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EIGHT

CASSIAN

T he next day, he was well enough for them to continue, but things still didn’t feel right. Not with Cassian necessarily… the forest. The trees had gone silent again. Cassian didn’t like that.

He walked just off Seraphine’s flank, boots light in the loam, eyes scanning the moss-draped branches overhead. Wind rustled the canopy. Shadows shifted wrong. And even with sunlight bleeding through the veil-thin forest ceiling, he felt it.

The air was too still. Too expectant.

They should’ve seen another Hollowborn by now.

That thought alone had his fingers twitching toward the hilt of his blade.

“You feel that?” he muttered.

Seraphine didn’t look at him, but her shoulders tensed. “I do.”

He knew she did. Her senses were sharp—razor-honed from years of command and the constant burden of being born into a House that only respected power if it drew blood.

Cassian didn’t understand her. Not fully. But he respected her. Even if she pissed him off more often than not.

They were two days into Hollow territory now.

After the ambush, they’d doubled their perimeter spacing, rotated watch cycles tighter.

Lira had taken point. Alek vanished between the trees every hour and reappeared without sound.

Brann was quieter, twitchier—but he hadn’t fled, so that was something.

Cassian, though… he was watching the patterns. And they weren’t adding up.

“These things don’t attack like that,” he said. “Not in the open. Not in packs.”

“You think they’re coordinating?”

“I think they’re changing.”

Seraphine’s gaze slid toward him—narrowed, sharp. “Why?”

Cassian exhaled through his nose. “Because something’s pushing them.”

She was quiet for a beat. “The Hollow’s waking.”

“No.” He looked around, jaw tense. “The Hollow’s hunting. ”

By midafternoon, the terrain had shifted. The trees grew closer, bark blackened by old flame, and a hush settled over the undergrowth. They were near one of the Veil’s scars. Places where reality had once been torn open, stitched shut again with spells and bones and sheer desperation.

Border shrines dotted the land here—old sentry points from the last Hollow wars. Some still held magic. Most were just cracked stone and ghosts.

Cassian spotted one in the distance—half-buried in moss, its dragonhead carving chipped but intact.

The team stopped briefly to rest. Lira and Alek moved to scout ahead. Brann busied himself with re-etching a fading protection rune into a nearby rock.

Cassian didn’t rest.

He watched Seraphine.

She walked toward the shrine alone, slow. Not limping—but there was a stiffness to her stride. Her glaive was sheathed, and her gloves tucked into her belt. She reached the altar and placed one bare hand on the dragon’s snout, bowing her head.

He followed without meaning to. Didn’t make a sound.

She spoke to the shrine—so low it was almost breath.

“You’d hate him.”

Cassian froze a few paces back. Her voice wasn’t meant for him.

“My father, I mean,” she said softly, tracing her fingers along the cold stone. “You’d hate how he talks about people. Like they’re numbers. Like sacrifice is the same as strategy.”

He didn’t interrupt.

She went on, quieter.

“I used to think I wanted to be just like him. Cold. Unbreakable. But lately... I think he’s broken in places that never healed right. Maybe I am too.”

Cassian stepped closer, his voice gravel-edged. “You don’t seem broken.”

She glanced back at him, startled. “You were eavesdropping.”

“I was listening.”

“You know that’s the same thing, right?”

Cassian shrugged, smirking. “Depends who’s doing it.”

She sighed and turned back to the altar. “I used to come here as a kid. Thought the spirits would keep me safe from nightmares.”

“Did they?”

“No,” she said. “But I learned how to fight the things in them.”

He took another step forward. Close enough now to see the tension in her hands, the way her fingers curled a little too tight against the stone. The way she blinked just once too long, like it held back something she wasn’t ready to say.

“You ever just wish someone would choose you?” she murmured, almost to herself. “Not because of what you are. But... who you are?”

He didn’t answer.

Their eyes met. For once, it wasn’t fire and barked orders. It wasn’t posturing or politics. It was just quiet. Real.

She was the first to look away.

“I should check the perimeter,” she said.

“Seraphine—”

The trees screamed.

A sound unlike anything Cassian had heard ripped through the air—a deep, reverberating roar that shook the canopy. The ground trembled beneath his feet.

It then burst into the clearing.

The dragon had once been majestic—massive, scaled, glorious. Now it was a corpse given motion.

Its wings were ragged membranes, torn with rot and streaked with black. Bones jutted at odd angles from its chest. Hollow corruption glowed violet in its eyes and pulsed through the cracks in its hide like veins filled with voidfire.

“Down!” Cassian shouted, shoving Seraphine behind the altar as the corrupted beast spewed a blast of twisted flame across the shrine.

The heat was unreal—wrong. It burned cold, sucked the life from everything it touched.

He drew his blade and flared his Stormfire, sparks snapping across his knuckles. The dragon reared back, mouth still leaking that void-stained smoke.

“Brann! Sigils, now! ” Seraphine yelled, rolling to her feet, glaive in hand.

“I’m trying—I don’t—fuck!”

The dragon lunged.

Cassian didn’t think—he ran straight at it.