Chapter 1 – The Hollow Warden Wakes
Pain.
It was the first thing he felt.
Dull at first, then sharp—like something had stabbed straight through his skull.
"Ugh… What is this...?"
His head throbbed. Hard. As if someone had driven a spike through his temples and twisted it slowly. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe right. Couldn’t think clearly.
"Am I dead? No... it hurts too much."
The air was cold. Damp. Heavy. Darkness pressed in from all sides, not the kind that comes with sleep, but the kind that comes when something is very, very wrong.
Then came the sound.
Chains.
Dragging. Clinking. Echoing off stone walls.
"That sound… it’s close. Too close."
He tried to move, but something was wrong.
His fingers wouldn’t respond.
No—those weren’t fingers.
Claws?
His body groaned as he shifted slightly. Bone creaked. Muscles pulled tight like old rope. Something scraped across his back. Fur? Metal? He couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“This... isn’t my body. What the hell happened to me?”
He gritted his teeth—no, fangs—and pushed forward.
One foot.
Then the other.
The sound followed: clink... scrape... drag...
Chains. They weren’t just nearby.
They were attached to him.
"Why am I chained? Was I... imprisoned?"
His mind felt like it was full of fog, thick and heavy. Like memories had been ripped out and something else was stuffed in their place.
He stumbled forward until his palm—no, claw—slammed into a cold, mossy wall. He caught his balance, panting.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Then he saw it.
A faint reflection in the dirty water pooled on the stone floor.
A tall figure.
Wrapped in armor. Covered in fur. Bone mask cracked down the middle. Chains dragging behind.
Eyes glowing faintly red like embers in ash.
"...No. That’s not me. That can’t be me."
But the reflection didn’t lie.
He touched the mask. It was real. Solid. Cold.
"What… am I?"
His thoughts were too slow, but pieces started forming. A whisper in the back of his mind. Familiar and distant at the same time.
A name. A face. Something long buried.
But it wouldn't come.
Only the pain stayed. The cold. The chains.
And the silence.
Then—something stirred. Not outside. Inside.
A flicker of awareness.
A spark.
"Someone... no... something is returning..."
The creature—the Hollow Warden—stood completely still.
No pacing. No breathing. No dragging chains.
Just... silence.
And then, for the first time in an age...
He remembered how to fear.
His breath rasped, slow and uneven. Every inhale scraped like rusted metal.
His chest burned with each pull of air, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t remember needing to breathe.
“Was I… alive before this?”
He tried to sit fully upright. His body resisted. Bones popped. Muscles feel twisted, like they’d been tied by someone who forgot what the human body was supposed to look like.
Everything aches—but not like wounds. More like being reassembled wrong.
"No. Not human. Not anymore."
The chains clinked as he shifted, dragging behind him like reluctant shadows.
They weren’t locked to him.
They were part of him.
Welded to the armor.
Fused to the flesh.
Grown into the bone.
"How long have I been like this?"
Silence answered.
The ruin around him was still. No breeze. No sound. Only dust, stone, and the faint red glow from somewhere above.
He looked around slowly.
Crumbling walls.
Massive support columns.
Runes etched deep into stone—faded, but still pulsing with faint light.
And in the center of it all, a broken seal.
A ring of shattered obsidian, once etched with glowing marks now cracked and dead.
Fragments of something ancient.
"Was I sealed here? A prisoner? A guardian?"
His thoughts came in fragments, jagged and disjointed.
But they were his.
That was the terrifying part.
He wasn’t supposed to have thoughts. He could feel that truth, buried deep in his bones—he had walked these ruins for centuries, maybe longer, without a single question in his mind.
But now...
Now I’m thinking. Remembering. Wanting.
A low sound escaped his throat. A growl? A breath? He couldn’t tell.
Something was wrong with the world.
Or with him.
He stumbled toward the center of the ruined chamber, toward the broken seal.
Clawed feet echoed against the stone. The chains dragged behind with every step.
A shallow crater waited in the center. Blackened. Scarred.
He stepped into it.
Nothing happened.
But as he stood there, one foot in the grave of whatever this place had held back...
A memory surfaced.
Not an image.
A name.
“Kael.”
The word echoed through his skull like thunder.
He didn’t know who Kael was.
But it felt like his name.
“I had a name…”
The thought hit him harder than the pain.
He fell to one knee, clawed hands hitting the stone floor. Chains coiled and rattled like dying snakes. His breath caught in his throat.
A pulse rippled through the chamber.
Low. Faint. Like something far away had heard the name.
Something that shouldn’t have.
“I... shouldn’t have said that.”
The air shifted.
The silence grew heavier.
Far above—beyond the ruin’s ceiling, past stone and earth and time—something moved.
Something woke up.
And deep below, the Warden—Kael?—felt its eyes turn toward him.
