The moment the false moon cracked, the forest forgot how to breathe.
It wasn't thunder that echoed through the trees. It wasn't wind or fire. It was something older—the sound of celestial betrayal. A fracture in the heavens that made the birds fall from their nests and even the bravest beasts whimper into the soil.
Jonas stood in the center of the Ruined Circle, blades drawn, chest rising like a drumbeat in the dark. His breath steamed. His blood pulsed with echoes of howls not his own—echoes of wolves who had lived and died long before his name was ever whispered.
And yet now… they answered him.
From every shadow beneath the trees, from every sacred cave forgotten by time, the Ashfang howled back.
And then the Hollowborn came.
They descended like a sickness—dozens, then scores, then too many to count. The earth groaned beneath their weight. Their bodies were wrong, limbs too long or too short, stitched together with bones that didn't belong to them.
Some had two heads. Others had none.
But all of them had eyes.
Red.
Watching Jonas.
> "They're not after the Pactstone," Elena breathed, her spear held low. "They're after him."
Elric stepped in front of Jonas, both swords drawn, his face lit with fury. "Then they'll have to go through me."
"No," Jonas said, his voice steadier than it should have been. "They'll go through us."
He took a step forward. The Hollowborn halted.
Then, from their center, emerged a different kind of nightmare—tall, cloaked in layered skins, its body covered in symbols made from burned flesh. It didn't walk. It floated. And its voice, when it came, sounded like an entire room breathing in unison.
> "Fangmarked. You howl too early."
Jonas stepped into the red light, both blades humming.
"I howl because I have teeth."
The creature grinned with too many mouths. "And yet none of them will stop the gnawing."
Then it screamed—and the Hollowborn charged.
The Ruined Circle turned into war.
Jonas met the first creature head-on, slashing its jaw clean off before pivoting into a spinning strike that felled two more. Behind him, Elena shouted incantations as her spear burned with silverfire, lighting up the dark like lightning bolts.
Gharan tore through Hollowborn with claws that sparked against bone, each strike backed by centuries of hate. The Ashfang fought with elegance and precision—they were not animals; they were soldiers of an oath older than kings.
Elric moved like a shadowstorm, blades flashing like twin wings of vengeance. "They keep coming!" he shouted. "They're not breaking ranks!"
"They don't need to," Elena called. "They're not here to win. They're here to bleed him!"
Jonas didn't hesitate. He lunged again, cutting down three in one motion—but for every one he felled, another rose in its place. His body ached. The mark on his chest burned, as if reacting to every Hollowborn eye.
But then something changed.
Jonas felt it.
From the deepest part of his chest… Something else woke up.
Not the wolf.
Not the man.
But the memory.
Of fire.
Of chains.
Of a gate that had once opened before, long ago.
A voice—not his own—whispered in his mind:
> You were born at the edge of forgetting. But your blood remembers.
The false moon above flickered.
The air shook.
And Jonas screamed.
Not in pain—in power.
His howl shattered glass in the abandoned ruins and cracked stones beneath his feet. The Hollowborn faltered. For a moment, they hesitated.
That's when Jonas moved.
He didn't just fight.
He commanded.
"Fall in!" he roared.
The Ashfang obeyed instantly. A circle formed around him, moving like a tide. Wolves interlocked shoulders. Weapons spun. Elena's spear left a burning trail in the air as she launched it through a dozen twisted skulls.
Elric laughed. "Now that's more like it!"
But the grinning creature from earlier had not moved. It simply watched—and when Jonas met its gaze, the Hollow mark on his chest pulsed harder.
> "You howl too early," it repeated, quieter now. "The Gate has not yet fed."
Jonas stared, his vision flickering. For a heartbeat, he saw through the creature—and saw what was behind it.
A second moon.
Not broken.
Not flickering.
But smiling.
The battle raged for hours.
By the time the last Hollowborn fell, the Ruined Circle was soaked in shadows and ash.
Elena collapsed beside a column, panting.
Three Ashfang wolves lay dead, their bodies guarded by surviving packmates.
Jonas dropped to his knees, blades sinking into the dirt beside him. His shirt was shredded. The mark on his chest now glowed faintly, like an ember refusing to die.
Gharan limped toward him, blood smeared across his furred shoulder.
"You lived."
Jonas looked up, exhausted.
"Barely."
"That's enough. For now."
They burned the bodies.
Hollowborn and Ashfang alike.
The fire was ritual—moon-oiled and bone-fed. It climbed into the sky like a plea.
Jonas stood silently as they lit the pyres.
Elric joined him.
"You did well."
"I let three die."
"You kept thirty alive."
"Not the same."
"No," Elric agreed. "But it's what leadership costs."
By midnight, they had moved to Dawnmere Hollow, a forgotten military outpost carved into the cliffs overlooking the valley. It was broken, overgrown—but safe.
Jonas sat alone in one of the ruined towers, staring at the horizon.
The false moon still hovered.
Lower now.
Hungrier.
He ran his fingers across the mark on his chest. "What do you want from me?" he whispered.
And for a moment, it felt like something listened.
Elena found him later, holding a book she'd recovered from the Pactstone ruins—a codex of old prophecies.
She sat beside him.
"Do you want to know what this says?" she asked.
"No," Jonas said.
She opened it anyway.
> "When the mark bleeds through fire, and the second moon sings,
The heir shall howl into the hollow sky.
And the dead shall remember their names."
Jonas was silent.
"You started something today," Elena whispered. "Something even the Hollowborn weren't ready for."
"I don't know what I am," Jonas said.
Elena smiled faintly.
"Then you're exactly what we need."
Far below Dawnmere, deep in the cracked core of the continent, something ancient stirred.
It wasn't, man.
It wa
sn't Wolf.
It wasn't even alive—not in the way the living understood.
But it remembered.
And as the mark on Jonas's chest flickered in the night…
The Hollow King opened his eyes beneath the world.
And smiled.