Chapter 138 - Oaths Made in Ash

What had once been immutable law chains, silence, inevitability now trembled. For countless ages, silence had not only ruled here, it had been here. It was not ruler and realm, but marrow and throne, command and decree, flawless and unassailable. Silence had been thought eternal, incorruptible, untouchable. The Hollow had known no pulse, no fracture, no defiance. It had been an endless reign of stillness, without sound, without breath, without the faintest ripple across its abyssal skin. Silence was law. Silence was sovereign. Silence was eternity itself. It was not simply the absence of noise, but a total erasure of existence, a dominion so absolute that to even imagine resistance was unthinkable. And yet eternity fractured.