The sky cracked like ancient parchment.
Oshael, once the hallowed capital of the Whisperfangs, now stood beneath a spiral of moons bleeding backward into time. The air was no longer air—it was memory, thick and pulsing, pressing against the lungs like guilt.
Jonas stood still as statues shattered around him. Every breath he took was borrowed from ancestors. Every heartbeat echoed with voices not his own. The Hollowbrand across his chest no longer burned—it throbbed with command, as if it wanted to peel open his ribs and crawl free.
"I feel them watching," Elena whispered, stepping beside him with her spear trembling.
"Who?" Elric asked.
Jonas didn't answer.
Because the answer had no name.
Only teeth.
The fall of Oshael did not come with fire.
It came with memory.
It came with Whisperrot.
From the broken moons above, shadow-born creatures rained down like cursed rain—vague, contorted shapes of wolves that remembered being human. Their faces twitched with echoes of sorrow. Their claws dripped not blood, but forgotten regrets.
They landed across the city, some splattering like ink, others assembling into jagged, humanoid forms with moon-cracked eyes. Each of them was built from grief and rage and ancestral disobedience. They were not soldiers.
They were penance.
Elias dropped to one knee beside the fountain where once moon prayers were offered. "This is it. The Whisperrot. The Lost Echoes."
"How do we stop them?" Elena asked.
Elias looked up, eyes wet. "You don't. You endure."
The battle began without a roar.
It began with a whisper.
A dozen Whisperrot lunged toward the sanctum. Jonas moved first—not as a warrior, but as something else. His body pulled into motion by forces older than blood. His bones cracked into form, his hands twisting into half-clawed sigils. He didn't grow fur. He didn't howl.
He unfolded.
The mark on his chest blazed like a third moon, casting beams that burned through the nearest Whisperrot. The shadows shrieked as they evaporated—but not before leaving behind a faint image of the person they once were.
A child.
A brother.
A Whisperfang.
Jonas faltered. "These things… they're pieces of us."
"No," Elias said gravely. "They're what's left when we forget who we are."
Elric fought like a storm, his twin blades gleaming as he slashed through shadow with defiant precision. He moved not just to protect Jonas but to prove something to himself—that he still had control.
Elena danced through the battlefield, her eyes calculating every movement. Her strikes were surgical, her strength brutal, but even she began to tire. For every Whisperrot they cut down, three more bled from the heavens above.
Elias stood at the temple's edge, drawing warding circles in moon-ash, whispering seals and prayers. He knew they couldn't win—not in the traditional sense. But maybe they could survive long enough to learn why this was happening.
"Jonas!" he cried. "We need the obelisk again! The city's memory—it's buried underneath. Find the Rootstone!"
Jonas turned inward.
The Rootstone.
The city's heart. Its core.
He ran.
Through cracked streets lined with fallen wolf statues, past murals defaced with blood sigils. The Whisperrot chased him, but they hesitated—confused by his scent, as if it carried command.
He found it beneath the old council circle—an obsidian pillar pulsing faintly under layers of ash.
He touched it.
And the city remembered.
He saw Oshael before the fall.
He saw the First Whisper—a child born of moon and man, not wolf—offered in sacrifice to the Hollow King as a way to preserve balance.
He saw the crown passed from one deceiver to the next, all wearing masks of nobility while feeding the Gate beneath the city with whispers of sin.
He saw the Hollow Pact.
> One heir to bear the mark.
> One kingdom to protect the secret.
> One Gate to never be opened… unless the bloodline failed.
And then he saw himself.
Not born to break the cycle.
Born to fulfill it.
He awoke gasping, eyes wide, as Elena dragged him back from the pillar. The battlefield was worse now—rivers of rot seeping from every crack in the stone.
"Jonas," she snapped, "we're losing!"
"No," he said. "We're just beginning."
He turned to Elric and Elias. "I know what to do. I have to face him."
"Who?" Elias said.
Jonas looked up.
The spiral above the city pulsed.
And descending from it, slowly, as if lowering himself into a dream, was a figure cloaked in robes of shattered moonlight and bone-smoke.
The Hollow King.
He landed with elegance, not malice.
He smiled.
And the city screamed.
The Whisperrot collapsed in worship.
Elric stood frozen, sweat dripping from his brow. "He looks… human."
"He was," Elias whispered. "Long ago."
Jonas stepped forward.
The Hollow King's face was pale and handsome but lined with something far older than age.
He looked at Jonas as one might look at a child who had returned after a long rebellion.
> "So. My blood walks again."
Jonas didn't flinch. "You're no king. Just a voice trapped in an echo."
The Hollow King tilted his head. "And yet you came. Marked. Called. Hungry."
"Not for power."
> "For truth? That's worse."
Jonas raised his hand.
The Hollowbrand burned like a sword of starlight.
But the Hollow King raised his, too.
And his bore a mark that mirrored Jonas's.
Elric's breath caught.
"You… you were the first Gate?"
The Hollow King's voice was a whisper laced in steel.
> "I was the mistake the Whisperfangs buried."
> "You are their apology."
Everything shook.
The Rootstone erupted from the ground behind Jonas, and the sky rippled as if peeling open. More figures emerged from the spiral—ancestors, false kings, failed heirs, each one carrying the same curse.
Jonas knew what this was now.
Not a war.
A reckoning.
Elias screamed, "Jonas, you have to sever the bond!"
Jonas turned.
"I can't."
"You must!"
"No. I have to understand it first."
Then the Hollow King extended a hand.
> "Come. Let me show you what they feared."
> "Come see why they hid your name."
Jonas stepped forward.
Elena shouted his name.
Elric moved to stop him.
But he kept walking.
Toward the man who bore his face.
Toward the monster that was once a savior.
Toward the truth that could either save or shatter the world.
And as their fingers touched—
The Gate opened.
And everything changed.