"The gods will not remember your birth. The world will try to erase you. But if you survive… you may yet become its undoing."— Unknown prophecy carved into the ruins of Trisveran
The sky wept black.
Not rain. Not ash. Not snow.Ink.
It poured in steady, sticky streams across the crumbling village of Kaelstrem Hollow, coating rooftops, soaking bones, and smearing the names of the dead into the mud.
Midwives screamed. One bit off her own tongue. The torchlight flickered blue — unnatural. Wrong. Then, came the sound.
A shriek. Not of a baby. Not of a beast.But like a tear in reality, wailing in protest.
A boy had been born.
He had no name, no status, no lineage.He was wrapped in rags and silence.The villagers only knew him as:
"The Hollowborn."
His mother died minutes after his first breath. His father? Vanished two nights before, muttering about a dream where a chain-wrapped god whispered, "Let the vessel breathe."
No one claimed him.
Except for the Mark.
On his chest was an intricate black symbol, like a clock made of bones, constantly rotating in reverse. It pulsed with a dull light every time someone got too close—making their vision blur and their thoughts slow.
The mark was forbidden. Ancient. Forgotten.
And it pulsed… with hunger.
At age 3, he spoke his first words—not to a person, but to the moon:
"Stop watching me."
The next morning, an elder was found dead. Eyes missing. Moonlight scorched into his skin.
They blamed the Hollowborn.
They carved a sigil of exile into his wrist and tossed him into the Drifts—a barren tundra of frozen sand where reality thinned and ancient whispers wandered freely.
They thought he'd die.
He did.But not in body.
"Do you hate them?"
The voice echoed inside him, ancient and layered—like a thousand whispers overlapping. It came from the Mark.
He didn't answer.
"Do you want to understand what you are?"
He nodded.
"Then devour."
The world around him shattered like glass. And for the first time… the Hollowborn opened his Eyes.
And saw everything.
He saw colors that had no name.He heard the skeletons of songs that had never been sung.He tasted the air of other realms, where time bled backward and kings were born weeping.
And in that space, he saw Nullren—the chained god.
A mouthless deity, wrapped in infinite rusted chains, hovering in a void of reversed stars. Its body was hollow. Inside it… mirrored the boy's soul.
They were the same.
"You are my vessel. But I am not your master."
The boy stepped forward.
"Then let's rewrite the sky."
The chains unraveled. The mark stopped spinning.
And Kael Veyrin was born.
He emerged from the Drifts barefoot and glowing.Eyes like eclipses. Voice low and steady.
And behind him…walked shadows with crowns.