Book I - The Hollow Crown

Chapter Eight: Thorns and Crowns

The rain began as Veylan and Clov emerged from the crypt.

But it wasn't water.

It was ashfall - grey and warm, thick as mourning, drifting down from the clouds like the sky itself was burning elsewhere.

Clov stared upward. "He's started the culling early."

"Who?" Veylan asked.

But he already knew the answer.

The Hollow King had come to Aramoor.

They didn't get far.

At the bridge into the upper quarter, five figures awaited them. Armored not in metal, but in living thorns - growing, shifting, whispering curses as they moved.

The Crownless Guard.

Once princes and saints. Now hand-picked wretches, resurrected by the Hollow King to be his swords.

Clov cursed under his breath. "They're not here to talk."

"No," Veylan said, stepping forward. "They're here for me."

The battle was short, brutal.

The air hissed with vineblades and blood chants.

Clov moved with unnatural grace - one moment dodging, the next singing, his voice bending the air. His power wasn't just sound; it was command. It turned gravity inside out, made the very bridge scream.

Veylan, however, burned.

Not with fire, but with memory. Every strike he landed caused him pain - as if each act of violence pulled more of his past to the surface.

He saw a palace in ruin.

Children turning to ash in his hands.

A woman - her name lost - dying as she whispered: "Don't become him."

He roared - and the bridge exploded in a halo of kinetic force.

When the dust settled, only one Crownless remained - kneeling, bleeding, laughing.

"You think you're the hero," she rasped, face half-burned.

"I don't know what I am," Veylan replied.

She grinned, blood on her teeth. "Then let me remind you."

And she stabbed a memory blade into his chest.

The world tilted.

Veylan fell to his knees - not from pain, but from the weight of what hit him:

His original name.

His first life.

The truth of the Flameborn.

He had once served the Architect.

Willingly.

As his general.

He collapsed.

The Crownless laughed one final time and fell dead.

Clov rushed to Veylan, panicked. "Hey! Vey - listen to me, this isn't over. We knew they'd try this. We planned - "

Veylan looked up. His eyes glowed - not red, not gold.

Black. Like the void before light.

"Did we?" he said coldly.

Clov froze.

In that moment, Veylan wasn't Veylan.

He was the echo of something older. Something worse.

A monster without guilt.

A god with no worshippers.

A child who became a pyre.

And then, just as suddenly, the light in his eyes faded.

He collapsed.

Later, in chains, Veylan awoke in the palace dungeon.

Stone walls. Silver cuffs. Silence.

He looked to his right.

Clov was gone.

But in his place, pinned to the wall, was a parchment with a burned sigil - a crown fractured down the middle.

And a note in Clov's handwriting:

"I'm sorry I lied.

But this is bigger than us both.

You need to remember everything.

I'll stall the real one."_

The Hollow King wasn't coming.

He was already here.

And he wasn't alone.

That night, as Veylan sat in chains, the Hollow King entered.

Tall. Silent. A crown made of writhing black roots. No eyes - just a face like shattered glass, endlessly reflecting everyone who looked upon him.

"You remember now," he said.

Veylan didn't reply.

The Hollow King placed a hand on his head - not cruelly, but tiredly.

"Then maybe you'll understand why I must kill you again."

But in the back of Veylan's mind, something stirred.

The Architect's voice, distant as the stars.

"You were never broken, Veylan.

You were unfinished."