The Hollow didn't sleep. It pulsed.
Vex stood at the edge of its deepest crater, ash curling around her ankles like silken smoke. The sky above had begun to bleed red—a sickle-shaped moon burning through the mist, as if the world itself watched her rebirth with bated breath. The Blood Moon.
Her Moon.
"Still breathing, Agni?" she murmured aloud, even though the fire inside her didn't need breath. It existed like a second soul—hot, ancient, and always listening.
"I never sleep. You carry me now." The voice inside her flared low and loving. "They gave you fire to burn them back."
She smiled. Not sweetly. Not like the girl they once adored.
This smile held teeth.
⸻
Six days had passed since she clawed out of the Hollow's pit.
She didn't walk in straight lines anymore. Her movements flowed like spilled wine—smooth, hypnotic, dangerous. Hair once golden now caught blood in its strands, cascading like molten copper. Her eyes glowed—a red so vivid it flickered like a phoenix's wings behind her lashes. They had sharpened, not just in color but in purpose. When she blinked, it was like fire dared to rest.
She was becoming what the Hollow had whispered she could be: more.
Each step across its cursed terrain, she absorbed more of its deathless memory. It fed her—not with kindness, but with recognition. She had survived what gods couldn't. And now, even the Hollow bowed.
⸻
She had marked the map drawn in her mind—a circle of stone, cracked with old ritual etchings. A place of power. The Flame Crown waited there, buried beneath blood, bones, and forgotten names.
Agni coiled around her spine.
"You'll need blood."
"I'll give it," she whispered.
Not her own. Never again.
⸻
The Flashback: Betrayal Wears a Familiar Face
There had been no battle when they came for her.
Only a letter. A summons. She had walked into the royal court in state robes, expecting a council vote.
Instead, she found chains.
Her stepfather's hand was the first to seize her shoulder.
Her stepbrother read the charges: the murder of her biological mother, poisoning by slow, sorcerous means. The evidence? A forged vial. Her own research journals, twisted into a weapon. And her public popularity—that had been the final sin.
"You weren't born noble, Vaeloria," the king had said coldly. "You were tolerated. Until you made yourself dangerous."
She had built policy. She had ended two border wars. She had dared to hold power without permission.
So they cut her name from the records. Framed her for the death of the only woman who had loved her. And when the sentence was passed, her stepfather didn't even flinch.
For a piece of territory promised to House Rhiadne by the enemy kingdom.
A neat little deal.
⸻
And now?
Now she would become the nightmare they thought they buried.
She crouched at the edge of the Hollow's heart, pressing her palm to the blackened ground. Her nails—long, sharp, lacquered with dried blood—drew a slow line through the dust.
The Flame Crown answered her touch.
Bones stirred beneath the stone.
⸻
The Ritual: A Queen's Claim
The old tongue slipped from her mouth like a second breath—words not taught, but remembered, as if her blood knew the script before her mind could catch it.
"By flame that fell. By oath that broke. By the blood that sealed and the ash that sang—"
The ground roared open.
Fire—not wild, but sentient—rose from the cracks like a serpent awakening. It circled her waist, her arms, her throat. Not burning her. Adorning her.
The Flame Crown emerged.
Not gold. Not silver. Something older. A circlet of scorched metal and embered thorns, pulsing with a heartbeat.
She reached for it.
Agni flared. "It will burn you."
"I will burn it back," she answered.
And when the Crown touched her head, it screamed—the last of its old king's curse cracking apart like ice. Flames erupted, consuming her body from toe to temple.
But she did not scream.
She smiled.
⸻
When the fire cleared, the Hollow knelt.
And Vex Rhiadne stood crowned—nails like daggers, eyes alight with an empire's fury, smile seduction-born. Her bare feet touched scorched earth like a goddess descending.
The crater was no longer a grave.
It was a throne.
⸻
Beyond the Hollow: The First Step
She would not come screaming into the world like a child lost.
She would come dancing through their courts, smiling like a queen, until their wine turned to ash and their beds to coffins.
"The world will know your name again," Agni whispered.
"No," she said, walking forward into the bloodlight. "They'll learn to beg it."
The wind shifted—low and heavy, carrying dust and old prayers. Somewhere above the Hollow, the moon bathed the broken land in crimson, painting her skin like warpaint. The shadows bent toward her as if pulled by instinct, as if they remembered who she was.
And who she was becoming.
With each step beyond the pit, her presence sharpened the air. Trees wilted. Birds stopped singing. The land had not seen a queen in centuries—and none like her.
Her eyes burned, not just with rage, but with something far older. A promise. A reckoning.
The gods had turned their faces once.
Now they would bow.
And the Hollow, her hollow, pulsed once more—less a prison, and more a womb that had birthed something divine and terrible.
Not quite woman.
Not quite monster.
Something more.
She didn't need an army yet.
She didn't need allies.
She needed only the flame in her veins, the blade at her hip, and a name.
Vex Rhiadne.
Daughter of betrayal.
Crowned by fire.
Carved by hunger.
And now, she was walking home.
And in her wake, something old had begun to stir.
A wind that had not breathed in centuries rustled the blackened trees. A storm grumbled beneath the crust of the earth. And across crumbling temple walls and forgotten tombstones, the words etched in dead languages began to glow again.
"When the Hollow bleeds fire,
the Wolf shall kneel."
They had thought it nothing but myth.
But the Hollow was bleeding now—bleeding flame and vengeance and the rage of a queen who had nothing left to lose.
And far away, in a war room gilded with gold and fear, the Black Wolf of Velgrave looked up as if something had clawed down his spine.
The air changed.
The fire had found its queen.
And the prophecy had just begun.