The descent began in silence.
Mike stood at the mouth of the stone tunnel beneath the Palace of Dusk, its walls slick with condensation and weeping shadows. Black rock stretched downward in a spiral, curving into unknown depths, and carved along its edges were torches, green fire licking their sconces, giving off no heat, only a pale sickly light. The flames bent with his presence, reacting to his essence, dancing toward him as he walked.
His feet struck the stone with dull, deliberate thuds. No echoes followed him, sound died too quickly here, swallowed by some unnatural hush in the air. The deeper he walked, the heavier the pressure became. A tension wrapped around his bones.
Bahamut's voice had been silent since the palace.
But Mike could still feel him lurking in the marrow. A low, coiled rage, waiting to be called.
"This is the Hollow," he muttered under his breath. He didn't need a guide. The pull was obvious. A trail of ash, a sour tang in the air, a divine absence that stung like rot.
He walked.
Green torches lit his path, dotting the walls at irregular intervals. The deeper he went, the brighter they burned, casting long shadows that rippled behind him. He passed carvings etched into the walls, old scripts in dead languages, many of which Mike now understood without knowing how.
"The First Flame's gift. These are warnings and laments." Bahamut growled
He walked for what felt like hours. Or maybe minutes. Time didn't move here it folded, crept sideways, curled into itself.
The path curved again, and the tunnel widened.
The walls began to pulse faintly, veins of sickly green running through the rock, synchronized with the torchlight. Between the intervals of flame, shadows pooled unnaturally deep. He glanced at one and caught a flicker of movement, a flash of a face. Kelsey's. Broken. Bloodied. Then gone.
His claws dug into his palms.
"Not real," he growled.
Another face appeared in the next pool of darkness.
A version of himself on fire. Burning alive. Screaming.
He didn't slow. He walked harder, faster.
The walls narrowed. The ceiling bent low. The torches hissed with growing intensity. Still cold. Still undead.
Then he heard it.
A wet scrape across the floor. A dragging sound. Bone on stone.
He turned.
A hulking shape stepped from the shadow a stitched-together mass of wraithbone and essence, its face shifting between dozens of visages. Eyes glowed with pale green hate. The torch beside it went out.
"You let her die," it whispered.
Mike didn't answer.
He lunged.
His fist tore through the thing's ribcage, scattering its form like ash. The torch next to him flared again, brighter this time, before dying to a pale flicker.
"Don't listen to them," Bahamut's voice returned, low and vibrating. "They are memory given form. Guilt sharpened into blade."
Mike exhaled steam. "Then I'll burn every memory they send."
He pressed forward.
King Maymun's Throne Room
King Maymun sat alone in his ornate golden throne, head bowed slightly, eyes half-closed in thought. The fires of his court burned quietly before him, casting a warm glow of colors across the polished floors of veined white marble.
He hadn't spoken to anyone in hours.
He did not need to.
He was watching.
Seeing.
Sensing.
The echoes of the underworld tugged at the edge of his perception, faint threads of energy only a few immortals still knew how to track. Not gods. Not angels. Those too proud and too blind to see the truth beneath the surface.
But Maymun was old. Older than most knew. And there were few truths hidden from him.
Kur.
That name haunted him now. The First Flame, cast from the surface of the world. His old friend but calamity of chaos. A legend buried even among the djinn. A being of such power that even speaking the name aloud once drew the attention of Watchers.
And yet, Kur's essence lived again, inside the mortal named Mike.
A mortal no longer.
A shadow flickered at the edge of the chamber.
Maymun didn't look up. "Speak, Binyai."
The tortoise shimmered into form, violet smoke curling from his shell.
"He's gone below," Binyai said quickly. "Through the Underworld. But… not within it."
Maymun's eyes narrowed.
"He's descending further," Binyai added. "Following the trail of Hecate's influence. The Hollow has accepted him."
The king's voice was a low, thunderous hum. "None walk there unless summoned… or cursed."
"I believe he is both," Binyai said, with uncharacteristic solemnity. "And the door did not resist him."
Maymun stood slowly, his form casting long shadows across the stone. His bronze skin glowed softly in the dark.
"If he has entered the Hollow to erase Hecate," he said, "then the war above will be our main concern. Go to Hamza. Tell him Mike follows the path toward Hecate's true from within the Hollow. We must prepare for the Watchers."
"And if he doesn't come back?" Binyai asked.
Maymun turned toward his great vault of sealed scrolls.
"Not even I know what that would do to the balance."
The Hollow
Mike pushed further, his breath forming cold clouds in the stale air. The walls began to curve outward again, and the corridor became a platform of black glass suspended over a bottomless chasm. Beneath it, wisps of green flame moved through the void like swimming ghosts.
He didn't trust the floor.
He walked anyway.
Shapes moved in the distance, maybe hallucinations, maybe watchers. He didn't care.
He was getting closer.
The sickness in the air was familiar now, the exact kind he'd smelled before in the caverns where he'd fought Hecate. It was the same taint that clung to her spellcraft, to the undead, to the broken runes.
But it was denser here. Purer. No dilution.
The center.
Mike's thoughts darkened as he walked, anger burning hotter with every step. He wasn't afraid. Not of this place. Not of its gods. Not anymore.
He reached another chamber, this one circular, domed like a cathedral, and lit by a ring of green fire torches. In the center, a wide spiral stair descended deeper, made not of stone, but of ribs from a massive creature.
He exhaled slowly as he followed the twisted bones steps down to a set of doors, shifting into his dragon form.
As he pushed them open the flames began to hiss in a rhythm.
Then came the groaning.
The hall pulsed open into a dome-shaped chamber. Dozens of green-fire torches lined the walls in a perfect circle. In the center stood a spire, a bone obelisk laced with crystal and silver. Around its base was a gate, woven of black iron and screaming faces. The torches trembled.
Mike stepped forward, and all the flames flared violently.
Bahamut's voice thundered in his skull:
"Her work lies beyond this gate. Blood and betrayal cling to the stones. This is a temple made to mock the divine."
Mike stepped up to the runes inscribed in the bone gate. He ran a claw across them.
They pulsed. Reacted.
"Then let her feel my rage," he growled.
He slammed his hand into the rune, and the Hollow Below shook.
Flames dimmed.
Then grew bright.
Before he could begin the descent down the next set of bone stairs beyond the hall, a whisper passed through the air.
"You should not be here."
Mike turned, hands curling into fists.
The voice came from everywhere at once. Not from a speaker. Not from a being. From the walls. From the bones. From the flame.
It was her.
Hecate.
Not her vessel, her true self.
"You carry Kur's flame. But you're still a man. And men bleed."
Mike walked down the bone-stairs, ignoring the voice. "Then come fucking make me."