Chapter 13: The Hollow Queen
666 Words
> “When the bond breaks, the body withers. The soul forgets. And the Hollow rises.”
— Moon Temple Warning, carved in silverstone
---
The Keep had gone silent.
Servants whispered. Guards stood uneasy.
The Flame Queen was burning from the inside out.
And no one could stop her.
---
Lyla locked herself in the sanctum — the room once used by the Blackfang ancestors to pray during war. Now, the floor was scorched. The walls were cracked. The air was thick with flickers of flame that danced along her arms without her even trying.
She wasn’t crying.
She wasn’t screaming.
She was silent.
Too silent.
And that’s what scared Sylra most.
“She’s not just grieving,” Sylra told Riven, pacing outside the door. “She’s Hollowing.”
Riven’s face was pale, his hands twitching. He hadn't slept. Hadn't eaten.
“If I could feel her, I’d know what to say—”
“You do feel her,” Sylra snapped. “That’s why you’re losing your mind.”
He looked up at his sister.
“She’s drowning in silence,” he whispered. “And I’m the only one who knows what that feels like.”
---
Inside the sanctum, Lyla sat in the center of the circle, eyes glowing faint silver, unmoving.
Flashes of memory warped in and out:
Her first kiss with Riven.
The day she found out she was marked.
Her mother’s voice, screaming her name.
The vision of herself standing over a burning field, alone.
And then…
Riven’s face — vanishing in smoke.
> “Don’t forget me,” his voice said.
Her voice, broken:
> “I’m trying.”
---
Outside, Kael’s influence grew.
His whispers crept through the minds of weaker wolves.
> “She’s unstable.”
“She’s cracking.”
“She’s no Queen… she’s a weapon waiting to go off.”
And some began to believe it.
---
That night, Sylra couldn’t wait any longer.
“She’s slipping. Her soul’s unraveling. If she enters the Hollow fully, she’ll never come back.”
“What do I do?” Riven asked.
“You go in.”
“She’ll kill me.”
“No,” Sylra said. “She’ll remember you… or she won’t come back at all.”
---
Riven entered the sanctum just before midnight.
The heat inside was unbearable. The stones glowed. The mark on his own chest burned with rejection.
But he stepped into the flames.
And he knelt.
“Lyla,” he whispered.
She didn’t blink.
Didn’t breathe.
He crawled to her, barely able to see through the smoke.
Then, softly:
> “I still choose you.”
Her eyes flickered.
He kept going.
> “I chose you when you were thrown into the Hollow.
I chose you when they crowned you Queen.
I chose you when the bond broke—
And I will keep choosing you until there’s nothing left of me.”
The fire pulsed.
A single tear slid down her cheek.
Then she whispered—
> “You were the only thing keeping me tethered.”
Her hand reached toward his.
Their fingers touched.
And then—
> Boom.
The bond snapped back.
Like lightning hitting bone.
They both screamed — in pain, in release, in reunion.
And the mark flared across both their bodies.
The silver vines on Lyla’s skin grew into blazing white patterns, circling her spine like wings. Riven’s heart surged, and his wolf howled inside him.
He caught her just as she collapsed.
This time, she fell into his arms.
---
Later, as they lay together on the temple floor, hearts still syncing, Lyla whispered:
> “You brought me back.”
Riven’s lips pressed to her hair.
“You were never gone. Just buried under too much pain.”
Her fingers clutched his shirt.
“We can’t let him do that again.”
“We won’t.”
She looked at him.
Eyes sharp. Alive again.
> “Then it’s time we end this.”
- Writer
