The world was silent after Vraen vanished.
Only the whistling wind moved through the ruined plaza, carrying the smell of blood and dust.
Kaela slumped against a broken wall, her sword falling from her fingers.
Her arms trembled. Her legs barely supported her weight.
Arin sat beside her, pressing a ripped cloth against the wound on his ribs, hissing between his teeth.
Riven knelt nearby, hurriedly reloading his battered pistol and checking the Genesis Core, which glowed faintly.
For a moment — just a moment — they were alive.
---
Patchwork Soldiers
"You're lucky," Riven muttered to Arin, cutting a strip from his own jacket to make a crude bandage.
"Could've been your heart."
"Yeah," Arin grunted, wincing.
"But it wasn't."
Kaela wiped blood from her cheek, feeling the bruises already forming along her ribs.
> "We... did good," she said softly, half-smiling.
"We're still standing."
For once, no one argued.
Arin gave a tired, lopsided grin.
Riven grunted an almost-laugh.
They had survived.
Not because they were strong.
Not because they were perfect.
But because they fought together.
---
Kaela closed her eyes for a second, feeling the steady, heavy pulse of the Genesis Core near her heart.
It scared her.
How it had filled her with energy before.
How easy it had been to hit harder, move faster.
Too easy.
Arin noticed her tense expression.
"You okay?"
Kaela nodded slowly.
But her fingers curled slightly tighter around the Core.
> "Yeah... just tired," she lied.
None of them spoke the truth.
None of them admitted that the next fight would probably be worse.
---
Meanwhile... Elsewhere
---
Far beyond the ruins, in a field of broken buildings and corpses, the Hollowborn twitched.
It stood half-collapsed, bones jutting through rotting flesh, black blood steaming in the cold night air.
Its one good eye — a glowing, sickly gold — opened again.
It felt the Genesis Core.
It smelled the raw power.
And it hungered.
With a bone-snapping crack, its twisted frame shifted.
New limbs burst from its sides, malformed wings of bone and sinew unfurling painfully.
It was evolving.
It was learning.
The Hollowborn was no longer just a monster.
It was becoming a weapon — a thing made to hunt and destroy, without mercy, without end.
Lightning flashed across the sky, and for a heartbeat, the Hollowborn's silhouette stretched taller than the ruins around it, a looming titan in the dark.
The air grew heavier.
Colder.
Darker.
And it began to move again — slowly at first, then faster, faster, smashing through anything that stood in its way, driven by a hunger deeper than instinct.
The Hollowborn was coming.