Rain stabbed the cracked stone steps like icy needles—relentless and merciless. Nerin crouched on the ruined shrine's threshold, spine bowed beneath soaked, threadbare rags clinging to his gaunt frame like wet cobwebs. The cold wasn't just cold—it gnawed deep into marrow and bone.
Behind him, rusted iron gates groaned with the wind, the shrine whispering long-forgotten curses through its rotten bones.
His eyes—dull, sunken pits—locked on the bruised sky, thick with clouds ready to swallow all light.
The world held its breath.
Beside him, a dying fire clawed weakly at damp leaves—hope gasping its last.
Nerin's numb fingers toyed with a battered coin. One side bore a faded emperor's face, the other a black sun, split in two—the same mark scorched into his left palm.
"Heads, I go home," he whispered. "Tails... I end it."
The coin spun, catching a flicker of light—a cruel joke.
But it didn't land.
It balanced on its edge.
His heart hammered like a death drum.
The world cracked.
A sound—not sound—ripped the air: a shriek deep and unnatural, grinding in his bones. The fire twisted, flames turning blue and black. Reality tore like rotten fabric.
When he blinked, the shrine was gone.
He stood in a city swallowed by endless dusk. Buildings loomed like broken bones, their empty windows hollow eyes. Blood-red moss pulsed on cracked walls like a living wound. Beneath his feet, rot-slick stone.
Ahead, a massive clocktower spun backward, its hands crawling in reverse. Above, a second moon hung cracked and bleeding shadows, casting sickly light.
Nerin swallowed hard. His throat raw.
One step.
Another.
The air pressed in—heavy with wrongness. Shadows writhed, whispering curses in a tongue he couldn't understand but felt in his bones.
The Mark burned beneath his collar—black sun split in two, glowing cold blue fire.
A truth poisoned his gut: this was no blessing. The Hollow Mark was a lock, a door—and a summons.
A brittle laugh cracked silence.
From an alley, a child emerged—barefoot, pale as death, eyes black voids swallowing light. Her grin stretched too wide, unnatural and wrong.
Her lips didn't move, but words seared his mind:
Welcome, Hollowed.
"You're early," the voice echoed in his skull. "The trial begins with you."
Nerin's breath hitched. "Trial? What the hell is this place?"
Her smile widened, teeth sharp as shattered glass.
A dream. A prison. A lesson. A lie. Choose your truth. But beware—the first thing you kill may be the last piece of yourself.
Darkness spilled from her eyes like ink. Chains floated in a halo above her gaunt head.
Nerin bolted.
Heart pounding thunder, he fled twisted streets and doors leading nowhere. The world warped with every step, logic unraveling like fraying threads.
No weapon. No guide. Only the burning Mark—an ache pulsing like a living wound beneath his skin.
Desperation dragged him into a collapsed bookstore. Dust hung thick in stale air, motes dancing in fractured light through broken windows.
On a rotten desk lay a knife—not steel, but bone. Cold. Sharp.
He hesitated. Then gripped it.
A voice whispered behind him, cold as death:
Your Aspect has been chosen.
Words carved into his mind, glowing terrible clarity:
[Aspect: Echo of the Forgotten]
[Attribute: Adaptive Instinct]
[Trait: Hollow Memory]
He didn't understand.
But he felt it—something shifting inside him. Lighter. Sharper. Darker.
Outside, the child was no longer small.
Tall, gaunt, eyeless—chains spinning slowly like a crown above her head.
"Lesson one," she crooned, voice like shattered glass, "survival demands a cost."
She lunged.
Nerin screamed.
And something inside him screamed back.
The knife in Nerin's hand felt impossibly cold, as if it drew heat straight from his blood. Its jagged edge wasn't made for mercy — it was a promise of pain, a language written in bone and scream.
The child lunged like a nightmare stitched from fractured glass and shadows. Her movements were too quick, too unnatural, bending physics and sanity like twisted wire.
Nerin barely dodged, heart slamming against his ribs like a war drum. The alley's walls closed in, suffocating, dripping with blood-red moss that pulsed and breathed with a life of its own.
His fingers trembled as he swung the bone knife — a desperate slash that grazed her pale cheek, sending a spray of black ichor that sizzled where it touched stone.
Her smile didn't falter.
"You can't kill what's already hollowed," she whispered, voice like a graveyard breeze. "You don't fight shadows — you survive them."
The air thickened; whispers slithered like snakes, filling Nerin's ears with curses in a tongue older than time. Every breath tasted of ash and rot.
Nerin stumbled back, the Mark burning hotter now, its cold blue flame licking beneath his skin. Pain flared, a dull throb that spread like poison.
His mind spiraled — fragmented memories, faces long lost, screams buried deep. Hollow Memory, the trait glowing faintly in his thoughts, pulling him toward forgotten horrors.
He forced himself to focus.
"Who are you?" he gasped, gripping the knife tighter. "What do you want?"
The girl's eyes, bottomless voids, flickered with cruel amusement.
"I am the first lesson," she said, voice slicing like shattered glass. "You want to live? Then you pay the price."
She vanished into a flicker of darkness, shadows swirling into a cage around Nerin.
Cold chains — intangible yet suffocating — wrapped tight around his limbs. The world warped, colors bleeding into nightmare hues.
The trial had begun.
Nerin's breath was ragged, chest heaving. His mind raced — how many screams did it take to break a man? To tear the last thread of his soul?
He remembered the whisper behind him: Your Aspect has been chosen.
Echo of the Forgotten. Adaptive Instinct. Hollow Memory.
No answers. Only hunger.
The chains tightened.
A cruel voice echoed, dripping with malice: "Survival demands sacrifice. What will you burn first? Flesh? Mind? Soul?"
Nerin clenched his teeth. His shadow writhed beside him — too many teeth when it smiled back, a dark mirror that promised ruin.
The first kill was coming. Not of flesh, but of something far more precious.
And Nerin knew—once it was gone, there was no turning back.
Chains of shadow tightened, biting cold as they constricted Nerin's wrists and ankles, pulling him to his knees on the rotten stone floor. The city around him seemed to pulse with malevolence—walls breathing decay, windows dripping darkness like fresh wounds.
The hollow whispers climbed into his ears again—voices speaking in the language of broken bones and forgotten screams. They weren't just noises; they were memories not his own, clawing at his mind's fragile walls.
Nerin struggled against the chains, but the shadows weren't physical—they seeped into his flesh, weaving into his nerves, turning his limbs into prisons of icy fire.
Your Aspect has been chosen. The words rang like a curse. Echo of the Forgotten.
He tasted ash on his tongue and saw flickers of faces long dead—their sorrows and sins tangled in his blood.
A cold certainty settled: this place was a crucible, and the Hollow Mark was the brand of the damned.
The child from the alley reappeared—not as a child but a towering specter, skin pale as bone, eyes black voids radiating chains that spun like crowns of despair.
"Your memory is not your own," she intoned, voice like the scraping of tombstones. "Echoes of lives long lost, screaming to be heard. But what will you remember when the last light fades?"
Nerin's vision blurred, fragments of memories bleeding into one another—faces he'd never seen, screams he'd never heard, yet felt crawling beneath his skin.
Pain exploded in his chest—a jagged shard of agony that seared and froze simultaneously.
He realized the chains were not only binding his body but siphoning his memories, feeding the city's insatiable hunger for forgotten souls.
Desperation clawed at him.
He slammed his fists into the ground, breaking stone, but the shadows only tightened their grip.
His mind screamed for escape, for survival, for something—anything.
Then a thought struck him, sharp as the bone knife still clenched in his hand.
Adaptive Instinct.
The trait glowed faintly beneath the Mark.
His body responded—muscles twitching, senses sharpening. A whisper of movement, a flicker of reflex.
He twisted, breaking one shadowy chain with a surge of cold fire flaring beneath his skin.
Freedom came at a price—the chains shrieked in agony, writhing like living things.
The specter's voice echoed: "You may break the cage, but the Hollow Mark binds more than flesh."
Nerin staggered to his feet, breath ragged but mind burning.
He was no longer just a prisoner.
He was a weapon forged by forgotten pain.
And the city—The Hollowed City—was the battlefield.