Rain stabbed the cracked stone steps like icy needles—relentless, unforgiving. Nerin crouched on the ruined shrine's threshold, his spine bowed beneath soaked, threadbare rags that clung to his gaunt frame like wet cobwebs. The cold wasn't just cold—it gnawed beneath skin and sinew, burrowing deep into marrow and bone. Behind him, rusted iron gates groaned with the wind, the shrine whispering long-forgotten curses through its rotten bones.
His eyes—dull, sunken pits—locked on the sky, a bruised canvas smeared with clouds thick enough to swallow light whole. The world held its breath, tight and trembling, as if waiting for the inevitable to snap loose. Beside him, a pitiful fire struggled to claw warmth from soggy leaves and trash. Its flickering flames were weak—like hope gasping on its last breath.
Nerin's numb fingers toyed with a battered coin. One side bore the faded face of an emperor dead to history, the other etched crudely with a black sun, split in two. The mark matched the scar scorched into his left palm—a brand no one wanted to see.
"Heads, I go home," he whispered, voice swallowed by rain. "Tails... I end it."
The coin spun, catching a stray flicker of light like a cruel mockery of hope.
But instead of landing on heads or tails, it balanced—impossibly—on its edge.
Heart hammering like a death drum, Nerin stared as the world cracked.
A sound—not sound—ripped the air: a shriek deep and unnatural, grinding in his bones. The fire beside him twisted, flames contorting to blue and black. His vision narrowed, reality tearing like rotten fabric.
When he blinked, the shrine had vanished.
He stood in a street that shouldn't exist.
Around him sprawled a city swallowed by endless dusk. Buildings loomed like broken bones, jagged and crooked, their empty windows staring like hollow eyes. Thick tendrils of blood-red moss crept up cracked walls, pulsing faintly—as if alive. Beneath his feet, cold stone slick with rot.
Ahead, a massive clocktower spun backward, the hands moving in slow reverse. Above it hung a second moon—cracked, bleeding shadows—casting a sickly, unnatural glow.
Nerin swallowed hard. His throat was dry and raw.
One step. Then another.
The air pressed in, heavy not with moisture, but with wrongness. Shadows writhed, whispering in a tongue he couldn't understand—yet felt in the marrow of his bones.
An icy pulse throbbed in his chest. Fingers trembling, he pulled down his collar.
There it burned—the Mark.
A black sun split in two, branded into his skin, now glowing faintly with a cold, blue fire.
The truth poisoned his gut: this was no blessing. The Hollow Mark was a lock, a door—and a summons. The chosen disappeared, one by one. Now, it was his turn.
A brittle laugh cracked the silence.
From a nearby alley emerged a child—barefoot, pale as death, eyes black voids swallowing all light. She smiled—a grin stretched far too wide, unnatural, wrong.
Her lips didn't move, but the words seared into his mind:
Welcome, Hollowed.
"You're early," the voice echoed in his skull. "That means the trial begins with you."
Nerin's breath hitched. "Trial? What the hell is this place?"
Her smile grew wider, teeth sharp and gleaming like fractured glass.
A dream. A prison. A lesson. A lie. Choose your truth. But beware—the first thing you kill may be the last piece of yourself.
Darkness spilled from her eyes like ink, chains floating in a halo above her gaunt head.
Nerin bolted.
Heart pounding thunder in his ears, he fled past twisted buildings, doors that led nowhere. The world warped with every step, logic unraveling like fraying threads.
No weapon. No guide. Only the burning Mark—an ache pulsing like a living wound beneath his skin.
Desperation dragged him into a collapsed bookstore. Inside, stale air hung thick with dust motes dancing in fractured light through broken windows. On a rotten desk lay a knife—not steel, but bone. Cold, sharp.
He hesitated. Then gripped it.
A voice whispered behind him, cold as death:
Your Aspect has been chosen.
Words carved themselves into his mind, glowing with terrible clarity:
[Aspect: Echo of the Forgotten]
[Attribute: Adaptive Instinct]
[Trait: Hollow Memory]
He didn't understand.
But he felt it—the subtle shift inside him. Lighter. Sharper. Darker.
Outside, the child was no longer small.
Tall, gaunt, eyeless—chains spinning slowly like a crown above her head.
"Lesson one," she crooned, voice like shattered glass, "survival demands a cost."
She lunged.
Nerin screamed.
And fought.
And something inside him screamed back.