The Hollow Sage

Nytheria was a continent of silent, beautiful ruins. Unlike the other lands, it hadn't been ravaged by war or twisted by plagues. It had simply… stopped. Grand universities with libraries of priceless knowledge stood open to the sky, their pages turned by a wind that no one read. Majestic cities of white stone were empty, their streets clean and silent, as if their inhabitants had collectively decided to vanish moments before. It was a land that had died of a broken spirit.

For weeks, the party moved through this eerie silence, the lack of open hostility more unnerving than any army. They encountered the people of this land, the ones the sparse reports called the Hollowed. They were not zombies or slaves; they were simply… empty. They sat on the steps of their perfect homes, their gazes vacant, their wills eroded by a philosophical poison so potent it had leeched all purpose from their souls. There was no suffering here. No pain. Only a vast, terrible, placid nothingness. Catherine wept at the sight, her healing light unable to mend a soul that was not wounded, but simply absent.

They found their final target, Selthar the Hollow Sage, in the Great Observatory of Oakhaven, a magnificent domed structure at the peak of a mountain. He was a thin, old man in simple scholar’s robes, sitting in a chair beside a vast, star-charting telescope.

“Ah,” he said, his voice calm and melodic, without turning. “The heroes. The slayers of a broken general, a failed healer, and a betrayed king. You’ve made it to the final chapter of this tragic little play.”

His gaze, heavy with a terrible, ancient understanding, finally fell upon Kael. “And then there is you. The anomaly. The broken piece from another game entirely.” Selthar’s eyes seemed to see not Kael’s present, but his past. “I see a world of steel and glass, of quiet, soul-crushing noise. I see a rooftop, slick with a miserable rain that offers no cleansing, only apathy. I see a ledger of failures, of debts and heartbreaks. I see a final, logical step into the void.”

Kael froze, his blood turning to ice. He sees me. He knows.

“Did you think this power was a gift?” Selthar continued, his voice weaving a spell of pure despair. “It is a curse. A second chance in a world just as broken as the first, to fight the same pointless battles against the same inevitable end. You fight to avert a doom that you, yourself, are destined to become. You saw the despair in Varic, in Isolde, in Draem. That is the destination for all who struggle. Tell me, Kael of another world, what is the point? It all ends in silence.”

The words struck Kael’s soul like a hammer. It was the voice of the despair he had carried his whole life, now given form. The silver aura around his blade flickered and died. His muscles locked. The old, familiar coldness of the rooftop seeped back into his bones.

As he stood paralyzed, the shadows in the room coalesced into shrieking, wraith-like figures that swarmed the party.

“Kael!” Ronan’s voice, a soldier’s bark born of pure terror, cut through the haze. He slammed his body in front of Kael, his shield taking the brunt of the wraiths’ assault. “Whatever lies he’s spinning, we’re still in a fight! Get your head on straight!”

Nira’s arrows, tipped with Catherine’s holy light, pierced the darkness. Cyras unleashed chains of lightning. They were fighting for him, a desperate defense around their frozen commander. Kael looked at his team, at their desperate struggle. He looked at the old man who was the embodiment of the surrender he had once chosen. And in that moment, a new, ice-cold clarity washed over him. He thinks he's showing me the abyss? I've already been there. I've looked down into it. And this time... this time I have a reason to step back.

“You’re wrong,” Kael said, his voice returning, stronger now. The silver aura reignited around his blade, brighter and purer than ever before. “You’re just a coward who got a glimpse of the end and decided the journey wasn’t worth taking. The truth you’re so proud of is just an excuse to give up. I made my choice on that ledge, and I’m making it again now.”

He leveled his sword, his voice a declaration of war against despair itself. “My life has meaning because I choose to give it meaning. Because of them!”

With that declaration, his power erupted. He thrust his sword skyward, and a silver aura detonated from the blade, blazing with the light of a newborn star. The backlash was immense, a feeling like his very soul was being torn, but he welcomed it, channeling all of it into a single, defiant act. The light scorched the darkness from the observatory. The wraiths shrieked and evaporated into smoke. His gaze then snapped to the great dome above. With a final, defiant roar, he unleashed the aura in a single, lancing beam. The roof shattered in a thunderous explosion, and through the gaping wound, the cleansing sunlight poured in.

Selthar’s power, born of shadows, withered in the light. He looked at Kael, not with hatred, but with a flicker of pure, academic confusion. “But… the equation is absolute… futility is the only logical end…” he stammered, as his body began to fade, scattering into fine, grey dust on the wind.

Kael stood panting in the beam of sunlight, his body aching from the backlash. He braced himself, waiting for the psychic torrent he now expected, the flood of memories, the weight of another soul.

But nothing came.

There was no vision, no whisper of gratitude, no final, tragic story. There was only the ringing silence in his own head and the profound emptiness where a soul had just been. It was a clean victory, the cleanest of them all, yet it felt colder, more unnerving than the others. With the others, he had been an executioner who had offered a final peace. Here, he had simply erased an equation. The thought left him feeling confused and strangely hollow.

As his dust scattered, a wave of gentle, golden light erupted from the observatory, spreading across the continent. All across Nytheria, the Hollowed stopped. They blinked, a flicker of confusion in their eyes, followed by the dawning, painful light of memory and self. The curse was broken.