The Warden led him deeper into the Hollowlands, where even the mist dared not linger too long.
Ruined statues loomed over broken plazas, their faces melted and hollow. The earth was cracked and bleeding slow streams of black water. High overhead, the sky was a roiling blanket of iron-gray clouds, pulsing as if alive.
Caelum followed without question.
Every muscle in his body screamed protest, but he forced himself onward.
He had to.
Because weakness in the Hollowlands meant death.
Or worse.
After what felt like hours — or maybe minutes, time was strange here — they came to a place unlike the rest. A clearing surrounded by massive pillars of twisted soulstone, each humming faintly with restrained power. At the center, a small, blackened fire burned without fuel, its smoke drifting straight upward like a spear through the sky.
The Warden turned to him at last.
"This is the Sanctuary," she said. "Our only refuge."
Caelum said nothing, though his instincts flared. The place felt... wrong. Ancient. As if it remembered things no human mind was meant to know.
She gestured to the fire.
"Kneel."
He hesitated.
The Warden's voice hardened. "Kneel, Caelum Vey. Prove your defiance."
Confusion flickered through him — but only for a moment.
He understood.
To kneel in defiance — not submission. To offer yourself willingly to the madness, but refuse to be consumed by it.
He stepped forward.
And knelt before the black fire.
At once, the soulstone pillars vibrated with a deep, thunderous resonance. The fire flared, wreathing him in smoke that smelled of blood and forgotten screams.
Pain ripped through him — white-hot, blinding.
Flashbacks struck:
Solaris' high spires crumbling.
His parents' disappointed eyes.
The sneering faces of the other initiates.
His own reflection, cracked and bleeding, asking, Why am I still alive?
He screamed — but the sound was eaten by the fire.
He reached inward, past fear, past regret, past the shattering core of his being —
And he seized the fraying, tangled mass of broken soul-threads that had become his new heart.
He refused to be undone.
When the fire died, when the world righted itself again, Caelum knelt in the ashes — breathing, alive, changed.
The Warden nodded once.
"You may call me Selvara," she said. "And you are no longer prey, Caelum Vey. You are Severed."
---
Later, as they sat around the dying embers, Selvara spoke.
"There are three truths you must accept if you wish to survive."
Caelum listened, silent.
"First," she said, holding up a scarred finger, "there is no such thing as an unbreakable soul. All can fracture. All can fall."
He nodded.
"Second: the stronger you become, the more the world will turn against you. Power does not inspire loyalty. It inspires fear."
He clenched his fists around the cold dirt.
"And third," Selvara said, voice low, "you must sever your ties to hope. Hope is a chain. Hope will break you."
Caelum closed his eyes.
Solaris. His childhood dreams. His wish to be loved. His wish to belong.
He crushed them.
Piece by piece.
When he opened his eyes again, the fire in them was colder, sharper.
Selvara smiled — not kindly, but proudly.
"You will do well here," she said.
"You will learn the true meaning of strength."
---
Three Days Later
Caelum's training began.
Brutal, relentless, tailored to the Hollowlands' madness.
Selvara showed no mercy — only necessity.
They fought under shifting skies, against creatures born of fractured magic: Skinners, Huskborn, Null-Eaters.
Each battle tore more of his weakness away, leaving only a blade honed by hate and survival.
He learned to twist the soul-threads he could barely control — forming shields, spears, claws of energy.
He learned to step through broken Web strands — blipping between spaces fractured by decay.
He learned to devour enemy spells, unraveling them into raw mist and siphoning it into himself.
But the Anathema inside him grew hungrier each day.
The risk of losing himself into monstrous rage became constant — a drumbeat at the edges of his mind.
Only Selvara's harsh hand — and his own stubborn will — kept him tethered.
Yet even she warned him:
"One day," she said, during a break in their endless training, "you will be given a choice."
He wiped blood from his mouth.
"What choice?"
She looked at him, solemn.
"To destroy the world that hates you," she said.
"Or to burn with it."
---
Meanwhile — Far Beyond the Hollowlands
In the glittering spires of Solaris, beneath crystal domes and golden banners, the Magisterium gathered.
A council of elder magicians, faces hidden by masks wrought from soulmetal, debated by firelight.
One name hovered over every conversation.
"Caelum Vey."
"Exiled. Supposedly dead," one said, voice dripping with disdain.
"Survived. Worse — evolved," another countered grimly.
"We cannot allow it," a third hissed.
An agreement was made, silent but absolute.
Solaris would send its hunters — not to capture.
To erase.
To unmake.
For Caelum Vey was no longer simply a disgrace.
He was a threat.
A seed of annihilation planted by their own hubris.
And the world would bleed before it ever bore fruit.