The southern lands had no name on maps anymore.
The few who remembered them called them the Hollow Wastes—a place where magic bled from the earth like an open wound, where time twisted and the dead walked beneath a pale sky that never changed.
Kael and Selene stood at the edge of a jagged canyon, where the last trees gave way to ashen plains.
Wind howled low and mournful. The sky was the color of old bone.
"It's worse than I imagined," Selene said, adjusting her blade.
Kael said nothing. The cursed eye in his skull had begun to itch, a warning flare of something old and watching just beyond the horizon.
He stepped forward. The cursed magic wrapped itself tighter around him—not to protect, but to test.
"This place feeds on weakness." Selene's voice was low. "We keep moving. Don't look back."
They descended into the Wastes.
The world twisted with each step.
Rocks shifted behind them. Whispers curled in their ears, voices that sounded like lost friends, dead lovers, or guilt given breath.
"Kael..."
He stopped.
The voice had been his mother's.
Selene caught his arm. "Don't listen."
He nodded, jaw clenched. But the voice remained.
They walked for hours.
No sun rose. No moon fell.
Only the endless grey.
At last, they saw it—half-buried in black glass, beneath a spire of bone: a shattered temple, pulsing faintly with unholy light.
Kael's cursed mark burned.
"This is it."
Selene unsheathed her blade. "Something's here. Watching us."
Kael took a step forward. The temple doors groaned open on their own.
Inside, the air was still. Frozen.
Then came the clink of armor.
A figure stepped from the shadows.
Clad in ancient gold, his helm shaped like a screaming wolf, and across his back—a sword longer than a man, humming with stormlight.
His eyes glowed with blue lightning.
Kael felt it instantly.
Another marked one.
The man's voice rolled like thunder.
"The throne calls many. Most fall before they reach me."
Kael drew his dagger, the cursed edge whispering. "I'm not most."
The man stepped into the light. His armor bore the crest of a kingdom lost a thousand years ago.
"Then prove it. Bleed for me, or bow."
Lightning sparked across the temple floor.
And Kael smiled.
"Let's find out if gods still bleed."
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End of Chapter 14
Kael has found the next Marked—The Stormblade King. Will they fight to the death… or awaken a force older than either of them?