The Vault had whispered truths Jayden could never unhear.
Now, back in Noctis Hollow, the air felt tighter. The ancient walls… colder. Everything was watching — the stones, the sky, the shadows. And something had changed in Jayden's eyes.
He didn't walk anymore.
He strode — like someone who knew he had fire in his blood.
---
The Council Divides
In the Grand Spire, the Council gathered again.
Lord Kaelric's voice thundered. "He entered the Vault? Alone?!"
Veyna nodded coolly. "He passed the trial. And the Vault chose him."
Whispers erupted across the chamber. Only Lady Morrienna remained still, fingers steepled beneath her chin.
"Then it begins," she said softly. "The Prophecy wasn't metaphor. The Vault opened not because he was ready, but because it is."
Kaelric slammed his fist against the obsidian table. "We must bind him before he becomes like the first."
Morrienna's gaze pierced him. "And what if binding him is what makes him like the first?"
The argument deepened. Two visions of the Hollow's future collided:
Kaelric's path: control Jayden at all costs. Use the Brand to seal him, maybe even break him.
Morrienna's path: prepare Jayden, train him, let him choose what he becomes.
A third voice rose from the shadows.
"I say we let the boy burn," rasped Nyxa the seer. "That which awakens in him may not be ours to command."
But no one noticed the silver-robed figure who left the chamber silently.
---
A Friend's Betrayal
Outside the Spire, Jayden sat at the edge of the Hollow's pool again — the black water unusually still. He hadn't told anyone what he saw in the Vault. Not fully.
Only one word clung to his mind like a claw.
Ashkarin.
And he didn't know why it made his pulse race.
"Deep thoughts?" a voice broke his silence.
Caziel.
He sat beside Jayden, eyes bright as ever.
"You feel it too," Caziel said. "The shift. They're tightening their hold."
Jayden nodded. "They want to Brand me again."
"And if they do, they'll know everything you're thinking — everything you are becoming."
Jayden clenched his jaw. "I'm not sure who I'm becoming."
Caziel paused, then leaned in. "Maybe it's time you left."
He slipped a scroll into Jayden's hand — Outsider coordinates.
"We have a place in the Ashrun Wastes. A sanctuary. No Council. No chains. Just truth. And war."
Jayden met his eyes. "You talk like you've made your choice."
"I have," Caziel whispered. "I'm not fighting for the Hollow anymore. I'm fighting to survive."
Then he vanished again, like smoke.
But Jayden noticed something strange:
> The insignia in his hand — the broken fang — was flickering.
As if someone else had activated it.
---
The Beginning of a Rebellion
That night, three guards were found unconscious near the Brand Chamber.
And on the walls of the Hollow, written in blood:
> "NO MORE CHAINS."
"BLOOD IS FREEDOM."
"THE BLOODBORN RISE."
A rebellion had begun.
Small. Silent. Deadly.
The Council panicked. Kaelric summoned warlocks from the northern peaks. The Brand Ceremony was rescheduled earlier.
"Jayden must be sealed," Kaelric barked. "Before the others rally around him."
But Jayden was already gone.
---
Flight from the Hollow
He fled just before dawn — taking the Hollow's northern gate, masked in shadow and cloaked by a spell Veyna gave him.
But he wasn't alone.
Veyna caught up beside him. "You didn't think I'd let you run off alone, did you?"
Jayden raised a brow. "So you're coming?"
"I trained you. I'm not wasting my investment."
She grinned faintly, then looked behind them. "They'll send Hunters. Maybe worse."
Jayden nodded. "Let them."
He didn't feel like prey anymore.
He felt like purpose.
And far beyond the Hollow, the sky cracked with red lightning — a sign that something deep beneath the world had begun to stir.