Chapter 8: The Hollow Marches

It began with silence.

Not the kind that comes before a storm — but the kind that lingers after something ancient wakes.

The kind of silence that feels like the world is holding its breath.

Kaen stood on a ridge, the wind brushing through his hair, his eyes fixed on the valley below. Smoke curled in the distance — not from fire, but from something colder. Something that left ash without heat.

Behind him, Reiji checked his satchel.

[Reijuu’s Perspective Insert]
Reijuu never feared Kaen’s power. He feared what it meant. Fire was clarity, yes—but clarity cut both ways. ‘One day,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have to choose if I follow him, or stop him.’

"There was a town there. Just three days ago."

"Not anymore," Kaen murmured.

They hadn't spoken much since the ruins. Since she appeared — the demoness of ash. Her voice still echoed in Kaen's bones, soft as dust, sharp as glass.

Now, the world was starting to remember.

As they descended into the valley, the stench hit them first.

Burnt wood. Charred bone.

And underneath it — something far worse.

Not their own.

But the kind left behind by people who knew they wouldn't survive.

Kaen's boots sank into blackened mud. Houses lay in pieces, roofs collapsed, walls melted like wax. Not scorched — disintegrated. As if something had chewed through Māna itself.

Reiji crouched by what remained of a child's toy.

Wooden. Cracked.

"They didn't have time to run."

Kaen's fists clenched.

"This wasn't war."

"No," Reiji said.

"This was hunger."

From behind a splintered inn, something moved.

Kaen spun, mark glowing faintly, but it was just a figure — cloaked, limping, coughing.

A survivor.

He rushed forward and caught the man before he collapsed. His skin was pale, flaking, and his eyes were clouded — not blind, but scarred. As if he had seen something he wasn't meant to.

"The sky… opened," the man rasped.

"And the stars… screamed."

"What did you see?" Kaen asked.

"No eyes… no mouths… only the sound. The… the void…"

He began to convulse.

Reiji pressed his hand to the man's chest.

The man let out one last breath — and his body turned to ash in Kaen's arms.

Not burned.

Not aged.

Just… gone.

Kaen rose slowly.

"The Hollow passed through here."

"And it's not hiding anymore."

Suddenly, [Kaen's Thought] Kaen felt it.

Like something far away had just turned its head toward him.

Far across the clouds, high above the mountains, a faint shimmer in the sky pulsed once — like a heartbeat made of shadow.

"It felt me," Kaen whispered.

"Then it's coming," Reiji said.

"And we're out of time."

The sound of hooves broke the stillness.

From the edge of the valley, a rider approached — fast, cloaked in deep navy, silver armor glinting beneath.

Reiji tensed.

"Who—"

"Wait," Kaen said.

He recognized that aura. Faint, buried deep in his memories — but familiar.

The rider stopped, pulled down her hood.

Hair like moonlight. Eyes like glass touched by sorrow.

"So," she said, her voice sharp as a drawn blade.

"The fire really did wake up again."

The wind tugged at her cloak, revealing armor polished but worn — silver etched with a crest Kaen didn't recognize. But what caught him wasn't her gear. It was her eyes.

He had seen that look once before.

On Iris.

The eyes of someone who had lost everything, yet stood anyway.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She dismounted in one smooth motion, dust rising around her boots as she walked forward.

"Your mother didn't tell you about me, then," she said flatly.

"Typical Asuka."

The name slammed into Kaen like a blade.

The woman tilted her head.

"Knew her? I bled for her. Fought beside her. Watched her burn an entire legion of slavers in the Black Vale."

Reiji whistled softly.

"Damn. That Asuka?"

"That Asuka," she confirmed.

Kaen stepped closer, his voice shaking.

She looked at him for a long moment, then removed one of her gloves.

Her hand was scarred — burns and claw marks that never healed. Across her wrist, a faint rune glowed, buried under skin and age.

"My name is Shigure," she said.

Shigure had once said the Academy wasn’t a haven — it was a cage. A cage lined in books and rules, hiding the monster they made of him.

He laughed often, but his smile rarely reached his eyes. Especially when someone mentioned freedom.

Shigure, the ever-smiling rogue, was more shadow than man. Lean and restless, with wind-blown hair and eyes like dusk, he thrived on unpredictability. Where others saw risk, he saw opportunity. Beneath the charm lay sharp instincts and scars he never spoke of.

"And I'm the one who tried to stop her from vanishing."

The silence between them thickened.

Shigure. He had heard the name. Whispers in the corners of Iris's old books. A demon mercenary once called The Blade of the Borderlands. A woman who had turned against her own kind for reasons no one could explain.

"She left me," Kaen said quietly.

"She… she died before I could even know her."

"She didn't die," Shigure replied.

"Not like you think. She didn't get the luxury of death."

She looked out over the burned village, her voice turning sharp.

"The Hollow didn't just take her. It tried to consume her. But she was too strong. So it imprisoned her. Ripped her spirit apart and scattered it across the Dead Sky."

"You're saying she's alive?"

"No. I'm saying parts of her are."

[Kaen's Thought] Kaen felt the heat rise in his chest. His mark pulsed.

Reiji looked between them, arms crossed.

"So why now? Why come to him?"

Shigure sighed.

"Because he lit the signal.

The Hollow has stirred again.

And that means the gate will open."

"What gate?"

"The one she tried to seal."

Kaen's thoughts reeled.

He wanted to scream.

To demand answers.

But instead, he said:

"Tell me everything.

Start from the beginning."

Shigure's face softened — just for a moment.

She sat on a broken stone near the charred inn, brushing dust from her glove.

"Fine. But you'd better sit down.

Because the story of the Hollow…

starts long before you were born."

Kaen sat on the edge of the broken stone, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the dying embers that remembered the pain and forged the will of what was once a village. Shigure remained still across from him, her eyes fixed on the ash dancing in the wind.

"Your mother wasn't just a warrior," she said finally.

"She was a contradiction."

"She was a demon… born to the bloodline of Serei, the fourth house — direct descendants of the Sovereign Flame. And yet she turned her back on all of it."

"Serei? That's… one of the ten elite bloodlines. Royal."

Shigure nodded slowly.

"Exactly. And she spat on the crown the moment she discovered the truth behind their power."

She reached into a satchel and pulled out a worn leather strip. Wrapped inside was a small medallion — etched with a symbol that pulsed faintly in Kaen's presence. It looked like flame, twisted in on itself like a spiral. Familiar, somehow.

"This was hers," Shigure said, handing it to him.

Kaen took it in his palm — and the mark on his chest pulsed.

Not in pain.

"It's the symbol of the Anima Flame."

"I've never heard of that."

Shigure chuckled bitterly.

"You wouldn't. It was erased. Buried. Not even the scholars in the capital know anymore. The Anima Flame is older than the demon kingdoms, older than Māna. It's not a weapon. It's not magic. It's a fire that lives between — between soul and power, between life and death."

She leaned forward.

"Your mother was one of the last to carry it in full."

"You're saying I… inherited this?"

"Not all of it," Shigure said. "But enough. Enough to wake what's been sleeping."

Reiji, who had remained mostly quiet, now spoke up.

"And the Hollow?"

"The Hollow isn't a creature," Shigure said softly.

"It's a scar."

Kaen and Reiji exchanged glances.

"A scar?" Kaen repeated.

"Long ago, the world tried to burn away the Anima Flame. The gods. The kings. The demons. Even the elves. All of them feared what it could do — not because it was evil, but because it couldn't be controlled."

"And it left something behind."

"Not something," Shigure corrected.

"Nothing. That's what the Hollow is. The space where the Anima was supposed to live. And when it feels even a flicker of that fire returning…"

She met Kaen's eyes.

"…it tries to erase it. Again."

Kaen stared down at the medallion in his palm.

The spiral seemed to move now.

Pulse. Breathe.

He whispered, more to himself than to them:

"Then that's why I exist."

Shigure stood.

"Your mother tried to hide it from the world. From herself. But when she gave birth to you, she passed on the flame that shapes as much as it scorches — fractured, but alive."

"And now it's waking up," Reiji muttered.

"More than that," Shigure said.

"It's calling."

A cold wind passed through them.

The sky — once gray — now shimmered faintly with a veil of blue flame, so thin and translucent it could only be seen by those marked.

Reiji shivered.

"Tell me I'm not the only one seeing that."

"You're not."

Shigure's voice lowered.

"Then the veil's thinning. We don't have much time."

Kaen clenched the medallion in his hand.

He wasn't afraid.

He was ready.

Nightfall draped the valley in silence once more.

But within Kaen, there was no rest.

The fire in his chest had been low for days. A flicker. A whisper.

But now it pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat — louder, sharper, deeper.

He could feel it curling beneath his skin like smoke.

He stood alone by the remains of a well, the stars above him blurred by a thin veil of blue shimmer.

Reiji and Shigure had fallen asleep near the edge of the ruins, taking shifts to guard what remained of their path. Kaen couldn't sleep. He didn't even try.

"You're changing."

The voice was not his own.

It came from within.

From the part of him that had always been too quiet — and now refused to stay silent.

Kaen clutched the medallion tighter.

His hand burned.

But he didn't let go.

A memory sparked — one not his, yet somehow familiar.

A forest of flame. His mother's voice. A cry, not of pain, but rage.

And then — silence, as she vanished into the darkness.

Kaen gasped and fell to his knees.

His breath steamed in the cold night air — except it wasn't cold anymore. Not to him.

His skin felt… wrong.

Too tight. Too warm.

His mark throbbed like it had become a second heart.

"Let me out."

Not threatening. Not demanding.

Just… inevitable.

Suddenly, his vision blurred — and for the briefest moment, Kaen saw the world not through his own eyes, but through something else.

The wind shimmered.

The earth pulsed.

Māna twisted in threads — no longer a river to draw from, but a web he was woven into.

And then — it snapped.

A wave of heat exploded from his chest, silent but violent. The grass around him browned. The stone beneath his feet cracked.

Far off, Reiji jolted awake. Shigure was already on her feet, sword halfway drawn.

They ran toward him.

Kaen tried to speak, but no words came. Only flame.

Blue.

Not red. Not orange.

Flame without smoke, light without fire.

His right arm pulsed, skin darkening with spiraling marks. They weren't burning him — they were becoming him.

"Kaen!" Reiji shouted. "Can you hear me?!"

He couldn't answer.

He was the answer.

Shigure froze in place, staring in awe.

"He's syncing…"

Reiji blinked.

"With what?!"

"With the Anima itself."

They were no longer just human.

They glowed faintly — not with color, but with motion. Like twin sparks caught in a windless flame.

He stood up — slow, steady — the heat around him bending the air, but not consuming anything.

And yet… everything around him knew.

A nearby crow screeched and fled.

The grass leaned away.

Even the shadows refused to touch him.

Kaen looked at his hands.

"I didn't ask for this."

Shigure stepped closer.

"No one ever does."

But Kaen didn't look afraid.

He looked awake.

"I'm not going to run," he said.

"And I'm done pretending this isn't real."

Reiji approached slowly, half-stunned.

"You okay?"

Kaen looked at him — really looked — as if for the first time, he could see his friend in all dimensions.

"No," he said. "But I'm ready."

And far above them — in the hollow night sky — the shimmer deepened.

Something in the Rift shifted.

And began to move.

High above the valley, the Rift pulsed.

Not visibly — not to the unmarked — but deep within the ancient fabric of the sky, a tremor spread like a shiver across a forgotten wound.

Something had awakened.

Something old.

Shigure stood watch while Kaen and Reiji rested. Or at least pretended to.

Neither of them slept.

Kaen sat by the embers that remembered the pain and forged the will of the fire, staring into his open palm. The marks had faded into faint patterns, like ghost-ink under his skin, but the memory of the flame that shapes as much as it scorches — the heat — still lingered.

"I thought I'd feel stronger," he muttered.

Reiji raised a brow.

"You just synced with a legendary flame that's older than recorded magic. What did you expect? Lightning bolts from your fingers?"

Kaen didn't laugh. His gaze stayed locked on his hand.

"I expected… to understand."

Shigure approached quietly, her voice low.

"The Anima doesn't give clarity. It gives connection. You're not meant to understand it. You're meant to become it."

"Then what am I becoming?"

"Someone the world won't be ready for."

In the quiet, something in the Rift stirred again.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually.

Literally.

A single streak of dark light cracked through the clouds above, barely visible but unmistakably wrong. Like a vein of shadow splitting the sky.

Shigure turned to it instantly.

"No…"

Reiji looked up.

"That's new."

"That's bad," Shigure growled.

"The Rift remembers that remembered the pain and forged the will the Anima. And now it's calling to its guardians."

"Guardians?" Kaen echoed.

"The Hollow Woken. Sentinels made from the bones of what was left behind."

The ground trembled faintly.

A distant howl echoed across the valley.

"They're coming."

"They're already here," Shigure corrected.

"And they won't stop. Not unless you seal the Rift."

"I don't even know what that means."

"Then you'd better learn fast."

She turned toward the east, pointing to the jagged peaks barely visible in the distance.

"There's a shrine in the Veiled Range. Old. Dead, even. But it was built on one of the last Anima Wells. If anything remains that can help you control the flame that shapes as much as it scorches — it's there."

"And the Rift?"

"It watches that place too."

Reiji cracked his knuckles.

"So we're walking straight into the mouth of whatever this thing is?"

"It's not a thing," Shigure said, her voice tense.

"It's a memory. And memories don't forget."

The temperature dropped suddenly.

Frost curled along the edge of Kaen's cloak.

He didn't move.

"Then let's remind it why we're still here."

Behind him, the last of the embers that remembered the pain and forged the will flared blue — and died.

By dawn, they were already climbing.

The Veiled Range loomed above them like a slumbering god — silent, cold, and merciless.

Mist clung to the edges of the trail, turning every shape into a shadow and every rock into a ghost.

Kaen walked at the front, his steps steady but inwardly strained.

The fire in his chest had dulled since the previous night — not vanished, just quieter, like it had exhaled after screaming too long.

"We're getting close," Shigure said behind him.

"I can feel the pull."

Reiji squinted at the stone around them.

"I can feel a headache."

The path narrowed, winding between jagged ridges scorched black by ancient fires. Trees once stood here. Now only skeletal trunks remained — twisted, charred, and broken.

"What happened to this place?" Kaen asked.

"It was purged," Shigure said.

"A long time ago. After the war of the Blood Houses. They feared the Anima Well would awaken again."

"So they tried to erase it."

"As they always do."

They reached a flat shelf of stone overlooking a dead basin below.

At the center stood a temple — or what was left of it.

Pillars cracked by time, its once-golden roof scorched to ash, but still standing. Barely.

The wind here was silent. No birds. No beasts.

Just the low, distant hum of something old.

Kaen exhaled, his breath visible despite the warmth of the fire within him—not only destructive, but defining.

"It's waiting."

"Yes," Shigure said.

"But so is something else."

A sudden gust hit them from the rear path.

Reiji turned instantly, drawing his blade.

Something moved in the mist.

Shapes.

Not animal.

Wrong.

Figures stepped forward — tall, skeletal, their forms wrapped in scorched cloth and bones blackened like cinders. Their eyes burned not with light, but absence.

Shigure drew her sword in one smooth motion.

"Hollow Woken."

Kaen stepped back, fists clenched. The medallion at his chest flared to life.

One of the figures spoke — its voice like wind over a grave:

"Flame returns. Flame must fall."

Reiji spit on the ground.

"Creepy and poetic. Fantastic."

"You can't kill them like normal," Shigure warned.

"They aren't alive. They're memories bound to Māna's scar."

Kaen didn't hesitate.

"Then we burn the scar."

He stepped forward, the mark on his arm glowing faintly. He didn't need to summon it — the Anima was already there, awake.

The Hollow Woken moved in unison.

Fast. Silent.

Kaen raised his palm.

A pulse of blue fire erupted from him — but this time, it didn't explode.

It shaped.

Spiraled.

It obeyed.

The flame wrapped around his hand like liquid light, forming a blade of pure essence — not metal, not magic.

The Hollow stopped.

Just for a second.

Long enough for Reiji to dive in and slice through the first one's legs — or what passed for legs.

The creature shattered into ash.

"One down," Reiji grunted.

But five more moved in.

Kaen turned, raising his burning arm. Shigure met his gaze — not afraid, but wary.

"The Well is below," she called out.

"If we get inside, you might be able to draw on it."

"What if it's empty?"

"Then we die."

"Then let's not die."

He sprinted toward the temple ruins, Reiji at his side, blades clashing against ghosts that should not exist.

Shigure held the rear, cutting through the ash-born monsters like she had done this a thousand times — and maybe she had.

The flame in Kaen's hand pulsed stronger as he approached the stairs.

And from deep within the temple, something stirred.

Not a monster.

Not a ghost.

But a voice.

One that knew him.

And whispered his true name.

The temple's gates groaned as Kaen stepped through, blue fire still dancing around his right hand like a living ribbon of heat.

Reiji followed closely behind, breathing hard, blade slick with black ash. Shigure sealed the entrance behind them with a broken altar stone.

Outside, the Hollow Woken shrieked. But they didn't follow.

They couldn't.

Not here.

"This place…" Kaen whispered.

It wasn't just ancient.

It was alive.

The very air inside the ruins shimmered faintly with residual Māna. The walls, though cracked and crumbling, thrummed with something deeper — like veins under flesh, still pulsing.

They weren't just standing in a building.

They were standing in the last breath of something long thought dead.

"Where's the Well?" Reiji asked, sword still drawn.

"Below," Shigure said, already moving toward the back of the sanctuary.

"The heart of the shrine is beneath the altar. Protected by rites even time couldn't fully erase."

As they descended a spiral of stone steps, torches on the wall — unlit for centuries — burst to life as Kaen passed.

No matches. No flint.

Just recognition.

"It knows you," Shigure said softly.

"The Well remembers that remembered the pain and forged the will."

"Then it should give me answers," Kaen replied, his voice tighter than before.

"It will," she said. "But not the ones you expect."

The chamber below was circular, domed, and covered in runes older than any language Kaen had ever seen. At its center was a pit — shallow, dry.

At first.

Then Kaen stepped closer.

The mark on his arm flared.

The ground responded.

A wave of blue light surged from the stone, casting flickers of memory across the chamber walls — not images, but impressions.

Screams. Fire. Wings.

A woman's cry.

The Well of Flame — dead for centuries — now bloomed before him.

It didn't need water.

It didn't need words.

It needed him.

He knelt by the edge of the pit, placing his palm flat against the stone.

And the voice returned.

"You have walked in borrowed skin long enough, child of ash."

Kaen's breath hitched.

It wasn't his mother's voice.

It wasn't Iris.

It wasn't even human.

It was the Flame itself.

"You bear no father's name, yet carry the weight of two bloodlines. You are not born of one flame, but many."

"You do not carry power.

You are its rebirth."

Kaen's eyes flared open, filled with visions not of the past — but of origin.

He saw a battlefield soaked in flame.

He saw a warrior wreathed in smoke — neither demon nor elf — carving sigils into stone with a blade of Māna itself.

He saw a woman cloaked in crimson, holding a child whose eyes already burned.

"Asuka…?"

He didn't say it aloud.

But the name echoed.

And the voice answered.

"She is gone.

But her flame remains — in you."

"Then who am I?! What do you want from me?"

Then a single word — so soft, it felt like it slipped under his skin.

"Kaen…"

But it wasn't his name.

It was his true name.

The one no one had spoken since the day he was hidden.

"Kaen no Enjin.

*Son of Ember.

Born of the Flamefallen.

Bearer of the Hollow Brand."

The ground beneath him cracked.

The medallion on his chest burst apart — not in destruction, but release.

And within the shard of metal, something pulsed — small, silent, and alive.

A flickering ember.

Shigure and Reiji shielded their eyes as light poured from the Well.

He let the flame that shapes as much as it scorches cover him.

Not to burn.

But to remember.

And in the heart of the ancient shrine, surrounded by silence and ash, Kaen stood.

Not as a mistake.

But as a name the Rift had long tried to erase.

Kaen no Enjin.

The one whose fire would not forget.