They felt it before they saw it.
The air thickened. The ground darkened. Birds fell silent mid-flight. Somewhere in the distance, a child screamed and didn't stop.
Then the winds came—black and biting, not cold but empty, as if every breath stolen by them took a piece of the soul with it.
Elric was the first to speak.
"…It's here."
No one asked what it was.
They knew.
The Hollow King's third general.
The one whispered in myths long buried. The one even priests refused to name during funerals.
The Eclipsed Reaper.
Not a creature. Not a man.
A convergence of all things that had died unwillingly.
Soldiers abandoned. Lovers poisoned. Children lost to war and silence.
Their souls had cried out.
And the Hollow King had listened.
—
It came riding a storm of black wind and rust-colored ash.
No face. No flesh. Only a cloak made of countless shrouds, their ends fluttering like withered hands. Beneath the cowl, nothing but void.
And behind it…
A horde of lost dead—not zombies, not ghosts, but twisted refusals.
Figures of sorrow, still mouthing the final words they never got to say.
They didn't hunger.
They mourned.
And yet, they killed.
—
Ael knew they couldn't face it in open battle.
This wasn't a fight of swords or truth.
This was a place where death refused order.
So he led them west—to a broken temple of stone and ivy called Tharwen's Hollow. Once a sanctuary of last rites, it had long since fallen into ruin.
But its heart remained sacred.
It was one of the last places where true death could still be remembered.
"Why here?" Lyra asked as they climbed the cracked steps.
Ael didn't look back.
"Because the Reaper devours what is forgotten. But this place remembers."
—
They lit no torches.
The temple did not need fire.
It breathed memory—candles still burned in unseen corners, even though no one had lit them in years. Statues of weeping women and hooded priests lined the walls, eyes closed in eternal mourning.
They began to prepare.
Wardings. Circles. Blessings both old and improvised.
Vel returned from the shadows. "There's no escape route. If it comes here, we stand. Or we fall."
"Then we stand," Ael said simply.
The Ashen Banner dug in.
For many, this was their first time facing an enemy they couldn't hate.
That made it more terrifying.
—
The Reaper arrived at midnight.
It didn't roar.
It didn't charge.
It entered.
Silently.
And the temple cried.
Literally—weeping stone, mournful echoes, memories pulled from the ground like roots torn from the earth.
Soldiers wept at the sight of old comrades among the wraiths.
A mother dropped her blade when she saw her lost son, hand outstretched.
A knight screamed when his dead brother whispered his name from the shadows.
But Ael walked forward.
And knelt.
He whispered not a spell.
Not a command.
But a prayer.
"For all who died before they could live.For all who left with songs unsung.You are remembered.You are not weapons.You are not soldiers.You are grief. And you are loved."
The Reaper paused.
And in that stillness—
Ael opened his arms.
"Let go."
—
It was not a fight.
It was a release.
One by one, the wraiths broke.
Not into pieces.
But into light.
Faint sighs echoed as the temple glowed with warmth for the first time in centuries.
Even the Reaper trembled.
From its cloak, a single child stepped forward.
Eyes wide.
Clutching a broken toy.
"I don't want to be angry anymore," he whispered.
Ael knelt to meet him.
"You don't have to be."
And the Reaper shattered.
Not in rage.
But in peace.
Its cloak folded inward.
Its wind died.
And for the first time in living memory, true silence returned.
The kind that followed rest.
Not horror.
—
Dawn came.
The Ashen Banner had not won a war that night.
But it had saved something far more fragile.
Rest.
For the forgotten.
For the lost.
Even for themselves.
—
Far beyond the veil, the Hollow King rose from his throne of bone and echo.
He did not rage.
He did not curse.
He simply said:
"Only one remains. The Harbinger. The one made of all your victories. Let us see if hope can survive… itself."