Chapter 159
Serafine knew the shape of Xander’s anger long before he turned to speak, it was visible in everything about him. It sat in his shoulders, that were squared and rigid as he stood by the wide window that overlooked the mistveiled border of what we now call the Hollow.
His arms were folded tight across his chest, and his knuckles pressed white against his skin. The dark, storm–lit eyes of his remained fixed on the distant line of trees that curved like a scar.
The place became the Hollow after it grew darker, and magic was felt within it. Serafine hadn’t ventured into it much, but suggested no one was to venture into it. There didn’t seem to be danger coming from there, but it was better to be safe and ban everyone’s entry.
She didnt‘ need to ask what had happened, Eryx had gone into the forest again.
The boy was clever, sometimes, he was too clever. He had inherited Serwafine’s instincts and more than a little of Xander’s defiance. At ten, he could easily read the land around him better than most men could with maps.
While Serafine had drawn wards, cast protective glyphs and warned him countless times, the Hollow still pulled at him like a song. The border meant nothing to him, not the way it did to her.
She stepped quiet going further into the room, the morning light trailing pale through the tall window behind her. Her footsteps softened against the stone, but Xander didn’t turn.
“He waited until guard rotation change,” he said, his voice was low and tight. “He slipped out just before dawn we believe, he was careful. Too careful for it to be the first time he’s done it at night.”
Coming to stand beside him, Serafine let her gaze follow the edge of the trees where the mist hung heavy. The forest hadn’t always looked like this, before Gideon’s fall it had been a place of rot and whispers. Rogues would pace the area looking for anything they could capture. People would do rituals and sacrifices in there. It had begun to bloom back to life after Gideon, the magic that fed it seemed to ward off the bad.
Not now though, while the rogues no longer waited out there, Serafine believed something far darker lived there now. Even if she was unable to put a
word or name to it.
The roots shifted in ways that did not match the wind, and the silence within it had grown deeper of late, not empty, but listening.
“Has he come back?” she asked.
“No. Not yet.”
She didn’t miss the way Xander’s jaw flexed. She placed a hand on his forearm, grounding him, though her own worry coiled sharp beneath her ribs. Eryx was strong, stronger than most his age, and gifted in ways they hadn’t entirely uncovered. But the Hollow did not forget the blood that had soaked its
stones. And neither did she.
They agreed to give Eryx space after he struggled to find his place among the children, but going into the Hollow was not part of that agreement. Serafine did not like that Eryx found comfort in the Hollow, in something so dark.
“I’ll find him,” she said quietly.
Xander didn’t move. “He’s crossing lines he doesn’t understand.”
Serafine turned to face him, studying the lines that time had etched into his face. He looked tired, but not in body. It was something heavier, the weariness of a man who had known too much war, too much loss, and now feared losing the one peace he had fought to preserve.
“He’s still a child,” she reminded him. “He’s testing his strength. That’s all.”
Xander’s gaze finally shifted to hers, sharp and steady. “He’s not just a child. He’s ours. And he carries your magic.”
A beat passed between them.
“What if Amelia began to follow him?” Xander asked. “What then, she’s smaller, younger, weaker. He might be wise for her age, Serafine, but he’s not strong enough to face the darkness like you had.”
They had said it before, in different words, during sleepless nights and quiet moments by the fire. Eryx was born of something ancient and fractured. His blood was not simple. Not Veyrathi alone, not human alone. He had inherited a piece of something older, something Serafine hadn’t fully understood even now. She had shaped the land. He was shaped by it.
Serafine exhaled and turned back to the window.
There was no sign of movement at the edge of the forest. There was no rustle of leaves, no shift in the light, just mist and the slow pulse of morning. Even without sight, Seafine could feel the faint tug of magic on the air, it was like a thread being pulled taunt in warning.
The Hollow was stirring.
It had been subtle to begin with, a new root curling along the path, a sudden silence among the bird. Dreams that seemed to slip away the moment she had opened her eyes, which left her with only the scent of smoke and stone.
She had told herself that it was nothing, and that the land was healing. She convinced herself that her magic was simply stretching wider now that the thread had gone.
But in her bones, she felt it and she knew something had shifted. And now with Eryx, and how drawn he had become to that shift, as if he knew the change, she didn’t like it.
“I’ll call to him,” she said. “He won’t ignore me.”
Xander nods sharply, and exhales but his shoulders don’t loosen. She touched his cheek for a brief moment, it was a small gesture, before she stepped back. She moved toward the center of the room, and the wards she’d set up long ago, still shimmered faintly in the floor beneath the stone.
Only she was capable of seeing them now, and she knelt slowly, before she pressed her hand to the old lines and whispered the boy’s name.
“Eryx.”
The name carried, not in the sense of it travelling through the hall, but like it soaked into the brick, the floor and travelled through the walls of the building. It would reach the Hollow and maybe even beyond that.
She felt the moment he heard her, it was nothing much, just a flicker at the edge of her mind, a resistance. Then there was a pulse of reluctant obedience.
He was on his way back.
Serafine rose to her feet, brushing her palms against her skirt. She watched as Xander had moved closer to the door now, as if waiti the moment he stepped through.
“He’s listening,” she said. “But something out there has his attention. Something I can’t feel clearly yet.”
Xander’s expression darkened, but he said nothing. He didn’t need to.
atch the boy
They both knew the Hollow had secrets. Serafine had hoped she could seal them, burry them, and ensure nothing more could rise. But she couldn’t, whatever was in the Hollow was awake and unwilling to sleep.
Lately, Serafine had begun to wonder whether they had misunderstood the land’s silence.
Maybe all that silence was not peace but was something else waiting at the edge?
