Alex’s POV
The Hollow King turned with the terrible grace of something ancient and unkillable, his fingers still curled above Sasha’s chest. Black fire spiraled from her like reverse smoke—tendrils of dying light drawn toward him, coiling with hungry elegance. It licked the air between them with the deliberate, predatory patience of a beast savoring its final meal.
His face—gods—his face was a relic of cruelty itself. Bone-thin. Parchment-pale. Ancient runes crawled along the hollows of his cheekbones, flickering like dying embers clinging to life. But it was his eyes that unmade me. Starless voids. Endless. They weren’t just hollow. They were the memory of galaxies devoured—silent, rotting pits where time had collapsed and mercy had never existed.
And Sasha—my Sasha—hung in chains like
