The Hollow Expanse
634 Words
Chapter 5
The Hollow Expanse wasn't on any map.
Not anymore.
Where once there were roads, now only shifting glass-sand and ruins of melted stone remained. Trees twisted like screaming statues, frozen mid-suffering. The sky over it never turned blue, only pale gray or ember red, and the wind whispered in languages long dead.
Kain stood on the edge of it, staring across the jagged wasteland. This is where he lives? Seris adjusted the scarf over her face, shielding herself from the burning wind. Lives is a generous word.
They’d been traveling for three days. No sign of the Null Order, but Seris warned it wouldn’t last. “They track by silence, not scent. If your mark flares again…
Kain didn’t need the rest.
He could feel it. The sigil pulsed stronger with every step toward the Expanse, as if the mark wanted to go there. Or wanted something to come from it.
They moved at dusk. The only time the Hollow Expanse was “quiet,” though quiet here meant the ground didn’t scream when you stepped on it. Kain wrapped his coat tighter and followed Seris between melted spires and bones of beasts that hadn’t existed for centuries.
How do you know this Fenrick is still alive? Kain asked. I don’t, Seris said. But the glyph archives said he made a pact with the Hollow. That’s why he didn’t die in the Unraveling.
A pact with what? She didn’t answer.
Suddenly, the wind changed.
The ghostlights, they’d followed Kain ever since the sanctuary vanished. All at once. Like candles snuffed out.
Then the air shimmered. And from the dust, a figure appeared.
He was draped in rotting robes, skin cracked like old parchment, and eyes glowing with pale green fire. Glyphs crawled across his skin, moving like ink trying to escape a page. His mouth didn’t move when he spoke. But Kain heard it, inside his head. You bring the mark.
Kain stepped back. Seris stepped forward.
Fenrick,” she said. We need your help.
The figure didn’t blink. The mark returns. The chain begins anew. Kain tried to speak, but the words stuck.
Please, Seris said. You knew the Spellcaster. You knew the cipher. I did, Fenrick said. Before the Hollow. Before the Silence bled into me.Kain forced himself forward. “Can you translate it?
Fenrick turned toward him fully. The glyphs on his arms flared, echoing the pattern on Kain’s.
He raised one hand. Give me your arm. Kain hesitated. Seris touched his shoulder. We don’t have time to hesitate.
Gritting his teeth, Kain stepped forward and held out his marked arm. Fenrick’s fingers hovered inches from the sigil.
When they touched, everything exploded.
In Kain’s mind: fire, voices, screams, spells unraveling mid-air. The Spellcaster’s fall. The Null rising. And then… a memory that wasn’t his.
A door. Buried beneath the world. Bound by blood. And a voice saying, Only the Heir can unlock the Truth.
Kain gasped and staggered backward.
Fenrick’s body was shaking.
His mouth opened wide. It begins where the sky was torn… and ends where the world forgot its name.
What does that mean? Seris asked. But Fenrick was fading.
Literally. His body began crumbling into dust, not from decay, but from completion. As if his last purpose had been fulfilled.
His final words echoed across the expanse.
The Spire waits… but so do the Broken. Then he was gone.
Kain stared at his mark. It had changed again, more complete. New lines, a center glyph pulsing like a heartbeat.
What now? he asked. Seris unsheathed her blade and looked toward the distant peaks. We find the Spire.
Kain looked once more where Fenrick had stood. The Hollow Expanse was silent again.
But the sky above it cracked, just a little and something watched from behind.
- Writer
