The road to Grithmar tasted of rust and regret.
Kael walked alone, his boots crunching through fields of frozen bloodflowers that wept black sap. The Hollow Crown sat heavier tonight—not in weight, but in presence. As if it were slowly fusing to his skull.
The Maw had gone quiet three days ago, after whispering a single phrase:
"They're waiting where the roads forget their names."
Now, standing before the obsidian gates of the Sable Concord's hidden chapterhouse, Kael understood.
The building wasn't just hidden.
It was erased.
The Initiation
The door opened before he knocked.
A woman with ink-stained fingers and hollows where her eyes should be greeted him.
"You're late, King of Ashes."
Her voice came from the rusted pendant around her neck, not her mouth.
"Mirellos has already burned tonight's memories."
Kael followed her through corridors lined with:
• Living Grimoires — books bound in still-breathing skin
• Whisper Jars — containing the last words of forgotten saints
• One repeating mural — a crown shattering into seven shadows
The archivist's chamber smelled of burning parchment and old wounds.
Mirellos sat enthroned in smoke, his paper robes stitched together with hair-thin chains. Where his face should have been, there was only a shifting collage of burned portraits.
"You seek the Black Index."
Not a question. The words peeled off his robes like scabs.
"But first, you must give us something the System hasn't stolen."
Kael unsheathed his dagger.
"A name."
Mirellos laughed—a sound like tearing parchment.
"Not yours. Hers."
He gestured to the corner.
Synnra Vehl emerged, her void-touched left arm pulsing with the same rhythm as Kael's crown. In her hands: a knife made from a saint's fingernail.
"Tell me the Maw's true name," she demanded, "and I'll show you what the Index says about the Hollow King before you."
The Eclipse Twins' Warning
The ritual began at midnight.
Kael watched as Synnra carved the Maw's whispers into her own arm. The wounds sealed instantly into glowing sigils. The air thickened with the scent of burning copper as the Black Index unfolded itself—pages written in frozen blood.
Then the candles blew out.
Two figures stood where none had been before:
• Noctel, his left side aging rapidly while his right regressed to infancy
• Virae, her mouth sewn shut with threads of condensed moonlight
"The Scourge Knights cross the Ashen March," Noctel said, his voice skipping like a broken record.
"Solmir Veilhart sharpens his sword with dead kings' breath," Virae's words appeared burned into the table.
Synnra's void-arm thrashed violently.
"They're not really here. These are just echoes—"
Noctel's decaying hand grasped Kael's wrist.
"You'll sit the Hollow Throne within the year."
His grip left frostbite patterns that spelled LIAR.
Virae leaned close, her stitches straining.
"Unless the Gutter Saint eats your shadow first."
Then they were gone—leaving only the smell of overturned graves and a single page from the Index floating downward.
Kael caught it.
The heading read:
"The Last Hollow King's Mistake: How to Survive the Maw's Betrayal."
The rest of the text had been clawed out.
The Price
Dawn found Kael standing at the chapterhouse's threshold, his right eye now void-black from Synnra's ritual.
Mirellos offered him three gifts:
1. A Map to Thren'Kai — where the Screaming Canyon knew the Crown's secrets
2. A Coin Stamped with the Eclipse Twins' Faces — always lands on edge
3. A Name That Wasn't His — "Use it when the System asks who you are"
As Kael stepped back onto the bloodflower road, Synnra called after him:
"The Index had one more page about you."
She touched her hollow eye sockets.
"It said you'll weep when you learn what the Hollow Crown really is."
The wind carried the Maw's first words in days, just for Kael:
"Lies taste sweetest when they're true."