The sky above the mountains remained unnaturally still, as if the world itself held its breath. The rift Selene Nocturna had torn into reality throbbed like a gaping wound, its edges flickering between existence and something far worse—unbeing.
Selene stood at the precipice, her hood casting a shadow over her gaunt, smirking face. She breathed deeply, inhaling the decay like it was the scent of a lover's perfume. The Severed Priest's remains had long since crumbled into dust, yet his soul still twisted in agony within the plague's grasp.
She lifted her hand, her blackened nails gleaming as a necrotic vapor coiled between her fingers. The infection she had crafted was no longer bound to bodies, no longer restricted to flesh. It had seeped into the very marrow of the world, and the veil between life and death rotted with every passing moment.
Selene's lips parted in a whisper.
A shuddering wail erupted from the earth as the monastery ruins trembled. From the dust and filth, shadows stitched themselves together, forming shapes that once were human, but now stood hollowed, malformed—husks of their former selves. Their eyes, sunken and black, leaked with necrotic pus, their mouths stretched open in silent screams.
The Hollowed had been born.
Selene stepped forward, cupping the chin of one of the creatures. Its skin peeled away at her touch, revealing nothing beneath—no bone, no organs, only emptiness.
"Do you feel it?" she murmured to the thing, tilting her head.
It did not answer. It could not.
She laughed softly, releasing it as she turned her gaze back to the ever-expanding tear in reality.
The Veil had begun to unravel, and she could feel the presence of something vast and watching beyond it. Not a god, not a demon, but something forgotten. Something that even she had not yet named.
"Ah," she sighed, placing a hand over her chest. "So you see me now, do you?"
The Hollowed stirred uneasily, sensing the unseen presence pressing through the rupture.
Selene smiled wider, her bloodstained lips cracking at the edges.
She flung her arms wide, and the Hollowed lurched forward, spreading like a tide of decay. The plague would consume not just the living, but the world itself.
And for the first time in centuries, Selene felt something unfamiliar slither through her twisted, withered heart.
Not power. Not hunger.
She had never corrupted the fabric of existence before.
And she could not wait to see how far it would break.