Book I - The Hollow Crown

Chapter Five: Ashes of the Loyal

It began with bells.

Not the chiming kind. These bells rang like bone snapping in the wind. Bells made from spine and sorrow - hung in the towers of the Bastion to warn of one thing only.

A King's March.

Veylan was already awake.

He had not slept. The map had pulsed against his chest all night like a dying heart, whispering to him in fractured echoes. Names he didn't know. Places he had never seen. But in every vision, he burned.

And the world thanked him for it.

Clov kicked open his door. "We've got company. Ugly kind. Robes. Bells. Singing nonsense."

Veylan stood, eyes half-glowing. "The Choir again?"

"No. Worse." Clov's voice dropped. "The Red Paladins."

Veylan blinked. "Those are a myth."

"Yeah, and so were you."

The Red Paladins were the Hollow King's personal enforcers. Once saints. Then sinners. Then... something else.

Wrapped in crimson plate stitched with relic-thread, they didn't bleed when struck. They bled before battle - to feed the blood-soaked scripture carved into their skin. It was said they couldn't be killed - only remembered painfully.

They came with fire.

The first impact tore the eastern wall apart.

The Bastion lit up in screams and silver flame.

Veylan burst into the chaos, Clov at his side, blades flashing. But the Paladins didn't fight like men. They spoke scripture, and the words broke bones. One whispered "Unmake," and a stone guardian shattered into powder.

Clov grunted. "I hate holy magic. So smug."

The Blind Seer led the resistance, screaming incantations older than light. Her voice made the air vibrate.

But it wasn't enough.

The Paladins were not there to conquer.

They were there to burn loyalty.

Veylan dove into the fray, and something inside him cracked.

Flames exploded from his chest - not just heat but memory. The air filled with cries not his own. Visions of a war long gone. A battlefield covered in obsidian glass, where he once stood upon a mountain of corpses, his skin glowing like a dying star.

"You're the Wound's Heir," a voice whispered in him.

"You ended the Age of Crowns. You broke the sky."

He screamed - and the fire answered.

Paladins fell in rings of golden light.

Some ran. Others knelt.

But the power didn't stay. Just as before, it vanished after seconds - leaving him breathless. Mortal. Burning.

He collapsed, clutching the map. It shrank - terrified of what it had just awakened.

Clov dragged him behind shattered pews.

"Okay," he panted. "That's new."

"I couldn't stop it," Veylan gasped. "It just? took me."

"No worries. Happens to the best of us. At least you're sexy when divine."

Then it happened.

The Paladins halted. Not from fear.

But reverence.

They stepped aside... and made way for a woman in black.

Not armored. Not robed. Just a simple traveler's cloak, covered in rain.

Her eyes were hollow.

Her hands, burned.

Her voice - quiet. But the city shuddered when she spoke.

"Hello, little brother."

Veylan froze.

Clov whispered, "You have a sister?"

"No."

"Not by blood," she said, stepping closer. "By ruin."

She pointed to the sky. "The Hollow King doesn't want you dead. He wants you remembered wrong. Wants the world to fear you again."

"Why?"

She smiled sadly. "Because you almost saved us last time."

She handed him a fragment - a mirror shard etched with a strange sigil.

He touched it? and saw the Chain War.

He saw himself.

But not as a child.

As a god. Unshackled. Radiant. Ending everything.

Clov caught him as he fell, blood leaking from his nose.

The woman faded. "You'll need to decide soon, Ashen Born. Burn? or bleed."

The Paladins vanished with her.

The Bastion lay in ruins.

Orrin was dead - his throat cut mid-vision.

The Blind Seer had lost both eyes, smiling as she whispered, "He walks again."

And Veylan?

He stood alone among ash, holding a fragment of a past no one wants to remember.

That night, Clov stared at the firelight, whispering:

"You're not the villain they fear.

You're the villain they made."