Ezra didn't sleep that night.
Not because of nightmares.
Because of clarity.
The kind that comes after chaos—the silence that follows the last scream in a room, when you're too afraid to breathe because it might wake something worse. He stood on the roof of the abandoned apartment complex they'd holed up in, watching the city twitch beneath the weight of a thousand unseen wars.
New York wasn't healing. It was… adjusting. Mutating.
He could feel the veins of the world thrumming beneath the concrete.
Mana rivers. Rifts. Pulse nodes. The Surge had changed the rules of life, and for the first time, Ezra heard the new ones clearly.
"Can't sleep?" Kael's voice drifted up behind him. She wore a tank top and sweats, her wound from the Choir pit stitched and sealed, though still pink.
Ezra shook his head. "Was never good at it. Not since the orphanage."
She leaned beside him, eyes scanning the same jagged horizon.
"Galen's working on mapping out what happened underground. Vesper's praying. Again."
"She always prays."
"Yeah, but this time it's different. She's scared."
Ezra didn't reply.
Kael folded her arms, gaze cutting toward him. "You changed down there. Not just your class. You."
Ezra nodded once. "I felt… seen. By something ancient. It gave me a choice."
"And?"
"I don't know if I made the right one."
Kael snorted. "Join the club."
A silence fell, heavy and intimate.
Then Ezra turned to her.
"I saw something. A vision. Me. Older. Angry. Broken. Holding a child… and letting the world burn behind me."
Kael's expression froze.
He continued, "I don't know if it was prophecy. Or warning. But it felt real."
Kael's voice was quiet. "Was the child yours?"
Ezra hesitated. "I think so."
She looked away.
Then whispered, "Would you burn the world to protect them?"
Ezra didn't answer. He didn't have to.
Three boroughs away, in a sleek underground command center beneath the ruins of an old FedEx distribution hub, the Watchers convened.
A half-dozen operatives stood around a holographic table, projecting live feeds of Ezra Vale's movements, team composition, and dungeon clear times.
At the head of the room stood Agent Lorne—tall, sharp-suited, and too clean-cut for the world he operated in.
He pointed at Ezra's most recent combat footage.
"No incantation. No delay. He synchronized with undead units without verbal command. That's post-Class evolution behavior."
The others murmured.
One, a tech-handler in a worn MIT hoodie, spoke up. "It's not just evolution. His affinity's shifting. He's starting to radiate Field Pressure. Passive influence. That usually doesn't show until B-Rank."
A tall woman with a jagged scar over her brow leaned in. "And he's still unranked. No formal testing. No official registry. That's a problem."
Lorne nodded. "It's also an opportunity."
He tapped the table.
A dossier appeared: Project Hollowglass. Top secret.
"What if I told you we predicted his emergence?"
Murmurs.
Lorne continued, "Twelve years ago, before The Surge even began, there was a theory. That some children born in post-fracture mana zones would carry something unique. Something that doesn't belong to this world. Ezra Vale is proof of that."
"Then why haven't we contained him?"
Lorne smiled coldly.
"Because you don't cage a nuclear core mid-ignition. You wait for it to settle… or explode."
The woman scoffed. "And when it explodes?"
Lorne's eyes gleamed. "Then we decide whether to rebuild… or control the fallout."
Back in Queens, Ezra and the team were prepping to leave.
Vesper had packed her rosaries and relics, muttering under her breath as she smeared ash on her cloak. Galen loaded the last of their scavenged tech, and Kael… Kael had found a shotgun.
Ezra arched a brow. "You planning to shoot ghosts now?"
Kael grinned. "No. Just assholes."
They'd planned to head west—to an old transit tunnel network rumored to have collapsed during a Rift Event two months back. Vesper claimed she had dreams about it.
But before they could leave, a knock came.
Three knocks. Slow. Intentional.
Everyone froze.
Ezra pulled one of his bone-daggers into hand, motioning the others back. He crept to the door, checked the peephole—
—and blinked.
A girl stood there. Maybe sixteen. Pale. Wild black hair in uneven curls. No weapons. No visible gear. She wore a white dress with ink-stained sleeves and was barefoot, toes bloody from walking gods-knew-how-long across city wreckage.
Ezra opened the door a crack.
"You lost?"
The girl looked up.
Her eyes were white. No iris. No pupil.
"I saw you in the dark."
Ezra stiffened.
She tilted her head. "The man with bones that hum. The Hollowborn."
Kael's voice whispered behind him. "We need to shut the door."
But Ezra didn't.
The girl's voice trembled.
"They're coming. They followed your echo."
"Who?"
She looked toward the sky.
"They wear the skin of men, but they don't bleed. They want what's in your head. What's in your soul."
Ezra's heart thudded once. "Why are you telling me this?"
The girl blinked. Then smiled—sad, tired, but warm.
"Because I was supposed to become what you are. But I died first."
And then she vanished.
Not walked away. Not blinked out.
Just gone.
Kael cursed. Galen grabbed a scanner—no heat signature, no mana trail, no trace.
Vesper stepped forward, gripping her relic.
"She wasn't alive. She wasn't dead. She was… in-between."
Ezra looked at his hand. The Hollowborn mark pulsed once.
Then, far off, something rumbled.
A low, dragging sound. Like chains.
Kael spun toward the west window. "Ezra… we've got movement."
A figure walked into view across the ruins. Clad in full armor. The metal was blackened, rusted, fused to the flesh beneath. Its face was hidden behind a horned mask.
Ezra felt his knees go weak.
Because this one… didn't breathe.
Undead. But not raised. Not like his.
It walked like it remembered being alive.
And behind it, more followed.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
An Undead Legion, marching from the shadows.
Ezra whispered, "Who the hell raised them…?"
Vesper's face turned pale.
"No one did. They're Hollowbound."
Ezra turned. "What?"
Vesper's voice cracked. "They weren't summoned. They weren't controlled. They chose to rise."
Galen murmured, "Then they're here for him."
Kael cocked her shotgun. "Then let's make it a welcome party."
Ezra stepped forward, heartbeat hammering like a drum.
The first undead in the line raised a fist.
Then pointed.
Straight at Ezra.
The challenge was silent.
But clear.
[System Alert]You are being measured.A Trial of Will has been initiated.Refusal will result in forced engagement.
—
Ezra didn't run.
He didn't command.
He simply raised his arm.
And the mark on his chest lit like a dying star.
From the ruins behind him, his own summoned undead emerged—Echo, the knight-binder. Vorn, the crawling giant. Even the smaller, lesser specters followed.
Undead against undead.
But Ezra's side had something the others didn't:
Him.
He stepped forward as the legions advanced.
And for the first time, Ezra Vale—Hollowborn—sang not for harmony.
But for war.