The next morning, a bell rang before the sunless sky could even shift in hue. A harsh clang that echoed through the underground halls like a war drum.
Corin scrambled to dress. Around him, the others moved fast, silent, and practiced. No one explained anything. No one looked at him.
The courtyard was full when he arrived. A hundred initiates stood in lines, most older and taller. Weapons were strapped to their backs, though none matched, blades dulled from use, spears with cracked hafts, axes with rusted teeth. These weren't soldiers. They were survivors.
At the front, Maera stood in her blood-slashed mask.
"To live is to march through death," she said coldly. "Today, the path opens. If you wish to remain here, you must take it. If you wish to understand what hunts you, what burns beneath your skin, then step forward. Otherwise, leave."
Three initiates turned and walked away.
No one stopped them.
Maera pointed to a stone tunnel behind her. "The Hollow awaits."
---
The Hollow March wasn't a march at all.
It was a maze of black corridors cut deep into the bones of the mountain. The air was tight and stale. Torches flickered from iron brackets. Somewhere far ahead, something howled.
"Stay together," said a girl beside Corin. He hadn't noticed her before, freckled, sharp-eyed, holding a narrow dagger. "They'll pick off the ones who run."
"They?" Corin asked.
She didn't answer.
They moved.
Within minutes, the group began to fracture, panic, fear, sudden screams in the dark. Shadows moved too fast, too wrong. One boy vanished behind them, dragged backward by a hook of bone. Another slashed wildly at nothing and collapsed, convulsing.
Corin clung to the girl's side, pulse hammering. "What is this place?"
"The test," she said. "The Hollow shows you what you fear most. And then it tries to eat it."
---
They turned a corner into a wider chamber, open space, black stone, and a faint glow pulsing from the walls like veins. Dozens of corpses lay in heaps, some fresh, some desiccated.
And in the center stood a creature.
Tall. Humanoid. But wrong.
Its face was smooth,no eyes, no mouth. Its hands ended in long bone blades. It cocked its head as it smelled them.
Corin froze.
The girl moved first, lunging with her dagger. The creature caught her mid-step, slamming her into the wall.
Corin didn't think. He grabbed a fallen axe and swung.
The blade struck the creature's shoulder. It shrieked, not in sound, but in his mind. A searing burst of pain and noise.
The mark on Corin's wrist flared.
The creature recoiled. It hissed, backing away into the shadows. It fled.
Corin dropped the axe, gasping.
The girl lay against the wall, bruised but breathing. "Not bad," she muttered. "For a cursed noble."
"What did you call me?"
But she'd already passed out.
---
By the end of the Hollow March, only twenty remained.
Bloodied. Shaken. Alive.
Maera met them at the exit.
"Congratulations," she said. "You've passed. You now belong to the Sealed Order."
Corin stood at the edge of the group, staring at the blood on his hands.
And at the burn still glowing beneath his skin.
But even louder than the pain was the voice in his head.
"You are not ready. But you are awakening."
He looked up, and saw the white-masked figure again.
Not in the shadows.
This time, standing beside Maera.
—
They stripped Corin of his name the moment he entered the gates of the mountain stronghold.
In its place: a number. Seventeen.
The same circle-crown mark was already stitched into the tunics of the others. A dark sigil over the heart. He wasn't the only one. Every initiate bore it, some from birth, some from fire, some through ritual. But none had described the mark speaking to them.
And none had seen it glow.
---
Training was merciless.
By day: combat drills with dulled blades and blindfolds. Runic memorization until their mouths bled from mispronounced syllables. Trials in the dark tunnels below, where echoes moved wrong and some never returned.
By night: whispers.
Corin heard them through stone. In his bones. Sometimes he woke gasping, convinced the sky was aflame again.
They called the mark a gift.
He knew better.
It was watching him.
---
Sera Vellin noticed.
"You dream too loud," she muttered one night in the barracks, not looking up.
"I don't"
"Don't lie. The mark flares when you sleep. I've seen it."
Corin gritted his teeth. "What does it want?"
Sera hesitated. "Maybe the better question is, who else sees it flare?"
---
That night, Maera summoned him to the lower sanctum, deep in the stone where runes pulsed along the walls like veins.
She wasn't alone.
Beside her stood a figure cloaked in black, wearing a white mask.
It had no mouth, no eyes. But Corin felt it looking through him.
"This is The Watcher," Maera said. "It doesn't speak with a voice. Only to the marked."
Then The Watcher raised its hand.
The same mark burned on its wrist.
Corin's own flared in response, white-hot, brighter than he'd ever seen.
In his skull, the voice boomed:
"The bloodline stirs. The Hollow Heir walks. The veil thins."
He staggered back, gasping. "What does that mean?"
Maera didn't answer. But something in her expression had changed. For the first time, she looked afraid.
---
Later, Corin found a note under his bunk:
"They all bear the mark. Only yours woke something. That is why they fear you."
He stared at it long into the night.
Because if they all carried the same mark...
Why did the shadows only whisper to him?
—
The initiates were woken before dawn by a horn's hollow call, low and cold, like the sound of a mountain mourning.
No one spoke as they dressed. Speaking was forbidden during trials.
Brother Joren led them down spiral stairs slick with frost. The torches didn't burn here, they hissed with a silver flame that cast no heat.
At the base of the stairs was a single iron door, bound in black chains. Runes shimmered across its surface.
Maera stood waiting, flanked by two masked Watchers.
She looked at them one by one, but her gaze lingered on Corin.
"This is the Trial of Silence," she said. "You will enter the Hollow. You will find the path. If you speak, you forfeit. If you fail, you die."
No explanation. No questions.
The door opened with a groan that felt like it had been waiting centuries to move.
---
Inside was darkness like pressure, not empty, but filled with something watching. The stone swallowed the sound. Even their footsteps vanished into the hush.
Corin moved with the others at first. But the paths split almost immediately, stone shifting behind them, separating the initiates like pieces on a board.
Alone now, he pressed forward through tunnels that bent and breathed.
His mark began to throb.
Then the whispers returned, louder. Closer. Clearer.
"You are not meant to survive.
You are meant to awaken."
A figure appeared in the path ahead, hooded, unmoving. Not a Watcher. Not a monk. This one's face was bare.
It was his own face.
Eyes hollow. Mark glowing.
"You must let go," it whispered in his voice.
Corin's instinct screamed to speak, but he remembered Maera's warning. If he spoke, he failed.
So he clenched his jaw and stepped forward. The apparition bared its teeth and lunged.
Corin dodged barely in time, slamming into the stone wall. Pain flared down his side, but he kept silent.
The shadow-Corin raised its hand. The same mark blazed on its wrist.
It reached for Corin's chest,
And then everything burned.
---
He didn't scream, though every nerve begged to. The mark was on fire. Visions flashed in his head, crowns of ash, wings of flame, blood in the shape of sigils.
Then the apparition split apart in a burst of light. Dust. Gone.
Silence returned.
And before Corin stood a narrow archway, runes shimmering around it like a gate to somewhere deeper.
He stepped through.
---
He emerged into a chamber where Maera and the Watchers waited, along with five other initiates.
Only five.
There were fourteen.
The survivors were pale, shaking. Sera Vellin had blood on her sleeve. One boy was weeping silently. No one dared speak.
Maera nodded once. "You passed."
She looked at Corin last.
"Some marks burn. Yours blazed," she murmured. "The Hollow chose you."
---
That night, Corin lay awake in his bunk.
His mark no longer hurt.
It pulsed, slowly, like a second heart.
And he dreamed not of fire, but of chains breaking.