Kaiza had seen monsters.He had fought the Hollow King. He had battled the Forgotten Lords. He had experienced visions that tore the illusion of reality.But this?This was worse.The First Hunger now loomed before him, a beast so ancient and cracked that it had forgotten all its own particulars but one final urge.To devour.The First Hunger itself, it appeared, had been rejected by reality, as the temple teetered and quaked and cracks yawned across the sky.Kaiza’s breathing was sharp and quick, his mind still revolving with shock from the visions the blacksmith at the crux had thrust into him. The sigil he’d touched still burned him as it had etched into his skin, and his chest was hot with his memories of being so close to him.But none of that mattered.Not right now.That was because Soryn was kneeling on the ground, trembling, her golden eyes aglow with something built out of the mortal plane, something dark.The Abyss had marked her.And Kaiza did not know whether he could bri

The world was dying.The temple had vanished, swallowed by the endless black sea below them. The sky, if it could be called that anymore, was a writhing, formless void, throbbing as though it were an organism, exuding hunger into the atmosphere.Kaiza was at the edge of the destruction, and his body ached with something new, something wrong.Something hungry.From the moment he had removed the Abyss from Soryn and inserted it into himself, everything had shifted.He could feel it now.A pressure on his mind. A voice whispering in a tongue he didn’t speak but which he somehow knew.He was marked by The Abyss long ago.But now it had finally accepted him.And that scared him more than anything.Soryn was gasping at his side, still exhausted from recent events. But her golden eyes, clear again, not touched by corruption, were fixed on him, sharp and assessing.She knew.She could see it in him.And she was waiting to find out what he would do next.The Harbinger lingered further back, hi

The Price of FireThe Black Spire still burned.Smoke billowed through the sky, wrapping along the rooftops of Duskfall like the last gasp of a dying god. The fire had devoured it all: the Hollow Lords’ secret ledgers, their armories, their painstakingly woven lies.But not Ronan.Kael wiped blood from his mouth, his breath sharp and ragged. His ribs throbbed where Ronan’s blade had struck flesh, the wound shallow but persistent. A reminder that he hadn’t managed to stop this.Dain stood by the stone parapet, watching the flames climb. “Well. That was fun.”Selene sheathed her daggers. “Not the word I’d use.”Kael exhaled slowly. The Hollow Lords had suspected he would be impulsive.But they were not counting on him to reduce their stronghold to ashes.Still, something felt wrong.Too easy.Too.There was a noise in the darkness.A horn.Low. Echoing.Kael’s stomach tightened.Selene frowned. “That’s not a city watch signal.Dain’s hand fell to his sword. “No. That’s a war call.”Kael’

Kaiza stepped forward.As soon as his foot crossed the threshold of the Hollow City, the air was gone.Not the wind. Not the temperature.But air itself.Sound faded, the very weight of reality warping as though space itself had bent in order to allow him entry.The ruins behind him, the battlefield, Soryn, the Harbinger, the First Hunger faded like a dream lost in waking.And the Hollow City embraced him home.An immense, infinite sprawl of gnarled towers, streets that went nowhere and everywhere, and a sky that wasn’t a sky at all.It was alive.Watching.Waiting.Kaiza breathed shallow and slow, his senses taut, his body wound.Because he had done this before.Not in visions.Not in nightmares.But in another life.Which the Abyss was making him relive.And this time there would be no turning back.“Son of a whore,” Soryn swore viciously as Kaiza disappeared from sight.Just a moment before, he’d been standing right there.Then he was gone.No sound. No trace.As if the Hollow City 

The Hollow City roared.Kaiza had thought the Abyss was just watching, waiting to see if he would break.But nowNow, the city was fighting back.The pavements shifted, stretched like living things beneath them, towers crumbled and reformed in the blink of an eye, walls of scorched stone blasted and collapsed, then remade somewhere else.This was no battlefield.This was a trap.A moving maze that wouldn’t let them out.And at its centerThe Champion of the Abyss stood, awaiting.He was the ideal, bred by the gods in Kaiza’s shape but without a single weak link.It was not human.It was not cursed.It was what Kaiza could have been, had he surrendered to the Abyss long ago.And now, it was here to blot him out.Kaiza let out a sharp breath, shrugging his shoulders. His body ached, veins blazed with Abyssal fire, muscles howled still from the battle earlier.But he wasn’t done.Not yet.He lifted his blade."Alright," he muttered. "Round two."The First BlowThe Abyss’s Champion acted f