CODEX OF THE HOLLOW FLAME

They crossed into the Ashen Verge beneath a sun that did not rise, but recoiled.

Light dimmed as if the sky itself feared to peer too closely at what lay ahead. The hills grew jagged and pale, as though the land had been scoured clean by fire too old for memory. Trees existed here only as silhouettes—charred husks with limbs raised like supplicants who had prayed too long and burned too slow.

There was no wind. Only weight.

Each step into the Verge felt like a vow spoken too late.

Vaelric walked first. He held the Codex close but did not open it. It pulsed faintly, as if in hesitation. The Crown of Binding was bound in cloth and lashed to his belt, a burden he no longer questioned. It had become like breath—unwelcome, but necessary.

Draum walked next, muttering oaths to every god who had ever dared exist, his axe swinging slightly in time with his heavy boots. He had tried a dozen times to light a pipe, but the flame would not catch. Even smoke feared this place.

Nyshara walked last, silent. Her wards flickered around her like dying stars. She no longer refreshed them. There was no point. The Verge drank magic—not violently, but with a quiet, insatiable hunger, like a tomb devouring names.

None of them spoke until they saw the Gate.

It was not built.

It was grown.

Rising from the ground like black bone, twisted and enormous, it formed an arch that bled downward in thin, brittle strands. At its peak, a single rune burned—a symbol not drawn, but carved into existence by something that knew grief deeper than language.

Vaelric stopped, staring.

"That's not a door," Draum said hoarsely. "That's a warning."

"No," Nyshara whispered. "It's a wound."

She stepped closer, brushing her fingers across the bleeding strands of stone. They parted slightly, revealing a vast canyon beyond—a chasm of unlit fire, where rivers of ash ran like veins through a dead god's corpse.

The Hollow Flame.

It did not burn.

It breathed.

A slow, rhythmic pull, like a tide beneath the world. It made the earth tremble and the bones in their bodies hum. The Verge was not merely a place—it was a memory.

And it was waking.

Vaelric stepped through the Gate.

Immediately, he fell.

Not physically.

Through memory.

Through time.

Through himself.

---

He stood again—but younger. No crown. No Codex. Only a blade in hand and a father's voice echoing in his mind: You are not your blood, but your choice.

Before him stood a pyre. His brother lay atop it.

No. Not lay—was bound.

Eyes wide, lips sewn shut with gold thread.

"Burn him," came the voice of the Magisters. "He carries the mark."

Vaelric had trembled.

And he had obeyed.

He remembered now. Not the choice, but the surrender.

The Codex had never shown him this. It had never needed to.

The Hollow Flame was not teaching.

It was judging.

---

When he awoke, he was kneeling in the dust, sweat and blood mixing at his brow. Draum and Nyshara hovered over him, both pale, both terrified.

"You stopped breathing," Nyshara said. "For minutes."

"You were muttering names," Draum added. "Most of 'em dead."

Vaelric looked past them, toward the chasm's edge.

"I remember now," he said softly. "Why I came here. Why I ran. Why the Codex chose me."

Nyshara's brow furrowed. "Then tell us."

Vaelric turned to her. His eyes no longer held the same shade. They were darker now—lit from within, like cinders that refused to go out.

"Because I was the one who lit the first pyre."

Thunder rumbled—but it was not sky-born.

Something moved beneath the chasm.

A vast shape, serpentine and skeletal, writhed through the ash-rivers like a forgotten god searching for the memory of its name.

"The Hollow Flame isn't just a power," Vaelric murmured. "It's a wound. A reckoning. It remembers everyone who's tried to master it."

"And?" Draum said. "What's it remembering now?"

Vaelric looked to the sky, which had begun to darken further—twilight turning into a bruise.

"Us."

---

They followed the ash-path deeper.

The ground was littered with relics half-buried—crowns with broken spires, swords still aflame but rusted, bones with runes etched into their marrow. The remains of kings and gods and fools who'd come seeking dominion.

All of them had failed.

"None of them made it to the Flame?" Nyshara asked, scanning the horizon.

"No," Vaelric said. "Or if they did… they never came back."

They reached the edge of a plateau.

Below them stretched the Hollow Court.

A circular stone floor, cracked and overgrown with glowing mold. In its center stood a figure, chained to a spire made of obsidian and grief. His face was hidden behind a mask of gold thorns, his body wrapped in robes stitched with embers.

But his presence…

It screamed.

"Thraemor," Nyshara whispered.

The air rippled. The chains tightened.

The figure stirred.

"No," Vaelric said. "Not yet. That's not Thraemor. That's…"

He faltered.

Because he recognized the figure's voice—murmuring in a language that bled into their minds like smoke into lungs.

"…that's the first king."

Draum paled. "What, the first?"

"The one who gave fire its name," Vaelric said, descending the slope slowly. "The one who made the pact."

As they approached, the masked figure turned. The golden thorns on his mask glowed with heat.

> "You bring the Codex. And the Crown. You bring remembrance."

"Who are you?" Vaelric asked.

The figure tilted its head.

> "I am the one who bound the Hollow Flame. And the one who failed to contain it."

Draum raised his axe. "Then you're the fool who got us all into this."

> "No," the figure replied. "The fool was the one who believed fire could be owned."

Nyshara stepped beside Vaelric. "Why are you still here?"

> "Because this is where the flame ends. This is where it must end again."

The ground trembled.

The chasm cracked.

And from below, a new presence began to rise.

Not like Thraemor.

Worse.

A thing of silence and soot. A thing that bore no form, only absence. Its name was never written, because names cannot hold despair.

The First King raised his chained hands.

> "I cannot hold him much longer. But you still can."

He looked directly at Vaelric.

> "The Codex has not yet finished writing you."

Vaelric drew the Crown from its wrappings.

"Then tell me how to end it."

> "You already know."

The Codex opened.

A single page.

A single line.

> Burn the wound, not the flame.

---

Above, the sky tore.

From the east, a scream of lightning.

From the west, drums of fire.

And rising between them, the shape of Thraemor—unshackled, born of the Hollow Flame, clothed in memory, and crowned in ruin.

Vaelric stepped forward, Crown in one hand, Codex in the other.

And spoke the words no king had dared in a thousand years:

"I am not your heir.

I am your ending."

---