The Hollow King did not announce itself with trumpets or fire or the screaming of the damned.
It announced itself with a yawn.
A farmer in the eastern provinces woke one morning and found that his fields had grown overnight. Not grown ...well...,grown ...wrong.... The wheat was tall as houses, the stalks thick as arms, the heads heavy with grain that gleamed like polished bone. He wept with joy. He fell to his knees and thanked the gods for their bounty. He did not notice that the roots had grown ...into... the earth rather than out of it, or that the soil beneath his feet was warm and soft and pulsing like a heartbeat.
Three days later, the wheat began to scream.
