Book I - The Hollow Crown

Chapter One: Ash Rain

Ash drifted like snow through the broken sky.

It whispered through cracks in the stone, settled on rusted rooftops, clung to prayer flags long forgotten. In the city of Threnwall, ash was not death - it was memory, the soot of fallen dreams. The people believed each flake carried a voice, a secret, a regret.

And in the ancient catacombs beneath the city, where time had been swallowed whole, a boy awoke.

He gasped, dragging cold air into lungs that hadn't drawn breath in years. His skin was pale, veined with silver, his hair tangled and dark, streaked with ash that seemed fused to his scalp. Chains lay broken around him, the sigils on them faintly glowing like dying stars.

He sat up slowly.

And remembered nothing.

His name was Veylan. That much echoed inside him like an echo in a stone well. Beyond that, his past was smoke. His body trembled with a familiar pain - dull, constant, and deep in the bone - as if some immense power had once carved itself into his flesh and left hollow rooms behind.

He staggered to his feet. His bare footsteps echoed through the shattered sanctuary. High above, light filtered through a collapsed dome where once a god might have knelt. Broken murals watched him - half-erased faces, gold-leaf wings, and forgotten prayers.

"Ahhh, there he is. Sleeping Beauty finally stirs."

The voice bounced around the chamber, cheerful, strange, and unmistakably mocking.

A figure leapt down from the rafters with a clang and a grunt. He landed in a ridiculous bow, arm extended as though presenting himself to royalty.

He wore mismatched boots, a tattered red cloak, and a cracked porcelain mask that smiled in two halves - one cheerful, one screaming.

"Clov," the stranger said brightly. "Wanderer. Trickster. Connoisseur of the mildly haunted. You must be the apocalypse."

Veylan stared.

"?What?"

"Good! You can speak. Thought we'd lost that along with your fashion sense." Clov gestured at the shredded robes hanging off Veylan's shoulders. "You look like a prophecy threw up on you."

"Where? am I?"

"Underground. Beneath Threnwall. City of broken oaths and overpriced soup. Been watching over you for a few months now. You snore like a dying priest."

"Why?"

Clov tilted his head. "Because the world is ending. Again. And you, my friend, are the matchstick."

They climbed through forgotten catacombs, through halls etched with warnings and verses long since blackened by flame. Veylan said little. Clov, on the other hand, filled the silence with everything from conspiracy theories about gods wearing wigs to an oddly detailed analysis of ghost etiquette.

When they emerged into the light, the ash was already falling.

Threnwall greeted them with mournful bells and stained glass windows cracked by centuries of grief. Its spires reached like skeletal fingers toward a colorless sky, and its streets twisted in ways that defied logic and sanity.

Veylan blinked, shielding his eyes.

"Why is the sky... gray?"

"It's Ash Rain," Clov said. "It happens every few years. Memories rise from the Wound, and the gods send them back down, burnt. It's a holy thing. Or maybe just very poor weather. Depends who you ask."

They wandered the Ash Markets, where vendors sold relics of forgotten lives - mirrors that reflected dead faces, rings that whispered apologies, candles that refused to go out even underwater. Veylan said nothing, but he watched. Always watching.

He felt something pull at him. A deep itch in his soul. A place he didn't know, calling.

And then he saw it.

A cathedral, rising above the city like a wound made of bone and black iron.

Its walls wept ash. Its bells tolled without touch. And upon its highest spire sat a throne of silence.

Clov followed his gaze.

"Ah. The Crownspire. Home of the Hollow King. Praise be, etcetera."

"?Is he a god?"

"He thinks so. Most people agree. Those who don't tend to explode."

Veylan frowned. The pain in his chest flared again - sharp, electric.

He was being watched.

It happened suddenly.

A low chime echoed through the square. People screamed and scattered. Clov tensed.

Out from the ash drifted a creature made of cathedral bells and rotting parchment wings. Its face was a cracked mask, its hands like candle stubs, dripping wax and scripture.

"Sermon Beast," Clov whispered. "Religious enforcement. Like a priest, if priests could bend your spine into calligraphy."

It turned.

And looked directly at Veylan.

The world bent.

Veylan clutched his head. His vision blurred. Time slowed. He saw the ash freeze mid-fall, every flake a burning word. His veins lit with gold. His eyes rolled back.

He remembered screaming.

Chains.

The fire.

The dead village.

He screamed again - but this time, it wasn't a cry of fear. It was a command.

Power exploded from him in a pulse of blinding light. The Sermon Beast shrieked - but its sound was cut short. It was turned to ash mid-roar, disintegrating as if unmade.

Then everything went silent.

And Veylan collapsed.

In the void of unconsciousness, he drifted.

He stood in a sea of black. Above him floated a massive, chained heart, beating slowly in the sky, each thud like thunder against bone.

A voice whispered, vast and kind and cruel all at once:

"You have returned, Ashen One.

We are waiting."

Far above, in the throne room of the Hollow King, Azarel stirred.

The spires trembled. The ashes thickened.

And the crown on his head began to whisper.

"The wound reopens."

The Hollow King's lips curved into something like a smile.

"So. The boy lives."