Vathis: Ashes of the Forsaken

The years that followed were not kind.

Hollow's Reach had never been a kind place, but for Aeron, it was not just a city of suffering. It was a cage—a prison built from expectation, pain, and a father who saw nothing but failure.

Aeron had once been the Chosen, or so Malik had believed. His birth had been foretold by omens of blood and shadow, by whispers in the dark corners of the world. But that night—the night his mother sealed him, the night Elira turned her back on him—it had all been shattered.

His power was gone.

His destiny was gone.

And his father was left with a broken thing where a god's instrument was meant to stand.

Malik did not forgive failure.

And so, he set out to fix him.

---

The Temple of Pain

There was no warmth in Malik's home.

Only discipline.

Only suffering.

"Weakness is a sickness, Aeron," Malik would say, voice cold and detached, as he locked his son in the prayer chambers for days without food or water. "And sickness must be burned away."

Sometimes, Malik's priests would come. They would whisper blessings that were not blessings, words of faith that tasted like ash, words meant to bind the mind and spirit into obedience.

Other times, it was the chains.

They were heavy, rusted things, relics from the old world. When Malik deemed Aeron unworthy, they were fastened to his wrists and ankles, and he was forced to crawl across the temple floors until his skin was raw and torn.

"You will learn to carry your burden."

"You will learn to kneel."

"You will learn what it means to serve."

It was not kindness.

It was not discipline.

It was control.

Aeron learned early that there was no point in fighting back.

His father was a high priest of the Old Gods. His will was absolute. The priests, the acolytes, even the city guard—they all bowed to him, they all whispered his name with fear and reverence.

Even if Aeron screamed, no one would save him.

No one would dare.

Except for her.

---

Selene – The Hollow Girl

The first time he met Selene, he thought she was a ghost.

She moved through Hollow's Reach like a shadow, slipping between alleys, through broken ruins, never quite there when you tried to look at her directly. Her clothes were tattered, her frame thin from hunger, her eyes old in a way a child's should not be.

But it was her voice that unsettled him most.

"You look lost," she had said, the first time they met.

He was.

But Aeron had never said it aloud.

He had never needed to.

Selene simply understood.

She had seen him before, she said. Watching from the ruins. Watching from the temple gates. She knew what his father was. Knew what he endured.

And still, she did not fear him.

"You think you're alone," she told him once, as they sat beneath the broken arches of an abandoned shrine. "But the world is full of broken things. You're not the first. You won't be the last."

It was comfort.

A strange thing, foreign to him.

At first, he rejected it.

But Selene was persistent.

She was like a stray that refused to leave no matter how many times you turned it away.

And in time—he stopped turning her away.

They would meet in secret, away from Malik's gaze. She would tell him stories of the world beyond Hollow's Reach—of the great ruins that lay beyond the Devourer's Teeth, of the sky before it turned to black, of the hidden places where the dead still whispered secrets to those who knew how to listen.

She told him of freedom, though neither of them knew what it truly meant.

But dreams were a dangerous thing.

And Malik hated them more than anything.

---

The Father's Wrath

Malik found out.

Aeron didn't know how—whether one of the acolytes had seen them, or if Malik simply knew everything.

But one night, he was wrenched from his bed and dragged to the altar room.

The priests were waiting.

So were the chains.

"You disappoint me," Malik said, as the rusted iron was fastened around Aeron's throat, as the whip coiled in his hands. "I thought you would learn. I thought you would see reason."

Aeron said nothing.

There was nothing to say.

Malik had always hated silence.

The first lash came without warning.

It burned.

The second came before the first pain could fade.

The third split flesh.

Aeron gritted his teeth, hands clenched so tightly his nails cut into his palms.

"You think you deserve kindness?"

A fourth lash.

"You think you deserve love?"

Fifth.

"Foolish boy."

Sixth.

"You are nothing."

Seventh.

"You have always been nothing."

The eighth lash never came.

Because something broke.

Not just within Aeron.

But around him.

The air shuddered.

The light flickered.

And for a moment, the shadows in the corners of the temple moved.

Something whispered.

A voice he had forgotten.

A hunger he had long buried.

And Malik felt it.

For the first time, his father hesitated.

For the first time, Aeron saw fear in his eyes.

And then—

The pain was gone.

The chains were gone.

And Malik was standing across the room, gasping, as if something unseen had thrown him aside.

Aeron stared at his hands.

At the faint traces of power flickering at his fingertips.

At the whispers that had returned—distant, faint, but no longer fully silenced.

He remembered.

His mother's seal.

It was cracking.

And soon, it would break.

And then—

Then he would be whole again.