Dravenloch was no stranger to suffering. The city had been carved in cruelty long before Sané's birth. Its streets were cobbled with the bones of the forgotten; its alleys breathed with the stink of despair. Here, the Hollowborn bled their hands in endless labor while the noble-born drank wine brewed from centuries of conquest.
But even in such a place, there were nights when the heavens themselves sought to deepen the misery...
The sky screamed.
A rift tore across the firmament above Dravenloch, vast and jagged like a wound in the flesh of the world. It pulsed with a light not of stars nor moons, but of raw, bleeding chaos. The wormhole yawned open, its edges burning with violet fire, and from its black throat poured the first whispers of the Makers' Curse.
Children woke to the sound of air splitting. Hounds barked and then choked, their cries swallowed by silence. Fires guttered in their lanterns, extinguished by the pull of that abyssal maw.
Then the beasts came.
They were not creatures of soil or sky. They were things shaped in mockery of both — abominations dragged from the forges of unmaking. Their forms shifted as they moved: bodies dripping with molten shadow, eyes like orbs of fractured glass, limbs that bent against all sense. Some walked on talons longer than spears, others slithered on masses of flesh, while still others crawled upside down upon invisible ceilings, howling in voices that shattered windows.
The first of them landed in the Market District. Its weight alone crushed a row of stalls into splinters. Its scream sent men to their knees, blood gushing from their ears. The second followed, its many heads tearing into watchmen as though they were twigs. Then more. A dozen. Two dozen. A hundred.
Dravenloch had become a banquet.
And the Hollowborn were the first courses.
The noble bells rang first.
From the eastern quarter, where the banners of the ruling family curled in crimson smoke, iron gongs boomed across the night. Their thunder did not call to protect the weak, nor to shield the Hollowborn who already perished by the dozens. No — the bells rang for lineage, for dominion, for the preservation of power.
The streets shook as the Dreadmark cultivators arrived.
Men and women born into power strode forward, their skin etched with living sigils that crawled like molten brands across their flesh. Every step they took cracked stone beneath their heels. Their eyes burned with the abyssal glow of bloodline strength.
The Scion of House Falcon has arrived.
One of the men of the Falcon family....known as Scar...raised his hands.
The mark of dread unfurled along his arm, and black flame surged forth, coiling into the form of a serpent. With a single gesture, it tore through a dozen beasts, their bodies collapsing into vaporous sludge. Another, from one, split the earth with his spear, sending waves of molten stone erupting through the cobbled streets. The creatures shrieked, writhing as magma swallowed them whole.
But for every beast slain, three more crawled through the wormhole. Their shrieks drowned out the bells, their claws raked across towers, dragging noble mansions into rubble.
Then came the Transmutors....they rarely helped but in this case they did.... intending to test out their experiments.
They did not march with spears or swords. They came with satchels of glass, each vial humming with unstable light. Their leader — a crooked man draped in robes stitched with sigils — raised a hand, and the first volley was loosed.
The air became fire.
Vials shattered mid-flight, releasing concoctions of raw alchemy. Some exploded in bursts of green flame that clung like tar. Others burst into clouds of silver dust that corroded flesh and metal alike. One potion cracked open the sky itself for a breath, summoning a storm of blades made from frozen blood.
The beasts howled. Limbs shattered, wings torn, torsos crushed into pulp. Yet still they came, heedless of pain, heedless of fire. They climbed over one another, using their dead as ladders to reach new prey.
The city descended into carnage.
Hollowborn slaves, caught in the tide, were trampled beneath claw and fang. Some were seized and used as shields by desperate guards. Others were simply ignored — their deaths too insignificant to record. Sané, pressed against the wall of a crumbling bakery, watched the carnage unfold. His heart pounded not from courage, nor from hope, but from the primal knowledge that he would die tonight.
Above, the wormhole widened further.
Its edges crackled, vomiting tendrils of violet lightning that struck towers and reduced them to dust. From within its depths, more horrors stirred, their outlines writhing like unborn nightmares.
The cultivators fought on, their dread-marks glowing brighter, their roars echoing across the night. The Transmutors hurled more vials, their laughter twisted, intoxicated by the chaos. But the tide was endless. Even the mighty began to falter.
And through it all, none spared a glance for the Hollowborn.
The streets of Dravenloch were oceans of blood.
Smoke rolled from collapsed towers, carrying with it the stench of burning flesh. The cries of merchants, nobles, and slaves blended into one endless wail, swallowed only by the thunder of the beasts.
Sané ran. Not toward safety — cause there was none. He ran because instinct demanded it, because the body clung to survival long after the spirit had surrendered. His bare feet struck stone slick with gore, slipping between corpses that only hours before had begged for bread beside him.
He darted past a broken cart, past a hollowborn mother shielding her child — a protection shattered a breath later by a beast's talon. Their blood sprayed his cheek, hot and metallic. He did not stop. He did not weep.
The wormhole pulsed above, vomiting more monstrosities into the city's veins. One landed near him, its form a tangle of limbs that bent backward, its head a cavernous maw lined with teeth of bone. The air around it warped, bending light, crushing breath.
Sané froze. His legs betrayed him.
The creature turned, its many eyes fixing upon him. In that instant, he saw his fate — not as fire or blade, but as a morsel, nameless and forgotten, torn apart by a beast that would never remember his face.
It lunged.
He tried to flee, but a talon as long as his arm hooked into his ribs, lifting him as if he were nothing but rags. His body screamed with pain. The beast roared, dragging him across stone, its movements violent, unrelenting.
Around him, chaos reigned. The Dreadmark cultivators clashed with abominations, their bodies glowing like shattered suns. The Transmutors hurled potions that exploded in waves of destruction, leveling entire blocks. Fire, shadow, and alchemy turned the night into a battlefield fit for gods and nightmares.
And yet — no one saw him.
No one cried out for the boy dragged into the dark.
No noble paused to spare him mercy.
No hollowborn raised a hand, for they were dying just as swiftly.
The beast leapt into the smoke, carrying him away from the ruins of the market, away from the blood-soaked streets, away from the only life he had ever known. His scream was swallowed by the roar of the battle, unheard, unheeded.
Hours passed. The wormhole shrank, folding back upon itself with a thunderclap that rattled the bones of the dead. The surviving beasts were hunted, their bodies left to rot in pits. Half of Dravenloch lay in ruins — charred stone, shattered towers, alleys clogged with corpses.
The Falcon family counted their dead, weighing them in ledgers of pride and shame. The Transmutors celebrated their records of new destruction.... happy that that their experiments actually yielded success. The survivors limped into the ruins, already rebuilding, already forgetting.
And Sané?
Sané was gone.
The Hollowborn did not ask after him. They had no breath left to waste. The noble-born never knew his name. To the city, his disappearance was less than ash in the wind.
The world moved on, uncaring. The scars of Dravenloch deepened. The wormhole closed. And somewhere beyond the reach of firelight and memory, a hollowborn boy was carried into the maw of fate.
Unseen.
Unwanted.
Unremembered.
But the abyss remembered him.
And it was hungry.