The skies over the eastern continent grew darker with each passing day. Clouds churned not with storm, but with memory—ash-gray and heavy with the weight of ancient sins.
David felt it before he saw it.
The Well within him pulsed not with power, but warning. Like a drumbeat slowing. Like breath held too long.
Something had moved.
Something old.
He stood upon the cliffs overlooking the Duskwrought Sea. The tide did not crash—it retreated, low and silent, exposing the bones of ships once sunken. Flocks of birds fled inland. Fish floated belly-up, their mana strings cut.
And then the sea split.
A tremor shook the land as something enormous rose from the deep.
Not a creature. Not a fortress.
A shell.
Blackened stone, shaped like the upper half of a massive humanoid form. A face with no features. No eyes. No mouth. Just void carved into masklike stillness.
The Husk of Varuun.
The first Fallen Well.
David didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward, calling the Well to him—not in defense, but in invitation.
The sea boiled where the Husk stepped. Each movement turned the air brittle. The very light seemed to avoid it.
David moved like water—leaping from cliff to rock to ruin, until he stood atop the highest jagged stone, facing the Husk as its head turned… without motion.
It had no will of its own.
But the Hollow had filled it.
And it remembered him.
Mana twisted unnaturally around the Husk. It didn't flow. It spiraled inward, feeding a singular emptiness where its heart should've been.
David breathed deeply.
The Well surged in response—but not with fire, or speed, or defense.
With clarity.
"I don't fear you," he said.
No answer came.
Only a sound—a low, mournful tone like ancient stone cracking under pressure.
Then the Husk moved.
The first blow shattered the sea cliff.
David met it not with strength, but with movement. He let the strike fall through him, slipping past the impact and striking with his palm into the Husk's joint.
The ground screamed.
The Husk staggered—not in pain, but in memory.
David spoke as he moved: "You are not the end. You are what was left behind."
A second strike came—faster, heavier. It brought fire, ice, wind, all corrupted. Each element devoured by the Hollow's will.
David absorbed it.
The Well twisted within him, spinning the Hollow's force into form.
Not rejection.
Conversion.
The clash lit the coastline with violet shockwaves.
Rocks cracked. Waters hissed.
Birds fled to other continents.
And far inland, people began to see the light.
Some trembled.
Some prayed.
But others… remembered.
Old guardians stirred in their exile.
Scribes retrieved sealed tomes.
And warriors—long retired—began sharpening old blades.
David landed atop the Husk's shoulder, driving mana through his heel into the void-shell beneath. His power didn't crack it—but it sank in.
He called not to break it.
But to speak.
"You were once like me."
For a flicker of time—barely a second—the Husk stopped moving.
David felt something deep within stir.
Then came the scream.
It wasn't sound.
It was loss.
A thousand broken dreams. A thousand empty moments. The Husk wailed with the anguish of becoming the Hollow. Not because it wished to—but because it had no will to refuse.
David stumbled from the force.
Blood ran from his nose.
He steadied himself.
"I will not become you."
The Husk's hand rose again.
But this time, it moved slower.
Then—light.
A beam of silver split the sky.
From it descended a figure cloaked in robes of moon-thread, bearing a staff etched with seven circles.
The Warden of Tahl.
One of the last Arbiters.
She spoke not to David, but to the sea.
"To those who fell, I offer memory. To those who remain, I offer choice."
She plunged her staff into the water.
A dome of mana spread outward, silencing the Hollow's corruption for a breath's time.
David nodded.
And then he leapt.
With the Warden stabilizing the sea, David drove his full essence into the Husk's core. His body glowed like a second sun, not with force—but intention.
The Hollow's hunger met his memory.
Its despair met his purpose.
And at the exact point where his fist met the Husk's chest—
Everything stopped.
For one eternal second, the world was still.
The waves froze mid-crest.
The wind paused.
The Hollow saw itself in David—and recoiled.
Then, with a sound like a chasm closing, the Husk collapsed.
Not exploded.
Not shattered.
Collapsed inward, folding into itself like a star dying, until only a stone the size of a man's fist remained—floating in the air.
David caught it.
The Warden bowed her head.
"It is a Seal now."
They stood in silence.
The coast broken.
The sea hushed.
David breathed, bloodied, yet whole.
The Warden turned to him.
"You fight not just with power, but with truth."
"I fight because I remember what it's like to be powerless."
She placed her hand over his heart.
"And that is why you must go to the Cradle."
He blinked. "What is the Cradle?"
"The place where all Wells are born… and where one must be remade."
Far beneath the ruins of Varuun, where the Hollow's core whispered through forgotten roots, something shifted.
It had sent the Husk.
Now it would send words.
And with them—
Temptation.