“When the child of wild magic awakens, the Hollow shall bloom again—and the blood shall call the bones home.”
The room goes quiet.
I touch the words, and the page warms.
A vision floods me—brief, flickering—of Mari standing in a grove that doesn’t exist, surrounded by figures cloaked in shadow, her eyes lit with silver light. The wind around her bends like it’s afraid.
Then it vanishes.
I close the book, heart pounding, throat tight.
She’s not just special. She’s central.
And someone knows.
CHAPTER 16
HARDIN
Ifeel him before I see him.
The forest doesn't fall silent, it just changes. The usual rhythm of birdsong and leaf-rustle flattens into something still and breathless, like the Hollow itself is holding its lungs tight against its ribs, waiting to see who bleeds first.
There’s a pressure in the air that settles low in my back and tightens the muscles along my spine, the kind of weight that doesn’t belong to weather or instinct but memory, the kind that's been gnawing at the back of my skull since the wards first flickered two nights ago. I follow the tremor down the ridge past the southern boundary, where the ash trees twist toward one another like lovers mourning too long.
And then I smell him: old blood and burnt bone and the tang of black iron.
It hits me like a punch to the chest, that scent. Not because I fear it, but because I know it better than I should. Because once, that stink came from both of us.
The clearing ahead is small, ringed with roots so thick they look like bones clawing from the earth. I step through the mist and there he is, standing in the space like he never left, like no time has passed at all.
Korrak.
He hasn’t changed. Or maybe that’s the problem, he’s changed too much. His armor is darker now, pieced together from creatures that shouldn’t be alive long enough to be skinned. His tusks are longer, filed sharp, gilded at the tips with gold or something fouler. The tattoos on his throat writhe faintly under his skin, spell-ink that moves like it remembers pain.
He doesn’t move when I enter. Just lifts his head and smiles in that slow, venomous way that used to make the younger warriors flinch.
“Well, well,” he says, voice low, smooth as a dagger drawn in the dark. “Look what the Hollow dragged in.”
My grip tightens on the axe slung across my back, but I don’t draw it. Not yet. There’s a ritual to this. A rhythm. He’ll want to talk first. He always does.
“You’re far from the clans,” I say, keeping my voice level, even though my chest tightens with each word. “I didn’t think the old blood still reached this deep.”
He chuckles and steps forward, slow, boots crunching the frost-hardened grass. “Blood reaches further than you think, little brother. You’ve been pretending for years that this place made you something else. That you’re safe. Civilized. But you and I both know that what runs through us doesn’t die in quiet towns.”
I don’t answer. There’s no point.
He circles me, each step careful, deliberate, like a predator testing the edge of a snare. The air crackles faintly around him, thick with the residue of dark rites and half-buried power.
“I heard a rumor,” he continues, tilting his head with mock curiosity. “Said you’ve taken up with a human woman. A soft little witch and her strange daughter.”
I shift my stance.
Korrak grins wider. “Oh, it’s true, then. That’s rich. You, of all people, playing house with creatures who wouldn’t hesitate to bind your throat and call it justice if they ever saw what you are beneath that uniform.”
“You came all this way to spy on me?”
“I came to offer you a choice.”
