Sleep became a stranger to Alaric. Every night, the whispers pressed closer, threading through the walls like cracks in the stone. The Hollow Ones never attacked, but their faceless heads appeared in the corners of his vision, dissolving the moment he blinked.
They were watching. Waiting.
By day, the Academy was no safer. Councilors murmured about "containment," students avoided him in the halls, and even Darian's once-boisterous voice had grown quiet in his presence. Only Clem stood at his side without hesitation — though even she could not hide the unease in her eyes.
"Alaric," she whispered one evening as they walked the torchlit corridor, "you said nothing during the council about why the Hollow Ones bowed to you."
"Because I don't know why," he admitted, his voice low. "But I intend to find out."
That resolve carried him past curfew, when most of the Academy slumbered. Guided by the amber stone's faint thrum, Alaric slipped into the restricted archives — a chamber buried beneath the eastern wing, guarded not by men, but by wards of light.
The stone pulsed against the wards. To his shock, they parted for him, their glow bending aside like curtains.
Inside, the archives smelled of dust and old blood. Tomes bound in cracked leather lined the shelves, their spines inscribed with symbols that writhed if stared at too long. He lit a faint orb of light and began to read.
Most of the records were forbidden histories — chronicles of failed vessels, experiments the Academy had hidden from its students. Names etched with cold precision: children born with dual power, each one consumed within months.
Except one.
He froze at the entry. Eryndor Draven.
His blood ran cold. The name was his family's.
The record described a man who bore both light and shadow, centuries ago. Revered at first, then feared, then hunted. The Hollow Ones, it said, had not attacked him. They had knelt.
Alaric's hands shook as he traced the words. The rest of the page had been deliberately scorched, blackened into unreadable ruin. But faint beneath the burn, one line remained:
"The Dual Vessel is not their prey… but their king."
The whispers surged in his head, pressing harder than ever. "Incomplete… incomplete…"
Alaric staggered back, the orb of light flickering in his palm. His breath came shallow, his chest tight.
The Hollow Ones didn't bow to him out of fear. They bowed out of recognition.
He was not just a vessel.
He was a successor.