The world was fraying.
At first, it was subtle — a distortion along the horizon, a ripple where no wind stirred, shadows that refused to align with their shapes. Sid noticed it before anyone else. The trees near the camp, once vibrant and full, now leaned inward like skeletal hands frozen mid-gesture. The grass that clung to patches of earth had turned gray, brittle as ash, and when his boots pressed against it, it crumbled like powdered bone.
"Nature's dying," Lucien muttered one morning, his eyes fixed on a tree whose bark had split open like an old scar. "The Hollow's bleeding through."
Sid followed Lucien's gaze and felt it before he fully saw it — an itch under the skin, a pressure behind the eyes, as if reality itself wanted to pull apart like loose threads in a worn cloak.
Nox stood at the edge of the ruined field with furrowed brow. "It's not dying. It's changing," he said quietly, but the words carried dread. "The Hollow doesn't destroy… it remakes."
Remakes.
Sid shuddered.
For days, patches of land had warped into grotesque forms. Forest paths bent unnaturally, twisting like veins that had burst and grown wild. Small streams turned dark, slick with something thick that reflected no light. Occasionally, he glimpsed shapes within the shadows — figures that stood just beyond sightlines, only to vanish when he blinked.
But it was when the visions began that the terror rooted deeper.
The first time it happened, Sid had been walking alone through a half-dead grove. His arm, now laced with both golden and black veins, throbbed as always, but something else pulsed beneath it — a rhythm not his own.
The air thickened. A low growl rolled like distant thunder through the woods.
The trees bent inward, their limbs curling toward him as if reaching. A shiver crawled down his spine.
Then the ground split.
Not physically, but visually.
For a heartbeat, Sid's eyes blurred, and the forest before him shifted. Where once there had been trunks and leaves, now rose black, jagged spires dripping with crimson ooze. Vines writhed like tentacles, covered in bone shards and pale scales. The sky above was no longer sky — it was a swirling mass of violet haze punctuated by skeletal wings.
In the heart of that vision stood a towering figure cloaked in flame, horns curling like molten iron. Its eyes were pits of white fire, and behind it stretched shapes that might have been armies — or souls.
The vision snapped shut like a wound sealing itself.
Sid stumbled, grabbing a nearby tree for support.
"What… what was that?" he breathed, his face pale.
Nox, who had been following at a distance, reached him. "You saw it too," he said, his eyes scanning the woods nervously. "The Hollow's shadow… it's reaching us faster than we thought."
"It's real," Sid whispered. "It's coming."
The second vision was worse.
That night, while sleeping, Sid's dreams dragged him deeper.
He stood on a battlefield, sprawled with broken chariots and corpses fused together by black root-like veins. Gods' banners were shredded. Their armor was twisted, molten with flame. Shapes crawled from the shadows — monstrous silhouettes with clawed hands and burning mouths. The wind smelled of blood and scorched bone.
He turned to run, but his reflection in the obsidian surface of a shattered shield revealed not himself, but Ravh'Zereth's face — pale, hollow-eyed, grinning with teeth like obsidian shards.
Sid screamed awake.
The camp stirred around him.
Reinhardt sat nearby, eyes dark with exhaustion.
"Another one?" he rasped.
Sid nodded, unable to speak for a moment.
Lucien stood frozen, as if the nightmare had been forced into his own dreams.
Nox's eyes hardened. "It's no coincidence," he growled. "Hal'Zirath's memory is bleeding into the world."
Over the next few days, more signs appeared. Rivers blackened. Fields grew patches of white fungus shaped like faces twisting in agony. Birds fell mid-flight, their wings curled like burned paper.
Sid began to see it even in daylight — when staring too long at tree trunks or rocks, their textures seemed to ripple and warp, curling into skeletal forms or whispering mouths before snapping back to normal.
It wasn't always terrifying, but it was always wrong.
During one walk, Sid paused to rest at a bend in the path. As he sat with his back against a stone, he stared absently into a pool of dark water. The reflection shifted.
For a breathless second, it was him — scarred, eyes blazing with both gold and black, hair wild with flame. Then it warped again, and the face was Ravh'Zereth's — calm, knowing, smiling like a predator watching prey stumble into its jaws.
Sid recoiled, splashing water onto his face until the pool's surface returned to normal.
Nox, arriving just in time, gripped his shoulder. "It's happening faster," he muttered.
Sid's heart pounded. "What if it never stops?"
Nox's jaw tightened. "Then we stop it."
But even as he spoke, Sid could see the doubt flicker in his eyes.
As the days passed, the team's morale fractured like the land around them. Some avoided venturing into tainted regions. Others overcompensated with drills and patrols that wore them down. Lucien's eyes burned with sleeplessness. Reinhardt barely slept at all, muttering to himself about defense lines and failed formations.
Sid alone seemed more focused, as if the creeping corruption had become a fuel rather than a threat.
At night, the whispers returned.
"Embrace the change…"
"The blood remembers…"
"The flame is yours…"
He would sit in silence, gripping his burning scar, steadying his breath until the voices faded. But each time, they returned louder.
One evening, staring at the horizon where the violet haze grew thicker with each passing day, Sid whispered to himself, "If it's coming… I'll face it."
He flexed his hand. The gold and black veins flared together like twin storms meeting at the scar's edge.
The wind howled across the corrupted land, and the shadows of Hal'Zirath crept closer.