Chapter 19: B1Ch18-The Hollow and The Moon

The last light of day slipped through the high-arched windows of Marrowvale’s keep, a sliver of orange just brushing the edge of Ashanti’s bed. The sun was gone now. Only the fire remained — a quiet hearth flickering in the far wall, its warmth doing little to change the fact that Ashanti’s body, beneath the furs and blankets, was cold to the touch. Krysthalia had lit the room with quiet care. No lamps. Only flames. Only silence. She sat in the corner chair beside her daughter’s bed, spine straight, hands clasped in her lap, watching the steady rise and fall of the girl’s chest. Cael lingered by the door, one hand on the mantle as if unsure he was allowed to be here this long. He hadn’t spoken since entering, hadn’t dared. But Krysthalia did not send him away.

“She hasn’t stirred?” he asked at last.

Krysthalia shook her head. “Only faint breaths. Her body is still healing, but… something has changed. The warmth fades more each day.”

“She’s still in there,” Cael said softly, more to himself. “I know she is.”

Krysthalia glanced at him then, her gaze as clear as ever. “You know more than most. I would have you stay. I believe she would want it.”

He gave a faint nod, moving closer. He looked down at Ashanti’s still face — at the way the firelight kissed her cheekbones and made her lashes gleam. Her black hair was fanned behind her head like a shadow that refused to move.

“She was carved a lot, wasn’t she?” Krysthalia asked quietly, eyes not leaving her daughter. “You knew her in that place.”

Cael didn’t answer at first.

“She was brought in when I was eight,” he said finally, voice hollow. “Silver-haired then. A rarity in the dark. They made her a Tool two years later.”

Krysthalia closed her eyes for a moment. “I remember when they took her.”

“She survived it,” Cael said, jaw tightening. “But they didn’t leave much behind. Just a name. Shade. A set of commands.”

Krysthalia looked at him then, really looked. “Yet you stayed beside her. Even when she became what they wanted.”

“She never scared me.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent. “Even when she should have.”

The silence stretched again. Outside the window, the last line of sunlight vanished beneath the horizon.

“I want to understand it,” Krysthalia murmured. “What they made her into. Who they are.”

Cael turned, eyes catching the light of the fire. “You want to know about the Hollow Vows?”

“I want to know everything.”

He sat then, finally, on the edge of a bench across from her. His posture was strange — stiff but guarded, as if years of watching his back in silence still clung to him.

“There are ranks,” he began. “Not like armies. More like… levels of obedience. Of capability. Candidates. Tools. Weapons. Hounds. And above them all, the Shadows. Only Hounds know of the shadow ranks.”

Krysthalia remained still. Listening. Absorbing.

“They break you first,” Cael continued. “Strip away name, thought, mercy. Carving comes later — that’s how they make sure the dama obeys the command instead of the soul.”

“And what of the carvers?” she asked.

His jaw twitched. “Not all of them are human. The worst ones aren’t.”

Krysthalia frowned faintly, but said nothing.

“The Inquirers,” Cael added. “They don’t ask questions with words. Just blades. They find the edges of pain. Of loyalty. They’re the ones who shape a candidate into a Tool.”

“And you endured that?”

“I did.” His gaze flicked back to Ashanti. “But not like she did.”

The fire cracked, the warmth of it seeming distant.

“Who commands them?” Krysthalia asked.

Cael hesitated. “A shadow behind the throne. I never saw them. Orders came through voices, letters, and figures in masks. There’s a name whispered… but never spoken aloud.”

Krysthalia’s fingers tightened slightly in her lap.

“And you stayed. Even knowing what they were.”

“I stayed,” he whispered, “because she did.”

Her eyes met his. “Tell me their locations.”

Cael’s gaze returned to Ashanti, his voice quieter now. “I already told you the ones I knew. The hideouts under Containe, the Hollow Zone, the Velarun lowlands, and the marshlands south of the Barrier.”

Krysthalia nodded once — she remembered.

“But there are rumors,” he added, voice taking on a darker note. “Ones, even the Weapons weren’t supposed to speak of. A fortress beneath the spine of the Aetherglass mountains — old, cursed, warded in ways that make you forget the path you took to get there. Another is hidden in the buried bones of a sunken city near the western cliffs of Talisyr. They say even time bends near it. And one more… a place they called the Maw.”

“The Maw?” she echoed.

He nodded, slowly. “No one who went was ever seen again. Only the Hands were said to go there, and only with captives that needed to be erased completely. It was the last stop. A place for the ones who broke too far to be useful… or too dangerous to kill.”

Krysthalia sat back slightly, breath controlled, expression unreadable. “And Ashanti?”

“She was being considered,” Cael said, his hands clenched tightly now. “After what she did… after she summoned that thing on one of the missions. They called it Worldeater. They didn’t know its name, only its hunger. The elders wanted her reassigned. Sent to the Maw.”

“But she wasn’t.”

“I stopped it. I begged. I offered myself in her place — one last carving, the worst one.”

Krysthalia’s eyes softened just slightly.

“I don’t regret it,” he said. “Not for a moment.”

***

The dark around her breathed. Ashanti stood barefoot on cracked stone, the sky above painted in swirling ink. Moons moved like ripples on a pond, fading in and out of each other as if memory and time had come unstitched. She didn’t feel cold, but neither did she feel warm — she simply was. A whisper rode the silence, then formed. Dust swirled around her ankles. A lone figure emerged from the mist — a woman clad in scale-stitched armor, her hair pulled back in braids, one eye covered with a strip of cloth dyed crimson. She moved with the grace of someone who had fought for every breath and didn’t waste any of them. Ashanti stepped forward.

“You’re not real,” she murmured.

“I was,” the woman said. “And you are.”

Without another word, the woman turned — and the world changed. Suddenly, they were in a circular coliseum carved from black stone and bone, surrounded by flame-brazed sigils. Ghosts lined the edges. Echoes. Ashanti could feel them, watching. A test? No. A lesson. The woman drew a thin-bladed spear and gestured toward her. Ashanti blinked — and in her hand was a matching spear, weighted and real. They danced. Not like Hollow Vows combat — not the brutal, efficient killing she’d been trained to do. This was fluid. Circular. Responsive. The woman struck, and Ashanti parried; she lunged, and Ashanti turned the blow aside. She wasn’t thinking. The movements weren’t hers, not really. They belonged to someone who had lived thousands of years before she was born. Yet now, they were becoming hers. The spear’s rhythm became familiar. A pattern of defense that did not end in death. Precision without slaughter. Strength without cruelty. When the lesson ended, the woman lowered her weapon and bowed once. Her eyes gleamed with pride.

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"You remember more with each return," she said, her voice like storm-winds wrapped in silk. "But remember this, child of the lost moon: power without compassion is hollow."

Ashanti staggered back, breath catching, and the world blurred again, pulling her toward another Echo.

***

The fire crackled low, spilling golden light across the stone walls of the chamber. Beyond the frosted windows, night had fully fallen over Marrowvale, casting its hush over the city. The only sound was the slow, even rhythm of Ashanti’s breathing and the occasional shift of logs in the hearth. Krysthalia adjusted her daughter’s blankets once more — not because they needed fixing, but because her hands needed something to do. Cael sat quietly near the hearth, shadows dancing over his face. He hadn't spoken for some time, but Krysthalia knew the silence wasn’t empty.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said at last. “What were their goals? What was it all for?”

Cael’s brows drew together. “That’s the thing… I don’t know what the original purpose was. Maybe they did once, but whatever it was… it changed.”

Krysthalia tilted her head. “Changed how?”

“They started chasing something darker. Older.” He hesitated. “I wasn’t told much. Most of us weren’t. But there was one who knew more. The one they all deferred to. The Veiled One.”

Krysthalia leaned forward slightly.

“She wasn’t like the rest,” Cael said. “Even among the higher ranks, she was set apart. No name. Always in shrouds — her voice low, calm, always composed. Dangerous in a quiet way. Most feared her. But she never gave orders directly. Just... suggestions. And people listened.”

Krysthalia frowned. “She told you things?”

“More than she told most. She said the Hollow Vows weren’t meant to be assassins. Not originally. That they were built for something greater. Something tied to the end of an age.”

He glanced toward Ashanti, then back to the fire.

“She told me that everything we did, the missions, the deaths, the scars we carved into one another, it was to awaken the Dark Lord. Said we were the chisels shaping the vessel. That once the god was awake, the chains of the world would break.”

“And you believed her?” Krysthalia asked softly.

“I believed she believed it,” Cael murmured. “She had that look. Like someone who knew the ending already, and pitied those who didn’t.”

Krysthalia folded her arms. “You said no one knew who she was?”

“No name. No origin. Just a veil.” Cael paused. “But there was another... a Weapon. I never heard her speak — not once — until the Veiled One came. Then, suddenly, she did. Like she couldn’t help it.”

Krysthalia's eyes narrowed slightly, but she said nothing, merely nodded, and turned her gaze to Ashanti.

“She was at the center of it,” Cael continued. “Even if she didn’t know. We all revolved around her like planets around a star.”

Krysthalia reached down and brushed a lock of black hair from Ashanti’s brow. Her fingers lingered.

“She is no one's vessel,” the queen said. “No one’s god to shape.”

“No,” Cael agreed. “She never was.”

***

The world swam, the warmth of firelight replaced by a flickering gray beyond time. Ashanti stood in a hall she had never seen, but her body remembered it. Stone columns stretched high into a vaulted ceiling, worn smooth by centuries of prayer. Banners of dark silk hung limp against the pillars — their glyphs ancient, symbols etched in reverence to a god long unspoken. Figures knelt in rows across the floor, heads bowed, palms open toward a distant altar. She was not among them, not truly, but the Echo was. Through the eyes of a man draped in ceremonial robes, she watched as he knelt last among the faithful. His heart thudded with hope. Longing. Not madness. Not yet. The voices around him whispered prayers.

“Return to us.”

“Break the silence.”

“Shatter the chains of this age.”

“We are the Hollow. Make us full.”

The man stood slowly and walked the center aisle, eyes fixed upon the altar, not of gold, but obsidian carved to mimic an open maw. An offering of oil and ash was laid upon it. Behind him, others murmured his name with reverence.

“Grand Caller...”

He spoke then, voice soft, trembling:

“We are the Hollow Vows. We are your faithful. Why will you not answer?”

Years passed in a blink. The hall was dimmer now. Fewer voices. The faithful had dwindled. Some left, some vanished. Still, he prayed.

“Please…” he whispered. “Just a sign. Anything.”

Ashanti felt the ache in his bones. Felt the silence eat him alive. Another blink. The altar cracked. A whisper answered, but it was not divine. Not holy. It rasped like broken stone:

“You wish to be full...?”

The Grand Caller froze. His eyes were wide, trembling hands reached toward the fracture in the obsidian. Something pulsed beneath it — not light, but hunger.

He fell to his knees in joy.

“You have returned.”

It did not, however, return. But he believed. And that belief was all that thing needed.

More years. The hall was gone. Only ruins remained. The Grand Caller sat in the dark, surrounded by etchings and crystals. Dozens. Hundreds. His form had thinned, bones pressed against stretched skin. His eyes glowed with the same sick silver as the fragments he’d mined from the void rift — the first seeds of damastyl. He carved runes into flesh. His own. Others. Shapes that should not exist, lines too sharp to be real.

“I made you,” he whispered to the crystals.

“I gave you purpose.”

“You will carry our Vow.”

He forgot the prayers. Forgot the god. Now, there was only the breaking. And the promise of what might be if he fed it just a little more. Ashanti — or the Echo she was riding — watched him cut open a child's palm and place a raw shard inside. The boy screamed, the air warping around him. Power surged, uncontrolled.

The Grand Caller wept in ecstasy.

“Perfect,” he crooned. “You are the beginning.”

But the child died. Writhing, burning. And the Grand Caller only turned to the next. He was no longer a prophet. He was the madman.

***

The fire had settled into a low, steady crackle. Shadows danced across the stone walls of Ashanti’s chamber, their movements slow and languid like memories reluctant to leave. Krysthalia sat by the hearth, still armored in the grace of queenship, but visibly tired. Not from ruling — from waiting. Cael stood at the edge of the balcony doors, the last blush of sunset flickering against his face. He glanced once toward the bed, then to Krysthalia.

“What was she like?” he asked gently. “Ashanti, I mean. Before it all?”

Krysthalia tilted her head, eyes softening.

“She wasn’t much of a princess,” she said after a pause. “Far too stubborn. Always sneaking sweets. She started a rebellion once, over stolen pie.”

Cael blinked. “…Pie?”

“She led the kitchen servants in a midnight insurrection. Snuck into the pantry and declared herself ‘the sovereign of whipped cream.’”

He laughed. Not mockingly — but something quiet and warm. “That sounds about right.”

Krysthalia’s gaze lingered on the girl curled beneath the velvet blankets. “She was always wild, even then. Her father and I would call her our ‘Little Moon.’ Always shifting, never tamed. But somehow… lighting the whole sky.”

At that, Cael’s smile faded slightly.

“The Veiled One,” he said slowly, “called her that once. Little Moon. Just before I left the Hollow Zone. I thought it was odd. She never used names.”

Krysthalia’s expression didn’t change, not outwardly. But something froze behind her eyes. The quiet between them lengthened, stretched taut as a pulled thread.

“I see,” she said, too evenly.

Cael didn’t press.

She looked once more at Ashanti, then slowly rose to her feet. “She’s safe now. For the first time in years, I can say that and almost believe it.”

He turned toward her. “You believe she’ll wake again soon?”

“I do,” Krysthalia said. “And when she does… she’ll need both of us. For different reasons.”

There was a long moment of understanding between them. Not trust, not yet — but alignment.

As Krysthalia crossed to the door, she stopped just beside him. “Get some rest, Cael.”

He nodded, voice low. “I’ll stay with her a while longer.”

She didn’t argue. Just looked back once — not at him, but at her daughter — before the door shut behind her. Cael stepped to the bedside again, watching the slow rise and fall of Ashanti’s chest. Her hair spilled across the pillow like spilled ink. Her hand, resting atop the covers, was cold but steady. He sat down beside her, fingers brushing faintly against the edge of her blanket.

“You’re still fighting in there,” he murmured. “Aren’t you?”

The candlelight flickered. The room said nothing. But he waited. And would continue waiting.