Lastlight's Revenant #24

The fallen dragon lay in a crater of its own making, its once-gleaming scales now dull and cracked, its breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps. The air around it shimmered with residual heat, the last remnants of its power bleeding away into the ruined earth.

Then—shadows moved.

Five figures descended from the smoke-choked sky, their fleshy wings beating with slow, deliberate strokes. Faceless demons, each more ancient than the last, their forms hunched and gnarled like old roots pulled from cursed soil.

At their head flew the eldest—the firstborn of the Hollow King, its skin like cracked parchment stretched over bones that had witnessed the birth of empires.

They landed in a loose circle around the dragon, their lipless mouths stretched in grotesque imitation of smiles.

The dragon could only hiss, a weak, rattling sound. Its cloudy eyes flickered between them, but there was no fight left—only exhaustion, and beneath that, something worse.

Resignation.

The eldest demon raised a clawed hand.

The others followed suit, their voices rising in a guttural chant that slithered through the air like serpents. Yellow magic circles flared to life beneath their feet, the sigils twisting like living things.

From the glowing patterns, chains erupted—thick, rusted things that reeked of old blood and older curses. They coiled around the dragon’s limbs, its wings, its throat, biting deep into flesh that had long since stopped healing.

The dragon did not struggle.

Then—

A shadow stretched.

From the ruins, a figure emerged, his footsteps silent against the broken earth. The Hollow King walked with the ease of a man strolling through his own garden, his hands clasped behind his back, his tattered cloak stirring in the wind. His face was hidden beneath the hood, but the smile was audible in his voice.

"Finally."

The word hung in the air, thick with triumph.

"After years of planning… after centuries of waiting…" He stopped before the dragon, tilting his head as if admiring a prized trophy. "The last dragon’s blood is mine to claim." A pause, then a chuckle, low and wet. "Rotted and sparse as it is."

The dragon’s chest rose once, a shuddering breath. Its eyes met the Hollow King’s, but there was no defiance left. No fury. Just… emptiness.

The Hollow King didn’t care.

He raised a hand, his fingers curling as the ritual began.

The air thickened. The chains glowed brighter.

And the dragon’s blood—what little remained—began to churn.

...

The world burned—then fell silent.

Sylrithiel’s barrier shattered like glass, the crimson dome dissolving into wisps of smoke. She collapsed, her body limp, her silver eyes dimmed to a dull gray.

Garran caught her before she hit the ground, his grip tight around her shoulders as her breath came in shallow, ragged gasps.

Then the dust settled.

And the survivors saw what remained.

An entire section of Vaeldrith was simply gone. The buildings, the streets, the very earth—erased as if a god had taken a knife to the city and carved it away. In the distance, where the flames had raged hottest, the land was nothing but a smoldering crater, its edges still glowing with embers.

And at its center—

The corpse dragon lay broken, its skeletal wings pinned beneath glowing yellow chains. Faceless demons stood in a circle around it, their hollow grins stretched wide as they chanted in a language that slithered like worms through the mind.

And the Hollow King—

He knelt over the dragon’s throat, one hand buried wrist-deep in its rotting flesh. Black blood oozed between his fingers, thick and putrid, as he pulled.

The dragon’s body convulsed, a soundless scream tearing from its jaws as its veins ruptured, the last of its cursed blood surging upward in a grotesque spiral.

The Hollow King tilted his head back, his mouth opening—

And he drank.

The blood poured into him, not as liquid, but as smoke, a swirling mass of darkness that forced itself down his throat. His body twisted, his bones cracking and reforming beneath his skin, his flesh withering even more as power pulsed through him.

His face—already eerie—collapsed inward, his cheeks hollowing, his eyes sinking into pits of endless black.

He looked even less like an elf now.

More like a corpse.

A fresh god.

The survivors watched in mute horror.

A child wailed, the sound piercing the silence like a knife. A soldier’s sword clattered to the ground, his hands shaking too violently to hold it.

Tomas cowered behind Kaelvar, his breath coming in panicked hitches.

Tobin rocked back and forth, his fingers clawing at his scalp. "It’s over… it’s over… it’s over… no purpose... no shelter... only death... only rot..."

Kaelvar stood unnervingly still, his tattoos writhing like serpents beneath his skin. His face was blank, but his knuckles were white around his hammer.

Sylrithiel’s hands trembled in Garran’s grip. "I should have seen it…" Her voice was a broken whisper. "The dragon’s blood—he needed it to perfect—"

"Enough." Garran’s voice cut through the despair like a blade. "Snap out of it. We need to move. Now. Before they turn their attention to us."

But it was too late.

The Hollow King’s head snapped up.

His eyes—black pits rimmed with ember-light—locked onto them.

And he smiled.

The Hollow King's voice rolled across the ruins like a funeral bell, spectral and echoing, each word vibrating through the bones of those who heard it:

"Ah...there you are, you persistent rats."

His ember-rimmed eyes studied them with detached amusement as he spread his skeletal hands. "I wonder what brews in those feeble little minds? Fear? Despair?" A wet chuckle escaped his lipless mouth. "Oh, how I'd savor sampling it...but alas."

With a casual flick of his wrist, a massive magic circle ignited in the air - sickly yellow runes forming a writhing portal.

From its depths poured nightmares: duskhounds with spines like scorpions, vermin-touched with too many joints, fleshforged abominations stitched from a dozen corpses, ember maws whose gullets glowed with inner fire.

And things worse still, demons with too many eyes, with shifting forms, with whispers that slithered into the mind before they'd even reached clawing distance.

"Do struggle," the Hollow King murmured as he turned away. "Do writhe and wiggle like worms."

Garran's grip on his sword tightened until his knuckles cracked. The courthouse loomed in the distance - so close now across the ashen wasteland the dragonfire had created. But between them stood an ocean of claws and teeth.

Then he spoke, his voice cutting through the terrified whimpers of the survivors and the shrieks of demons:

"Will you run again?"

The Hollow King froze mid-step.

"My sword reached you once," Garran continued, loud and clear. "You fled."

Slowly, impossibly, the ancient elven monarch turned. His skeletal face showed no anger, only the intrigued tilt of a scholar observing an unexpected specimen. "Are you trying to say..."

"I'm giving you the chance to face me again," Garran interrupted. He raised his blade, the steel catching the hellish light. "To reclaim your honor. Unless..." A feral grin split his face. "The Hollow King fears defeat?"

For three heartbeats, silence hung over the ruins. Then the ancient being threw back his head and laughed, a sound like breaking tombstones.

"Oh...that is adorable."

The Hollow King's chuckle slithered through the ruins like a knife through flesh. His skeletal fingers brushed his blindfolded eyes, wiping an imaginary tear.

When he spoke again, his voice dripped with the mock indulgence of an adult humoring a child's foolish game.

"And what does the mighty Garran Dornblade want in exchange for this...generous opportunity?"

Garran's sword didn't waver. "Simple. If I win, you let these people live."

Kaelvar's tattoos flared black along his arms. "Garran, you damned fool—"

A single raised hand and a glare sharper than steel silenced him.

The Hollow King tilted his head, the amusement in his corpse-like face growing with each passing second. But he didn't answer immediately.

Instead, his eyeless gaze swept over the cowering survivors—women clutching children, soldiers gripping rusted swords, all flinching beneath his attention like mice before a circling hawk.

Then he looked beyond them, to where the courthouse loomed in the distance.

"Ah."

The realization dripped from his voice like poison from a fang.

"A bid to buy time, is it?" His lipless mouth stretched into something too wide to be a smile as he studied Garran anew. "How...predictable."

Garran said nothing. The silence stretched, broken only by the whimpers of children and the creak of demon claws shifting impatiently in the horde.

The Hollow King tapped a bony finger against his chin in mock deep contemplation. "What to do...?" His gaze returned to the survivors, lingering on their tear-streaked faces. 

"Their lord is dead. Their homes, ash. Their guardian, a gutted offering. All they have left... is an oathbreaker." A wet chuckle bubbled from his throat. "But I wonder...how sweet would their despair be if they lost even that?"

His laughter crescendoed into something manic, echoing off the ruins like the shrieks of the damned. "It would almost be worth sparing their wretched lives—just to watch them rot in the dark, clinging to hope like rats gnawing on bones beneath dirt they once trod!"

With a dramatic sigh, he spread his arms wide. "Very well, little human. I shall spare these pathetic insects at the price of your life..."

His grin turned predatory.

"Let us see how far an oathbreaker's blade can reach."