Chapter 2: The Whisper of the Past

Kael drugged Reika unwillingly through the alleys of Emberhold. The beast pursued him, death-gaze drawing back over unwinking stare. Rang through unnatural sheen an uncanny stillness — like waiting hunter.

She walked with an age of a thousand years on the earth, as if she had been here for eternity. Kael would have stepped back, but he could not. There was something dead in her — lifeless, deadly, and beyond the understanding of Kael.

She led the others through creaking on hinges for centuries under the gate in the Silver Market, where for centuries goods had been cried and shouted. It was an asylum now of what had been lost: up-turned baskets, broken torches, and stench of rot adhering to stone like an abscess. Reika did not linger. She pushed inside, looking down.

"Where are we?" Kael was gasping, his own breathing slightly worse. His grip on the hilt of his sword was firm, though, and the Hollowborn hadn't budged an inch.

Reika said nothing. She rested back against the worn wall, shoulders against stone, and so quietly that she almost whispered. There was roiling air, as if waves had swept across the surface of otherwise calm water, for a moment or two. Kael blinked, never quite certain he had.

And the wall creaked back into being once more — a secret door bucking on a soft hiss. She pushed Kael through in front of her into the darkness within, her own roughened breathing echoing.

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

Kael stopped but did not breathe harder. He kicked the door open wide, cold from the underdark surging in as they moved deeper into Emberhold's secret tunnels. The corridor was dim and damp, with air thick with mold and grime.

She led him to a small room, whose walls were lined with mountains and mountains of bookshelves stacked high with books and souvenirs. One could sense that no one had set foot in this room for quite a while. It was only lit by some soft candlelight from candles that had been placed on a rock pedestal in the center of the room.

"What is it?" Kael snarled, his head reeling. Hollowborn hadn't, and now, where it'd begun. And Reika, the woman who'd pulled him out of thin air — like rescuing him had been a cover, something she'd had planned all along.

Reika moved closer, stern face in her black eyes keeping him in check.

"This is where it began."

Kael's eyebrow flickered.

"Where did it begin?"

The strain in her voice-laden words sagged the shoulders braced by an inch or two. But Reika's eyes shot wide open, rather, with relieving tension.

"Hollowborn." She shuddered for a second, then quickly covered it up by flushing out cheeky cheeks. "They weren't just a plague. They were crafted — by something. Something that wanted to conquer. Someone who mastered antiquarian magic."

Her heart did perhaps two jump turns. "Antiquity?

She shook her head slowly, her eyes unfocused, dreamy. "There's a why Emberhold fell. Why the Hollowborn come and come again. And it is not the monsters. It is not what I fear." More than that was the risk. More than the Hollowborn, more than what she feared.

Kael leaned in, attempting to interpret her slurred words. "What's happening?

Reika entered the room and supported herself against the table, following the rim of an impossibly dusty, impossibly old book. She drew it back to herself, cover creased and dried with age last it had been touched. She opened the cover, inner pages covered in doodles that Kael couldn't decipher.

"'The Core,' she said in amazement. "It's an object -- a repository of ancient power. Not the sort of power for us, either. It's. something other. Something nefarious.'"

Kael shifted his gaze. What he'd just seen couldn't — but legend, legend to scare children in front of inns. They'd warned them they'd warned them they'd warned them they'd warned them the Core was legend, a legend to scare children. Legends did, though.

"And how is the Hollowborn related to the Core?" Kael's scowl furled.

Reika slammed the book shut and glared at him with anger. "The Core made the Hollowborn. They were its warriors, its armor. And now." She spat the words out. "Now, it's awakening."

Kael was confused. "Awakening?"

She nodded, her eyes darkened. "The Core is crying, Kael. Calling for the Hollowborn. And the one who holds it." She said nothing more.

Kael understood. The one possessing the Core had utilized the Hollowborn. And they, with that kind of power, could reshape the world.

That did not tell him, however, why Reika was there. Now.

"Why me?" Kael asked, his tone softer 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."

Kael's head spun. He hadn't asked for that. He did not wish to fight a second war that killed him the first time. But the Hollowborn were no longer an idea. They were fact. And if Reika was Being Deceived, then they weren't even his biggest issues that he had to fix.

"I didn't ask for that," Kael growled, hands on hips.

Reika stood there, her mind lost in thought. "I do. You can't do that, though. We have to be in charge, or everything that we've been able to accomplish will be engulfed by the darkness."

Kael stood frozen, the sensation behind them sneaking up on him. The world itself was perishing around them, and they might be buried with only strife. It was not something he would never have, but to which he would have no access whatsoever.

The Hollowborn were merely the start.

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