Lucien stood at the edge of the woods, breath visible in the morning chill. Dew clung to the grass like droplets of glass, and birdsong echoed in the trees behind him. The world felt untouched, innocent. It made him sick.
He looked over his shoulder once, back toward the distant roof of the cottage his home, for now. Smoke curled lazily from the chimney. He could almost hear his mother humming a tune as she kneaded dough or washed vegetables in the stone basin. That warmth would be gone soon enough.
He faced forward. Toward the mountain. Today wasn't for sparring in the woods or testing sparks in secret. Today, he walked the first path of power.
He tightened the laces on his small leather satchel patched with clumsy stitches and stepped onto the deer trail that vanished into the trees. It had been a forgotten place, even in his last life. But he remembered now. The Black Hollow.
A sinkhole hidden deep within the forest, older than the village, older than the empire. Once a ritual site for those who had no gods but magic itself.
Lucien's pace quickened.
He'd remembered the name of the spell he cast days earlier. Its syllables were burned into his mind even now.
"Rhaz-Orien Valth'Aeth."
A soul-fracture sigil. One of the forbidden frameworks from the Obsidian Manuscript. In his past life, it took him six months of study to attempt it, and another year to survive it. He did it on his first try. As a child. But he couldn't stop there. His muscles ached with every step, the price of channeling power his body couldn't yet contain. He ignored the pain. It was good. It reminded him that his body had limits. Limits he intended to break.
The woods grew darker as he pressed onward. Branches closed overhead like gnarled fingers, blotting out the sky. No birds sang here. No creatures stirred. Even the air felt heavier, clotted with the remnants of old power.
By noon, Lucien reached it.
A clearing with no wind. No insects. No sound.
In the center, a ring of stone teeth jutted from the earth, half-swallowed by moss and time. A collapsed sinkhole yawned at the heart of the ruins dark, steep, bottomless.
The Black Hollow.
Lucien stepped forward, eyes narrowing. He knelt and placed a hand on one of the broken stones. Power. Faint, ancient, slumbering. He traced a rune into the mossy surface with his fingertip, whispering a second incantation from memory.
"Serakin vol Sol'mareth… awaken."
The stone pulsed faintly. A red shimmer passed through the ring.
Lucien stepped to the edge of the hole.
He tied a rope stolen from the shed days earlier around the thickest root and began his descent, the cool stone wall scraping his palms. Deeper and deeper, until the light above became a pale circle and the only sound was his own breath echoing in the void.
Then his foot touched solid ground.
He was underground. The Hollow's chamber stretched wider than he expected, illuminated faintly by veins of glowing crystal embedded in the walls. Stalactites hung like fangs from the ceiling. The air here was cold, metallic, tinged with something foul.
He moved cautiously, every sense alert.
At the far end of the cavern, an altar waited obsidian, untouched by age or dust. Symbols were carved across it in looping, serpentine patterns. Blood magic. Soul-binding glyphs. Exactly what he needed.
He approached it slowly, heart steady. "Rhaz-Orien Valth'Aeth was just the spark," he murmured. "This… this will be the forge."
Lucien reached into his satchel and pulled out a single object: a bone-white crystal wrapped in twine. Not a relic just a memory anchor. Something he had crafted himself from chalk, oil, and the last breath of a dying bird. He placed it on the altar. Then he spoke again.
"Velkaron'tael. Bind me to the flame. Strip the flesh, shape the soul."
The chamber shuddered.
Flames erupted along the base of the altar black, with purple edges, dancing without heat. The crystal pulsed like a heart, lifting from the stone. Lucien opened his arms wide, letting the fire crawl toward him. Pain lanced through his chest, down his spine. The ritual wasn't meant for children. But he wasn't a child.
He gritted his teeth, forcing his mana into alignment with the glyphs on the altar, syncing his breath with the pulse of the crystal. The flames engulfed him. His skin seared, then cooled. His veins froze, then burned again. Visions slammed into his mind. Not memories. Echoes of the Hollow's history.
The first caster who came here—mad with grief, burning with vengeance. The cults who bled themselves dry to gain power. The last guardian, who turned to ash rather than let a tyrant drink from the Hollow's heart. Lucien screamed as the final echo passed through him. Then Silence. The flames vanished. The altar cracked. The crystal turned to dust. And Lucien Vale stood in the dark, panting.
Changed.
The Hollow had accepted him.
He opened his hand and conjured a new flame. No longer a spark. A black fire danced in his palm. He smiled. He stared at the flame for a long time, letting its warmthless light flicker across his face. It did not flicker like normal fire. It pulsed alive, aware. It responded to his thoughts. He closed his hand, and it vanished instantly, like a blade sheathed in the void.
Lucien turned away from the altar, breathing slowly, steadily, though his muscles trembled from the effort. Sweat clung to his skin, now streaked with soot and traces of blood along his arms. He didn't recall being cut, but the Hollow often took more than it gave.
He glanced toward the far edge of the chamber. There a narrow fissure between two pillars of stone. He approached, sensing it wasn't part of the original cavern. A crack in the earth, caused by collapse or perhaps by magic too wild to be bound. Faint light leaked from the split—brighter than the rest of the Hollow. He stepped through. What he saw beyond wasn't stone, or at least not merely that. It was a wall. Smooth, seamless, black like glass but veined with gold.
Runes moved along its surface like living ink, flowing in slow, circular paths. A sealed gate. A relic left by one of the ancient Orders. He pressed his palm against it. Warm. The runes reacted to him. They brightened, spiraling toward his touch. He whispered, almost unconsciously, "Vael'turien Ehn-Kai."
The language of the Deep Sigilists — a dialect lost even before his first life began. He had only ever heard it once, carved into a ruin beneath the Crimson Wastes.
Now it came to him as easily as breath.
The gate did not open. But it answered. A single rune seared itself into the center, pulsing with amber light. Then silence. Lucien pulled his hand back, lips twitching in amusement. "A key," he muttered. "Or a challenge." He turned from the sealed wall and began retracing his steps. The Hollow had given him what he needed strength, connection, insight. And now, it had offered him a mystery. As he reached the rope and began climbing, his mind already spun with plans. He had time. Not much but enough.