The air tasted of iron and ash as Kael tightened his grip on the rusted dagger. The forest around him pulsed, not with life, but with something older—something hungry. His boots crunched over brittle branches, each snap echoing like a warning. He didn’t stop. The map burned in his pocket, its ink bleeding into his fingers, a brand that throbbed with every step. Somewhere ahead, the Hollow Crown waited. Or maybe it was waiting for him.
The trees leaned inward, their bark peeling like dead skin. Kael’s breath came shallow, his throat raw from the acrid air. He’d heard the stories—how the crown was a relic of a god who’d forgotten its name, how it devoured those who sought it. But the alternative was worse: the fever that had taken his sister, the hollowing of her eyes, the way her voice had turned to static before she vanished into the mist. He’d trade his soul for a cure, even if it meant facing the thing that hunted him in dreams.
A low growl rippled through the underbrush. Kael froze. The sound wasn’t animal, not entirely. It was a vibration in his bones, a memory of something vast and hungry. He pressed his back against a tree, heart hammering. The dagger’s hilt felt cold, but the blade itself was warm, alive. He’d found it in the ruins of a temple, its edge chipped but still sharp enough to cut through steel. It had whispered to him then, a voice like wind through broken glass.
“You’re not ready,” the voice said now, though Kael hadn’t spoken. He swallowed hard, his fingers trembling. The dagger’s whisper wasn’t a threat—it was a warning. But he couldn’t turn back. Not when the map’s ink had begun to writhe, forming new symbols each time he looked away.
The growl grew louder. Kael crouched, peering through the shadows. Something moved—too tall, too still. Its eyes glowed faintly, like embers in a grave. He didn’t wait to see more. He ran.
The forest blurred into a haze of gray and green. Branches lashed his face, but he didn’t slow. The dagger’s whisper turned to a scream in his mind, a desperate plea. He stumbled into a clearing, the air thick with the stench of rot. At the center stood a stone altar, its surface etched with spirals that pulsed like veins. And there, half-buried in the dirt, was a crown—twisted gold and blackened gems, its shape jagged as a broken tooth.
Kael’s breath hitched. The crown was real. But so was the thing behind him.
“You shouldn’t have come,” it said, its voice a chorus of whispers. It stepped into the light, its form shifting—human enough to be terrifying, but wrong in the way a reflection is wrong. Its hands were too long, its eyes two voids. “The crown doesn’t give what you think.”
Kael raised the dagger, his arm steady despite the terror clawing at his gut. “I don’t care. I need it.”
The creature tilted its head. “You don’t understand. It’s not a gift. It’s a debt.”
The ground trembled. The crown’s spirals flared, and Kael felt something inside him crack open. The whispers in the dagger grew louder, but now they weren’t warnings—they were laughter. A cold smile spread across the creature’s face. “You’re already mine,” it said.
The world went black.
When Kael woke, the crown was on his head. Its weight was nothing compared to the silence in his mind. The creature was gone, but the forest felt different—emptier, as if it had been waiting for this. He touched the crown, and a surge of images flooded him: a city of glass and shadow, a god’s final scream, the moment the crown had been forged from a thousand stolen lives.
He staggered back, the dagger slipping from his hand. The map in his pocket was gone, replaced by a single word etched in his skin: *Run.*
The forest didn’t whisper anymore. It screamed.
Kael ran.
He didn’t stop until the trees thinned, revealing a vast plain under a blood-red sky. The crown’s weight pressed against his skull, but the silence in his mind was absolute. He could feel it now—the hunger beneath the surface, the way the world itself seemed to bend toward the crown’s will. It wasn’t a relic. It was a leash.
A figure stood at the edge of the plain, cloaked in shadows that moved like smoke. Kael’s breath caught. The figure turned, and he saw its face—his own, but older, worn down by years he hadn’t lived.
“You took it,” the figure said, its voice a mirror of his own. “Now you’ll pay.”
Kael backed away, but the crown pulsed, and the ground beneath him shifted. The plain dissolved into darkness, and he was falling—through time, through memory, through the bones of the world itself.
He landed in a city of glass and shadow, its towers jagged and alive. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and something sweet, like rotting fruit. People moved like ghosts, their faces hollow, their eyes reflecting the crown’s dark light. Kael looked down at his hands—his skin was pale, his fingers thin, but the crown was still there, gleaming on his head.
“This is where it begins,” a voice said. Kael turned. A woman stood in the ruins of a cathedral, her robes stained with ash. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds. “You’ve come back again,” she said. “Always back.”
“Who are you?” Kael demanded.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “The same as you. A prisoner. A thief. A god’s shadow.”
The crown burned against his skull. The city trembled. Kael knew, in that moment, that he’d never left the forest.
He was just deeper now.
