Chapter 79 seems interesting
or fight my way back.
The power coiled inside me, thick and intoxicating. It whispered of sovereignty, of eternity, of a world that would bow at my feet. I could remake everything. Tear it down and rebuild it in my image. The soldiers kneeling before me weren’t just warriors—they were mine. My will could shape the very bones of this world.
But Lena’s voice was still there, a fragile thread in the storm.
“Elias, please.”
She wasn’t begging. She wasn’t ordering. She was reminding.
My vision sharpened, and for the first time, I saw what I had become. The black veins still pulsed beneath my skin, but they weren’t just my veins anymore. They were roots, stretching into something vast and endless. My hands weren’t hands; they were vessels of something far beyond human comprehension. And my eyes—
I didn’t want to know what my eyes looked like now.
Dorian’s grip tightened on his sword. He wasn’t afraid for himself. He was afraid for Lena. Afraid of what I might do to her—what I already had done.
And my father.
He was waiting. Waiting for me to give in. To take my place at his side.
No.
The word barely formed in my mind before the Hollow recoiled, as if the very concept was an injury. The shadows trembled, flickering between substance and smoke.
I latched onto that flicker of hesitation.
This was not a prophecy written in stone. It was a test. A trap. A lie.
The Hollow did not own me.
I was not its vessel.
I was not its god.
I was still Elias.
I clenched my fists, and for the first time, I fought.
The darkness shrieked as I pulled against it, wrenching myself free from the thing that had tried to shape me. The veins beneath my skin writhed, resisting, but I refused to yield. I reached for Lena, for Dorian, for myself, dragging my consciousness back from the abyss.
And then—I burned.
Agony tore through me as the Hollow resisted, clawing at my soul with a rage I had never known. The soldiers gasped as the air around me cracked, the very foundation of this battlefield fracturing under the weight of the power I was rejecting.
“Hold on,” Lena whispered. “Please, just—”
My father’s expression finally shifted. His smile faded, replaced by something colder. Sharper.
Disappointment.
“Foolish boy,” he murmured.
Then he raised his hand.
And the world shattered.
A force slammed into me, raw and ancient, tearing through my chest like ice and fire all at once. My body buckled, my knees hitting the ruined earth as pain ripped through every nerve. The Hollow howled, surging back with a vengeance.
Lena screamed.
Dorian moved.
And my father—
He stepped forward, looking down at me as if I were a child who had failed his lesson.
“You were given a gift,” he said softly. “And you squander it?”
His foot pressed against my shoulder, shoving me further into the dirt. I gritted my teeth, fighting against the weight of his power, but it was suffocating. The Hollow wanted me back. It wanted me to surrender.
I would not.
I forced my head up, meeting his gaze with everything I had left.
“I am not yours.”
His eyes darkened. “No?”
Then he leaned down, voice a whisper of cold steel.
“Then let’s see if she is.”
Lena.
I barely had time to register the movement before he turned toward her.
No.
I lunged, power surging through me—not the Hollow’s, not his—mine.
The battlefield roared as my body moved faster than thought, faster than fear. Shadows still clung to my skin, but this time, they obeyed me.
Not my father.
Not the Hollow.
Me.
And as my fist connected with his chest, the world erupted in light.
A shockwave blasted outward the moment my fist struck his chest. The ground cracked, fissures spreading like veins of molten light through the battlefield. The force sent my father reeling, his body skidding back across the earth, but he didn’t fall. No—he caught himself, black robes whipping around him as he steadied, his expression twisting into something dark.
Surprise.
I had surprised him.
Lena’s breath hitched behind me, and I felt Dorian shift, tense and ready. The soldiers—his soldiers—stayed kneeling, their heads still bowed, but I could feel their hesitation. They had expected a god. They had expected something inevitable.
But I had just proven that nothing was inevitable.
My father exhaled slowly, brushing dust from his sleeve, then lifted his gaze back to mine. “So,” he murmured, voice carrying like a storm rolling across an empty plain. “You’ve chosen defiance.”
I flexed my fingers, feeling the weight of my own power humming beneath my skin. The Hollow still coiled inside me, waiting, watching. But it was no longer in control. I was.
“I’ve chosen myself,” I said.
His eyes darkened. “A shame.”
And then the air collapsed.
It was like the sky itself shattered, folding inward as something vast and ancient tore free. A pressure so immense it crushed the breath from my lungs. The torches that had been snuffed out earlier reignited, but their flames burned black, casting shadows that weren’t just darkness—they were living things, writhing and twisting like hungry beasts.
The battlefield was gone.
We stood in the Hollow now.
Not its whispers. Not its dreams.
The real Hollow.
Lena let out a strangled sound, and I reached for her without thinking. My fingers brushed her wrist—warm, human—and it grounded me, even as the void pressed in. Dorian was beside her, his blade raised, but even he looked pale.
My father stepped forward, his silhouette outlined in seething, endless night. The Hollow curled around him like a crown, bending to his will, thick with power. “You think this is a choice, Elias?” he said, almost gently. “You think you are something apart from me?”
The shadows around him lashed outward, striking with the speed of a serpent.
I threw up my arm, and the Hollow within me surged, meeting his attack head-on. The impact rang through my bones, forcing me back a step, but I held my ground. The darkness writhed, shifting, and I twisted my wrist, forcing it away.
He was strong.
But so was I.
His lips curled in something that was not quite a smile. “Interesting.”
The ground beneath us fractured further, the weight of two forces clashing at once. The Hollow had never been fought like this—never been resisted. And it didn’t like it.
Neither did he.
His hand flicked upward, and the soldiers behind him—those who had knelt so reverently—suddenly rose, eyes burning with the same black fire that curled through the air.
I barely had time to react before they moved.