"Prophets do not see the future.They see the truth beneath time."— Burned scripture, Red Veil Cult
They had taken his name.
The priests.The doctors.The ones in silver masks.
They carved it out of him with blessed knives and soft-spoken prayers. Called him unstable. Possessed. Wrong.
They fed him drugs to silence his mind.They burned chain-sigils into his skin to bind the Echo.They threw him into the pit to forget.
But the song still played.
"The god is hollow.The echo is full."
He rocked slowly on broken knees, curled in a shadowed corner of the Rotmarket—a patchwork bazaar where even time came to rot. His robes were stitched from rags and scripture—pages torn from forbidden texts, ink smeared by blood and rain, smuggled out of sanctums never meant to be breached.
His skin was a palimpsest: layered with symbols he could no longer read, but could never forget.
Shoppers passed him without pause, used to the twitching.Used to the madling who spoke in riddles.
Until a child dropped a coin.
It landed near his foot—silver, bright, clean.
And the moment it touched the ground,his hand snapped forward, far too fast for a body so broken.
He gripped the coin.His eyes rolled white.
And then—he saw.
🔥 Fire.Not flame. Not heat.Fire of thought. Fire of memory.
A scream burning backwards through time.A god without form, trapped in a thousand hollow statues.
A city in chains—Not built by hands.But by memory.
And beneath it—A door.
Black.Rusted shut.Nine sigils carved around the frame.
Each one broken.Each one bleeding.Each one calling a different name.
His body seized. Blood spilled from his nose in thick rivulets.He began to laugh.
Not joy.Not madness.Recognition.
"He's awake.He's missing his face—but he's awake."
A nearby officer turned, hand tightening on a shock-baton.
"Oi! Madling! Shut your damned mouth or I'll break your teeth!"
The prophet didn't answer.He opened his mouth—
—and screamed.
Loud.Wrong.A siren made of human agony.
Windows cracked.Children cried.Market bells shuddered on their strings.
Guards tackled him. Dragged him, still laughing, still foaming, blood and truth leaking from every corner of him.
The coin was still clutched in his hand.
And as they pulled him into silence,he whispered—
"The Hollow God remembers.And so will you."