Vera studied the figure before her. The mask of smooth ivory, unbroken except for the inverted crown carved into its brow—like an empty mockery of a face staring her down.

  “…Hollow Ascendant.”

  The words whispered from everywhere and nowhere at once, carrying a hatred so vast it felt like the world itself had spoken it.

  Vera swung Stillwake in a single, fluid motion.

  Mark of Hollow Mercy.

  A pale sigil bloomed in the air. White-gray Resonance rippled outward, wrapping around the battered form of Vanded Blazegrip. His wounds sealed shut in an instant, brilliance crawling across his armor like veins glistening under the moonlight. The same wave also enveloped the fallen mounts nearby, knitting flesh and bone back together.

  Vanded stared at her. His lips moved, but the sound didn’t reach her. Vera gave him a brief glance, then at the flickering specter beside him, before turning her focus back to the being ahead.

  Veyrith, the Silent Lord.

  The final boss of the raid Sepulchre of Silence.

  The Hollow King’s closest servant. A remnant of the second tribulation.

  It should probably have made her hesitate. Even equipped with one of her strongest loadouts, numerous buffs active, and her Resonance reserves bolstered by high-tier Echophials, this was the most powerful enemy she’d faced as Veralyth Mournvale rather than merely relived through conjured memories.

  It said a lot about her that she was more exhilarated than anything.

  Exhilarated. And angry.

  If she had been only a few seconds later, Caldrin would have died. So would Vanded and the mounts.

  She had already dealt with this threat before, so that it thought it could crawl back just because she wasn’t around…

  Her eyes darkened.

  Resonance surged at her command.

  The Silent Lord lifted one hand. An obsidian staff appeared in it, crowned by a cluster of bone fragments frozen in eternal orbit. The air trembled in response.

  Mark of the Gray Reliquary.

  Patches of stone spread over Stillwake’s edge, creeping across it like rock beginning to fracture.

  Veralyth moved.

  Breakstep.

  Crescent Severance.

  The world barely kept up. Stillwake cut a perfect arc, trailed by a dozen ghostly crescents that shimmered like shards of moonlight. They converged on a single point. Veyrith’s staff met the blow, deflecting it with a soundless burst that shattered much of what remained of the plaza.

  He didn’t move or shift.

  Vera stepped back, dragging the halberd in a tight sweep that tore open a Hollow Reach behind her. Without looking, she seized Vanded and the kneeling, chain-bound specter, flinging them through it and depositing them toward the edge of the field where her mounts were.

  Veyrith’s gaze followed her.

  Vera spun Stillwake once, leveling it at him again.

  Then she vanished.

  Breakstep.

  Mark of Ashen Slip.

  Stone shattered under her heel as she reappeared in front of him. His staff came up to block.

  Hollow Weer.

  She pivoted mid-swing, blade veering unnaturally to his flank. It sliced through the air, meeting a wall of obsidian bone that erupted from nothing. The halberd’s edge cracked through it, fractures racing along both the bone and the rock covering her weapon.

  Veyrith planted his staff into the ground. Pale smoke bled outward. Dozens of skeletal forms crawled from them, shrieking without sound and hurling shards of ossified light toward her.

  Binding Coil.

  Stillwake spun in her hands. A spiraling barrier flared around her as Resonance compressed into a storm that shredded the attacks before they reached her.

  Mark of Hollowspike Cascade.

  Lances of pale bone burst from the earth, skewering the skeletons. Then she attacked once more.

  They collided again and again—her blows a flurry of clean, exact strikes and his defenses sculpted from blackened marrow and petrified silence. Each clash tore apart more of their surroundings as a growing crater formed from their exchange.

  Veyrith lifted a hand. The world constricted where Vera stood. Ash-white motes drifted upward like ash caught in reverse gravity.

  Riftwheel Ascent.

  Vera instantly vaulted backward, Stillwake carving a straight line that sent up a wall of flame and stone just as the space she’d stood in folded inward, vanishing completely.

  As the debris settled and the flames faded, Veyrith was untouched, watching her as she landed.

  They regarded each other for a long moment.

  “…You play,” came the voiceless sound that wasn’t speech.

  Vera smiled faintly, straightening her stance. “I had to see if you were up to it first,” she said. “Last we met, this much would’ve been enough. But not now, huh?”

  Her smile vanished.

  Stillwake’s butt struck the ground once. Then the halberd spun in her hands, the blade flashing in tight, deliberate circles. Four clean cuts split the air, each marked by a flare of gray light.

  A sigil unfurled in the wake of the last stroke.

  Mark of Withering Hollow.

  Resonance ignited in her chest, burning cold.

  Veyrith didn’t move. And yet somehow, he stilled further. A silent shudder rippled outward from him, twisting reality as though pressure had shifted deep underwater.

  His staff pulsed with a heavy radiance, the distortion collapsing in on itself, both crushed and dismissed.

  Even without speaking, Vera felt the rage rising behind his mask.

  She tilted her head slightly. So it wasn’t going to end that easily.

  It would’ve been convenient if it had worked, but it wasn’t unexpected that it didn’t. Soulrend effects were tied to both House Hollow and the Hollow King. A Silent Lord would have much higher resistance against it than maybe anyone else.

  Vera rocked once on her heels, as though weighing her next step.

  Withering Hollow wouldn’t take, and the lower-Seal Forms and Marks she’d used up till now wouldn’t do much damage to someone of his level.

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  Which meant only one thing.

  It was time to go all out. For real.

  She shifted her footing, Stillwake lowering until its edge hovered above the broken stone. Resonance pulsed down its length, making the air shudder.

  Breakstep.

  It was almost as if the world didn’t register the transition. She appeared within Veyrith’s guard, halberd carving upward quicker than a blur. But he must have predicted her action. Obsidian shards were already erupting around her, hardening midair to spear toward her from all sides, while a veil of shifting mist tried to drag her footing down.

  Binding Coil.

  The collision warped their surroundings. Her attack was interrupted, but so was Veyrith’s. Vera twisted her grip and slammed the next blow into his flank, striking plates of blackened bone just before reaching the ash-white robes beneath.

  Bone spines tore out of the ground and curled inward like a ribcage closing around her.

  Vera exhaled once.

  Mark of Hollow Reach.

  Mark of Hollow Reach.

  Two quick gestures, and twin ruptures appeared in space. The first pulled her clear of the cage, reappearing behind him.

  Crushing Wake.

  Stillwake moved, and the air ruptured as more Resonance than even a Fourth-Seal Form merited burned through the weapon. A wall of compressed force burst forward from the halberd’s edge, bending under its own speed. Veyrith reacted in time, summoning a barrier of fused marrow that absorbed the impact—but not all of it, as the shock shoved him just a couple of steps aside.

  Right into the second Hollow Reach Vera had opened.

  The rift pulsed as he crossed it, silver-gray and festering, and Vera followed without hesitation.

  For an instant, there was nothing but silence and motion.

  Then she emerged on the other side.

  Wind struck her face. The world widened. The two of them appeared above the marshlands beyond Marrowfen. The city glimmered faintly in the distance under the moon’s light, pale lanterns flickering to life like scattered embers among the maze of rooftops and shadows. Below them stretched a field of black water and skeletal trees.

  Mark of Ember Sight.

  A glow like smoldering coals swept across Vera’s vision, sharpening the world into lines of heat and life. Even as gravity claimed her, she watched calmly while Veyrith’s form fell below, his faceless mask tilted upward at her.

  He struck the mire with an impact that sent waves of dark liquid and muck spiraling off.

  Vera landed a short distance away, boots sinking into the half-solid muck. She glanced around, then raised Stillwake.

  Binding Coil.

  The marsh rippled under the tempest of her Resonance, clearing a wide ring of space around her.

  Vera’s attention returned to Veyrith.

  He rose from the mire, robes unmarred and mask turning slowly to take in their new surroundings. Finally, he raised one hand and clenched his fist.

  At once, all water drained away. The marsh hardened, its moisture drawn deep into the earth until nothing remained but cracked ground and veins of marrowstone, with occasional emaciated trees jutting from the surface like ribs of a dead leviathan.

  A barren field stretched around them for hundreds of meters.

  They stared each other down.

  Crushing Wake.

  Stillwake moved again, carving a vast arc through the field in another wave of pressure that roared toward Veyrith. He caught it on a shield of fused marrow, the wall splintering but holding. Behind him, the remnants of the dead forest disintegrated—trees, stone, and ground flattened into dust as the wave passed, devouring everything in its path before finally fading into nothing.

  Breakstep.

  Hollowfall Sweep.

  The Fourth-Seal Form pulled the world toward her as she moved. Stillwake’s low cut drew gravity off balance, dragging Veyrith into the swing. His staff struck the ground, and Resonance erupted upward. Suddenly, bone and ash folded in around Vera and encased her in pale, calcified matter like a sarcophagus of silence.

  Her power strained against it as she felt her energy being drained. She tried to reach for Hollow Reach, but there was no space to carve the Mark. Outside, even more Resonance was gathering into a more catastrophic attack.

  So she stopped struggling against the cage itself and simply let her Resonance break free.

  For the first time since arriving in this world, she used a genuine, offensive Fifth-Seal Form.

  Dreadwake Ascension.

  Stillwake’s butt touched ground. A column of force surged through her, pushing her upward like the recoil of a collapsing mountain. It was her body against the sarcophagus, and eventually, the sarcophagus gave way. It shattered, and Vera shot skyward, the halberd’s blade trailing cold light as something vast gathered at its edge.

  Below, Veyrith’s Resonance was coalescing into a coffin-shaped reliquary of black bone, its seams bleeding spectral shadow.

  Vera’s rise slowed. For a heartbeat, she hung weightless against the night.

  Then gravity restored its claim.

  The weight of a mountain flipped, dragging her down with the inevitability of judgment.

  Veyrith raised his gaze as she fell. A bulwark of shale and bone formed around him.

  The light trailing Stillwake gathered into a single line in front of the weapon. The instant it landed, the world folded. An overpowering force burst out, silence replaced by the tearing of stone and the scream of matter being forced apart. Entire ridges of land bowed under the impact. The dried and drowned forest around them sank further, collapsing into concentric trenches that frothed with wrenching motion.

  When the dust cleared, Vera stood in a crater half a mile wide.

  She glanced around, steadying her breath. One Form. Just one.

  In the game, Dreadwake Ascension had been an area burst meant to stagger high-tier mobs. Here, it had erased a landscape.

  It was a humbling fact.

  But Veyrith was still standing. A crack ran across the side of his mask, and his robes were torn at the edges—but he stood. And behind him, the black reliquary had finished forming, hovering like a vertical, festering wound on reality. Its surface rippled once, then shifted open.

  A flood of still Resonance poured out, dragging with it a vision of a colossal throne wrought of bone and void, suspended high above the battlefield. Waves of annihilation rolled outward, devouring stone and shadow alike as everything began to blur.

  Vera planted Stillwake.

  Mark of the Mourning Tithe.

  A barrier of translucent gray curved around her, dense enough to distort the scene beyond. The flood struck, soundless but absolute. The barrier trembled under its weight, breaks racing through the surface, but it held.

  Finally, the reliquary sealed itself but lingered.

  When the wave subsided, Vera dropped the Mark and advanced.

  Breakstep.

  Crescent Wake.

  Stillwake spun once in her hands. She swung long, hooked his staff, twisted, and forced his guard wide. Metal and bone collided, Resonance grinding against Resonance in a shower of gray sparks.

  Veyrith raised his offhand. An inverted phantom crown ignited around him, and Vera’s movements became heavy and thick as set ash.

  The still rule of the Hollow King was near-absolute in its command.

  But Vera was Chosen of House Hollow. Stillness was also her dominion.

  She flared her Resonance and pushed through the drag. Breakstep helped her move back and dodge a follow-up attack.

  Stillwake carved a perfect circle through the haze.

  Hollow Rend.

  Another Fifth-Seal Form.

  The first movement barely affected Veyrith, but everything around them—trees, mud, even entire sections of ground—tore free and spiraled toward her in hundreds of gray streaks. The fragments gathered in Stillwake’s orbit, drawn to follow its blade in a storm of motion that defied gravity, compressing tighter and tighter until the halberd’s edge shimmered with condensed force.

  Behind Veyrith, the black reliquary split open again. Another tide of annihilating Resonance poured forth, flooding the field in a wave that threatened to dissolve everything it touched.

  Vera met it head-on this time.

  She completed the Form, swinging Stillwake and unleashing the built maelstrom. The collision of forces erupted and the world convulsed. The horizon bent, color drained from the landscape, and for an instant, time seemed ready to halt.

  Through it, Vera caught flashes of the reliquary collapsing inward on itself and the Silent Lord being hurled upward in the resulting backlash as the remnants of the throne crumbled away.

  Vera moved before the aftermath even settled. Breakstep blurred her form, pushing her up and creating her own purchase in the air.

  Mark of Hollow Reach.

  She shot through the rift, Stillwake already raised as she appeared above Veyrith, meeting him.

  Severed Grace.

  The Silent Lord twisted, dark marrow blooming to protect his entire body against the strike.

  Whatever silence lingered shattered.

  It wasn’t sound that followed—it was thunder. A tidal force that cascaded through the sky, splitting the basin below. A fissure hundreds of meters long ripped the landscape apart, exposing a lightless chasm that breathed Hollow like fog.

  A split traced itself across Veyrith’s barrier, and for a heartbeat, his body seemed suspended in the air, caught between gravity and will.

  Then, as if making up for that moment of hesitation, he fell. He fell with a speed that even Vera struggled to track, vanishing into the chasm’s depths.

  Vera’s Resonance steadied, the sigil-scars along her arms dimming from molten white to ember gray as she landed at the fissure’s edge and peered down.

  Mark of the Stillbound Veil.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Not a single presence pinged, even though she could see faint traces of him below. Was the Mark unable to detect him? That would explain why she’d never noticed his presence anywhere in Marrowfen—not in the city, nor in the Marrowvault—even after combing both multiple times with Stillbound Veil.

  Mark of Hollow Dominion.

  Stillwake cut a quick glyph in the ground under her. Muted Resonance spread outward in concentric waves, each one widening until they covered an area almost as large as Marrowfen itself. The Mark drained a decent chunk of her reserves, but compared to tearing through realms with Hollow Reach, it wasn’t that bad.

  Seconds passed. Then the world in front of her split open in a rift of ash-white light, harsher and more absolute than her own.

  Veyrith stepped through.

  Half his mask now burned with ashen fire bleeding from a fracture that split it clean down the center. Vera thought she caught something close to surprise flicker behind the stillness of that faceless gaze.

  She almost smirked.

  In the game, Mark of Hollow Dominion created a ring centered on her that enemies couldn’t leave for four seconds. Here, she didn’t see why it wouldn’t apply to Marks like Hollow Reach as well.

  She had expected the Silent Lord to try and run.

  Stillwake rose, its edge catching the pale glow of the rift.

  But this time, she was finishing him off completely.