Arion ran his brush through the dark red paint and let it drip across the wall like blood tracing old scars.

  The mural wasn’t finished, but it didn’t matter. The message always came before the meaning.

  A figure stood at the center—hooded, faceless, arms outstretched. Not threatening. Not pleading. Just there.

  Around him, the world burned. A city crumbling. A sky cracking like glass. But the figure held the fire at bay—not with power, but with presence.

  Arion stepped back and tilted his head.

  Not bad for half a god.

  He lit a cigarette and stared up at his work, smoke curling around his fingers like ghosts that still remembered his name.

  “You always paint him like that,” a voice said behind him.

  He didn’t need to turn.

  The girl was young. Mortal. Probably seventeen. Probably smarter than most people he met.

  Nessa.

  “Like what?” Arion asked.

  “Like he’s still one of you.”

  He exhaled slowly. “He never stopped being one of us. We just stopped deserving him.”

  Nessa leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the mural. “Something’s moving. I felt it last night. Like… like the sky breathed in.”

  Arion nodded. “Yeah. The Hollow’s turning over.”

  Nessa frowned. “You think it’s hunting him again?”

  Arion smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No. I think it’s afraid he might wake up before it does.”

  She went quiet.

  The kind of quiet that came when even prophecy didn’t have answers.

  Arion turned back to the mural, dipped his brush again, and added a single streak of gold across the figure’s chest.

  A heart.

  Still burning.

  Still beating.

  Even in the ashes.

  Elsewhere — The Hollow

  Beneath the city, in the foundation bones of a church that no longer bore a name, the Hollow gathered.

  No light. No hymns. Just the shuffle of feet on wet stone and the breath of those who had given theirs to the dark.

  Dozens stood in a rough circle. Some cloaked. Some bare. All marked—hands inked black, lips sewn or scarred, eyes ringed in ash.

  In the center, the altar: a slab of old iron, warped by flame and time. On it, a heart. Still pulsing.

  Not human. Not quite divine.

  Their leader stepped forward—cloaked in bone-white robes, barefoot, voice wrapped in silk and rot.

  “You feel it,” he said. His voice was soft, but the room bowed to it. “The pulse has returned.”

  Murmurs. Movements. One fell to their knees, weeping.

  “He walks among them again,” the leader continued. “The Protector. The Traitor. The Hollow’s antithesis.”

  He lifted the heart and held it above his head.

  “It beat once. Just once. And that is enough.”

  A flare of silent ecstasy moved through the crowd.

  They weren’t worshipers.

  They were witnesses.

  And soon—reclaimers.

  “The gods are dead,” he said. “But he refused to stay in the grave we offered him.”

  He turned, slowly, letting them see the mark on his palm—a brand in the shape of Kaelen’s sigil, burned backwards.

  “Let us remind the world what happens to those who turn their light against the divine order.”

  The heart stopped pulsing.

  And the Hollow knelt.

  Later That Night — East Wall District

  Kaelen found Arion the way he always did.

  By the paint.

  Crimson and gold dripped down the cinderblock like veins through concrete, forming a figure Kaelen recognized instantly—even if the face was always left blank.

  Arion didn’t look up from where he sat, legs crossed, a half-finished cigarette burning low between his fingers.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  Kaelen said nothing. Just stepped forward and studied the mural.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “You gave me too much fire,” he muttered.

  Arion shrugged. “You burned with it longer than most.”

  Kaelen’s gaze flicked down the wall. Gold still wet. Still bright. “She’s having visions again, isn’t she?”

  “She never stopped,” Arion said. “They’re just louder now.”

  He stood and turned to face Kaelen fully, the city lights catching the divine lines still etched in his tired face—lines mortals never noticed, but Kaelen always saw.

  “She painted you in her sleep last week,” Arion added. “Called you by your old name.”

  Kaelen’s jaw clenched. “Don’t.”

  Arion raised a brow. “Still running from it?”

  “I’m not running. I’m staying.”

  “Same thing, brother. You just changed direction.”

  Kaelen looked away, the city breathing beneath them—steam rising from manholes, sirens distant, stars hidden.

  “They’re stirring,” he said. “The Hollow. I felt them in the tunnels.”

  Arion’s teasing fell away.

  “They felt you,” he said.

  Kaelen nodded. “And now they remember.”

  A long silence stretched between them. Not awkward—ancient.

  Then Arion asked, quieter, “You think they’ll come for you this time? Or for what you protect?”

  Kaelen looked back at the mural. At the blank face in firelight.

  “For both,” he said.

  Arion flicked his cigarette away, watching the sparks vanish in the street.

  “Then I hope you remember how to burn.”

  That Same Night — Nessa’s Room

  Nessa didn’t remember falling asleep.

  One second she was sitting on her floor, sketchbook open, fingers still stained with paint. The next—silence.

  Not quiet.

  Silence.

  Like the world had stopped breathing.

  When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t in her room anymore.

  She stood in a field of ash. Not burnt trees—just nothing. A horizon that faded into black smoke, endless and slow. Above her, the sky cracked open like old marble, leaking golden light through its fractures.

  And in the center of it all stood a figure. Back turned. Cloaked in shadows.

  Kaelen.

  She knew it was him.

  Even here—especially here—he carried the weight of a world that wasn’t his anymore.

  She stepped forward.

  “Kaelen,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  The wind didn’t move. The light didn’t shift. But he turned.

  His face wasn’t a face.

  It was fire and grief and something older than time.

  His voice echoed without sound.

  “Do not follow me.”

  She took another step.

  “I need to understand.”

  “Understanding is how it ends.”

  Then—a scream tore through the sky.

  Not human.

  Not animal.

  Something hollowed out and furious. It swallowed the gold above and cracked the ash below, splitting the field into a thousand broken mirrors. And in every shard, she saw:

  ? Lira, bleeding in the dark.

  ? Arion painting over a body with gold he couldn’t wash away.

  ? Kaelen, kneeling in a ruined street, his hands glowing with power he swore he’d buried.

  And behind all of it—

  Eyes.

  No shape.

  Just eyes.

  Watching. Waiting.

  Awake.

  She fell backward into darkness.

  ?

  Nessa woke choking on her breath, sweat-soaked, heart racing.

  Her sketchbook was open beside her.

  On the page: the mural Arion painted that morning—

  —but now the figure in the center had a face.

  And it was weeping.

  Moments Later — Arion’s Studio

  Arion didn’t bother locking the door anymore.

  If someone meant harm, a lock wouldn’t stop them.

  If they meant well, the Hollow would find them anyway.

  So when the door slammed open and footsteps scrambled across paint-slick concrete, he didn’t look up right away.

  Nessa’s breath hitched as she stopped just short of his canvas.

  “I saw it again,” she whispered. “But this time… I heard him.”

  That got his attention.

  He turned. Really looked at her. Sweat clung to her neck, her eyes wide and rimmed in sleepless panic.

  “What did he say?” Arion asked.

  Nessa pulled her sketchbook from her bag and flipped to the page—the figure from the mural, Kaelen, but with a face now.

  And tears.

  Real ones, streaked in faint gold ink she didn’t remember using.

  “He told me not to follow him,” she said. “Told me that understanding is how it ends.”

  Arion was silent.

  Nessa watched him with rising frustration. “You said the Hollow was waking. That it’s afraid of him. Why would he want to keep us away now? Why push us out?”

  “Because he’s starting to remember,” Arion said quietly.

  She blinked. “Remember what?”

  “Who he was… and what it cost him.”

  He took the sketchbook, fingers brushing over the image like he was holding a fragment of something holy—or broken.

  “He’s not afraid of dying,” Arion said. “He’s afraid of becoming again.”

  Nessa’s hands curled into fists. “Then we help him. If the Hollow’s moving, we can’t just—wait.”

  Arion looked at her. And for the first time since she’d met him, his voice held no humor. No riddles.

  Just truth.

  “If Kaelen falls back into who he was, the world may not survive saving.”

  Beneath the City — Hours Before Dawn

  The streets above slept, but below, the city breathed.

  Kaelen moved through a service tunnel no one remembered, lit only by the dying glow of emergency lights. The concrete walls pulsed faintly, a heartbeat not his own. The Hollow’s signature had always been subtle—no flame, no footprints. Just wrongness.

  And it was everywhere now.

  Every corner he turned, something was off.

  Graffiti written in languages never spoken aloud. Rust that formed perfect, ancient sigils. Rats that wouldn’t cross certain lines. The kind of silence that didn’t just fall—it pressed.

  He stopped.

  Ahead, a wide steel maintenance hatch, half open.

  Marked in soot.

  Not recent. Not obvious.

  But to him?

  A sign.

  He stepped through.

  The chamber beyond was wide and round—an old water distribution node, long forgotten. Empty. Still. Until he saw it.

  In the center: a circle of burned floor.

  Perfect. Cold.

  Kaelen crouched and touched the blackened concrete. The memory hit him like lightning—

  A ritual site.

  Not for summoning.

  For siphoning.

  The Hollow hadn’t just awakened. It had fed.

  He stood slowly, muscles tense. Whoever—or whatever—was working beneath the city wasn’t just worshiping the dark.

  They were strengthening it.

  He heard footsteps behind him.

  Fast. Reckless.

  A mortal would’ve missed it.

  Kaelen turned, caught the movement in the corner of his eye—but whatever it was, it vanished into the tunnel behind him.

  Gone.

  Not running.

  Watching.

  He stepped backward into the darkness, voice low and cold.

  “You remember me.”

  Silence.

  Then—a whisper.

  Not words.

  Just yes.

  Kaelen narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m not who I was.”

  The whisper returned.

  Exactly.

  Elsewhere — Lira’s Apartment, 4:12 A.M.

  Lira stared at the coffee going cold in her hand, laptop glow lighting her face in a halo of blue.

  Kaelen’s name sat in the search bar.

  Nothing.

  Not even a last name.

  She tried variations, spellings, combinations.

  Still nothing.

  Which was weird. Too weird.

  Even ghosts left digital shadows these days. But him?

  Nothing stuck. Like the world kept forgetting him on purpose.

  She frowned and reached for the sketch she’d stolen from the precinct evidence box a month ago—the one pulled from the body found in the river. No ID, no cause of death, just a symbol carved into the skin.

  A circle split by a line.

  She’d seen it once before.

  Not in a case file. Not in a textbook.

  But on Kaelen’s wrist.

  Not a tattoo. A scar.

  Like something branded deep and never fully healed.

  She searched the symbol this time. It brought up nothing modern.

  But then—a match.

  A scan of a page from some old mythology forum, half-dead and half-crazy. Most of it was nonsense, gods and metaphors, doomsday symbols…

  But her eyes caught on a single phrase, buried in poetic garbage:

  “The one who stepped down, whose fire turned inward, whose hands bear the mark of mercy and ruin.”

  She sat back slowly.

  She didn’t believe in gods. She didn’t believe in prophecy.

  But Kaelen?

  She was starting to believe he wasn’t lying when he said he never left.

  Her fingers hovered over her keyboard.

  Then she opened a new tab and typed in a name she hadn’t said out loud yet.

  “Arion.”