The Rebirth Of The Beast Tamer

"I am not saying the words are not true. The Hollow is poisonous and I can feel it in my bones. But don't blind yourselves into thinking the cult has not shaped the path that we are walking."

She glanced at Kelvin, sharp as an arrow. "They want us deeper, so always remember that." Darius had been silent, with his head lowered, Rhoam pressed against his back.

Now he lifted his gaze, the firelight caught against the lines of soot and sweat that etched into his face. "Trap or not," he said, with his voice deep and gravel-thick, "the core has to be faced."

Kelvin frowned, but Darius continued before he could interrupt. "Ironholt fell because we were too late to strike the heart. We cut at the edges, bled against the tide, and the fire still consumed us. If there's a core to this Hollow, then that is where the blade goes. Even if the cult is waiting. Even if it trap's the jaws close around us."

Rhoam snorted with his armored head nudging Darius's shoulder. Faint embers shimmered across its plated hide, the soulshards inlaid into its armor was glowing brighter with every word.

Darius pressed his hand against the beast's horn. "A trap that is worth charging, if it means the realms don't bleed like Ironholt did."

As if answering their debate, the fissures in the Hollow flared. Across the wasteland, the veins of green fire brightened and kept pulsing like the heartbeat of some buried giant.

Shadows were stretched across the crater floor, twisting and writhing as if it was alive. The relic's hum was deepened, its glyphs flashed brighter before fading back to stillness.

Then the moans began. At first, it was a low chorus from a distant. But it grew with time, layer upon layer, hundreds of voices groaning through the night air.

Soon it was not a sound but a rhythm, like drums beaten in some abyssal cavern. War drums, made from the throats of the dead.

Lyra's hand went to her bowstring. "They know that we are here." Kelvin rose to his feet with his spear in his hand, Xerion's coils was spreading wide around him like a living shield. "Then let them know that we are not turning back."

Darius stood as well, Rhoam shifted to block the fire's that glow from their backs, as if it was daring the Hollow to try its first strike.

The moans grew louder, closer and echoing across every fissure like an army gathering breath. And from the shadows of the Hollow's rim, a faint green mist began to rise.

For a long moment, the three tamers and their beasts stood together, staring into the abyssal wasteland below. The relic pulsed once more, a dim light, as though it had given all the warning it could give.

Kelvin lifted his spear and rested the blade across his shoulder. "Trap or prophecy, it doesn't matter. We will go forward."

Lyra's jaw clenched, but she nodded, pulling her bowstring once to hear it's hum, reassuring herself it still sang. "Then we will cut through whatever waits."

Darius rested his gauntlet against Rhoam's neck. "To the core. No other path." The fissures answered again with a low flare of fire, the Hollow itself was groaning like something that was waking up from deep sleep.

The moans rolled louder, now clearly like the cries of countless undead, rising not as aimless noise but as a steady rhythm, like a warhost being summoned to its general's drum.

The march toward the Hollow was not measured in steps but in heartbeats, each one was echoing louder than the last. The ground beneath the Crest's boots betrayed its own death.

Cracks spider-webbed across the earth, glowed with sickly veins of green-white fire that pulsed as though the land itself had been grafted to a diseased heart.

Every fissure hissed with a loud breath, the escaping vapors was writhing upward like the dying whispers of those that were already swallowed by the abyss.

Kelvin felt each vibration beneath his soles, not merely as tremors of earth but as messages in a language of dread—like, the Hollow itself was aware of their intrusion.

His spear weighed heavy in his hand, not with fatigue, but with the gravity of what awaited them. Every time he often glance sideways at his companions, while needing their living presence to remind him he was not already among the dead.

Lyra walked ahead, her hood was drawn low, though it did mask the sharp line of her jaw a little, which was set with iron.

Her bow rested across her shoulders, yet Kelvin noticed that her fingers kept brushing the string, as if the action alone steadied her pulse.

The rogue had danced with peril her whole life, but here her movements lacked their usual easy confidence. Even she could not laugh off the Hollow.

Darius brought up the rear, shield strapped firm, his bulk a wall of determination. His breaths came steady, measured, as though he had trained for this very moment. Yet his eyes betrayed him.

They scanned the fissures, the horizon and the sky, all with the sharp vigilance of a man who knew one lapse would mean his companions' deaths. And then there were the beasts.

Xerion slithered alongside Kelvin, its body was coiling with restrained menace. Every ripple of its scales set sparks against the fissures, like a predator brushing against the edge of a cage it has longed to break.

Salaris glided above Lyra with its wings beating soundless currents, its feathers was trailing wisps of ghost-light as though the Hollow sought to claim even its radiance.

Behind them lumbered Rhoam, Darius's companion, each of its Hoover steps was shaking dust loose from the broken ground. Its bellow came low and constant, not unlike as a war chant begun before the first sword strike.

Together, the Crest and their beast made their way to the brink. The Hollow's rim revealed itself in stages, first as a thinning of earth, then a widening fracture, and finally a yawning mouth that could have devoured kingdoms in whole.

Kelvin had seen battlefields littered with corpses, but never had he seen a land itself wear the skin of death. The air became heavy, humid with decay, until even breathing felt like dragging rot into their lungs.

And then the Hollow spread fully before them. Kelvin froze. Lyra, too, halted mid-step. Even Darius, the stalwart, paused with a drawn-out breath.

Below them lay not a cavern but an endless basin of blasphemy. Cult altars that ringed the wasteland like broken teeth, each was carved with runes that glowed the same venomous green as the fissures.

Thousands, tens of thousands of the undead knelt before those altars, their spines were bent in grotesque mimicry of prayer. They did not move and they did not shuffle as usual.

They knelt in perfect, silent unison with their heads bowed to the altars, as if it was awaiting for benediction from some unseen god.

The sound was the worst part. It was not silence, it was the sound of absence, the hollowed echo of lungs that no longer breathed, voices that should have moaned but instead rasped in rhythm.

A chant, but not of words, of hunger, of worship or of waiting. It filled the air, crushed it, even made thought sound that muffled in Kelvin's skull.

He could not shake the feeling they had intruded upon a cathedral, a dark congregation where every worshipper was already dead.

Lyra swallowed audibly. "Gods," she whispered. "It is not an army, it is a congregation." Darius's shield hand trembled once before he steadied it. "Then we will break their sermon."

Immediately the shadow moved. It was not fast, not even clear. At first, Kelvin thought it was merely the smoke of the fissures pooling too thickly in the Hollow's center.

But then the smoke breathed. It rose and curled into a shape too large to comprehend, its edges and indistinct were yet terrifyingly coherent.

A silhouette loomed faintly against the Hollow's depths. A monstrosity vast enough to blot half the basin if it was chosen to rise.

Kelvin's heart stuttered. He knew what he saw, what he barely dared to name. Vark.... Not the man, not yet. But the promise of him, his presence hung in the Hollow like a prelude.

Xerion hissed violently, as it scales was bristling with instinctive hatred. Salaris screeched, a sound that was sharp enough to cut air.

Even Rhoam, whose calmness outweighed Darius's, let out a bellow that shook the rim. The beasts knew before their tamers could admit it that their final nemesis awaited them.

Kelvin lowered his spear. The steel rang as its end kissed stone, a sharp note that sliced through the suffocating chant.

Lyra lifted her bow. She nocked an arrow, the string taut was glowing faintly as if the weapon itself refused to remain unlit in this abyss.

Darius slammed his shield against the ground and sparks bursted from the fissures where metal struck cursed stone.