CODEX OF THE HOLLOW FLAME

-–

The wind outside Cairnthorne did not stir the grass.

It bent it.

Low, constant, as though unseen hands pressed it flat in reverence—or fear.

Vaelric stepped from the vault with the Crown of Binding held in both hands, careful not to let its weight lean too far in any direction. It felt wrong. Not in the way cursed relics normally did—like cold iron or whispered voices—but in the way a wound feels when stitched too tight.

The Codex did not pulse. It did not flicker. It only watched.

Behind him, Nyshara emerged with lips pale and trembling, her wards flickering out like dying fireflies. Draum stumbled last, coughing hard, blood on his beard. The Remnant's scream had done something to him—something that hadn't touched skin, but memory.

They didn't speak for hours.

They traveled in silence through the Pale Marches, passing cairns that now seemed smaller, more pitiful. These were not kings—they were penitents. Men who'd held godlight in their hands and tried to bury the fire when it turned to ash. And now, the circlet that had silenced a god rode again in the hands of a prince who had once vowed never to wear a crown.

They made camp beside a salt-bleached river that did not flow. The water hovered in place, rippling without movement, like time was afraid to pass. Draum tried to spark a flame from dried roots but the kindling hissed and spat black smoke before dying.

"Fire won't obey me here," he grumbled, throwing down the flint.

"It won't disobey either," Nyshara said softly, staring at the motionless water. "It's just… remembering."

Vaelric sat cross-legged, the Codex on his lap, the crown beside it like a dark halo.

"Remembering what?" Draum asked. "That we're out of food and out of wine and out of damned options?"

Vaelric didn't look up. "That once, flame served kings. And then… it stopped."

The silence that followed was thick and grim. Nyshara eventually broke it.

"We should have left the crown."

"We couldn't," Vaelric replied.

"I know," she said sharply. "That's what scares me."

The Codex snapped open.

Its pages turned not in wind but of their own accord, flipping to a section Vaelric had never seen before—glossy and dark, symbols etched not in ink, but in what looked like scorched glass. The page was warm beneath his fingers.

Then it began to write.

Not in his hand.

Not in any hand.

Just… appearing.

> What the flame forgets, the flesh remembers. What the kings bound, the blood now seeks. The Hollow God stirs not in rage… but in grief.

Vaelric read the words aloud. His voice cracked on the last line.

"What does that mean?" Draum asked.

But the Codex didn't answer.

Instead, it burned.

A flare of light burst from its pages, and for one searing instant, the world changed.

They were no longer beside the river.

They were standing in a great hall.

But not truly.

The Codex had taken them—not in body, but in mind.

A memory.

The walls were carved from stone so old it wept steam. Pillars rose into endless dark, and at the far end stood seven thrones. Empty.

But not unoccupied.

On each sat a figure wrought in ash and bone, crowned in shadow. Kings. Hollowed. Their eyes bled flame.

The memory walked around them.

A figure in robes—unseen, except for the trail of fire left in his wake—strode toward the thrones. He held something high above his head. The crown. The same crown Vaelric now carried.

Only it was whole.

> "By this," the figure said in a voice made of ruin and sorrow, "we seal him. By this, we forget."

The kings did not speak.

But they bled.

From mouths, from eyes, from the very pores of their skin—light poured. Gold and crimson, the essence of rule, of godhood. It flowed into the crown like wine into a broken chalice. The circlet cracked even as it was filled.

Then the memory snapped.

The hall vanished.

The cold returned.

Vaelric collapsed, coughing blood.

"Enough!" Nyshara cried, grabbing the Codex. Its pages sizzled beneath her fingers, but she did not flinch. "You'll die trying to remember what they buried!"

Vaelric wiped blood from his mouth, hand trembling. "I have to remember. That's the only way to stop him."

Draum helped him sit up. "Who is 'him' now? Thraemor? The kings? Or the damn book itself?"

None of them had an answer.

That night, the sky cracked open.

Not with thunder.

With song.

A lament poured from the heavens—low, beautiful, and aching. It rippled across the salt river, across the hills, across the still cairns. The grass bowed lower. The trees leaned. And from the horizon, something moved.

A procession.

Figures shrouded in smoke and memory. Warriors in broken armor. Some had no faces. Some had too many. All of them bore wounds that never bled, and weapons that whispered through the air like sighs.

"They're not alive," Nyshara breathed.

"They're not dead either," Vaelric said.

"Echoes?" Draum asked.

"No." Vaelric stood. "Witnesses."

The procession passed them in silence. But one figure turned—its face featureless, but its gesture unmistakable.

It pointed north.

Toward the Ashen Verge.

Toward the place even the Codex refused to name.

Vaelric nodded.

He understood.

"It's time," he said. "To go where the flame ends."

Nyshara clenched her fists. "And if it doesn't end?"

Vaelric looked down at the circlet of cracked iron.

"Then we finish what they couldn't."

Behind him, the Codex shut with a sound like a final breath.

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