It was dreaming.
And now, its eyelids trembled.
Elias felt it in his bones—the slow, seismic shift of something vast and ancient stirring beneath Vareth. The streets cracked like eggshells. The canals boiled. And the whispers that had once slithered through the ichor now screamed in unison.
The Crow Maiden’s voice came to him on the wind, fractured but clear:
"You broke the cycle. Now you must break the god."
But how do you kill something that has already died?
2: The Surgeon of Memories
In the Quill District, where scholars traded in forbidden truths, Elias sought the one person who might know: The Surgeon of Memories, a creature of ink and parchment who carved knowledge from living flesh.
The Surgeon’s lair was a labyrinth of books that bled when opened. Its face was a shifting mosaic of stolen eyes.
"The Hollow Kings were never rulers," it rasped, slicing a quill across its own wrist. Black ink pooled, forming words on its skin. "They were wardens. The god beneath us is not a corpse—it is a prisoner."
The truth unfolded in jagged script:
Long ago, the god had been betrayed by its own kin. Its body was slain, but its consciousness was sealed beneath Vareth, forced to dream eternally. The Hollow Kings existed to keep it asleep.
And Elias had just shattered its chains.
3: The Apostate Choir
Not everyone wanted the god to remain dormant.
The Apostate Choir, a cult of fanatics who worshipped the ichor, saw its awakening as a sacrament. They slit their throats and let the black tides pour from their mouths, singing hymns in a language that made the air vibrate like a plucked nerve.
Their leader, The Hymnal, was a thing of rot and reverence—a corpse puppeteered by the god’s earliest whispers.
"You cannot stop the inevitable," it gurgled, its jaw unhinging like a snake’s. "The god will rise. And we will be its voice."
Elias burned their temple.
But the ichor had already learned to sing.
4: The Diving Bell
To kill a god, Elias had to descend into its mind.
The Diving Bell, a relic from the city’s founding, was a brass chamber lined with mirrors that reflected the soul instead of the body. It was said that those who stepped inside could walk the corridors of a god’s dreams.
But the bell demanded a toll: a memory worth forgetting.
Elias offered the moment he first heard Seris’s voice.
The mirrors swallowed him whole.
5: The God’s Lament
The god’s dream was a cathedral of collapsing stars.
Elias stood before its heart—a pulsing, blackened thing suspended in a web of chains. The god’s voice was not a sound, but a pressure, crushing his thoughts into shapes he couldn’t comprehend.
WHY DO YOU RESIST?
Elias had expected rage. Instead, he felt loneliness.
The god had been betrayed. Abandoned. Left to rot in the dark.
And all it wanted was to be remembered.
6: The Hollow Promise
Elias could not kill the god.
But he could change the story.
He pressed his palm against the god’s heart and whispered:
"I will remember you. But you must sleep again."
For the first time in centuries, the god hesitated.
Then—slowly—the chains reformed.
