The city's breath was a rasping dirge. Nerin's footsteps echoed through shattered alleys, swallowed by a chorus of hollow whispers—voices that sang of loss, rage, and eternal hunger. The red moss throbbed along the walls like veins pumping dark blood, its pulse syncing with the black sun burning beneath his skin.
The bone knife hung heavy in his hand, still slick with the remnants of the broken echoes he had slain. Each strike had demanded a piece of his soul, each victory a cruel trade. The woman—the veiled warden of this nightmare—had vanished, leaving behind only her chilling promise: the path ahead was darker still.
A cold wind twisted through the ruins, carrying a scent sharp and metallic—like a forgotten grave freshly disturbed. Nerin's breath caught as a faint melody wound its way through the air—a bone choir, faint and terrible, sung by voices cracked and broken, echoing from deep beneath the city's rot.
The hollowed citizens emerged from the shadows, gaunt figures with eyes like bottomless pits, their mouths moving in silent harmony. Their song was a lament of lives devoured by the city's curse, a warning stitched in sorrow and madness.
Nerin's Mark flared with blue fire, its cold burn a tether pulling him forward, deeper into the heart of decay.
Ahead, a cavernous maw yawned between two crumbling towers—an ancient theater swallowed by time, its stage set for a performance of agony and survival.
The bone choir rose in a crescendo as Nerin stepped into the darkness, the knife ready, his senses razor-sharp. The walls themselves seemed to pulse, breathing with a life of their own, veins of black flame coursing beneath cracked stone.
From the shadows, a figure stepped forward—tall, skeletal, draped in tattered robes woven from whispers and despair. Its face was a hollow skull crowned with broken bone, eyes burning with cruel light.
"Welcome, Hollowed," it intoned, voice grinding like bones scraping stone. "The choir awaits its final note."
Nerin's fingers tightened on the knife's hilt. He understood now: the city was alive, a symphony of suffering, and he was both the audience and the instrument.
The trial would demand more than blood—it would demand sacrifice, memory, and the shattering of what remained of his soul.
He stepped into the theater, the bone choir rising around him, their song a knife carving through the silence of the Hollowed City.
And the first note was his scream.
The bone choir's song faded into a low, hungry hum, vibrating through the cracked stones beneath Nerin's feet. The theater around him twisted and writhed — no longer mere ruins, but a living maw, its walls pulsating like a beating heart, its ceilings dripping with the sticky residue of forgotten dreams. The air tasted sour and metallic, thick with the scent of decay and memory bleeding into madness.
Nerin's hollowed eyes scanned the darkness. Shadows pressed close, whispering secrets he dared not hear. The Mark burned with icy fire on his palm, pulsing like a second heartbeat — a relentless reminder that his soul was no longer wholly his own.
From the depths of the maw, a voice rose — fractured, desperate, and aching:
"Feed us… or be consumed."
Before him, the ground cracked open like a wound, spilling phantasms — memories stolen from the depths of his mind, twisted and corrupted. Faces of loved ones blurred into grotesque masks, laughter warped into shrieks, joy decaying into despair. The memories clawed at him with skeletal fingers, begging to be reclaimed, yet threatening to swallow him whole.
Nerin felt his sanity fray at the edges, the line between self and shadow dissolving. The Mark flared, screaming with hunger. To survive, he must consume — not flesh, but the echoes of his own past, devouring what made him whole, piece by fragile piece.
His voice was a broken rasp: "I… will not lose myself."
But the city laughed — a hollow, shattered sound — as the memories surged forward, enveloping him in a suffocating tide of pain and loss.
The struggle was a violent dance. Each consumed memory burned away a fragment of Nerin's soul, yet granted him shards of terrible power — sharp instincts, brutal clarity, the cold detachment of the hollowed.
His bones ached, flesh pulsing with the Mark's icy flame as the Memory Maw devoured and transformed him.
In the abyssal silence that followed, only one truth remained:
To break the Hollow Mark's chains, Nerin must become both predator and prey.
And in this city of endless dusk, the price of freedom was always higher than the cost of bondage.
The Memory Maw's hunger had left Nerin hollowed in more ways than one. His mind was a shattered mirror, each shard reflecting a fragment of who he was—and who he was becoming. The city's curse was no longer something imposed upon him; it was breeding inside, twisting every thought, every breath.
He stumbled from the maw, the bone knife feeling heavier than ever, weighed down by the ghosts of his devoured past. The black sun on his palm pulsed like a heartbeat of ice, cold and relentless, marking him as both prisoner and predator.
Around him, the world had shifted. The once-silent ruins now whispered like a congregation of lost souls, voices threading through the cracked air with venomous intent. The blood-red moss writhed and spread, staining everything with its sick pulse.
Nerin's gaze caught a reflection in a shattered shard of glass—a face both familiar and monstrous stared back. His eyes were sunken hollows, his shadow fractured and too many-toothed when it flickered in the dying light.
A voice echoed inside his skull, cruel and calculating: "You have tasted the abyss. Now, you must forge a new self from the shards."
The city wasn't just a prison anymore. It was a forge, hammering him into something darker, sharper.
He flexed his fingers. The bone knife vibrated, humming with a new, terrible power—the echo of the forgotten now bleeding into reality.
From the twisting shadows, the veiled woman returned, chains spinning like a halo of damnation.
"Your first transformation is complete, Hollowed. But every step forward costs more than you imagine. Your soul is fracturing. Your enemies are waiting. And the Mark… it hungers."
Nerin swallowed the bitter truth.
Freedom was a blade edged with sacrifice.
And the deeper he delved, the more he realized that in the Hollowed City, there was no salvation—only survival, at the cost of losing what made you human.
He sheathed the bone knife, eyes burning with a cold fire.
"Then let the city break me," he whispered. "But I will not break first."
The hollowed nights stretched on, and the trial marched forward—deeper into darkness, deeper into himself.