Chapter 1: The Forge’s Last Flame

Emberhold's cold was heavy with the muck of the Old World suffocating every breath. The great city clinging to the twisting cliffs, the haunt now, breaking to dust on the gale. The stinking streets choked once with warriers, merchants, and traders, now empty and filthy, save the keening wailing of Hollowborn down the streets.

Kael rested back against the side of his forge, hammer in hand and satisfied. It had centuries before it had wielded a sword. War hammers were memories of past ages. Nothing remained but cold metal bulk of past ages' fiery forge — sooted, upon which phantasms brooded of moments long forgotten. His hammer clattered on something metallic, one crashing blow shattering the silence. He was weary. Tired of the perpetual cloud that clung to him, tired of nite sweats that pursued him even on blinding sun days. His past clung to his back like a loose second skin, dragging him down step by agonizing step. But running from it there ever shall be, no.

The fire in the forge reduced to red-hot embers, the shadows in the room black and very jagged. He pushed a hand through sweat-slicked hair over his eyes, the trembling hand clenching the water pail against his hip. Too many years trying to recall, recalling out of memory the memories of the Ash War, friends and comrades slain by his own hand. But all his bluster for it all, the memories always managed to intrude, edging out from under wraps and twisting, hissing snake coiled and ready for warmly intimate provoking.

A thunderous boom the other side of town and his head jerked. Kael stood rigid, looking. It wasn't the wind.

A monster.

His heart crashed up. He knew the sound all too well. The Hollowborn were coming.

He set his hammer down on the floor and propped the dented, battered sword against the wall, blade battered from battle but still hard enough to slice through bone like paper. Too long, too dad-blamed long, since he ever even did fight, ever. Too long. Kael had not an ounce of doubt about one thing, though: if the Hollowborn were going to attack them again, then bad news. Bad big news.

Sword in hand, he quit the forge and the city streets. The mountainside was wrapped in dense mist that obscured the city from view in mystical night. His head bent, he shot rapidly and silently, the boots barely brushing the cobblestones.

He strode along the alleys and could see the bobbing lantern lights of the town guard in the distance, the guards' lanterns cutting through the darkness. And a pause in the bobbing of the lights on the breeze was teasing him. He strode more quickly down, his heart demanding he get out of it.

From an alley corner, he watched.

The Hollowborn.

They were no longer hollow things they used to be some half century ago. They were different now - intelligent, agile, and deadly. These Hollowborn crept in the darkness, cold eyes the only indication that they existed. They stumbled around, rigid as if they were constructed of less than human.

Kael's grip on his hilt closed harder. He steeled himself on a deep breath, ready, prepared to swing his sword. He'd killed the monster so many times he'd lost count anymore and knew where death to kill lay upon them as well as the back of his own hand. But before he raised his sword to swing, he stopped in mid-step at the whispery voice behind him.

"You can't kill them all, Kael."

She twirled, sword raised high. A woman faced him, half-concealed behind a hood of shining white so blinding it hurt to look. Too clever, too evil, eyes that gazed into hers cut a nervous path of uncomfortable up Kael's arms. He didn't know her and yet she was too serene for a woman who'd just encountered the Hollowborn.

"Who are you?" Kael demanded, lowering his sword but still keeping a cautious eye on the creatures.

The woman didn't answer right away. Instead, she glanced at the Hollowborn, who had stopped moving in their tracks, as if waiting for something.

"My name is Reika," she said at last, stepping closer. "And you're going to need more than just a sword to stop them."

Kael's grip cramped on the hilt with indignation. He couldn't fathom that this woman didn't have even a hint of what was taking place, and yet somehow he couldn't manage to keep himself from the impression that she was providing him a lot more than he was requiring of her.

"What on earth are you saying?" Kael barked.

Reika's gaze flew back to his. She took a soft breath, whispering in desperation.

"They're not alone at what horrors extend beyond. Something more, something which stirs."

Kael's brow furrowed up. "What're you sayin' to me?"

A warning snarled out of the darkness before she could say a word. A Hollowborn stepped into stance, its light-tipped eyes closing tight as it poured all of its will into Kael.

The woman's face twisted still tighter, and Kael caught something very near to fear in her eyes.

"We have no time," she answered in a rush. "Come with me, and I will tell the truth. But we can't delay."

Kael did pause, but for a moment. But whatever it was in the woman's voice, whatever it was in the words themselves, drove him on before he was stayed by sense.

He whirled again, sword aloft, and leapt into the darkness following her.

Kael trailed behind Reika at a pace of a slow stroll through the twisting streets of Emberhold. The dead-eyed creatures followed, unblinking gaze never for an instant shifting from vertebrae upon his spine. There was something unnatural about the stiffness — as though a patient huntress.

She moved as if she'd been here for a century, with such measured slowness. Kael would have learned to walk warily, but the seriousness of the situation outweighed his own caution. Something was amiss with her — an old, deadly something which Kael couldn't quite identify.

They spilled out under the arch that had groaned open for centuries above the Silver Market, where merchants had negotiated their wares for centuries. Now it was a shadow of what it used to be: upturned baskets, broken torches, and a reek of decay stuck to the stone like a plague. Reika did not think twice. She pushed through, looking down.

"Where do we go?" Kael asked, air tightening ever so slightly in his throat. His hold on the sword never loosened, though the Hollowborn had not yet shifted themselves.

Reika spoke nothing. She leaned against a weathered wall, resting on stone, speaking so softly that she was almost inaudible. Air was stirred, like ripples on the surface of a still pond, for a moment. Kael blinked, never certain he had.

And the wall creaked into motion once again — a concealed door rattling over a high wheeze. She beckoned Kael through the darkness in front of him, her own breath heard only just so.

"It's safe here," she whispered to him.

Kael stopped but did not breathe. He circled around the doorway, the chill of the underdark moving into his limbs as they moved deeper into Emberhold's secret passages. The passageway was dark and stale, with heavy mud and mold-scented air.

She led him to a little room whose walls were lined with bookshelves stacked with row after row of books and mementos. The room was obviously not frequented in decades. The only light was provided by some candles on the top of a rock pedestal in the middle of the room.

"What is this?" Kael growled, still not understanding. His head reeled. The Hollowborn had never been on the starting line, but now, on the starting line of it all. And Reika, this woman who'd rescued him out of the blue — as if rescuing him was what she'd planned to do all along.

She set him, her sharp face in her dark eyes confronting him. "This is where it all began."

Kael's eyebrow flew up.

"Where did it begin?"

The roughness of her voice settled shoulders so fragile by a degree. Reika's eyes relaxed, however, with a minimal unwinding of tension.

"The Hollowborn." She shivered momentarily, but smoothed over it with a flush in her cheeks. "They're not born disease. They were created — by someone. Someone seeking power. Someone who knew about old magic."

Kael's heart jerked twice. "Old magic?

She rested her head, her face heavy, her eyes far away, dreamy. "There is a reason Emberhold fell. Why the Hollowborn return and return again. And it's not the creatures. It's not what I fear."

Worse than that was the threat. Worse than the Hollowborn, worse than what she feared.

Kael leaned forward, trying to make out her slurred words. "What's happening?

Reika paced across the room and stood beside the table, her fingers tracing over the top of a dusty, old book. She drew it to her, the cracked and worn cover bearing testament to years of disuse. She opened it creakily, the symbols inside the inside pages jumbled in areas that Kael couldn't decipher.

"'The Core,' she whispered, her chest full of soft wonder. "It's an artifact -- a vessel of ancient power. But not ours. It's. something else. Something dark.'"

Kael's head spun. He was not hearing this — but legend, legend to frighten children in taverns, could not be. They'd told them they'd told them they'd told them they'd told them that they'd said the Core was legend, a legend to frighten children. Legends became real.

"And how does the Hollowborn stand in relation to the Core to start with?" Kael balled up, snarled.

Reika slammed the book closed and stood over him, seething with rage. "The Core produced the Hollowborn. They were its soldiers, its armor. And now." She spat out the words on gritted teeth. "Now, it's waking up."

Kael was unable to quell his bewilderment. "Waking up?"

She tilted her head, eyes smoldering with an even darker hue. "The Core cries out, Kael. Calling for the Hollowborn. And its master." She hadn't needed to remind him.

Kael understood. The one who controlled the Core controlled the Hollowborn as well. And with that kind of strength, they could remake reality.

This did not tell him, however, why Reika chased him. Why now.

"Why me?" Kael asked, his voice gentler this time.

Reika seemed to hesitate before speaking again. Her eyes flicked to the sword at his side, then back to his face. "You've fought them before, haven't you?"

Kael didn't answer. He didn't need to. The scars on his hands and the nightmares in his mind said enough.

"You're the only one left who knows how to fight them," she said softly. "You're the only one who can stop them."

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