The world hadn't changed. Ezra had.
From the rooftops, Wraithfall looked the same: gutted streets, skeletal towers, and the ever-present veil of crimson mist that tainted the horizon like an open wound. But the weight on Ezra's shoulders felt heavier now—denser than the black steel plating he wore.
He had answers, yes.
But answers came with consequences.
The mark burned against his chest like an invisible brand. The system's message still echoed in his mind.
[Passive Effect: Hunted – Until cleansed, subject will be tracked by Wraith-class entities in all zones.]
Wraithclass. A rank reserved for entities beyond logic. Beyond control. Even Federation warbands avoided them when possible. Now one knew his name.
And it was coming.
"Are you going to talk about it?" Kael asked from behind.
Ezra didn't look at her. "What's there to say?"
She leaned against a crumbled air vent, arms crossed, rifle slung over her shoulder. Her pale blond hair was tied in a loose braid, dirt smudged across her face like warpaint. "You were born in a lab. Your mother's the reason for half the nightmare tech in the Eastern Wastes. And oh yeah—there's a Wraithclass freak tracking you now like a lost puppy. You know... minor stuff."
He gave her a look. She shrugged.
"Humor helps."
Ezra rubbed his temples. "I don't even know what to feel. My life before the Surge... I thought it was all gone. Now it's coming back in pieces, and each one is sharper than the last."
Kael pushed off the wall and approached. "You're not that kid anymore, Ezra. You're a Hollowborn, sure—but you're also a survivor. You made it this far without their help."
He looked up at her. "That's not true. If I hadn't awakened..."
"Then you'd still be Ezra. Just with fewer glowing skeletons following you around."
He smirked despite himself.
She was good at that. Peeling back the weight of the world with just enough sarcasm to keep him sane.
They descended to street level.
Galen met them at the checkpoint, his axe resting against his armored shoulder. Behind him stood a growing band of survivors—Zone 13 scavvers, rogue ex-Federation soldiers, even a few mutated outcasts. All drawn to the rising signal of Ezra's necrotic beacon.
He hadn't meant to start a movement.
But movements didn't wait for permission.
"Status?" Ezra asked.
Galen's voice rumbled like gravel. "North sector stabilized. Safe zones marked. Your thralls patrol the perimeter, and the revenant we reclaimed last night has bonded to the leyline."
Ezra nodded.
Since unlocking mid-tier Necromancy, he could tether his summons to anchor points—allowing them to patrol areas without his direct presence. It was the closest thing this broken city had to order.
Kael glanced at the makeshift walls—stacked vehicles and fused rubble reinforced by bone pillars and shadow-stitched glyphs. "Looks like a fortress."
Ezra stepped forward, his eyes scanning the crowd. "It's not. Not yet."
Galen tilted his head. "Then what is it?"
Ezra met his gaze. "A beginning."
They moved into the command shelter—a retooled subway car reinforced with mana-reactive plating scavenged from a downed S-class transport. Kael called it the "Coffin Office," which annoyed Ezra more than he liked to admit.
Inside, a glowing map displayed the current layout of Wraithfall. The zones were color-coded: red for hostile, blue for reclaimed, grey for unknown.
Only two blue zones blinked.
Zone 13.And a sliver of Zone 14, where a new anomaly had surfaced.
Ezra pointed at it. "What is that?"
Kael tapped on her tablet. "Two hours ago, a leyline pulse triggered a global anomaly alert. Federation scouts tried to breach it. Lost contact in under three minutes. No visuals, but the system registered five named-class spawns and something tagged as 'Ancestral Signature Detected.'"
Ezra's brows furrowed. "Ancestral?"
Galen grunted. "Ancient mana signature. Pre-Surge. Tied to the old world."
Ezra looked up. "That can't be coincidence."
Kael nodded. "It's not. The anomaly only triggered after you left the Hollowborn lab. Something in that place… woke it up."
Ezra studied the blinking point. The pull in his chest was familiar—like the pulse of his Hollow Core. A resonance.
"I need to go there."
Kael folded her arms. "Of course you do."
"I'm serious."
She didn't argue, just sighed. "You really need to stop running toward the cursed glowy stuff."
He allowed himself a ghost of a smile. "It's never not the cursed glowy stuff."
They moved out by nightfall.
Ezra took only Kael, Galen, and three revenant scouts—a skeletal archer named Rook, a decayed mage whose soul-flame burned emerald, and a fresh summon bonded from a fallen Federation commander, still wearing his crimson armor.
Ezra didn't know the man's name.
He just called him Echo.
Their path led them through the Drowned District, where the streets had collapsed into flooded chasms. Fog thickened around them with every step, muffling their senses and dulling their minimaps. Even Ezra's thralls faltered.
By the time they reached the anomaly site, the world had gone completely quiet.
No wind.No sounds.Just silence—and the oppressive hum of something ancient.
The structure stood like a wound in the earth: a stone ziggurat, sunken halfway into the ground, pulsing with green and violet light. Sigils floated in the air above it, shifting in runes Ezra instinctively understood.
Not because he'd seen them before.
But because they remembered him.
The moment he stepped onto the first stair, the world warped.
[Welcome, Hollowborn][Trial of Origin: Initiated][Rank Restriction Lifted – Custom Instance Generated][Survive to Ascend]
Kael drew her gun. "Please tell me you see that."
Ezra didn't reply.
Because he wasn't standing on stone anymore.
The world fell away.
He landed in darkness.
Cold. Endless. A void of screaming wind and distant whispers.
A single path lay ahead, lit by bone torches burning white-blue flame. Along the walls, carvings shifted—scenes from his life, but wrong. Twisted.
He saw himself holding Kael's corpse.Galen impaled on his own axe.A child—his child—burning in his arms.
"No," he muttered. "This isn't real."
[Stage 1: Face the Hollow]
A shape emerged from the mist.
It was him.
But not.
The thing wore his face, but its eyes were pits of black fire. Its body flickered between rotting flesh and obsidian armor. Shadows bled from its limbs like oil.
Ezra raised his scythe.
The Hollowborn doppelgänger mirrored him.
And then it lunged.
The battle was like fighting a memory. Every move he made, the Hollow echoed. Every trick, every summon, even his necrotic pulses—it all came back at him sharper, crueler.
He fell once.Twice.
On the third knockdown, he tasted blood.
[Warning: Vital Threshold Breached – 11% HP][Would you like to activate Hollow Surge?][Y/N]
He hesitated.
Surge was his last-resort skill—channeling all stored necrotic essence in exchange for temporary invincibility. But it came with a cost.
Afterward, he wouldn't be able to use his undead… for hours.
[Time Remaining: 12 Seconds]
He spat out blood. "Screw it."
[Hollow Surge Activated]
His body exploded in violet flame.
The Hollow shrieked as its mimicry faltered. Ezra's scythe crashed through its chest, sending shatters of dark mana across the void.
One.Two.Three final blows.
The copy collapsed in a burst of shadow.
[Stage 1 Complete][Reward: Hollowborn Trait – "Soul Fracture"][Your summons may now inherit emotion fragments from consumed enemies.]
Ezra gasped as light consumed him.
He blinked.
The ziggurat returned. The mist cleared.
Kael was beside him, wide-eyed. "You just vanished. For like... ten seconds."
He looked at his hands. "I was gone for hours."
Then he saw the new notification.
[Congratulations: Rank Achieved – F]
Ezra let out a shaky breath.
The first step.
Finally.
But even as they began their return to base, he felt it.
Something was watching.
And in the distance, beneath the city's rotting bones, a voice echoed:
"We see you, Hollowborn."