He did not breathe.
He did not eat.
He did not feel.
But he walked.
The Hollow Saint left the light behind — and stepped into the broken realms.
The skies turned black. The trees wept ash. The bones of old gods jutted from the earth like ancient warnings.
He felt nothing.
But the world remembered what he had been sent to kill.
And it hated him for it.
His first encounter was in the Dead Expanse, where wind moved in reverse and time wept. A beast made of forgotten kings slithered from a cracked palace and whispered with ten mouths:
"Turn back, weapon. What you seek… will unmake you."
The Saint said nothing.
He drew his blade.
The kings screamed — and fell silent.
The wind howled. The sky bled a little more.
Still, the Saint walked.
In the Ruins of Valekor, once a high city of light, now crushed beneath hellfire, the ghosts of soldiers appeared.
They were not enemies.
They were memories.
"We fought for heaven," said one. "We died screaming."
"We never knew why," said another. "Only that Shadow never stopped walking."
The Saint stood among them, still silent.
One ghost reached out, barely whispering:
"Are you hope?"
The Saint turned away.
And the ghost vanished.
Farther still, in the Cradle of Bone, he met his first true test: a fallen lightbearer—wingless, maddened, but alive.
Her name was lost. Her blade cracked. Her faith, shattered.
But she recognized the Saint.
"You were made to destroy him," she spat. "To fix our mistake."
"Will you do it?"
He watched her.
Then answered — his first words since his awakening:
"If that is the command."
She stared.
"And what if it isn't?"
He blinked slowly.
"Then I will wait. Until it is."
She laughed, bitterly.
And stepped aside.
"Then go on, weapon. Burn for your masters."
He did not look back.
At the edge of the world, where the stone cracked into a pit of endless red skies, he stopped.
Below lay the Obsidian Hell — rebuilt by Shadow after the war. A throne not of power, but of purpose.
And pain.
The Saint gazed down.
He remembered nothing.
But his hands trembled.
The mission burned within him.
Yet something else stirred.
A question.
A voice.
It was not his own.
"Are you sure this is your war?"
He did not answer it.
From the shadows, a voice called out.
A thin, dark creature with hollow eyes and a stitched mouth crawled toward him. An old watcher from the First War, left behind by Shadow to observe… and whisper.
It grinned.
"He knows you're coming."
The Saint said nothing.
The creature licked its teeth.
"You won't be the first to try. You won't be the last."
The Saint stepped forward.
"I will be the last."
The creature's grin faded.
And it vanished into dust.
Down the long obsidian stairs, where screams once echoed and rivers once boiled, the Saint descended.
Not quickly.
Not cautiously.
But like judgment given form.
At the gates of the Throneless Court, two horned beasts rose — defenders of the old hell. Neither bowed. Neither attacked.
They simply watched.
They knew what was coming.
And they feared what would follow.
The Saint passed between them.
The gates opened.
And Shadow waited.