Hollow's Reach had never been a place of warmth, but for Aeron, it was more than just a city of suffering. It was a cage—a prison of iron expectation and inherited failure.
His birth had been an omen. Blood in the water. Shadows stretching unnaturally long. Whispers slithering through temple halls, proclaiming that Malik's son was destined for greatness.
For power.
For divinity.
And then it was all taken from him.
The night his mother sealed him, the night Elira turned her back on him, his power was stolen away, locked behind bindings of light and silence.
His father was left with nothing but a hollow thing where a god's instrument was meant to stand.
And Malik did not forgive weakness.
So he set out to fix his son.
---
THE TEMPLE OF PAIN
There was no warmth in Malik's home.
Only discipline.
Only suffering.
"Weakness is a sickness, Aeron." Malik's voice was always measured, cold. Detached. "And sickness must be burned away."
The lessons varied.
Sometimes, it was isolation.
Locked in the prayer chambers, left alone for days without food, without water, without light. The silence gnawed at him like unseen teeth, the air so thick with incense that breathing itself felt like a punishment.
Sometimes, it was doctrine.
The priests would come, draped in robes of black and red, their voices hushed and reverent. They would whisper blessings that were not blessings, prayers that sought not to uplift but to bind.
"The will must be broken before it can be made whole."
"Obedience is salvation."
"You are lost, but your father will guide you."
Sometimes, it was the chains.
They were heavy, rusted things—relics of the old world, their weight both physical and symbolic. When Malik deemed him unworthy, they were fastened around Aeron's wrists and ankles, forcing him to crawl through the temple's marble halls until his skin split and bled.
"You will learn to carry your burden."
"You will learn to kneel."
"You will learn what it means to serve."
It was not kindness.
It was not discipline.
It was control.
And Aeron learned early that fighting was pointless.
Malik was not merely a father—he was a high priest of the Old Gods. His word was law. The priests, the acolytes, even the city guard bowed before him.
Even if Aeron screamed, no one would come.
No one would dare.
Except for her.
---
SELENE – THE HOLLOW GIRL
The first time Aeron met Selene, he thought she was a ghost.
She moved through Hollow's Reach like a shadow, slipping through alleys, darting between broken ruins. She was thin, hunger sharpening her features into something almost feral. Her hair was uneven, cut by an unsteady hand.
But it was her eyes that unsettled him most.
Old eyes.
Not in the way of age, but in the way of someone who had seen too much, too soon.
"You look lost."
It was the first thing she ever said to him.
He was.
But he had never spoken it aloud.
Selene simply understood.
She had been watching, she admitted. From the temple gates, from the ruins, from the shadows. She knew what his father was. She knew what the temple did to him.
And yet—she did not fear him.
"You think you're alone." She told him once, as they sat beneath the ruined arches of a long-abandoned shrine. "But the world is full of broken things. You're not the first. You won't be the last."
It was comfort.
A foreign thing.
At first, he rejected it.
But Selene was persistent.
She was like a stray that refused to leave, no matter how many times you turned it away.
And in time—Aeron stopped turning her away.
They met in secret, beyond the reach of Malik's watchful gaze. She told him stories of the world beyond Hollow's Reach. Of the ruins past the Devourer's Teeth. Of a time when the sky was not black. Of hidden places where the dead still whispered to those who knew how to listen.
She told him of freedom—though neither of them truly knew what that word meant.
But dreams were dangerous things.
And Malik hated them.
---
THE FATHER'S WRATH
Malik found out.
Aeron never learned how.
Perhaps a priest had seen them. Perhaps Selene had been careless.
Perhaps Malik had simply always known.
But one night, Aeron was dragged from his bed, yanked through the temple halls, his limbs aching as they forced him into the altar chamber.
The priests were waiting.
So were the chains.
"You disappoint me."
Malik's voice was calm.
The rusted iron collar snapped shut around Aeron's throat.
The whip uncoiled in his father's hand.
"I thought you would learn."
The first lash came without warning.
It burned.
The second came before the first pain could fade.
The third split flesh.
Aeron clenched his fists.
"You think you deserve kindness?"
Fourth.
"You think you deserve love?"
Fifth.
"Foolish boy."
Sixth.
"You are nothing."
Seventh.
"You have always been nothing."
The eighth lash never came.
Because something broke.
Not just within Aeron.
But around him.
The air shuddered.
The torches flickered.
And in the corners of the temple, the shadows moved.
Something whispered.
A voice he had forgotten.
A hunger he had long buried.
And Malik felt it.
For the first time, his father hesitated.
For the first time, Aeron saw fear in his eyes.
And then—
The pain was gone.
The chains were gone.
Malik was across the room, gasping—as if an unseen force had thrown him aside.
Aeron stared at his hands.
At the faint traces of power flickering at his fingertips.
At the whispers that had returned—distant, faint, but no longer fully silenced.
He remembered.
His mother's seal.
It was cracking.
And soon, it would break.
And then—
Then he would be whole again.