Chapter 91 – The Hollow Son
The ascent to the Shattered Spire was nothing short of a reckoning.
The mountain's face was split from crown to root—a wound left by a battle forgotten in time, when gods and mortals screamed as equals. Ash still clung to its crevices like mourning garb, and even the crows refused to circle its peak. The air grew thinner with every step, as though the mountain itself sought to keep them from the summit. With each footfall, they drew closer to something ancient, something forgotten, something that had been waiting long enough to grow bitter.
Their company had thinned—Tarn, Lysa, Caedren, and five trusted scouts. The rest remained in Morvale, waiting, watching, praying the Dominion's tide would not wash in before the summit yielded its truths. Caedren felt a knot in his stomach every time he thought of the town below, now abandoned. The sight of the stakes and the masks—the symbols of a place erased by fear—haunted his thoughts like the ghosts of its former inhabitants. But his purpose lay ahead, and there was no room for hesitation.
Tarn grunted as he pulled himself over a ledge. "Tell me again why the answers we seek always sit at the top of the world?"
Caedren did not answer immediately, his gaze still set on the jagged path ahead. The wind bit at his skin, but his thoughts were colder still. "Because they were buried there," Lysa replied, eyes ever forward. "Not to be found. But to be forgotten."
Her words lingered in the space between them, hanging like a mist. Caedren understood what she meant—this journey was not for glory. It was not to claim a victory or uncover some long-lost treasure. It was to unearth the final remnants of a world that had long since ceased to exist, to confront the echoes of men who had fallen before their time, and to face the consequences of what they had left behind.
By dusk, they reached the plateau where the Spire's bones jutted like broken spears. The tower, once a monastery, now leaned at a perilous angle, half-swallowed by time and frost. Wind howled through its cracked masonry like voices screaming through clenched teeth, as if the mountain itself had become a tombstone for those who had once sought answers within its walls.
Lysa halted.
"He's here."
Caedren looked around, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword. "The Hollow Son?"
Lysa nodded slowly, her blade already half-drawn, as though expecting something more than just a man to greet them. "No fire. No shadow. Just absence."
They entered.
Inside, silence lay thick as burial cloth. Mosaics on the walls showed battles never recorded in books—Kael in black fire; Ivan in chains made of stars; a third figure, cloaked in grey, face shattered from the stone. The images seemed to blur before Caedren's eyes, as though the past itself was reluctant to be recalled.
At the altar sat a man.
Not young. Not old. Timeless in the way statues are.
His skin was pale, and his eyes closed. He breathed steadily, but there was something unsettling about the rhythm. It was the breath of a man who had not truly lived for centuries, if ever. His body was marked not with scars—but runes, intricate and foreign, twisting across his skin in patterns that seemed to shift and change with every glance. His presence filled the room with a weight that pressed down on Caedren's chest, a heaviness that had nothing to do with the mountain's altitude.
The Hollow Son opened his eyes.
They were empty.
Not blind—hollow. Reflecting no light, as if he saw into places the sun refused to shine, into spaces where no man should ever look. His gaze was not a gaze at all, but an absence that swallowed the light around him. The very air seemed to tremble with the force of it.
He spoke without moving his lips.
"You wear Ivan's echo."
"You bleed with Kael's shadow."
"You seek peace, child of war."
"Why?"
Caedren stepped forward. His boots echoed on the cold stone, the sound deafening in the stillness. He did not kneel, though he felt an urge to do so, a recognition of something greater than him—something older. But he was not here to bend before it. He was here to confront it.
"Because I am tired of watching graves grow like fields. Because I've seen children taught to hate names they've never heard. Because I believe there is more than death passed down like inheritance."
The Hollow Son's head tilted slightly, as though considering his words. He stood, bones cracking like shifting rock, and stepped toward Caedren with a fluidity that defied his appearance. The space between them seemed to bend, the air vibrating with the tension of a question that had lingered for too long.
"Then you must take the weight."
He touched Caedren's brow.
And in an instant—
He saw.
He saw Ivan weeping over Kael's broken body, begging the fire to take him instead. He saw a child screaming in the ruins of a village—saved by one of Ivan's students, the sound of desperation and relief blending into one. He saw the student becoming Caedren's ancestor, vowing to raise a blade only when words failed. He saw Lysa, standing at a pyre, her own brother's body burning—chosen by the Severed Crown not for loyalty, but for loss.
And beneath it all—a map. Carved into memory. The path to the Forge of Mourning, where the Final Crown sleeps.
Caedren collapsed.
When he woke, the Hollow Son was gone. The altar before him was empty, as though it had never held anything at all. Only a single word had been scratched into the stone.
Forgive.
Outside, dawn crept pale and watchful. The first light of morning filtered through the cracks in the tower, casting long shadows across the ruins. Tarn stood by the door, his gaze fixed on the horizon. The faintest frown tugged at the corner of his mouth, his expression unreadable.
Tarn stared at the horizon, lips pressed in thought. "Do we go back now?"
"No," Caedren said, standing. His legs were unsteady, but his resolve had never been firmer. "We go forward. Past Morvale. Past the gates. To the Forge."
Lysa looked at him sideways. "You saw it, didn't you?"
Caedren didn't meet her gaze immediately. Instead, he turned his attention to the ruins around them, the ghosts of history whispering from the stone. He could feel the weight of the map burned into his mind, the path ahead clear but shrouded in mystery. "I saw everything. The war. The peace. The price. And what's still to come."
Tarn tightened his grip on his axe, his knuckles turning white. "Then may the gods we no longer believe in walk with us."
Caedren didn't look back.
"Let them try to stop us."
The mountain stretched behind them, silent now, its secrets buried once more beneath the ice and stone. And ahead, the path to the Forge lay open—though not for long. The world had already begun to shift, and the choices to come would demand more than the strength of arms. They would require a reckoning.
And Caedren would meet it head-on.
The Hollow Son's words echoed in his mind.
"You wear Ivan's echo."
"You bleed with Kael's shadow."
"Forgive."