She stood in the heart of the Hollow Garden, surrounded by things that no longer grew.
The roots here didn't curl with life. They twitched. They pulsed with the rhythm of something deeper—something not born from soil, but summoned from the spaces between breath. Their color defied reason, hues that slipped out of memory the moment you looked away. Like the remnants of a dream—or a wound that refused to close.
Ves'Sariel knelt in the moss-ringed center, her robe puddling around her like spilled ink. Her bare feet sank into the soft, fetid sprawl of mulch and spores that had once been sacred grass. The altar in front of her throbbed—bone-white and cracked, its veins crusted with a slow, dark sap that steamed under the guttering lanterns. Overhead, the trees bowed inward—not from age, but obedience. Their bark was split with blackened seams, bleeding resin thick as blood. The branches swayed though there was no wind.
And the flowers…
Once white. Once sacred.
Now, their petals had curled back to reveal the gnashing rows of blackened teeth hidden in their throats. They trembled when she passed, craning toward her with the devotion of children and the hunger of things starved for meaning.
Still, she whispered to them gently.
"It's nearly time," she cooed, stroking the rim of the altar with her fingertips. "The harvest comes. The soil remembers."
Her voice still carried music. Not the blinding kind she'd once offered in the moonlit halls of Silvyrin, but a quieter, stranger lullaby—wrapped in soft syllables that licked at the edge of madness. She sounded like someone who had forgotten what sanity tasted like… but remembered how to mimic its shape.
Behind her, a creature crawled along the wall—faceless, slick, coated in a mirror-like sheen that reflected not reality, but the thoughts Ves'Sariel had buried. It clicked, once, as it froze on the ceiling like a spider waiting to drop.
She didn't look at it.
It was nothing but a thought given legs. One of many.
Her thoughts, however, were far away.
Far from this place.
Far from this body.
⸻The night the stars blurred with laughter and moonlight.
They'd danced barefoot in the reflecting courtyard of the Temple of Silvyrin. Drunk on stolen wine and stories shared in whispers, the scent of wild citrus blossoms heavy in the air. Nyxia had grabbed her hand and spun her until the world blurred—her white hair trailing like a comet behind her, feet silent on the polished stone.
"Ves, you're going to trip—"
"I want to," she'd laughed, violet hair tangled, breath warm. "Trip. Fall. Maybe take you with me."
And she had.
They'd tumbled into the grass near the moonwell. Giggling. Breathless. A pile of robes, ribbons, and unspoken truths. The stars watched them. The trees shielded them. And Nyxia had kissed her first—soft, unsure, but real.
Ves'Sariel had never forgotten that heat.
Not in her blood. Not in her bones.
Not even when the vines took root in her veins and tore the girl she used to be into something else.
She hadn't kept her promise.
"I'll protect you. I'll love you longer than the stars burn."
She had meant it.
But love, like everything else, was a kind of hunger.
And Ves'Sariel had learned to feed.
⸻Now…
The altar pulsed beneath her palms, its core beating with lightless magic. She rose slowly, her hair unbound, falling in curling black ribbons across her back. Her breath hitched as root-like vines reached up from the ground and slid against her skin—tasting her. Testing. Remembering her. Feeding on the memory of who she'd once been.
A voice slithered through the rot-choked air.
"You cling to ghosts."
"I remember," Ves whispered. "Because I want to. Because I loved her."
"Love is a leash," the voice said. Distant. Inhuman.
"No," Ves answered, tilting her head up toward the pulsating heart at the ceiling's center—a vast, black bulb, pulsing like a cocoon. "It's a seed. It grows. Even in rot."
The faceless creature hissed again. Ves raised her hand, and it fell silent.
"Nyxia will come," she said quietly. "They all will. Perseus, with his silver rage. Loque, still wearing a leash of light. And Nyxia…"
She closed her eyes.
"She'll still smell like wildflower smoke and bloodied pride."
She could feel her. Just on the edge of the vision. The sharpness of her voice. The way she always looked like she was about to run—or kill. The things she never said.
She remembered the last thing Nyxia had told her, before the vines took her down into the dark:
I can't follow you down that path.
But Ves'Sariel had carved a new one.
And if Nyxia stepped onto it, even for a heartbeat—Ves would never let her leave again.
⸻
She left the garden like a storm in silence.
The vault below was older than the Hollow Garden. Older than the Temple of Silvyrin. Older, perhaps, than elves had words for.
She walked barefoot across a fractured obsidian floor, the stone etched with glyphs older than language. Her robe dragged behind her in long strands of void-touched silk, alive and whispering against itself. The air was heavy with pressure, thick with thought, wet with the breath of something dreaming.
The walls of the vault pulsed. Not with blood—but with memory.
They leaked it.
Down long veins of crystal and bone, old echoes spilled like ink. Names long dead. Screams that had aged into silence. Prayers spoken in languages the world had outlawed.
At the chamber's center rose a pedestal—not crafted, but grown. Spiraled like coral. White like bleached jawbone. Its center pulsed with a hollow heartbeat, as if begging to be filled.
Ves'Sariel stepped forward.
Behind her, her choir followed.
Not disciples. Not worshippers.
Remnants.
They floated, dragged, and crawled behind her. Half-melted bodies of what once were elves and humans and other things now better left unclassified. Their mouths had been sewn shut with silver thread. Their eyes replaced by polished onyx spheres that wept faint black mist. Some chanted psalms in a tongue only heard in dreams, vibrating through the marrow of the vault.
They sang behind her eyes. Not with voices. With presence.
She opened her hand.
From her palm unfurled a root—small, quivering, the color of bruised violets and slow decay. It pulsed like a heartbeat made of ash.
She pressed it into the pedestal.
It vanished.
Swallowed whole.
The pedestal groaned.
And then the vault shuddered.
Not from quake, but awakening.
Around the outer edge of the room, glyphs ignited—thin lines of pale light crawling like veins. The runes shimmered in sequence, forming patterns that bent the air itself, distorting sound and shape.
The walls breathed. The ceiling trembled.
And the altar sighed.
"I've planted the seed," Ves'Sariel said, her voice barely more than breath.
From the shadows above, something answered.
"And I will feed it."
The voice was old.
And hungry.
And patient.
She looked up, her throat exposed, her arms outstretched like a supplicant. The darkness above wasn't empty. It watched. It listened. It remembered.
She whispered a name.
One not spoken in centuries.
One that no throat shaped by mortal flesh was ever meant to utter.
The vault stilled.
Time stilled.
The air rippled. The altar exhaled.
And something in Ves'Sariel's spine unraveled, like a thousand silken cords snapping all at once—and reweaving her from the inside out.
She gasped.
Her hands trembled.
Her pupils blew wide, swallowing the violet into endless black.
⸻
When it passed, she was kneeling again. Sweat ran down her spine. Her limbs shook—not with weakness, but with readiness.
The choir had gone still, hovering in a wide ring around her. Their heads bowed.
The seed was planted.
The song was begun.
Now… she only had to finish it.
And that meant bait.
It meant blood.
It meant Nyxia.
Her fingers curled inward as she stood.
"She'll come," Ves repeated. "She'll stand at the edge of everything I've built. And she'll choose."
Whether Nyxia chose the Light or the Hollow didn't matter.
Not anymore.
Because Ves'Sariel had made her peace with both.
And she knew how to devour them just the same.