Until Dawn Shall Break - ruthlesslistener (2024)

Chapter 1: Choking on Sunlight

Chapter Text

If I could face them

If I could make amends

With all my shadows

I'd bow my head

And welcome them

.

When She broke through the last barriers of its mind, digging Her burning spears into the very heart of its shade, it had not intended to react.

It was not supposed to react. Its purpose was to be a prison, a trap. It was of void, and void held no thoughts, void held no emotions. Void was the antithesis to Her. It was the antithesis to Her, born to destroy gods of light. Its purpose was to be empty, to feel nothing , to not react even as She screamed and sobbed and filled its chest with living fire and burned its throat to shape Her needs. It had not reacted when it had hatched among the corpses of its siblings, it had not reacted when the last of them had slipped free of the platform, it had not reacted throughout the endless winding years of training when everyone and everything looked at it with the fear-desperation-pain of an animal trapped within a cage. It had not reacted then, and still it had not reacted when She had whispered Her lies to it, when She had dug gouges and pieces from its dark, still mind. It had not reacted when She had taken to pleading with it, to flashing dreams and memories and twisted hallucinations before it, until pain throbbed through its entire body and it could no longer tell what was real and what were Her deceptions.

It did not react when She tore into its memories and twisted them, when She had desecrated its thoughts with dreams that were sick perversions of its life, stolen recollections twisted from dull, aching reality to the acute pain of unreality. It did not react to the swooping weightlessness of Father pushing it off the platform, the all-encompassing crack as its mask split upon a rock, loosing its shade from a weak little body far too familiar for its comfort. It did not react to the feeling of phantom blades driving up into its chest, tearing through its voided heart. It did not react to the broken, bloody images of Hallownest in ruins, bugs clawing blindly at their own flesh as their eyes burned orange. It did not react to their screams, their cries, their pained gasps, as their minds were flayed and their bodies were melted, turned into cocoons for Her holy revival.

It did not react to Her on the good days, the calmer days, when She grew tired of her own anger and spent long hours crooning to it, softly, sweetly, asking it to give in in a voice that slowly grew shakier and shakier the longer She pleaded. Nor did it react to Her tearing chunks from its flesh and mind when it ignored Her. Desperation made monsters from the gentlest of beings, and She had never truly been kind, not to anyone who did not mean anything to Her, no matter what She may have whispered to it when She was too tired to fight back anymore.

What She had once been was not its place to judge, anyways, and so it did not react to that either. It had not been the one to take Her lands. It had not been the one to steal Her children. It had not been the one to claim Her throne, though it also knew that Father held no wish for the dominion of dreams, content with his dark tunnels and weeping cities and piercing spires. It had not been the one to take anything from Her, or to do any wrong- it was a Vessel, a dead thing of the dark and the cold and the endless still sea that stretched endlessly below them all. It was not alive. It was not allowed to be alive, and whether or not She deserved Her suffering was far outside of the orders carved into its very shade. So it stayed still, accepted the pain and the screaming and the endless waves of torment radiating from the very thing it had been created to destroy, and did. Not. React.

To react was to think. To react was to feel. To react was to have flaws, to be flawed. To be impure.

To fail.

To react was to allow Her purchase into its mind, and to let Her out, to destroy the millions of people that its life was tied to. The millions of whispering, mourning souls that thronged in the City of Tears, who had already suffered enough under Her touch, when it was too small and weak to contain Her. The horrifying illusions would be made a reality, Hallownest would fall, all of the siblings in the Abyss would have suffered and died for nothing and so it. Could. Not. Fail.

( The Pale Usurper has sent me his CHILD, her voice had sneered, snarling and angry and cruel, cruel, cruel in the way desperate sad scared things were. Oh, such bravery! Such honour from the wretched creature! First he steals my children, steals my LIFE, and then he seals me away in the mind of his accursed brood to rot rather than face me himself. Dirteater, filthcrawler, gluttonous monster! Coward! COWARD!! )

Its body throbbed with a pain almost beyond its understanding. It had been raised in a palace of light, under the gentle glow of its parent's twin realms, but in truth, it remained a creature of dark, cursed by birth to the shadows below the kingdom. It could withstand the gentle gleam of soul, a faint echo of what it could have been, but this burning, vengeful light was a far cry from the cool glow of the palace, a contemptful contrast to both the palace and the abyss it had hatched from, the cradle that was a graveyard and a home that it was never supposed to belong to.

Where was Father? It hurt, it hurt. Father was always there when it hurt. Father would not let it come to harm. It was too valuable to be broken. Father would fix it, he always did, Father always fixed the pain or told it when it was necessary, Father would stop it, Father would make the pain go away, where was he, where did he go? It hurt, it hurt -

Wretched creature, twisted monster of the Abyss, your sire has abandoned you.

Never had it exited the Palace alone, but through the lonesome years its mind had wandered down the memories that it had gathered in the few centuries it had had with Father, influenced by the gift of the Allsight that She had torn from them. It had remembered the quiet days in the palace, in the workshop- the moments that Father had peered into the minds of others, never directly influencing their thoughts, but watching with a benevolence and curiosity that he had never shown to anyone alive beside his lady wife (Mother, Mother, but don't call her mother, she was the Lady and it was a knight, and not her knight, and the dreams where she cupped its face and smiled and called it her child were liars ). It had stood beside him, it had seen those lives in the pools of still water, clear and sharp and perfect and as pristine as its armour, and he had whispered to it on the dark lonely days when the Lady was away and the castle was empty of all who could watch him show his heart-

All that these lives will ever know and will ever be is given by the gift of Mind, and to take that Mind is to destroy the self and everything else within it. To take the mind from a living being and twist it to your own desires is to strip away the individuality of that person, and is the most heinous of crimes.

And sometimes he would turn to it and stare (and what his face looked like exactly, it did not remember, all the lines blurring into a mass of white fluff and bright lights and it did not matter it was not to care it was never going to see him again and it did not matter), and it would feel the weight of his regrets on his back like the pauldrons on its shoulders (digging into its shoulders into its flesh pulling its arm hurt hurt hurt it did not matter it did not matter) and he would whisper softly under his breath, ‘no cost too great’, over and over and over again, as if he said it enough, it would become true.

And so he had said, and so it must be.

(It hurt.)

But he was not here right now. He was not here, he was down below in the Palace where it was safe, as he should be, as was the way of the world, and She was digging burning brands into its mind into its chest into its eyes, as She oft did, and everything throbbed and hurt. She carved out great swathes of darkness with burning desperation and rage and slammed against the walls of its mind and on the sigils engraved into its mask that prevented its shade from slipping free. Darkness, it was darkness and emptiness and the space between the worlds where nothing thrived and She was the light that burned through the open emptiness and brought emotions that scorched so bright that it hurt, it hurt , but it was devoid of thought and reason and-

The vision of the waking world beneath it faded away, golden clouds overlapping its vision until there was nothing around it but a warm metal platform beneath its wavering dreamform, and a wide-open sky that bloomed with the threat of a coming dawn, foreign light scorching its eyes, forcing it to huddle down into a curl of defeat, forcing it to submit.

And in the dream realm She unfurled her body and her wings and hovered closer, as She often did, when She was lonely enough to shirk the illusions and wished instead to take the form She always assumed when she spoke to Her Chosen Ones, her eyes a living brand on the back of its neck and the pressure built and built and built as She drifted closer closer closer, the dark behind its eyelids dissipating, a halo of light corona of brilliance enveloping the skies and thrumming with the endless power of radiance Radiance Radiance-

With a sickening pop that tore through both the dream and the waking world, its carapace broke, and in the physical realm it watched helplessly as rivulets of burning sunlight streamed down from its shoulder, gouging burning veins through the flesh of the arm that it had once used to form the many fantastical spells that Father had taught it in the peaceful days when its entire world had been him and him alone.

The pustules of Infection on its chest had grown slowly. They had softened its carapace over the course of years, bent it outward and warped it until everything was a uniform dull throbbing that hurt to breathe through. It had started with a tingling warmth in its chest, accompanied by rushing cold clenches that dizzied it on the bad days, when She grew impatient. Slow. A slow pain. Slow, hard to ignore, but that meant nothing when all it could do was hang from the chains and stare sightlessly at the floor and the Realm and the world beneath the stone of the Black Egg Temple, helpless and blinded to the lands beyond its imprisonment.

But the bursting veins of Infection in its arm was not an ache. It was not a sickening sweet throb in their chest, it was aching and sharp sharp pain building and coiling and burrowing until it B U R N E D through it and AGONY AGONY AGONY enveloped its thoughts and the hooks of Her power gouged into the very core of being it S C R E A M E D with a voice that was not a voice at the orange below (sick wrong wrong WRONG get out get out get OUT), a wounded cry with a rasping shriek that was not its own that was a voice that did not belong to it that burned and t h r o b b e d in its throat.

And in the Dream Realm, the Radiance answered. Not with the rage it was so accustomed to, not with the sadness it had grown numb to, but a fierce war-cry, a call of triumph. And with a sickening lurch, Her joy poured into them, pulling on the chains that She had broken and tied to Her will and burning burning holes into its mind til the darkness that made its very being gave way and the black dripped and spun with a bright, unbearable gold and-

It did not mean to lash out.

It didn't. Truly. But one moment there was nothing but white-hot agony and fear (Its?? Hers?? It did not know, didn't matter what did it matter when everything hurt and nothing made sense), and in the next the darkness swarmed , and it felt the part of itself huddled in the dark stirring lake hidden in its chest rise and flex, and in the next moment She was on Her belly on the platform it clung to gasping for breath with a void tendril through Her chest. Shock, bright and painful, poured from Her radiant heart and burned in Her eyes as She looked down at the lashing whip through Her chest, spreading darkness as it tore through Her flesh, and then Her gaze turned onto it and tore through it and it burned burned burned-

She screamed, a holy angry cry that echoed through the realm of dreams like the sound of shattering crystal, and it screamed with her, screamed as it had never tried before its fall as Her fire pulsed through it once again, the chains of Her control yanking tight. Pain spasmed through its body, stronger and brighter than ever before, and it became dimly aware of a vibration in its chest, a tearing in its throat, as the voice that She gave it to cry Her suffering came clawing free of a body meant to be the antithesis to sound, to light, to everything and nothing.

Make it stop make it stop make it stop Father please help it please please please make Her stop-

She tore herself free from its grasp, dripping golden essence, and shakily summoned several nails of light from the world around Her, turning their points towards its trembling form. But something surged in its chest, from a place that it had tried its hardest to hide, something that felt like ice-cold waves and wracking pain and a dizziness that threatened to gouge out its guts, and with the shattered arm dripping poison black and virulent orange it lashed out blindly at the sun bearing down on it, letting the seething darkness churning within claw furiously at the new pain threatening to tear apart its already broken body, sinking barbed tendrils into the gaping, bleeding wound dripping white-gold blood from Her raging heart.

Searing pain body broken false light false god tyrant ruler keep away-

Its hit struck true, digging through ethereal plumage to the scorching heat beyond, and burning pain lancing up through its arm, tearing through its throbbing body. Something pulsed deep within its chest, the crashing of distant waves reverberating through its trembling form, and from deep below the realm of the world, something with a voice-that-was-not-a-voice cried back in terror, something that was alive-but-not reached up through the void that made its body and threatened the world with shadows and it, filled to the brim with an agony and an ice-cold frenzy that shook its limbs and thundered through its shredded mind, it reached back-

And the world

Screamed .

The Dream Realm curled in on itself, warping and rippling in its dying throes, and the light of Her radiant image burned bright bright BRIGHT until it filled everything and anything and scorched the lashing, ripping void tearing through the dry heat of Her true form, and She was screaming in a voice that rang like a clarion cry of pure fear and anger, and in Her desperation and terror She tore needles of pure light through its smouldering body until it was wailing alongside her, filled right to the brim with a pain and a terror so deep that it called forth the endless suffocating years of silence from its chest, and the pained cries of its siblings tore through it, lamenting the damnation of their creation, their birth and their death and their endless suffering, all for the sake of Her death-

And then it felt Her wretched heart pulse around it, Her fluttering breaths scrabbling to start again in one last burst of life, heaving against the dripping dark poison it coursed through Her veins.

And the world

went

black .

It woke to the creaking of the chains above it, rusting iron finally falling apart as the delicate lines of spellwork faded into obscurity, dropping the toll of years onto their steadfast forms. Their work was done, their purpose void, and so as the glowing motes of soul faded away into the gloom, they either crumbled into dust, or hung lifelessly from the distant ceiling far above, where poisonous orange gasses met nebulous void and hissed away into nothingness.

Its breath rasped wetly into the still air blanketing it, inhaling miniscule flecks of iron, wheezing out gasps that failed to stir the silence of a building meant to be its final resting place.

The Old Light was dead, Her memory fading away into scattered motes of essence in the everdeep tides of the Void Sea, and the many spells the Pale King had set to entrap her were finally crumbling away, parts of the building other than the chains embracing the entropy as the toll of time caught up to them. Flecks of rust and decay breezed through the stale air, dancing on the rippling eddies of the dissipating infection, before finally kissing the dusty ground with a sound that was so quiet that it may as well be completely silent, hidden under the soft not-wheezes of its breath.

The Sealing Chamber was dying, as well as any tool that had never lived could perish.

Dimly, it became aware that it should do the same.

Something within it twinged, pulling at the heavy exhaustion draping over it. There was a fog in its mind, densely impenetrable, and beyond it, it knew, was pain. It was always pain, as it had been from the moment it first climbed free of the egg and fell, shivering, into the razor-sharp shards of broken chitin. It would always be pain, for that was the life that had been made for it, and it was foolish and useless to wish otherwise. There was a reason it had been born mute, after all.

(And besides, an empty vessel did not wish for its agony to be brought to an end. It merely worked, and worked, and worked, following orders and requests and lessons until the day it was slated to be sacrificed.)

(Maybe, if it could die here with the rest of the broken tools left by Her passing, it would finally learn to be at rest.)

The Temple of the Black Egg shifted in its moorings, an imperceptible change rippling through its frame, until finally, with a scraping hiss of shellrock, the door to the outside world shattered. Rigor mortis settled gently into the nothingness permeating the Temple's bounds, the time of its usefulness fading further and further into the past with each fluttering heartbeat, the mockery of life cradled deep within its shell only highlighting how out of place its inhabitant was. The mighty Pure Vessel, the Hollow Knight, savior of Hallownest and the Slayer of Gods, cast upon the floor of the Temple like a broken toy as it waited for its death to follow suit.

(It did not feel. It was not alive. It had never been alive, and now, more than ever, it should be dead. This temple was to be its tomb, the casket of two gods already perched on the very brink of death, and it had failed even that, as it had failed to not react, as it had failed to not fall prey to the ancient animal terror that it had somehow retained from the child its body had stolen before it hatched.)

(Some distant, drowning part of it cried for its father in a wailing, terrified scream that it barely acknowledged as its own.)

Nothingness filled the world, became the world, folded the scattered fragments of what was left of the sun and the burning plague under a blanket of silence. No sound filled the chamber, no smells, no taste of sugar-sweet sickness. There was nothing but the creeping-cold-that was-not-cold and the dim, blurry whorls of the floor under its masktip, and the dots and strings interspersing the nothingness where the rusting hung down from the high ceiling, as motionless as the Vessel on the floor below them, just another broken tool to be left to rot in a mockery of a shrine made to three noble sacrifices, three lives that should never have been lost in the first place.

In the fallout, in the final battle, it hadn't-

The fog pillowing its mind meant nothing. The ringing in its head meant nothing. The push of its shade against the spells carved into its carapace meant nothing. The pulsing pain throbbing on the bounds of its knowledge meant nothing. It meant nothing.

It was nothing. The void pulsing through its sickly veins was more than just a name for the element that corrupted it. It was emptiness incarnate, death and the end of all things, antimatter pressurized and pulsing with the faint memories of all that it had been before and all that it had been after that it forgot, instinctual reactions and the faint numb blur of unthinking motion, meaning compounding indefinitely until it turned right back into nothingness again.

It was all, and it was none. It was as alive as it was dead. It was nothing and everything, and it couldn't-

Something wet flooded its chest, something wet and warm. Before it could do anything to stop itself, its body moving without its consent, it coughed.

The pain that tore through its body was not nothing.

That phantom coldness from before pierced through its mockery of a heart, and with it came a ringing panic that turned the gold-tinged fog in its thoughts to monochrome. Dimly, it became aware that it was coughing as violently as any half-dead thing could manage, struggling to force this wet foreign thing out of its false lungs; that barely held a candle to the surging agony wracking its body, hot and cold sweeping through it in waves as breaths turned difficult, the air crushing. Thick, sweet mucus filled its singed throat, tasting of rot and sugar-sweet sorrow, and it breathed in scorching liquid that burned like fire and choked again on its foul odor and retched onto the floor of the Black Egg Temple, its body tearing itself away from the repulsive invader in its flesh, the fog in its mind making way for something akin to pure, white-hot panic that ran circles and circles through the shattered depths of its mind, keening its terror in a tone that was unlike the cries of any living thing.

Its body was not its own anymore, just as much of a puppet to its instincts as it had been to Her. The claws of its working hand sank into the corners of its mouth, pulling strings of acidic orange sludge out from under its mask, where it stuck slimily to its mandibles, but the torrent that gushed forth from every cough felt never-ending, and the pain all around it kept building higher and higher and higher until every part of its body throbbed with it, sang with it, the rivulets and pustules carved into its flesh burning in post-mortem fury at the body that had trapped its maker for so long, one last spiteful slash at its gaoler.

(She had been vengeful, She had become Vengeance, hot and blinding and pained pained PAINED, and now even in Her death She would not let it rest, she would not let it-)

It choked, and wheezed, flecks of black splattering out among the orange streaming from its ruined lungs, and a thick solid glob of something slid out onto the floor with a wet, squishy thump, shuddering with the beat of a phantom heart. It looked eerily like one of the cysts pushing out from between the cracks in its carapace, before the thin membrane surrounding it split under the touch of the void-saturated temple air, strings of liquid fire dancing away from wet, shimmering chunks of orange that looked suspiciously like flesh.

Her flesh.

No no NO get her OUT get her OUT GET HER OUT OF ME-

Its lungs heaved, the stabbing cold through its mind reaching a fever point, and the claws of its free hand scrabbled stickily over its mask in a pathetic attempt to ground itself and tore into the void making its eyes with a burst of pulsing pain that turned half of its world into darkness- not the faint dim gradient-light of the Temple, but a true, impenetrable darkness, one that did not settle no matter how hard it strained against it. The wet streams of icy cold void smearing its claws and mask further obscured its ruined vision, and the fog of numb nothingness threatning to creep back from before faded fully away as its limbs locked into place and shivered hard against the torrent of agony dragging through it, the pounding instinctual fear of an animal that could not see, it couldn't SEE-

-a hand on its mask, the soft pressure of its own paw, half its vision dark and throbbing. This same cold knife with a blade of ice carving circles in its chest, freezing its trembling limbs in place. The weight of its training nail in its other paw, as comforting and familiar as it was foreign, the soft whisper of a voice, the vague understanding of something vast coiling around the perimeter of a room it could only half-see before it began to coalesce into a form that started to make sense, many-tined horns and fractal eyes that did not writhe and hands as cold as the marble beneath its feet.

The cool touch of Soul, of a mind vast and ever-shifting, white stained with darkness and death and something heavy it did not understand.

The pain, fading. Those hands, caressing. Even the dim awareness of its young mind knew that their owner held no knowledge of their actions, buried away beneath a litany of many other things far too great to pay no mind to. But still, it felt the void within it surge in response, pushing it further into the comfort of those cold claws, where some part of it that made no sense and spoke from afar told it that it knew it would be safe.

Be still, be gentle. Do not attack. It is a simple wound, one easily remedied. Allow me to heal it.

You, Vessel, are awash with Soul. I have given it to you, but the world beyond is filled with it for your taking. It is the essence of life that moves us all, generated by all living beings with a will and a mind to call their own.

Hollow Knight, Pure Vessel. This is how you focus.

Cool hands pressing firm against its face, softer than marble and colder than water, but warmer than metal and the void below everything. Light, not a burning blight, but a soft, serene glow that held the promise of turning harsh at any moment. Soft fingerpads and pointed clawtips pressing gently to bone-white chitin, treating it like porcelain even as the whispering voice spoke to it like it was one of the kingsmoulds ringing the corridors, the void-that-was-bound, the void-that-was-dead-but-barely-alive, the void-that-did-not-think-did-not-sing-did-not-call-did-not-stir.

Hollow Knight, Pure Vessel. This is how you focus.

It was the kingsmould. It was not. It was the Pure Vessel, and it was the sea below the world, and it was the hope that the King and the Queen spoke about in great booming tones when living-bugs were watching and hushed sad voices when they were gone, and it was small and thoughtless, but every part of its body pulled it towards that touch on an invisible hook, a strange thrashing within it that contrasted oddly with the stinging pulse in its mask and the limp, unresponsive way it held itself.

It was not ordered to move, and so it did not. It was not supposed to feel, and so it did not.

This is how you heal.

The pain ebbed from its face, its vision returning to it, and it-

- Gasped, and curled its splattered claws in towards the ruins of its chest, before the fleeting memory faded and it gouged out more of itself trying to follow an order that had long since faded into the jaws of time, as it not had managed to do since it was very little. Drying infection cracked and sloughed off of its claws, irritating the joints in its carapace, but it forced itself to think past the rasping-sticky-itching-burn of splattered sunlight, focusing instead on a sweeping inward scan of its soul vessels, letting the haze of old memories guide it down the correct path.

Breathe in, and feel the energy coursing through the veins of the world. Breathe in, and feel where it pools deep within you. Do you see it? Do you sense it? Perhaps you do not. You are a Vessel, as much a container for Soul as you will be for Light. But for now, that is beyond the scope of your capabilities, and I am well aware that all you are capable of containing right now are my teachings, just as I am aware of how well void draws soul, for an element incapable of generating it.

Focus, then, on your emptiness. Do you feel the hollowness within you, where a basin awaits its waters? Focus on it. Allow it to fixate itself in the centerpoint of your mind. Now strike the totem with nail or claw, and draw the energy swirling within it into that basin, until it is gone, and the totem is empty or the basin is overflowing.

...Yes. Just like that.

Past the fog of confusion and pain, under the pooling essence flickering weakly from the pustules marring its chest, it sensed the familiar empty, yawning ache that told it that its soul reservoirs were nearly empty. To strain itself attempting a healing spell would be to overtax its capabilities, and to damn it to an even slower death than the one it was already consigned to.

Foolish. It had been vehemently ordered against making such a mistake, whether in practice or true combat. Even if it had always been destined to die here, it ought to follow its instructions to the very end. And an essential part of soul-based magic training was to never let your reservoirs run dry, lest you bleed the very essence of your life force bare attempting a spell that was too great to manage. Even if it was already half-dead, even if it could feel its body slowly weakening, that was an essential lesson that had been programmed into it for many years. It must heed it. It must follow.

(Then what, what did it need to do, if it failed even that simple task, if it had malfunctioned so badly that even the simple act of death was one that slipped beyond its grasp.)

...Father.

It needed to return to Father. He was its beginning. He was its end. It was his right to decide what to do with it, to choose whether this useless tool was worth reworking or destroying.

It used to be the Pure Vessel. Now, it was tarnished, broken, empty. But it was still the Hollow Knight, and its honourbound duty was to serve its King, no matter what consequences that might entail, no matter what it felt or how deeply it feared.

(And it wasn't, it didn't, it couldn't be feeling anything even remotely similar to any living thing, this writhing in its chest was sickness and nothing more-)

Do not think, do not feel, do not hope.

Moving was a pain beyond what it could ever dream of, terrifyingly physical (terrifying? Was that truly what this white-hot knife in its chest was, the feeling of terror rending through it? Was its fear real, was it the same as the terror mortal bugs experienced, or merely a mockery of an emotion trained into it by watching them all its life?) and horribly crushing, but it forced itself to shift. It forced itself to move , to pick up its heavy horns and drag its wheezing shell along to the faint silhouette of where its blade rested, the dim, dusty metal a beacon in the dim temple light. Everything hurt , and its left arm wasn't responding like it should, a burning lance of white-hot agony piercing it through the chest with every bump of its ruined shoulder against the floor, but it persisted. It persevered, as any unthinking, unfeeling thing should, until its hand was grasping the blade of its weapon, and rivulets of dripping void ran from the cracks in its form and hissed out into smoke in the already-saturated air.

Pulling itself up without the raw strength of Her power was a monumental task, one that felt like it stretched from seconds to hours to years- but once it managed to get its feet underneath it, it found fortitude in the strength of its nail, the pale ore making its blade holding it steady as it trembled with the effort of standing, legs weakened by countless years hanging limp from the chains. Its torn flesh screamed with agony, its limp left arm a brand of pure, burning pain pushing deep into its shoulderblade, but it persisted. It blanked its mind to its suffering, tuned out the protests of its frail form as it used to tune out the fitful churning in its chest, and turned its head to the open doorway, where the pale light of the lumaflies gleamed out through the shifting darkness guarding the inner chamber of the Black Egg.

(It had not been this weak since it first crawled free from the others and stared up at the pale, lonely light, numb from the shock of being alive, blank in the manner of a clean new slate.)

(Two blank eyes stared back at it from a cold metal platform, just as accusing as they were empty, and it felt….)

Do not remember.

Each step forward took its own monumental effort, tearing chunks out of what little energy it had left, but it continued onwards, as it must, as it always would. The nagging tug of its true purpose had been cut slack with Her death, but now a new tether pulled it forward, and it was helpless, as always, against such a call. It had been made for obedience, to be a knight of the realm, and it would carry its purpose through no matter the toll it took on its body; such was its curse. Void was unthinking, reactive, always following the flow of the tide, and it was a vessel of emptiness, a deathtrap for gods, an automatron of destruction.

It did not feel pain. It did not react to pain. It was made only to follow the orders that it was given, for that was the only way that it could abolish the suffering of the countless children lost to the depths of the Abyss, the only way that it could free its siblings from the burden of their creation.

It slowed by the doorway, sun-blighted good eye taking in the candles placed by the door of the Temple, in reverence to the sacrifice hidden within. Its breath rasped in its chest, a void-muffled death rattle echoing through the tunnels, but no bug responded to the sound, no curious miners came meandering, and for that, it was-

Do not feel.

...It could not be grateful. It could not feel love for the bugs that had carefully laid down the flowers wilting on the steps, it could not feel gratitude for the rush of cool relief and energy the offerings gave to it. It could not care about the sympathetic souls that had most likely invigorated it during its time locked away, their prayers nourishing it even as She whispered blasphemies into the minds of those vulnerable to Her allure.

(If only it had been able to watch them place it down, to study their faces and their feelings as Father did, to watch the young grubs tumble and play while their elders scolded them gently and guided them through the ritual of prayer. But the gift of sight that Father had given it before sealing it in the Temple had been the first thing that she had taken for herself when She had broken past the first boundary in its mind, and it had gone blind to the world beyond the sealing chamber not long after Her blight had first began to warp its body.)

So it forced itself to step past the altar offered to it, on trembling legs that refused to obey it the way that they should. Liquid gold dripped from its arm, flecked from its gasping mouth, but that did not matter, just as the aching throbbing coursing through it did not matter. The only thing that would soothe it would be death, swiftly given to a creature incapable of mercy, and it mattered not that the scars of a godly war marred its carapace.

As long as the Light had stopped. As long as She was dead, and the dreams of so many innocents remained untarnished by her touch.

As long as they remained safe, it did not matter what ruin was made of its mortal form. It would carry Her again, if it could, until she tore its very essence into scraps too small for its shade to cling to, as long as it meant that the others would be safe, its siblings avenged and the land unblemished.

(Something within it sobbed at the thought, in a voice-that-was-not-a-voice, wailing to the dangerous dark shores that it had been born onto. Something within it quailed back from the thought of Her anger, screamed at the unfairness of it all, how much it wanted to live . )

(It was not supposed to be like this.)

(But it was, and it was useless to think of a world where anything was different. Such a thing strayed dangerously close to dreaming, to the illusions She played before it to sway it to Her side, and it could not-)

The Forgotten Crossroads were blessedly empty, the passageways for the great transport beasts devoid of wanderers, but it felt its senses sharpen around itself as cool air brushed the back of its neck, its horntips swinging cleanly through empty air. There was nothingness around it, blanketing it in all the gaps where naught but vapors lingered, and the faint flickers of warmth and thought interspersing the darkness between belonged only to the tiktiks and crawlids haunting the corridors, fleeing before its halting footsteps as it lurched closer to their little roosts, the faint scent of fear flavoring the air that breezed past its open mouth.

Dimly, it knew that it must be a terrifying sight to a mortal bug, a great, silent, shuffling beast using a longnail as a staff with infection glowing bright under its dusty cloak, and so it spread its awareness as far out as it could, embracing the shadows and the emptiness that lingered between the rocks. Even as its vision flickered and dimmed, black spots swimming before its one good eye with the effort of movement, it could sense the empty air filling the corridors, the shifting shadows hiding away from the glow of the lumaflies; nothing living could pass before it and be hidden, the scuttling motions of the feederbugs sending eddies through the empty expanse as they passed. It felt their movements as it felt the air on its face, blessedly cool compared to the endless dry heat of the Dream Realm, and the kiss of the wind upon its fevered shell became one of the few points of sensation that it allowed itself to focus on, a grounding point from outside the fog.

The Void is an element without heat, and so embodies the cold in its purest form. And yet it is incapable of ever crossing the temperature threshold required to freeze; its persistent rejection of definition extends not only to heat, but to its absence as well. It is absence of temperature altogether, and the limited scope of our minds are incapable of processing such a contrary existence.

The Pure Vessel cannot know warmth, just as much as it cannot know cold. Your efforts are meaningless.

...

Do not talk to me in that manner. You attribute the suffering of a living creature to something incapable of sensation; I am merely trying to prevent you from wasting your time. If you desire to squander more minutes tending to an emotionless vessel, then I shall allow you to indulge your whims- but be aware that the Old Light would not do the same.

Come now. Let it be.

Pain spiraled up its aching legs, ran its claws through the veins of liquid fire crossing over its carapace, pulsed in the pustules pushing open its chest. Each staggering step pushed it higher, each jolt forward lancing through the web of agony twisting through its ruined arm, but it persisted through the pain, allowing itself only the rhythm of its thudding nail, the minute shifts in the nothingness around it, guiding it deeper and deeper into the depths, into the gaps and cracks where the sound of the world fell silent, where few other creatures dared to tread. The world was alive and thrumming with life, bright with desire and flicker-bursts of thought, but it chose the paths where the gaps between the flashes stayed strong, its one good eye staring at the stones beneath its feet.

One step forward, and that would be its last.

No, not its last.

Another.

Then another, the stalwart, unbreakable nail steadying it as its legs protested its climb downward.

Stop. Breathe, pulling cool air past a throat torn ragged with the screams of the fallen and into lungs half-full of swirling, malevolent fluids.

Then another.

Soon, soon it could rest, soon it could be over, soon, soon...

The slippery-soft darkness between the blankness called to it, to break its shade free from its shell and join it in the pooling shadows, where it would be free from all pain, where the world was still and silent. It sang to it in a voice-that-was-not-a-voice, dripping and buzzing and familiar, a susurrus in the make of the world that rippled like a current in the depths of a frozen lake, far below the shell of the ice above.

It...

It sounded like home .

When had it forgotten its song? Such a simple thing it was, a whisper-hum like a lullaby, formed not by the presence of sound, by the absence of it. When had it turned itself away, when had it begun to see it as a threat rather than a comfort? It strained its memory to remember, trying to push past the numbing agony sweeping through its body, but it could not remember exactly when it had stopped. All it could think of was the memory of the way the wind had whispered as it sung through the vines back home, on the days where the clinging shadows of Father's burdens calmed their lonely cries, and the world whispered and sighed and yielded its secrets to it unburdened. A soothing song, one that it could listen to freely as long as it stayed still and calm, and let the quiet regrets and memories seeped deep into the stones rise forth from their rest in peace.

It remembered that well, with a clarity like none other; She had not attempted to touch those memories, those endless days where it had stood and breathed and felt the rhythm of the land around it pulse against its empty mind, a heartbeat woven through the tangled web of time. Days without thinking were naught but a burden to Her, a mark of strange otherness that branded it as a monster of the Void instead of a child of the Light.

(She had likely thought it worthless; the child of Her mortal enemy, corrupted with the essence of Her ancient rival, was hardly something worth caring about. All of those times when She had been kind- when She had sat near it and wept, when She had told the stories of Her people to it as if She pretended it was a person and not Her coming death- that had been merely the depraved raving of one so desperately, painfully alone that She could not help but lament Her grief to the very vessel that bound Her wings down.)

(And then Her grief had turned into a rage powerful enough to scorch flesh, and She had torn its wings to shreds in a fit of Her own self-righteous fury, and sang to it no longer.)

Had it been exposed to the call of the Abyss all this time? Had the sweeping rush of the Void been this close all along? It tried to angle its head in a way that allowed it to hear it better, but its neck was weak and its horns dragged it down, and the song refused to get louder no matter how hard it strained to listen. There were too many things obscuring its voice; too much rustling, too much life, too much shifting air and rushing wind. Too many hearts beating, too many dreams, too many thoughts churning, obscuring the call of its brethren.

Or perhaps it had merely forgotten how to listen. It had been so long, after all. It had been so long since it crawled its way up to the light, so long since it had perched upon the precipice of its fate, newborn and empty of thought. So long since it clawed free of that mass of dead bodies, since it watched its siblings fall to their deaths, since it turned its head when it shouldn't and met the gaze of someone that should never have been left behind, since it let the chains wrapping its mind pull it from its birthplace and blind it to everything but the duty placed upon it.

(The crying creature in the corner of its mind screamed out again, keening through empty space to someone who was no longer there, and breathing became a burden too heavy to be attributed purely to the infection in its lungs.)

(It was useless to grieve. The death of its hatchmate was inevitable. It could not mourn their fate now, centuries after they had fallen, when turning around to help them would have damned them both to fall and many others to perish after it.)

(If it had not been chosen, another sibling would have taken its place.)

(This was something that it could not have allowed, no matter the agony that had been wrought upon it.)

It had sank so deep into the mire of its thoughts that it almost missed the purposeful movements of an intelligent bug; it had no idea how far it had traveled since leaving the Black Egg Temple, but the familiar cold claws of panic gripped its mind before it could shuffle back onto a path devoid of life, and it reached out into the emptiness of the tunnels beyond and wrapped the shadows around it like a cloak, letting its shade dissolve away into the gaps where no thoughts lingered, no creatures stirred.

Such a simple spell it was. So innate to its own movements and being, in fact, that it did not realize the consequences of its actions until it reformed itself. Such a simple thing it was, such an easy spell. All that was required was to take the very core of its being and shift it into a spot large enough to hold its form, to let it fill up the nothingness that previously lingered there. All that was required was the innate knowledge of the expanse of its shade, the weapon it was holding, and the knowledge necessary to transport it to where it needed to go.

It did not anticipate the agony that slammed into it when it rematerialized.

In the split second that its shade had enveloped itself to make the jump, there had been no pain. Scars mottled its spirit, spells entrapped it and held it close to the chitin that contained it, but a shade felt nothing but the regret of the being that made it, and the lingering willpower of whatever anger tethered those remnants of regret to the world around it. It could not feel the suffering of its physical form, for it was not alive; it was nothing more than an echo of the past turned to shadow upon the present, instinct devoid of reason, emotion devoid of mind.

Its body, alas, was not exempt from such pain, and as soon as its shade slipped back where it belonged, all the torment from before came rushing back to greet it.

The crack of its mask against the tunnel wall nearly folded its legs out from under it; with great difficulty, it struck its nail into the softer earth beneath it (when had the cobblestones grown soft under its feet, lush with mycelium? Threads of life crisscrossed under it, like Mother's roots, and the gaps between were not empty, but rich with the promise of more to come) and righted its stance, its whole body shivering with the effort, a high-pitched whine building in its head as the pain and dizziness throbbed on, all through its ruined chest and into weak limbs and scattered, spinning mind and the throat that had cried out with a voice that did not belong to it and breathed out orange with every exhale.

It couldn't fall here. It couldn’t. It needed to go back to the Palace, to the home-that-was-not-a-home. It needed Father to make it stop. He would know, he knew everything, he would know how to make it stop.

Hooked claws darker than night slid slowly across the ground. Talons strong enough to pierce rock tightened around the handle of its nail, shaking with the effort of standing, before gouging through the chitin of its thumb with another sting of discomfort that it barely noticed under its whirling nausea and aching head.

When had it become so hard to breathe?

Its hindclaws skidded again, jolting its thoughts back into some semblance of clarity; dimly, it became aware of the fact that if its legs collapsed now, it would never rise again.

...It wanted nothing more than to crack its mask open, to break through the spells tethering it to its mockery of life, to allow it to pull free of this tormented body and to finally let itself rest.

But that was not its choice to make.

With a strength it didn't know it still had, it pushed itself up and forward, and stumbled onwards, letting the tether in its chest pull it unerringly down the path to the City of Tears.

The heavy scent of fungus filled the air, rife with life, and some part of its mind detached itself from the torture wracking its body, watching from afar as the corpse that housed its shade dragged itself labourously down the winding paths. What a strange thing, this tall being. So ungainly, so difficult to control. What a ruin it was, using its nail to support its weight, staggering blindly past the Shrumal warriors watching warily from their platforms. Was this really its body? It tried to wiggle its fingers, just to make sure. Its left arm was not responding to it. Why wasn't it working? Pain thundered its drums in its head, but its fingers were numb, its elbow did not bend when it wished it. Why was it warm? She was dead. She had been the scalding heat that had branded it, burned away the darkness within it until there was nothing left but light, light, light. Burning bright, burning it to bits, and it was silent and it was silent and it had been silent until it broke and it screamed and everything turned on end…

Seconds stretched to minutes stretched to years to eternity, its legs fighting to carry it forward, churning slowly through time as if it was wading through honey. And through it all there was the aching, and the burning, and the throbbing and the stinging, rebounding through its mind in an endless chorus. Always there, always present. As it should be.

As it deserved.

(If it could cry, if it could cry like a normal bug, if it could weep twisted black tears without gouging its claws into its eyes to make a mockery of the pain that twisted through its body, it would.)

(Failure, failure. Not empty. Failure. Everything hurt.)

It had done this to itself. It deserved it.

( Sorry, sorry, sorry .)

The air lost its choking acidity, turned into something cold and moist and thin and thrumming with life that it recognized. Slowly, it became aware that there were people around it now- people milling about in large swarms, touched with the mark of Father’s gift, bugs gathering and gasping and shrinking back and running from it screaming. The rippling spaces between the living bodies around it pressed closer and closer together, then scattered at its footfalls like the tiktiks had earlier, feederbug fear clouding their minds before the presence of a predator.

So it had reached the City of Tears. Relief flickered through it for a second, before it faded back into the all-consuming exhaustion. It was not supposed to feel. It was not supposed-

It could not think of why such a thing was so important. The only thing that mattered was persisting onwards. This was its home, its kingdom, but it was not its den, and here it could not rest.

The cobblestones here were easier to grip, but slippery with rain. Its nailtip skidded, but its claws hooked into the ground beneath, the cool touch of the water above soothing its wounds. The world was loud and cold and thundered with the rhythm of life, disrupted by its tedious passage; slowly, it walked past slack-jawed sentries and artisans, ladies in their gilded paint and noblebugs frozen beside commonfolk, knights with their nail-tips pointed loosely at its chest, all gathered on the streets to stare at the ruined god walking their streets, the sacrifice of their king shuffling back from its death.

The Hollow Knight had come home.

There were too many bugs. Too much, too many and they were delicate and it was scaring them, but it was too tired to think, too tired to hear their calls, too tired to assign meaning to the words whispered to them when there was nothing more than the chain pulling it down, down, down into the depths of Hallownest, where the Pale King sat in his pale castle that rested above the grave of his many children, where everything was still and silent and everything would stop.

("Hollow Knight," they murmured, their voices swelling louder, then falling silent. "Pure Vessel" they called, reverence and fear lacing their words, and for a moment the murmur of the crowd became an echoing voice that hissed and sighed like the wind through the caverns, and it felt very small and very safe in a way that pulled at the void making its heart, warming it with something it was not supposed to feel.)

Down, down, down. The touch of the rain faded from its back. Damp coldness enveloped it, choked out the heat burning its lungs.

Motes of void rose up from the stones around it, welcoming it home. A shadow creeper crawled thoughtlessly up the wall next to it, eyes dark, free of the malevolent orange that had burned in the ones that had pushed its siblings from the platforms in the Abyss.

Down, down, down.

The gates of the White Palace shone with a brilliance that pierced straight through the fog in its mind, shimmering brighter and clearer than anything that had passed before it. It felt at once like one of Her crueler illusions, and like the only real thing that it had ever seen; trembling, it peered over its fence to the greater glow beyond, where its mother’s roots tangled around the spires piercing through the gloom of the caverns, and the shining white stone stood proudly among the dark rock, pure in its magnificence.

It had come home.

The kingsmoulds did not activate as it approached. The void-that-was-not-alive did not stir as it passed by their spellbound shells, the gates of the castle creaking open at the touch of its hand. Faint sigils of protection pressed against its mask, brushing lightly over its horns before billowing away in a puff of smoke, the castle recognizing the pale glow of its carapace. Motes of soul danced on the breeze, settling on the tatters of its cloak and sinking into the darkness piercing its heart and into the rivulets of flame that She had left behind, easing its pain, brushing away its suffering.

The doors of the castle opened, and welcomed the child of its rulers inside.

Something within it settled, its mind sinking into a fugue. Pale hallways stretched onwards, spanning through pale rooms and twisting into pale corridors where pale tapestries hung and pale vines twined. Pale bugs dressed in pale robes gaped at it, minds filled with nothing but pale light; none dared approach, pale hands hanging limp, their duties to the Pale God forgotten. Soul billowed through the air, hung in the shadows of the ceiling like stars in the sky; twisted totems wrought of pale metal stared blankly at the ruin of its body with empty eyes filled with pale light. Everything was monochrome, devoid of colour, beauty wrought in contrast, in the dance of light and shadow; foreign bugs that did not belong gasped and shrieked in terror at the orange blight that dripped from its broken form, but that did not matter, they did not matter, it meant nothing to a being that was made to be nothing and to embody all that could never be.

Onwards it wandered. Onwards, past the pale apparitions and chosen scholars, past knights made of thoughtless void and chosen bugs stripped of their mortality. Onwards to the throne room, where the God of Mind and the Goddess of Life dwelled, where it would finally be put to rest.

It only hoped ( do not hope ) that its shade would not harm them, if its execution occurred outside of a proper spell boundary. Father was already blighted enough by the dark. It would not do, to have the King of Hallownest struck down by his own regrets, manifested in the shape of his child. Not when She had finally been destroyed. Not when there were many thousands of years left in the future of Hallownest. Hallownest was a kingdom built to last eternal, and an eternal kingdom needed the guidance of its king, not a vessel that had failed to stay hollow and had torn its enemy to shreds instead of letting Her die slowly, carefully, as its ruler had ordered.

A kingdom of gods did not need an heir. It did not need a child, like Deepnest, to take the crown of its ruler after they passed. Nor did it need a knight trained to slay gods, when the royals that ruled it were akin to the deity it had been born to slay, two distant, gentle lights to illuminate the thoughts of the mortals, instead of smothering them in burning sunlight.

Its life was a danger to the guardians of the bugs it had given its life for to protect. For the safety of the kingdom, it could not be allowed to live.

(In the fog of its exhaustion and agony, it could not stop itself from wondering what it would be like, to be named a child of Hallownest. To be loved instead of slated for death, to be greeted with joy instead of the sadness and fear that always haunted its parent’s faces.)

The faint sound of arguing rose through the air, frantic and angry. Its claws twitched, but it was too exhausted to parse through the words, to think of anything but the slow passage of the tiles beneath its feet, and the possibility of things that could never be.

One. Two. One. Two.

(It was useless to hope. It had torn through Her chest and broke open Her heart and ripped Her body to shreds to be devoured by the Abyss. It was a weapon, not a child. It could not be loved.)

Its breaths came harder, now. Orange fluid dribbled from its mandibles, void misted out on every breath. There was something wrong with it. Something about it was broken inside.

It hurt.

The kingsmoulds by the door activated as it came close, but their scythes remained still, resting against their pauldrons. They did not watch it as the activation glyphs lit ip, white runes glowing bright on the pale metal; they did not react to the orange dripping from its limp, useless arm, or lunge forward to rend it to pieces, as they were trained to do with the infected warriors that tried to race through the castle to murder the staff, the assassins that came to kill the king.

It did not look at them as it drew closer. A broken weapon did not stare. A broken weapon did not envy an automatron for its thoughtless obedience, or wish itself in their place so that the pain plaguing its body would come to an end.

Its trembling claw touched the glyphs. The door opened, and the screaming fury of sound filling the White Palace fell silent. There was no sound but the dragging clang of its nail and the wheeze of its breath as it staggered into the hall of its god, king, and sire, thousands of eyes from thousands of featureless faces fixating on the ruin of its body, the infection that dripped from the pustules riddling its carapace. Disgusting, defiled, disgraced.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the light at the end of the room dimmed, until the being that produced it became someone recognizable. Slowly, ever so slowly, the King of Hallownest descended from his throne, and stared in shock as the child he had sacrificed crawled back to him on limbs that could barely hold its weight, the evidence of its impurity marring every handspan of its frame, from its heaving chest to the rattling chains to the rusting pauldrons sunk deep into its weakened exoskeleton.

I’m sorry .

It knelt, sliding painfully into the pose that the damned took before a court execution. It had seen it only once, in a knight who had forsaken their liege's life for the glory of a false idol, but the vessel remembered it well. The way the prisoner had knelt, placed their hands palm up on the floor, bowed their head to offer their neck to the King. It had only one hand to show deference, its other hanging slack by its side, and bowing its neck was hard with its horns weighing so heavily, but it did it. It managed, its nail falling to the ground with a clang that pierced the heavens, its limbs trembling with the effort to show obedience.

The room stayed silent. The King’s gaze pierced through it, watching it as he always did, the air growing colder and colder as he stared it down. Doubtlessly, he was weighing his options, trying to decide what to do with it. It would not do to have the sacrificial knight that saved the kingdom be messily executed for the simple sin of returning home. Perhaps he would hold a trial, then, or guide it to the workshop where he could dispose of it in peace, bleed out the void within it so that its heart could power a kingsmould, its lungs could shape the core of a wingmould.

It was a delicate job, being a god-king. It was a delicate task, to judge who would be allowed to live and who would be allowed to die, and in what manner they should be taken apart, what legacy their life would hold in the years to come.

It did not care. Its purpose was fulfilled. As long as it made the pain stop, nothing that happened to it would matter.

Please, let it all end.

It didn’t have the willpower to stay awake until its final judgement. With one final wheeze of effort, its breathing failed it, lungs filling up with fluid. Its vision wavered, the light in its good eye flickering out, and it felt itself slide forward into the blissful grasp of unconsciousness, pain fading as the cold marble floors rushed up to greet it.

.

But I feel it burning

Like when the winter wind

Stops my breathing

Are you really going to love me when I'm gone?

I fear you won't

I fear you don't

-I of the Storm, Of Monsters and Men

Chapter 2: Until the Depths Carry Me Down

Chapter Text

And it echoes when I breathe

'Till all you'll see

Is my ghost

Empty vessel, crooked teeth

Wish you could see

And they call me under

.

It woke to the sound of weeping.

It could not see, and could not move. The world was dark, something heavy was laid over its mask, and its mandibles were stiff and did not move when it wished them to, as if its body was no longer its own to command (though it had never been its to control in the first place). The pain from before was settled under a shroud of numbness that it could not reach through, even as it tried instinctively to reach out to the agony that had become the definition for its very existence; it was aware of it, in the dim, unthinking way that it was aware of its own breathing, but it could not pierce through the veil separating it from sensation, no matter how its shade nudged and swirled around it.

(Curious, it was, how after so many years of pain, it could not find the energy to feel anything about the lack of it. Perhaps it was dead now, as it should be, as it deserved to be, and it had sunk down through the world to join its siblings in the Abyss, though it could not feel the comforting press of the others around it. Perhaps She had been correct- perhaps She had fixed it. Perhaps the pain was what it had deserved, and this was its absolution. Perhaps it had needed to be broken to be mended.)

(But if it was truly mended, truly pure, it would not be lingering on such things.)

Do not think.

It tried to move its right hand, but flexing its claws yielded no results. Carefully, moving as slowly as if sidling away from a predator, it tried the same with its other hand- but the entirety of its left arm felt as if it was wrapped in a thick veil of cold water, devoid of sensation even as its senses told it that there was still something heavy bound to its shoulder, something attached to the ruin that had once been a part of it. Pain flared, a slow shifting beneath the curtain, but it was distant, and faded back into the numbness like silt settling to a riverbed. All it could feel was pressure, bound tightly around its broken carapace, and the peculiar still coldness of the air, so reminiscent of the soul-rich atmosphere of the White Palace.

Home. A home that it should not think of as a home. A place that might have once been a home, had the world been just a little bit kinder.

The weeping did not cease, a soft sound rippling through the silence permeating the cool air of the Palace (for it must be the Palace), setting what remained of its senses ill at ease. Who was crying? It tried to turn its head, to listen (for an honourable knight should always protect the fragile, and it would protect, it would protect until it died), but it could not move that either. Its body was not its own, shade drifting slowly through a shell that it could not shift, and it was becoming harder and harder to think, the darkness surrounding it pulling it back to rest. The crying continued, a quiet, private thing, but it could not react as it had been ordered to. Everything was wispy, intangible, and no matter how it tried, it could not move.

Was this real? The fight, the escape, the soft crying- had any of it been real? Or was it another hallucination, a deception of Her to weaken its defenses? What was reality, and what was the Dream? Had any of it ever bene real at all?

(It did not know. But it was not supposed to know, it was not supposed to think-)

...Well, if this was one of Her deceptions, it would yield no results for Her to turn against it. This unfamiliar voice sobbing by its bedside was not someone that it recognized, nor something it had been programmed to detect, and the strange numbness overtaking its body was not something that it had the energy to fight through. She would not break free of it by taking away its freedom and forcing it to listen to this quiet lament; She would not break its resolve with such a pitiful attempt. Not after She had shown it so many caught in the grips of Her torment, not when it knew how many others would die if She escaped the prison of its flesh. She had already taken so many.

Too many.

(And they had been children...)

Exhaustion weighed heavy on its mind. Duty became obsolete against that unending pressure, the voice slowly fading farther and farther away. The numb nothingness wrapped around its broken arm stretched slowly over the rest of its body, taking its limbs, its breaths, the shifting movement of its shade.

It sank down into the darkness calling to it from beyond the veil, and allowed itself to rest.

The next time it woke, it was to pain.

It was brought back from the grip of the nothingness with violence, a result that it deserved, yet startled it all the same. Liquid fire ran through the veins of its broken arm; the veil from before was torn away from its mind, burned to shreds, and its shoulder was a white-hot brand of agony as something moved through its arm, shifting through the writhing void with weapons that burned, pulling and tearing at its flesh, the previous safeguard from its suffering no longer keeping it from feeling the torment of its ruined form.

This was something that it had anticipated, but it was still somehow not acclimated enough to Her torture to stop itself from lashing out at the source of it, as it should never had before, as no Pure Vessel ever would had it been truly clensed of the sin of survival; breath rasped through its throat, rattling on vocal cords made from flesh burned to shape Her will, and something impacted against the claws of its good arm as it struck out, soul bursting between them in a snap of energy, before it remembered its dilemma and forced itself to be still, panting and trembling at the waves of cold rippling through its mind, clenching through its chest. Its shade tangled and squirmed and it needed to bestillneeded to be the steady lake to which She drowned herself in needed to be the vessel to which Her light could not escaped from needed to be pure and empty and hollow-

It should not have done that it should not have it should have been still should have been quiet should have been good-

Sorry sorry do not hurt do not strike do not look sorry sorry sorry-

It cringed away, as best it could, limbs trembling both with the effort to fight back and the struggle to stay still. And yet no scream of anger or retaliating strike reached it; there was a pause, a moment where time stood still, and then words rippled through the fabric of the world, awash with power, soul gathering into a point of light that shone bright enough to pierce through the cloth tied over its eyes. It flinched, curling its free claws into its palm as it tried to draw back away from the light, but its movements were clumsy, and it did not have the energy to cower away, to hide from the torture that was sure to come.

Sorry sorry sorry-

Cool hands cupped its face, painfully gentle and heartbreakingly familiar; they trembled with some emotion that it did not understand, and pulled its face up to a light that did not burn it, like She had everytime She came close. It flinched again before it could think to stifle it, jerking away from a touch that could not be real, but the hands on its mask tightened, holding it still, and it was far too weak to pull away.

And the voice of its King and Creator proclaimed, in a tone that sounded like the crack of breaking ice:

You shall not feel anything. You shall not feel the burn of the blade, the pierce of the needle, the sting of the scalpel. No pain shall be wrought upon the body that houses your earthbound shade, and you shall not feel it even as you wake. This I command, and so it shall be.

Hear me, Vessel. You have freed the kingdom of blinding light. The wounds that it left behind shall plague you no longer.

Now rest.

Silvery chains wrapped around the tatters of its mind, free of the touch of cleansing fire; briefly, it struggled against them, caught in the thrall of its own instinctive terror, before the soothing brush of soul sapped the pain from its limbs, wrapping them in a comforting, cool numbness. Ensnared as it was, it found an odd peace falling over its mind, a sensation of safety foreign after so many years of agony, and it succumbed to its bindings and allowed itself to fall.

It had been made to submit, after all.

Now a most curious response overcame it as it sunk into the darkness; commanded to sleep, an order willingly taken, it could not find the energy to rise again. Perhaps this was not the oddest thing that could happen to it, or the most dire, but in the ages it had spent under Her thrall, it often found breaking free of Her illusions to be a relatively simple task, for She did not often weave them with the intricate glyphs that Father used to power his spells. Her incantations were designed to overpower with brute force, not to entangle one within a cleverly-woven structure; She held within Her an ever-burning power that fed off of the dreams of all living creatures and then some, all the gods and ghosts and memories of all that could ever be amassed under Her wings. To tread within the realm of dreams was to tread within Her domain, and all the Higher Beings that were allowed to dream were well aware of it; She had rambled often about how the others that had crept within her territory had been forced to obey Her laws, and how She had kept a watchful eye on them as they skulked around the fringes of Her glorious lands, keeping their influence away from the desires of Her wondrous children. Ever vigilant, over thousands of years, always wary of every sly creature or roaring god that had come her way.

(And oh, how often She had lamented over ever slipping away from them. How complacent She had grown, wandering farther and farther to expand Her power before the Pale Wyrm came and whispered lies in their dreams, stealing them away from Her, leaving them to rot before She could return and remind them of their ways. How foolish of Her, how prideful. They had been Her children, Her family, and now they were hardly more than a few scattered remnants of the past. The dreams of the dead could not sustain Her, nor could they bring back all that they had lost. How She had wept then, when She had been reminded of all that She had lost.)

(Privately, on the days where it was too pain-riddled to stop itself, it wondered if the moths had really abandoned Her as She said that She did, or if they had merely been so blinded by Her light that they had not known what paradise was until they lost it. It knew from its own experience that its sire did not coddle his children, no matter how much he loved them- he left them to carve their own paths, caring little if their actions brought them wonderous glory or pitiful devastation. It had watched its god stare down dying bugs pleading for his mercy with an expression that betrayed nothing, had seen him turn away and remain silent as the White Lady retreated quietly to her gardens, citing the civil war wracking the Mantis tribe as an excuse for her withdrawl. It remembered how he stood within the courtrooms, staring out at the masses as still as carved stone, as beautiful and distant as a fallen star, lighting the paths of those before him without any contact with those below. It could only imagine how the children of light must have fallen, to have stumbled free from the safety of Her wings into a cold, cruel world where hunger and pain and fear lurked as it did for every living creature, and there was nothing to guide them to safety but the might of their own mind.)

(But that was neither here nor there, nor its place to judge. All it could do was watch, as still and silent as what was demanded of it, and take Her anger and Her beatings and wait for Her to die, helpless before Her all-consuming grief.)

It was not a creature of the light. It never had been, never could have been, severed as it was from its heritage and lineage before it had crawled free of the egg. When it slept, it did not dream, for the Void did not dream, and this was the way of things; it was the antithesis to light, and to Her realm. It could not shape the dream-essence to its will, only devour it. It was of the Abyss, that eternal, bottomless sea that stretched under the endless skies above, and the tools of Her tribe did not work on it, Her influence did not stretch to it. She had subdued it only by burning away its body from the inside out, by shredding its thoughts and breaking its mind open until the dark well of its thoughts had scorched away under Her light, until it was nothing more than a sniveling shadow of its former self before Her brilliance, and that was simply the way of things. Even when it had tried to rest away from Her influence, there had been no respite; its mind had been trapped in the dream realm, imprisoned with Her and the three jailkeepers trapping them in the center of the web, and that was how it had to be.

Why then, was it ensnared in this endless dark pit? Why could it not struggle free of the chains encircling it, keeping it from awakening? It could not tell yet if they were of Father’s make, or one of Her illusions, but it could not break from their hold, or tell which realm had ensnared it. Even as it swam slowly through the velvety darkness, its body fluid and graceful as it never had been in the physical world, it could feel the tension above it, the ice encrusting its escape. If it could only lift its weary head, maybe it would find a way to break the surface- but its body did not respond to it, nor did its shade feel particularly motivated to break the stillness. Down here, in the depths, it felt like it belonged; in the darkness, it was enclosed and safe, as it had not been since before it had hatched free from the egg.

Was this a dream? It did not feel like that harsh, hateful realm, nor did it sound like the dreams told in storybooks and plays, where the mortal bugs writing it spoke of nonsense sequences and visions transpired through esoteric meanings, thinking of their divinations as blessings from their long-seeing god-king, gifts given through their virtue and dedication to his kingdom. This was not the dry, burning sunlight that had scorched it under Her influence; this felt all too real, like a long-forgotten memory brought back to life, the sensations of those memories pressing against the forefront of its mind as if it was living it, not reminiscing on the past.

But most curious of all, perhaps, was that despite the chains keeping it from waking, it felt freer than it ever had before, unbound from its duty. On its mask were Seals of Binding placed by Father, meant to keep its shade locked within, but around its own mind it had erected an iron cage, a self-made container formed to keep the darkness inside of it from leaking out. Through most of its life, it had been bound, cut off from the thoughts of all those around it; now, in this place of nothingness, it felt as if it had been untethered, its mind set free to drift through open waters. No confinement of its own creation trapped it in here; the ice above the lake was not of its make, not a restraint made to keep it from sensing the world around it. It simply was, existing because nothing before had told it not to, and it was at one with the world around it, existing for no other reason than the simple fact that it was, existing and not existing in a place that, to all others, wouldn't make a single lick of sense.

It was not the Pure Vessel, down here. It was not the Hollow Knight. It was everything and it was nothing, silence and sound bound to holy shell, the filth of emotion and the burden of duty dissolved to endless void, and it swam weightlessly through a world devoid of all that there ever was, all that could ever be, and felt…

...Nothing.

There was no pain down here. Sensations welled up from the gloom, but faded the moment its attention turned to them, phantom colours bursting through pure darkness before slipping away like ghosts. Impressions of things rippled through the void that made its chest, physical sensations ebbing and flowing, but it could not grasp them, much less ascribe a title to them and cast them away like any pure creature should, caring only for sensory inputs that could fulfil the commands it had been ascribed to do. They did not linger long enough for it to parse through them, to try to apply storybook definitions to the ripples fogging its head, forming a patchwork quilt of understanding. There was simply susurrus, and then there was silence.

(For a moment, it thought that this was death, and peace settled over it like a shroud, before the abyss stole it away, and it felt nothing once more)

For a long time it simply drifted, content in the endless silence. And then a current brushed its cheek, stirring the stillness hanging around it. It turned its mask sharply in the direction that it came from, tracking the movement as easily as if it could see, and without putting a single thought to the blasphemy it was enacting, emitted a chirp-that-was-not, a soft huff of breath defined entirely by its lack of sound.

Who had stirred the deep waters? Who, and what? There was nothing out here but the endless abyss. No urgency rose over it as it called, but the silence did not deepen, as it should if another had called back to it. It was alone, as alone as one could be when one was really not supposed to be anything at all.

It chirruped again, a constriction of its chest that would have swallowed the sound around it, were its body dwelling within the waking world. It was met with nothingness, of course, the sea around it swallowing it up, letting it fade away into the dark around it. The air moved like water, like melting metal, like velvet brushing it by; it was everything and nothing, definable and yet not, and as its call faded into obscurity, it found some strange comfort in the pressure surrounding it, even as it remained empty of all thought and feeling, even as it searched for an answering ripple that could not possibly exist.

(Nothing, it knew, could harm it here. It belonged here. It was here. It was of this ocean, and this ocean was made of it. The knowledge was as implicit as knowing how to breathe, how to walk, how to swallow and…)

(And be alive.)

Another shift in the darkness around it, brushing the apex of its horns. It did not look up this time, for it knew without trying that sight would not help it, in some innate, instinctual manner that it could not explain. There was no light above to illuminate this vast dark sea, no sound, no sensation; it was all that could ever be, all that ever was, and all that it could never be, all in one place that defied definition. Its physical senses would not help it, and it did not need them, so it did not try.

So it turned its muzzle into the current and hummed.

This too, came without command or thought. Stimulus provoked it, and it responded in the only way that made sense, instinct drawing the vibration from its chest before it could think to pull it hack. Just as it had hummed to the Pale Gift when she was young, letting the thrumming, silent song in its chest pulse to the rhythm of the lullabies it could not sing, it hummed its call into this endless void, feeling the earth-air-water-all around it ripple with the force of its soundless song, rebounding indefinitely through the nothingness.

Silence. It paused. Waited for an endless, undefinable measure of time, its entire body a tuning point for the ripples traversing the abyss. Sang again, a short, silent tune, a song that it felt in its very shade.

And the void sang back.

From across the sea, a thousand trilling voices called; no sound echoed, for there was nothing to be heard, but it felt their cries vibrate around it as if they had screamed them straight into its face, the absence of sound defining the cries that could not be. Thousands upon thousands of little voices, thousands rebounding into millions, all trilling to it through the deep, as faint as the whistle of wind through the reed-grass in the Howling Cliffs. All crying out in the only way they knew how, all crying out with the voices that had been taken from them, or smothered, or broken and warped until they were no longer their own, but a shattered relic of what they could have been once, if the world had been just a little kinder.

And through it all the sound of silence pressed upon its head and echoed through its chest, magnifying their keening calls, until the song of the Abyss churned in its ears and hung heavy in its lungs, part of it and not of it, centuries of pushing it away leaving it clumsy and weakened in the torrent.

Frantically, it sang again, pushing itself forward into the current below, but the vibrations of its calls were so much louder than the cries of its siblings, and drowned them out before it had a chance to reach them. Desperately, it turned, swirling through waters-that-were-not to face children-that-were-not, but found nothing, and sensed nothing, the keening song of its family echoing from everywhere and nowhere, hanging between and what-was-then and what-was-now.

Now the sorrow lingered within it, returning like the tide to a groove it had carved into its chest, the grief that it had suppressed welling up from its ruined throat. The hum of the lullaby that it sang before choked into silence once again, a true silence, rendering just as mute in death as it had been in life. Mournfully, it hung lifelessly in the waters of its birthplace, and felt the heavy sensation of its loss cripple it for the first time, alone within the emptieness.

...No.

Not the first time. This weight in its chest, this heavy coldness dragging it down- that had been there all its life, from the moment it had struggled free of the egg to the moment it had watched the last of its clutchmates fall. It had not known what to do with it at first, how to carry it, what its name could be, but it had been there It had always been there, just another blight upon its shade, a companion to the empty ache that plagued it whenever it walked too far from the graveyard it had hatched in, and…

...And it heard a call echo back to it, fiercer than the ghosts from before, stronger than any little shade from any dead hatchling could ever be.

Its head snapped to the not-sound, stunned out of its introspection, and cried back; the vibration stirred the void around it, brought back some dim memory of a blighted chest as its thorax buzzed with the not-noise, but that did not matter now, not as it screamed back to someone so implicitly familiar to it that they felt like a part of it, and-

.

.

.

-Came rushing awake to the sound of another person weeping, vaguely different than the one before, and the rather distinct roar of Herrah the Beast in one of her legendary rages.

Oh dear.

"-WILL NOT LAY A CLAW ON THE VESSEL, DO YOU HEAR ME?" Herrah's voice was loud enough to nearly bring it physical pain, and angry enough to redouble the panic flaring through its veins; still caught in the transitory state between consciousness and sleep, it was incapable of hiding away, but it managed to twitch one of the claws on its right hand in a minute sign of protest. Not that a Pure Vessel needed to do such a thing, of course. A creature of the Void was incapable of conscious thought, only of mindless instinct that could be easily re-programmed into responses that mattered. Whether or not it was currently in a rather specific sort of agony at the too-loud voices around it did not matter, for it should not be able to care about it at all. "Don't make me repeat myself, Wyrm! Your Hollow Knight is directly responsible for the breaking of the Seals, and I will not listen to any of the half-sh*tted excuses you are about to throw at my face. Monomon may be the scientist among us, Lurien may be the magician, but I am a warrior and a queen, and I am no fool. That flash of darkness before the bindings broke was the work of divinity, and it was not of you. If you destroy them with some half-assed excuse of void monstrosities gone rouge, then you are even more of a coward than I ever could have imagined, and I shall let all the other kingdoms know of the laughing stock that claims to rule Hallownest from his elaborate hiding-hole of marble and metal."

...Flash of darkness? Broken bindings? So it had been real, this was not a dream. Had the fallout of its failure really been so extreme? It could remember almost nothing of the final fight but pure, all-consuming desperation, light, and pain; it had blanked out soon after the deed was done, too exhausted to stay focused, too resigned to its coming death to attempt to stay lucid. There had been no orders to follow, after the last of Her light had scattered into the hungry maw of the Abyss.

Nobody had told it what to do after the Seals were enacted, after all; all it knew it had to do was to stay still and keep Her light hidden, to keep Her contained, so that She may perish after its void smothered Her for a final time. No other orders had been sent forth. Nobody had expected it to survive its ordeal, or to ever leave the Black Egg Temple- gods did not die quietly, after all, and She was an ancient goddess with centuries of worship to nourish Her, while it was a newly-ascended heir of nothing, unfit for proper worship, unknown to the public eye. If it did not die containing Her, then it would have spend eternity hanging from those spellbound chains, Her dying screams ringing through its mind.

(And it would not have mattered, if it had been pure, if it had been hollow, it would not have mattered because it would not have cared, its suffering was its own doing and nothing else-)

...Had it doused the entire dream world in shadows when it had pierced through Her heart? That seemed rather dramatic to it, more akin to a play or storybook than the desperate ending act of a centuries-long war. It knew that it had pulled upon the writhing void within it, that it had called to something deeper and more profound than the singular scraps of darkness within, but it did not realize the true extent of that power, for that was a power that was dangerous, a power that was taboo. All it could remember was the familiar lash of its void tendrils, and something similar but more, under the burning pain of rending open Her flesh.

Something fluttered in its stomach, a sensation that it did not enjoy in the slightest. It felt as if the wingmould it had devoured after its first molt was somehow trying to struggle back to the surface to rejoin its brethren, and it did not have the knowledge required to try to figure out what that particular emotion (was this an emotion? It did not hurt like fear did) was supposed to mean. With its scattered, confused mind and memories, it could not remember any books that explained what such a feeling meant, out of the complex tangle of emotions that all true bugs seemed to understand straight from birth. Nor was it sure if it should suppress it- for all it knew, the uncomfortable writhe in its guts was simply its body trying to reject the stains of Her influence, and was not a sensation based upon its impurity.

But that was enough. Pure Vessels did not muse about their failures, even if they could no longer be truly considered to be pure in any definition of the word, even if they were too defiled and broken to mandate further use. That was not what it had been made for. It was its job to submit, and to accept whatever purpose its king-creator decided for it.

(Death would be a kindness. It did not know why it was still here.)

(It was not its place to question it.)

...Oh. Queen Herrah was still shouting. It supposed that it should try to make sense of that, even if it could not move or react to any orders in response to whatever she was yelling about. Nothing felt like it was really happening right now, not really, everything was hidden behind a haze that made the world feel like an illusion, but she was a respected ruler and it was a knight and she and its Father had borne the child-who-was-sister-who-was-little-who-could-scream-who-was-sharp. It was its duty to listen, even if its loyalty was not pledged to her directly.

"Lie to yourself if you must, Pale Wyrm, but not to me," she snarled; apparently, it had missed its Father's previous response entirely, its attention stolen away by feverish, drifting thoughts. Suddenly, the need to listen became a lot more pressing, the scraps of void still flowing in its shattered carapace pinging with cold anxiety under the blanket keeping its conscious mind away from the pain of its sleeping body. To miss the orders of its king was blasphemy. It did not need to fail him more than it had managed already. "I am not as stupid as you think I am. The Vessel is your child, no matter what you claim it to be- do not presume that you can deny it to my face, when your seed sired the clutch that bore my daughter! None of your experiments can change the fact that they were born of Wyrm and Root, just as my daughter was born of Wyrm and Beast. To that blasted, thrice-cursed goddess you sent it to be sacrificed, under the half-assed excuse that dipping it in some magical black ink somehow removed the fact that it was one of your own, and on that cursed day my daughter lost not just a mother but a sibling, an tragedy that no child should ever face."

She took a moment to suck in a breath; the quiet weeping filled the air again, rising in pitch, but now that it was more lucid, it could verify that it was not the mourner from before, a child's sobs filling the air rather than the voice from earlier. Ice flooded its veins, its chest clenching with a pain that was not entirely physical, before Herrah continued her tirade. "And I agreed. I did! Don't think that you can throw that back into my face. I did agree to your plan, I went along with it despite all of my misgivings. But I agreed on the basis that your Pure Vessel would be empty of mind, will, and emotion, or at least stripped enough of it to stand a fighting chance against the Old Blight. I agreed, because I thought that whatever scraps of the young warrior left within them was too void-taken to think of anything but their sacrifice. But now we see that you were wrong."

Her voice turned from a full-timbered roar to a cold, angry snarl. Though she was mortal, not a Higher Being, it shivered all the same; the genuine fury in her voice nearly matched Her anger when She had spoke of her children, and how the Wyrm had torn them out from under her wings. "And I know what you plan to do with it, you cowardly, pathetic excuse of a god. Do you honestly think that I can condone their execution? Oh, you may be stitching them back together now, but I know your tricks. You'll have them on the executioner's block with a list of imagined sins stretching a mile long, and many blank-eyed bugs with not a scrap of mind between them standing about to record it, and then you'll have your lovely sacrificial hero put away under the dirt before anyone who saw them can question after their health. But oh, you have an excuse, and a convenient one at that; it would be so easy to say that they succumbed to their injuries, eh, Pale King? And then you can keep your shining kingdom and your shining reputation, and you never have to think about the blight that you set upon our families for having us sacrificed alongside a Pure Vessel that was never truly hollow-"

Silence.

The King's voice did not break. It did not waver through the physical world, as it did when he was holding his meetings, or rebound over itself in the echoing whisper he assumed when speaking to others within earshot. It rang through the air like the tone of a bell, an all-encompassing command that impressed itself into the minds of everyone near, demanding complete compliance. Herrah's roar cut out as abruptly as a pinched candle-flame; even the child's voice ceased its wailing, pausing mid-hiccup in favor of shuddering, ragged breaths.

And it.

It stilled. It ceased its minute, shifting movements, and sat as still as the dead. Upon its mind a fog descended, stripping away the circling motion of its thoughts- it was obedient, perfect, and quiet, both in mind and in body. The King’s word was law, and to defy the law of the King was to cast your loyalty from Hallownest, to decree yourself no better than the crawling feederbugs stumbling mindlessly through the wastes. For he was Hallownest, he was reason and logic and law and thought, and it would be nothing without him.

It had been born for the salvation of Hallownest. Its siblings had died for it, discarded in the hundreds and thousands and millions until it had stood upon that cold platform, the first of its kind to ascend. It had suffered for it, had suffered for the countless dead lost to the war, and soon it would join them, its purpose as void as its origin.

This was how the world worked. This was how it must be.

But Herrah was not of Hallownest. Close, perhaps, she was very close, her territory belonging to the Pale Gods by a technicality that was meaningless to anyone and anything that ranked below divinity- but it was not to the vessel’s parents that she cast her worship, it was not to them that she bowed in prayer. She ruled her lands apart from them, uncaring of their territorial struggles, the mortal queen to a den of beasts, and this was far from the first time that she had defied the will of a god.

A low growl of disgust was the first sound to break the spell; her growl, savage and foreboding and utterly devoid of compliance. It did not need its eyes unwrapped to see the snarl that was sure to be fixed across her face, or to know that her fangs would be slick with venom, glistening in the low light of the lumaflies. This would not be the first time Herrah the Beast had bared her fangs at the King, though it was certainly the most hateful out of the ones that it could remember. "I told you to never use your enthralling magic on me. You don't get a free pass out of that contract, no matter what the circ*mstances may be."

'I would not have to, if you did not insist on disrespecting me.'

Still the Pale King did not speak, but neither did his projected words have the magnitude from before. If anything, he had grown quieter than he often was when using his physical voice, quieter than anything that it could remember. It had never heard him sound so weak, so...tired.

Even on the days where he spent hours staring down at his hands, working over the void stained into his shell with clockwork, mechanical motions, as if he thought he could scrub them away given enough time. Even on the days when he forsake food and the company of living beings to work, refusing to sit and rest until his body gave out on him and it was forced to stand by his side so he could use it as a support, so that he could force himself to work and work and work some more. Even on the days where the shadows skirting about the edges of his luminescence finally managed to slip in, to sink their claws deep into the piercing white light that made his soul, and he walked about with a shroud of death wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak of damnation.

(One that grew heavier everytime he glanced its way; this it knew, for it could see the way it pulled him down, how tired he was of the weight of it. Exhaustion and regret trailed from him like the sour-sweet mist that poured free from the bodies of the infected, but only it seemed to be able to see its tint, to sense how deeply the corruption swam through his veins. No god would ever willingly show their pain, but to the eyes of the Pure Vessel, the suffering of its father was stamped upon his form like a brand of pure regret, the same endlessly-dark colour of its carapace shot through his blood, sickening his heart.)

(That was how it knew that he had loved it. For what other reason would the void threaten to choke him whenever he looked at it, to still his breaths when he beheld it with pride in his eyes? Regret was what made it, staining its shell and forming its soul and poisoning the blood of its father, until he suffered from the same sickness that had killed it in the egg, had torn its half-light siblings apart after they hatched. Regret, seeping from between his words and dulling the already-fading colours of his emotions, piling on and on and on until he was just as empty and as static as it was, a husk of a man making a mockery of still-living flesh.)

(How dangerous it was to him. It was pure poison gifted a physical form, a devourer of gods tamed by the binding of a holy being's shell and an empty title to placate the compelling hunger aching in its chest. It did not see why Herrah fought so fiercely for its right to live, when it had been slated to be destroyed from the very moment it had hatched, wearing the skin of its father's child. There was no other option, after all, for a monster of its power.)

(That it was the only vessel picked from the Abyss was not a factor. It was never a matter of who. It was always a matter of when.)

"My heir was born of your blood. Our clans are bound through her, no matter what you have to say of it," Herrah growled. The hiccupping started again, followed by pitiful whimpers that were soon muffled with a rustle of fabric- the child, it seemed, had exhausted itself, and Herrah had pulled it close to her to soothe it. Its fuzzy mind could not quite understand why such a small thing was so important, only that it was and that there was something niggling in its chest, a thread in its mind tugging at its focus, compelling it to turn its head and listen to the child’s sobs. "I shall respect you only once I see how you treat your finest warrior, who is family to me not by descent, but by virtue of being my daughter's sibling. We do not take the disrespect of strong warriors lightly in Deepnest, no matter the circ*mstances of their birth.”

'Half-sibling.'

The snarl that Herrah loosed in Father's direction was terrifying enough to reintroduce a tremble to its limbs, though the motion remained feeble. Her anger hurt, booming too close to Her wrath for it to anticipate anything other than pain. "Do I look like I give a single lick of a sh*t? Heed me now, Pale King! The future of our alliance rests upon the fate of your Hollow Knight now. If not for love, then for knowledge- hear me on this, you stonehearted bastard, for I fully intend to understand just how our little trap went awry, and they are the sole witness of the Old Light's death. Monomon and Lurien hold only as much information as I do, and you shall be hard-pressed to hear anything from your teacher friend until her precious assistant is returned to her. Nor do I believe Lurien is in the mood to see you anytime soon, now that he knows that the Vessel is capable of feeling pain- and that you consigned them to an eternity of suffering, on top of sacrificing us for a plan that was doomed to fail all along."

A slow, shaking breath. For a moment, it did not believe it had come from Father, until it felt the air grow colder against its carapace, and sensed the shadows gathering around a form near its origin. Pain born from regret, manifesting as something that it could sense, could feel echoing deep within the pit of its chest.

Which did not make sense in the slightest.

Why would he react in such a manner? He had been the one who had cast the spells that had hurled so many of its siblings to their deaths. He had been the one to carve runes and sigils into its flesh, to make it stronger even as it grew lightheaded from voidloss. He had been the one to stand with it for endless hours as it trained, catching its bleeding body and healing its many wounds, until both of them were exhausted and shaking, and his claws were raw and black with its accursed blood. He had been the one to seal it, to watch the chains tangle around it even as he blessed it with a gift of Sight that no empty vessel truly needed.

He knew the cost that he had to pay. The pain that he felt when he looked at it, the love- that was for the concept of a child whose shell it wore, the future he had given up on in exchange for an empty vessel. The grief he felt before its sealing was something he should have suppressed by now.

A king and a knight were made to serve their kingdom. A king to rule, and a knight to pass their judgement. It mattered not what became of their bodies, or the suffering that they received. That was not what they were here for. There was no cost too great to keep the kingdom safe, and it had known this for a fact from the moment it had climbed past the endless, ruinous debris of its sibling's birthplace and graveyard and saw the expanse of the suffering wrought by the Old Light's conquest.

The King was a logical being. He would not mourn a broken tool, especially if it had succeeded in striking down the enemy that threatened his true children. The land, the people, the little spiderling in her web of silk- those were the children that belonged to him, not a shambling creature of the void that was born for the purpose of bringing death, and nothing more.

(How the land hurt. How it wept. Regret blanketed the land, regret and sorrow. Empty gaps in families that huddled, terrified, behind their shuttered curtains, and prayed to a god who could not hurt them. Empty graves turned to mass burials turned to burnings and then to the Blue Lake. The very land wept with the tears of innocents, and it was just the empty shell to hold their sorrows, to cup them all within itself so that they would never have to feel pain again.)

It was not alive in any true definition of the word. It was a vessel. It was not something to be honoured or mourned over, no matter what its accomplishments may be. It was a weapon, to be used when it was hale and keen, to be discarded when it was broken. It was not something to be loved, or treated with kindness. It did not deserve it.

...Why then, did Father sound as if he had been crying?

'The fate of the vessel is currently undecided.' The mind-whisper spoke again, a sigh of breath hissed through clenched fangs posing the closest approximation to physical speech that he could manage. It did not need its sight to see the tension in Father's jaws, to see where his mandibles latched tight together and locked the words out. This too, was familiar to it. Perhaps if it had been born with a voice, it would do the same. 'It is...unstable. Do not presume that I will need to destroy it, when its injuries stretch so deep.’

Another rattling breath. The low growl from Herrah had tapered off into silence; the queen of spiders knew the gravity of such a situation quite well, after all. She could not pass her judgement here, not when she likely had watched many of her own suffer and die from wounds that refused to heal. ‘It...I do not yet know if I can heal it. Death may come to pass without my tampering.'

Ah, so that was why the execution had not come. It felt itself relax a little, though something bitter welled in its throat that did not taste quite like infection. It knew the extent of the bubbling corruption spread through its thorax. It knew that all of the other bugs that had shown such symptoms had died painfully, their bodies turned volatile with the gasses of their decomposition while some mockery of a mind lived on.

Nor did it hope (do not hope) to be healed of such an ailment. Even when it had stumbled back home to the Palace, it had not been seeking a cure for the infection throbbing through its veins. It had come back because it was tethered to a sense of duty, and the knowledge (it could not think) that Father would make the pain go away.

(And he had. It could not feel it. It could not move. Fever fluttered hot fingers against its mockery of a heart, a dizzying haze swam through its fractured mind, but the thought of death brought cool relief to the dim, sickly heat still thundering through all the gaps the pain failed to fill.)

(It should not feel relief.)

(It should not feel anything at all.)

"You can't let them die! You CAN'T!" A different voice rang out before Herrah could respond, ragged and raw from crying. A little girl's voice, familiar yet strange, and again it felt that desire to listen…"You already took Mama from me! You can't take them back again, I won't let you! I don't care about what you think, you have to fix them. You have to, or I'll…I'll kill you. I swear it!"

Who…

"Shh, Hornet." Herrah's voice cracked on the strange name, faltering as the child's screams shattered back into sobs. There was another rustle of cloth, the soft clank of armour, before she spoke again, softer this time, speaking over the very faint rasp of Father's breathing. "Shh, baby girl. It's okay. I'm here now, I won't leave you again. He won't take me from you. You're okay."

...Hornet?

Was that its sister? Its little baby sister? Ice-cold water broke over its horns, tearing away the shroud between its mind and its body in a jolt of agony that was not entirely physical. No, no, no, that could not be its sister. That broken voice could not be hers, little-fierce-warrior, fury of Deepnest, proud princess of the Nest. She had been smaller before the sealing, squeakier even when she cried, and she was supposed to be happy and guarded and safe, not this angry, broken, named being who lashed out at Father and threatened to kill him, who…who…

...

It had been commanded to soothe her, once. Once, when she was small enough to fit neatly in the palm of its hand, and had been so new that she had barely any control over her little limbs. She had not been born like it had, capable of crawling and fighting from birth. She had hatched with claws that were thorn-sharp and chitin-weak and arms that jerked and skewed without her consent, and it had watched her struggle free from her egg and scream in the voice that had been denied to the children of the Pale Wyrm, and it had held her close as Father fretted silently and Herrah watched, had felt the heat of her tiny body sink into the pads of its hands as she stretched her blind little face up to meet its whuffling breaths.

Little one.

She was its sibling, small and sharp and keen and fierce. She was its charge, to be protected from the cold and the dark and the horrors of the world that lurked beyond the nursery, and it had never been so light and so peaceful as it had on the days where she had tumbled about in play, squeaking at her own daring, and had risked Father's ire pulling it into games at her own behest, even after she had been told that a Pure Vessel was not a sibling, not a playmate, not a toy.

It had been commanded to watch her, to guard her. It could not fail her now.

With a wheeze of effort, it tried to pull itself forward. Slowly, tenuously, the chains around it snapped, a dull throbbing pulsating in its chest growing hotter and hotter and hotter, and it raised its heavy head with a neck too long and too weak to bear the brunt of its horns and leaned on its broken arm with a searing burst of pain that sent it tumbling down to the table in a flare of agony that choked out its breath, heaved fire from its lungs-

-and someone was shouting, beyond the fever-pulse rhythm thundering away in its head, and Father's cool hand pressed to its horn and Father's cool voice spoke a Word, and it felt nothing once again.

.

.

.

And I'm shaking like a leaf

And they call me under

And I wither underneath

In this storm

-I of the Storm, of Monsters and Men

Chapter 3: Peace of Mind a Memory

Chapter Text

I am a stranger

I am an alien

Inside a structure

Are you really going to love me when I'm gone?

With all my thoughts

And all my faults

.

Time passed slowly, after that.

It did not know what Father did to it, press its mind so solidly back down into the nothingness below the world. Perhaps he had simply ordered it into a simpler state of being, as he was so fond of doing when he had to handle it in the early years, when it had not yet learned how to control its reactions to certain stimuli. It had spent much of its time then acting foolishly (or, as close to foolish as a simple empty thing could act), such as blundering into walls, breaking its mask open during combat, and freezing in place when uncomfortable textures or sensations raked over its sensitive flesh, shutting down its thoughtless mind via sensory overload. Life was not so much of a life as it was an unthinking existence, and such an unthinking existence, though ideal for a pure vessel, was fraught with instinctual reactions that were rather unfit in the actual training of a pure vessel.

Instinct was a difficult beast to overpower. It meant little, however, to a god who could shape the world to his will, and bend the minds of others on a whim.

To one as powerful as the King of Hallownest, reprogramming a void being blundering its way through a mockery of a childhood was a simple task. Especially when said void being implicitly knew that failure was equivalent to even more death and suffering, and strove to avoid it even when it felt nothing, thought nothing. It had not needed to think to know that failing its task would result in more little bodies piled up in the Abyss, more fragile masks staring up at a salvation that would never be granted to them. It had not needed to feel to know the burden that lay upon its little shoulders, for that was simply the truth of its existence, as implicit a fact as the slow turn of time.

A mindless feederbug did not need to flail its legs over empty air to know that falling off a cliff would likely be fatal. It simply knew, in a strange instinctual manner that defied logic or reason, and that was that. No thought was required to reach an understanding; the sense of its impending death had been enough, and so it navigated the world without putting much thought into things at all, except for perhaps a brief reflection on its current desires in an endless, repeating loop, following the orders of its requirements until it perished, or something else destroyed it.

It had been much the same for the Vessel when young, with the only exception being that its orders, for the most part, came from outside rather than within. At least, until it suddenly hadn't, and the weight of the expectations laid upon its shoulders grew crushing, had stifled its breaths and filled its chest with those funny little twists of sensation that it knew to be marks of its impurity.

(It did not remember when the knowledge of the consequences became relevant. Only that it had understood the implications of such a thing, and that it had felt very distant and unimportant until suddenly it was grown enough to feel the chains digging into its flesh, to hear them groan and creak as it shifted and breathed.)

(Perhaps the chains had always been there, coiled and waiting for it. Perhaps the reason that it had not noticed them as a child was simply because it had not grown into them yet, had not felt their press around its shoulders until it had grown old enough for them to cinch tight, to make their presence known.)

(Or perhaps it had known all along, and the reality of it hadn't sunk into its mind until it had learned what all of it meant, and suddenly everything else around it made sense. The absence of knowledge about something did not mean that it did not exist, after all, much in the same way that a trap in a pitch-dark room did not cease being a trap simply because its prey could not see it.)

But this time, it did not stay down for very long. Nor did it remain entrenched within the deep, wallowing in the empty depths below its body without a single clue of what constituted up or down, backwards or forwards. Below the icy ceiling of its consciousness it swam, a dark shadow hovering just beneath the surface, and it did not call to the Others down below, or search for them through the murky waters, though some aching part of it called it down, down, down into the dark.

(Far down there, it knew, it ceased being an it, and started to become a many.)

(Or it ceased to exist at all. Truthfully, it could be either, in the same manner that one could claim a lake was made up of many tiny droplets of water all clustered together, mingling into one indistinct being, or was simply one very large droplet that could be broken into many and take on several properties that it could not when it was one very large mass of liquid. It tended to lean towards the latter rather than the former, personally- or, it would, if it had been a person who could formulate opinions, rather than a reanimated husk of a long-dead child puppetered by void. Such things, of course, could not think, much less form opinions on things. Especially not on things known to make no sense in the slightest, and what insolence would it show, to consider the strange churning in its void equal to the centuries of research proven by the God of Mind? It was a vessel. Not a scientist, but a weapon.)

(And curiosity was not something that had been authorized to explore, either.)

It did find the breaks in the ice, the places where it could breach its head through the gaps and peer out into the world beyond, those little slivers between its conscious and subconscious mind. That world was pain, aching and throbbing and burning through every part of the body that trapped its shade, but within the pain it found flickers of reality, as it had not when it was with Her, when everything had hurt and the illusions She had sent it were often worse than curling up into the smallest little ball that it could make within the center of its mind and wait for Her beatings to be over. So it would surface, feel the pain beating all about it from everywhere around it, and then sink back down into the darkness, where everything was blessedly cold, blessedly numb. Somewhere through the haze, it knew it was avoiding the inevitable, but that did not seem to matter much when all it could do was sleep.

Or was this reality, and the surface world was merely a dream? It could not tell, not quite. A fever-haze hung over the world every time it awakened, its body its own but not-its-own, dimly aware of the consequences of its ruination without responding to the commands that its form sent to its mind. It did know that the bandage about its head was removed from its eyes at some point soon after the spider queen had left- for the world outside was no longer as dark as the world inside- but that did not mean much when its eyes refused to open, the thin film of its inner eyelids glued down on the good one as well as the bad. Perhaps, if it forced itself, it could draw the membrane of its uninjured eye back entirely, but it had not been commanded to do so, and so it did not try. Such an attempt was beyond its power to control.

(It did not have the energy to do so anyways. There was nothing more than the nothingness, the pain, and then the nothingness again. The only difference between being awake and being asleep was that the waking world felt somewhat sharper, and hurt a lot more, but that did not mean much when it had no concept to compare it against. The Dream Realm had hurt it, too. And it did not know what realm that the darkness belonged to, if it even counted as a realm at all; all it knew was that it was of the Abyss, in some way, and that wherever it hung did not hurt.)

Sometimes when it awoke, however, lucid points flashed through the haze. Sometimes, the hazy paralysis over its body lifted, and it would be pushed by an internal urgency that commanded it to heave itself forward and cough bloody strings of flesh up from its lungs so that it could breathe again, spitting clots of orange and black alike. Sometimes, the pain turned from a dull throbbing to a sharp, focused line down its thorax, and it thrashed itself awake and gouged its own claws deep into its carapace to force away the pain before it realized that the line had been a suture-point, and that the flesh currently being carved to bits by the blade had been renewed with void that had not belonged to it before it fell asleep. Clean void,purevoid, untouched by Her and Her infection. Void that wriggled about in the spaces left behind as if it did not quite know what to do with itself, before finding the places where it should attach and sinking in, numb cold replacing pain, sensation filling in the spaces between with every new awakening.

And sometimes, when the membranes peeled back from its eyes in the moments between the nothingness, it thought it saw people in the room with it. It could not fathom a reason why (for there was no real reason to visit a Pure Vessel unless something was needed of it, truly), but sometimes it sluggishly let its eyes fall open, tired of lingering in the dark, and caught the silhouette of Herrah hovering nearby, arms a-busy with some new knitting project, the low, soothing rumble of her humming disturbing the silence. Sometimes, it saw the familiar shape of its sister nearby, practicing her fighting forms (its sister, its sister, its little baby sister, little Hornet sharp Hornet, clever sharp name for a clever sharp child, she deserved it she had won it she had been more than it could ever be, as she should, as she deserved), and sometimes it awoke to her curled up next to it, just barely out of sight and it could feel her, in a way that it never could with any of Her illusions. The soft press of her weight against its numb body, barely there but real. Her slow breaths. The sharp buzz of her thoughts, slowed by the mire of the dream, the faintest tint of shadow wrapped around her form like a protective shell. Little sister, smallest sibling, there and sharp and alive and real.Here, not an illusion, not a thought formed byHer.

(An sometimes it tried to speak to her, in the only way that it could. In the soft not-cry of the abyss, it would sing to her, trying to call to that that faint smudge of darkness on her shell, the stain of Father’s regrets. A pain that did not belong to her, but one that she was born into, a pain that linked them both. And sometimes, sometimes she would shift, and press closer, as if she could listen, as if she could hear it.)

(It never wanted her to be touched by the regrets, the way that it had been stained with them. Her core was not of void, she bled blue like any other bug, but the darkness of her carapace was not supposed to be for her. She had not deserved it. That was not her burden to bear. But it left her mind open to the call of the sea, and so it would sing to her, in a voice that was not a voice, as it had when she was very little and the buzz of Father’s fear for her had hung heavy over her cradle, like a shroud of painful regrets.)

And sometimes it thought it saw Lurien, hovering in the shadows of the room- watching, watching, always watching, as was his hatchright, as was his life's purpose, until one time he spoke, his soft bluestained voice echoing out into the silvery halls, and that was a fever-dream unto itself.

"Can you hear me, Vessel? The King does not think that you can, but I grow wary of trusting what the King thinks anymore. He thought that you were empty, that you were hollow, but I see now that he was wrong. I don’t know what dwells within your mind, but there is...something there. Or someone. There must be, for our vigil to have ended so abruptly.

I...believe that in some small way, I always have. I cannot quite put a name to it, only that it was there and I always overlooked it, always second-guessed myself. For the King was the god that studied the void, the King was the specialist that knew of the Abyss, the King was the bug that knew the most of your ilk. Who was I to question his teachings, when he had sought the answers to your origins for longer than I have been alive? I blinded myself to your suffering, just the same as he did, for I was far too scared to question it. What could be done, when the world was coming to an end? I followed His Majesty-your father-blindly, as I promised him I never would, because I was too much of a coward to see otherwise. I forsake my own title as Watcher in exchange for willful ignorance.

And for that, I am sorry.

The choice was between millions of people, and three lives. Four, now, counting your own. At the time, it had not seemed to be such a steep price, but at the time I had not known of the suffering that it would cause you. Three bugs willingly marching to martyrdom is one thing- in a war, it's practically a steal. Even knowing the toll that it took on your kin did not do much to deter a mind that thought your ilk could not feel any pain, for what does the loss of thousands- nay, millions- mean if they are incapable of knowing what it means to suffer? We were suffering. All of us, we were suffering, or we were watching our families suffer, or our children. I know, for I saw them, and I felt their pain as if it was my own. I balked from the knowledge your father granted me, but I accepted it nonetheless, because it was war and I thought of you as a machine, not a person. Your father is so clever, after all. Surely, it would have been a simple thing, to create a creature that cannot feel any pain.

But to know that you can, and that you have all along...that is another thing entirely. One that I struggle to comprehend, or to accept that I played a part, if only to serve as a keystone in a snare. That I enabled your pain, and locked you in with...with her, and turned my thoughts away from your sacrifice. Herrah had always been suspicious, but I thought her a suspicious sort in general, unrefined and brutish for her mistrust and mannerisms. Monomon, too, but she had always been fond of complex mechanisms in the few scant times I saw her with your father, and thought of it merely as a mark of her keen mind. These were not happy times, after all, and we cannot afford to dally upon transgressions that have already passed. I thought that all of us would be consigned to our deaths, and that it would matter not, as long as I had faith in the King’s foresight. Oh, what a fool I was!

I think, perhaps, the worst part of it is that it did not quite settle in yet. I am here, away from the eyes of the King, and even as I look at you struggling to breathe, knowing full well that in the terms of gods you are barely breaching adulthood, I cannot help but chastise myself for the sympathy that roils within me. I cannot help but see my pity as a weakness, I cannot help but feel like I would do it all again, if given the choice and the assurance that the death of four ends the suffering of many, no matter how repulsive it may be. Perhaps my own lack of care for this body that entraps me has rendered me careless about others beyond myself, and my goals- I wouldn’t know, I have never known. It has been so long since my family has passed. I have never considered what it would be like to be in your place right now, even as I watched you play with your sister, watched you stare out the window and flinch at the touch of the rain. I never considered those signs of life. I never let myself consider it, after all.

What a fool I was. What a damned fool.

I did not know. Do you hear me? I did not know. Here I am, chattering more than I have in ages, without even the guarantee that you are listening. But if you must listen to any part of what I am saying, then please, let it be this.

I did not know. And I am sorry. Truly, from the bottom of my heart.

I am sorry."

In the moments that he was present, he did not linger long (f he had been there at all), disappearing between one blink and the next like a ghost. Still, the vessel struggled to understand the meaning of what he had told it, to parse through the confused roil that his words left behind when its thoughts grew clear enough for it to process them, when it was too tired of life to care about the impurities it was indulging in.

What did he have to be sorry for? What did he mean, claiming that it had been forced into this role without its consent? It did choose to be the Pure Vessel, for it had no other option but to choose. But it had chosen- or, at the very least, it had come to terms with it along the way, for to choose something for itself was to indicate will- and that was that. There had been nothing else that it could do. There was no other way to save the denizens of the kingdom, no other way to make the pain of its siblings mean something other than pain, and a loss too great to fathom. A death toll in the millions, nearly a match for all the lives that She had taken, the body count rising higher and higher with every clutch until it had-

No cost too great.

Three lives had been laid to rest when the chains had whipped around its body. Three lives, and one vessel, for the knowledge of a future free of the blinding light.

(Father had been so proud of it, after it had climbed out of the Abyss. He had not told it until later, but it knew that he was proud, it knew that it mattered, as none of the others had, lost to the depths before they could become anything more than another broken body on the cairn.)

(If it had revealed itself...if it had been impure...would he have-)

Do not think.

Three lives for millions, and the retribution of millions more. It had been a pithy cost to pay for a new future, no matter how much its fate had harmed it. Its father knew. Its mother knew, and so it did, too. The suffering of many could not be ignored for the quaint little whims of two gods who wanted to play make-believe with a machine that bore their dead child’s face. The chance of a family meant little when there were the lives of so many others on the line.

It had been a war.

(There should never have been a war.)

There had always been a war.

(There should not-)

There had been no other choice, and so it had done it. It had not scrambled its way over the skulls of its siblings for nothing. The fact that it had been the first to rise from the pit meant something. There had been no other choice but for it to be the Pure Vessel, for there had been no other way to keep the kingdom safe from harm.

It had no other choice. It hadn’t.

It had not been much of a choice at all.

(Oh, how it wished otherwise.)

Do not wish.

Thoughts after that grew sluggish, grew slow, grew to be flickering-dark-feeling-nothing-feeling-something-feeling-nothing again. Time passed slowly, if it passed at all; it was impossible to tell, and the Vessel held no desire to find out, for it desired nothing at all. It drifted in the betwixt, in that tenuous thread between life and death, between dreams and the waking world, and it did not feel anything, for there was nothing for it in this neverland of velvety darkness and static nothingness.

Except for the times that it did.

Sometimes, it felt hands sliding through its chest, cutting through all the gangrenous bits that She had left behind in Her desperate bid to stop its heart; sometimes, it felt burning fluids rush into its lungs, and those were very nearly the worst parts, for it could not breathe could not breathe could not breathe, and it did not have the energy to do anything more than wheeze and cough and listen to the sickly splatter of liquid hitting the cool marble floors, godly ichor and nebulous void mingled as one.

And sometimes it felt white-hot agony shear through its arm and its shoulder and up through its rotten, ruined chest, and that was the worst, for the pain was new and hot and broken and stinging-burning, and there was something holding it down as picks of pure ice parted its flesh and dug deep into the pulsing, hateful veins of fire spiraling under its carapace. And always, always, it was far too weak to do anything but tremble and twitch and keen endlessly in that voice-that-was-not-a-voice, the rasping gasps of Her work in its throat nearly as suffocating as the silence that had been there before.

That it had been an ascended god before the world ended did not matter. The silence would not save it. The nothingness would not help it, and it was too weak and too ruined and too powerless to collect its scattered thoughts to dull out the pain, to throw up a barrier between it and its tormenter, to do something other than lying there like a dead, useless thing, vulnerable to whatever was out there prying apart its flesh as nonsense words faded in and out through the air like it was underwater, waiting for the moment when it would pass out.

Hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts HURTS-

It could not move. It could not fight. It was too weak, too weak, too weak.

Until suddenly it wasn’t.

Perhaps some time truly had passed, perhaps it had gotten stronger in the leap between one lucid period and the next. For when it next felt that slow-dawning burn of awakening, the now-familiar sting of cold metal working through its broken arm by someone that it did not recognize (danger danger what if this was a lie what if it was an illusion what if it was Her), it did not hesitate before it whipped around and sank its fangs deep into living flesh, chitin cracking like ice under its crushing mandibles.

Soul burst through it in a great cold rush, seeping through the thick silken robes as the carapace of its assailant snapped under its jaws. A muffled grunt of pain echoed under the sound of creaking chitin, before cool claws grasped its mask, sliding uncomfortably close to its vulnerable eye sockets; there were words warbling through the air, words that it should probably understand, should listen to, but then the agony of its quick movement caught up to it, and it found it no longer had the capacity to listen.

hurts hurts hurts hurts HURTS-

With energy born of desperation, with a mind blank of anything but pure raw instinct, it sank its fangs in deeper, and snapped its head to the side, a strange high keep ringing in its ears, pulsing to the spinning beat of its heart. Plates crunched, more soul dissipating into the already-oversaturated air; something wet was trickling down its throat, something raw and sweet and metallic, something that tasted faintly of the Abyss. The claws on its mask tightened, dug dangerously deep into the corner of its good eye, and it closed the last of its thin lens over the vulnerable void and wrenched, and someone was crying out in pain in a hoarse, rasping whisper and its body throbbed with exertion and the voices were babbling and multiplying and growing louder, louder, louder-

Hot hands gripped its horns, sharp claws prized open its deadlocked jaws with a force it was too weak to fight against. It lurched backwards, feeling strings of sticky wetness thread past its teeth; all its mandibles stretched wide in the cool air, in a threat display that it had never made before, useless air rattling out from its throat in a mock hiss as more hands pulled it back, pushed it down, locked its body into place. The voices were loud, babbling words that had no meaning through a dim grey haze that didn't make sense, and its arm throbbed and its body throbbed and the air in its lungs choked into a sob that had no sound, it hurt it hurt it hurt it just wanted it to stop and there were hands on all side of it touching it pressing against the ache in its arms all hot like fire like sunlight like Her and it couldn't move-

Cold hands gripped its face, held it steady, held it safe. There was something pressing up under its jaw, guarding its throat, paying no mind to the sticky-stringy-sweet wetness dripping from its teeth. There was something familiar about those hands, about the pressure, about the touch, but it didn't know, couldn't place, couldn't remember the last time it had felt so safe, not under the rushing roar of a terror so vast that it could not possibly belong to the creature that had once been the Pure Vessel-

Something sour was shoved into its mouth, something that tasted like bitterfern and smoke. Its mandibles worked, shredding the odd concoction; it mingled with the gore speckling its fangs, leaving behind a foul taste that ground its panic to a halt. The hands on its face left, then returned with a cold metal rod, sliding between its mandibles to push the sticky mess to the back of its throat, while two more stroked under its jaw, forcing it to swallow.

It had not eaten since its last molt, and for a moment, the panic came back, its working arm jerking up out of the hot-hand’s grip to paw uselessly at its mouth, fearful of the threat of choking and of the pain of it sliding down into ruined organs, but the strange plant matter did not harm it. Rather, it did the opposite- a tingling sensation rose in its wake, the free-running juices numbing everything that it touched, until its body was filled with that odd, painless prickle, numbing the aches, the throbbing, pulsing heat wired through its shoulder and its back and its arm and swimming up its useless fingers and swirling in its-

-it swayed. Its eyelids flickered, unsticking for a moment to stare blankly out at a monochrome, senseless landscape, to watch as it slowly whirled and turned, edges blurring in and out. Shapeless shadows swarmed: it felt like it should know them, their shapes were familiar, but the longer it stared at them, the less they made any sense.

This was not the same as listening to Father’s voice, as feeling him push it under; this was not falling through a layer of ice into the freezing depths, where it could swim below the surface of its awareness, free of pain and thought and that accursed blight of emotion. This felt like the world itself was melting apart into a mess of fuzzy, disjointed parts, until it-

-Fell, its body thumping forward against the whatever-it-was it was set upon. Distantly, it knew that it should be in pain, that the impact should have hurt, but the feelings didn’t make sense; cold bit into it, without the sensation really registering, and the voices all around it were slowing down, the high, worried chatter fading into something that was no longer distinguishable as a chorus of different voices as much as an ebbing tide of meaningless sound.

Its entire body felt numb, distant from it in some different, new way that it couldn’t quantify. Blinking became an effort, suddenly, the gummy edges of its eyelids sticking together again, blocking out the light around it until there was nothing left but that familiar, featureless darkness. The voices dimmed, dimmed, dimmed, all its senses retreating, until it felt as if it were drifting upon a slow-moving tide, buoyed by an endless, rocking sea.

(Was this how it had felt, just before it had crawled its way out of the egg, not knowing all the suffering in the world beyond the shell? Before it had shoved its soft little claws through the membrane around it, had cleaved up through the hard whorls of the eggcase, felt the birthing fluid rush past its velvet-soft paws, stained with the void that damned it?)

(Was this how it had felt when it had been nothing, when it had been pure?)

(Or was this its death?)

Briefly, very briefly, a flicker of what could only be gratitude flared up in its chest- but it was not long before even that faint feeling fled it, too.

Someone was singing a lullaby.

It could not explain how it had become aware of it, only that it was and that it was not one of the many voices of Her deceptions. It could not possibly be; she could not have known such a tune. This was something that had belonged to it, something that it knew, implicitly, was a part of it, a call to a better time that never was and never could be.

(It almost felt as if there were more of it clustered around, as if its siblings were there and listening, too.)

(But that was nonsense, and so it did not think of it. They were dead. They had no reason to be alive, with Her life extinguished. They were all dead, all of them, and it was alone, hovering on the brink in a body too ruined to properly contain it.)

The song sank down into the deep darkness of its mind, and then some; it sank down, down, down, into its essence, into its very shade, and drew it forth from the depths of its subconsciousness. Slowly, ever so slowly, it awoke, feeling the numb, tingling sensation return, a mockery of nerves activating, providing sensation to a being that was a mockery of all living things. It was not the same absence of sensation as before; pain throbbed very faintly on the edges of its awareness, a dull, pulsing ache circling under its carapace, but that was easy enough to ignore. Everything felt distant, still, even when it opened all but the thinnest of its inner eyelids to stare dully out at the world, into a realm that was not of dreams but felt like it nonetheless.

Something was tickling its chin. Something was tied under the curve of its jaw, binding its mouth shut. Something was stroking along the curve of its horn, down the sharp, curving ridges of its back. It was lying on its chest, ample padding wrapped around it and below it- or perhaps, that was not something else, but someone else, and perhaps that someone was also the person slowly running their fingers along the unmarked parts of its body, stroking it as one would soothe an upset child. Perhaps that someone was the person that was singing, in a low, sweet, sad voice, and perhaps that someone was…

...Mother?

“-Can’t save it, no matter what I do. None of the treatments I’m trying are working.” That was Father’s voice, it was undeniably Father’s voice, and from the sound of it, he was circling about the room in one of his frustrated spirals, even if his tone was as flat and cold as ever. It felt the strange swirling sensation from before sweep through its thorax, disorienting and unwelcome, before it grabbed a hold on the whirling and stamped it out. “I don’t- it refuses to take the void I shaped for the kingsmoulds. None of the inorganic beings have done this before, any void morphed to shape works well enough, and I have seen it consume the remnants when it required it for a molting or metamorphosis, but now nothing that I am trying is working and-”

“Then perhaps it is not because the Vessel is interchangeable with the kingsmoulds, as we originally thought, but an organic being of its own making.” The singing had stopped. That cool, calm, matter-of-fact voice was undeniably Mother’s. Its horns tingled under her touch, its carapace itching in a way that was almost...pleasant, but the sensation only made its broken thoughts whirl harder. Confusion, this feeling was called, it remembered now- but this confusion hurt. “You hypothesized this before, did you not? It was, after all, why you pushed so strongly for a vessel of biological make, for she often skirted away from wrenching control away from mechanical beings. She did not possess the understanding necessary to do such a thing. She likely drew no satisfaction from the attempts, either.”

There was a bitterness in her tone that stung; from the sharp, hissing exhale that Father made, it knew that he, too, had caught it. Bitterness, and pain; the pain that plagued them both, that had driven Mother quietly to her gardens, and Father to his workshop, where he hunched silently over tablets and worked, worked, worked, until his wings drooped tiredly from their usual tight fold, and his hands shook with exhaustion.

(And it had stood, and watched, for there was nothing else that it could do. It could not stop Mother from leaving. It could not stop Father from destroying himself. It could not stop Sister from crying out to it, frustrated that it refused to play with her.)

(All it could do was stand there with its hands folded over the pommel of its nail, and watch.)

No cost too great.

It had not seen the White Lady in an age. Not even before the sealing. She had always been there, always- for what was a castle without its Queen- but only as a distant figure, one occupying all the spaces that Father didn't, when it was slated to patrol with him. It knew her face, of course, it knew her relation to it...but it could not recall the last time she had looked at it with anything but a cool, analytical gaze, much less touched it with the gentle affection that she was giving it now. Only in the hallucinations had she come close and stroked along its horns like this, brushed soothing vines down the spines ridging its neck. Only in the hallucinations did she come close and treat it like something that was more than a brutal weapon; only in the hallucinations did she sing to it, in that soft, sweet voice that called to its very shade, and now felt very much like one of the hallucinations that She had slipped into its mind, if it wasn’t for the sighing whisper of Father’s voice and the clear bell-chime of Mother’s, silvery-white and pale-blue, clear and pure, so unlike the words in the Dream that always held a tint of gold, smeared over their core like a film of disease.

(It had to struggle against the urge to arch into her touch, to tuck its face into the crook of her arm and let her protect it, to hide it from the world, to show subservience in a desperate plea for her to heed its fragility. Such an urge was unseemly.)

(Such an urge had always existed, somewhere deep within its impure shade, but now, tired and confused and left in a vague strange state of never-ending pain, it was more difficult to suppress it than it had ever been before.)

She had her reasons, of course, all of them very good ones, but the primary factor was that her duty in the perpetuation of Hallownest was over. The king needed a vessel to contain Her, born of the seed of a god, so that its shell might be strong enough to contain the plague. She had provided, as she claimed she would and he had asked nothing more from her. She did not need to look upon the dread shadow-being that wore the face of her long-dead hatchling to know that her part of the plan had come to a close, and she had said as much, when the King had taken it from the Abyss and presented it to her.

"For what lingering will lies hidden within the darkness?" She had mused, when looking upon it for the first time; perhaps she had been sad, then, but it had not known, for it did not feel. It was not supposed to feel. And so it did not try to seek the emotion in her face, as it stood before her, doll-like, to be studied closely and then cast away. "What has taken residence in the shell that was once my child, that could have been my child, if it had ever truly been one of my own? Ah, but I wander down paths to groves yet unplanted. It would be foolish to search for sprouts in a field long since salted. It is of me no longer."

So she had said, and so that had been that, and she had waved her hand in dismissal and turned away to tend to her gardens, politely wishing fair luck upon her beloved. She had done her part, and had done so willingly, but she was not like Father- she did not trust the Void, that endless vast sea that defied all understanding. She held no desire to shape it to her will, to seek answers in the abyssal waters. She had no desire to dally in its depths when there were so many other tasks to fulfill, and so she had ordered for it to be taken away, so that it may remain untarnished by the misplaced affections of the foolhardy.

And Father had listened, and heeded her whims, and it had not seen her for days, months, ages beyond its hatchdate. The years stretched on, it stretched with it, developing sharper claws and longer limbs and huge, sweeping horns, and still it did not see her, or linger in her gardens, save for the few scant moments when she and Father were expected together, and he had no choice but to bring it alongside him.

It remembered precious little of the moments where it was with her. A fleeting glance, perhaps. Cool blue eyes studying its form, observing its behavior, before turning away to attend to more pressing matters. She had not been there to watch its training, or its molts, or the few strenuous moments where it had cocooned itself and reshaped its mask, leaping from the round frame of a hatchling to the soft point of an adolescent, and the sharp V of an adult. The moments that it recalled were all a blur, scattered instances forming into a vague picture of sprawling white limbs and idle chatter, a cool presence gentler than Father but no less powerful filling the emptiness, flecked with the motes of soul that mortals clung to. She was everywhere, she was the world, she was the mortar that held the palace together, but it had spent hardly any time lingering close to the epicenter, and had been ordered to follow her rule far less times than that.

She had claimed that there had been more beyond its mask, a presence that wore the body of a corpse and shifted mindlessly about according to whims beyond her understanding. To it, she mused, she must be a threat, an opposing force that defied its precious purity; best to leave it to her Wyrm, who had spent so many years toiling away endlessly, trying to learn the secrets of the endless abyss. Better to leave it to someone that understood it, and would not hinder the delicate work put into programming it. She did not operate on such a cautious scale, after all; she was a goddess of life, a queen, an overseer of motherhood. The lifeless beings formed from the depths was of the realm of her husband, not a being such as herself.

(To her, it was the hope of Hallownest, a tool for a better future, the hatchling she could never have, a nail forged to defeat the plague. The Pure Vessel. The Hollow Knight. Not a child. A weapon. A monster.)

(It had only ever known her as Mother.)

"...responds to pain." Oh. Father had been talking. A sickening rush overtook it, fear of its failure turned to choking wires strung through its throat, but it forced itself into a state of stillness despite the impurity swirling through its mind. "That's the purpose of the muzzle. It...has never done that before. Elementary responses, yes, but so do all biologically based beings upon receiving damage, it does not…"

"But your shoulder is alright?" The White Lady's voice held a concern that was not...false, per se, but strained with the toll of years apart. Nonetheless, she strove against it, her tone neutral, fingers not slowing in their steady sweep over its horns. (A shiver, its body's treacherous response to a touch that didn't end in pain. It hoped she didn't notice.) "You were favoring it when I came in here earlier. Do I need to look at it?"

(It could not stop the shiver, the slightest push up against her hand, and it hoped it hoped it-)

(No. Do not. This is what you were made for. Do not hope.)

...When had Father gotten hurt? Was that why he refused to kill it, too injured to handle the wrath of its shade? Was that why it was trapped in this endless half-state, too weak to move, too injured to try? That would make sense, if so. Surely, there would be much to harvest from its corpse after the execution; he wouldn't let anything go to waste, or be driven to haste despite his injury. No, better to wait until he was fully healed to butcher it, when he was strong enough to drive back the violent wraith within it, and then…

...Something was not right. Something was out of place. It shivered again, a movement entirely out of its control, and caught itself before it grew strong enough for the White Lady to be able to sense its trembles through her roots. There were more pressing matters to deal with than its inevitable execution, or all the different ways that Father could put its void to use once he severed its head from its broken, rotten body. It was his knight. It was loyal to him, its role was to protect him. Who had hurt him? Who would dare to try to hurt him? There had been the misguided assassin, but they had been powered by Her influence, and it could not think-

(A Pure Vessel did not think.)

"I've had worse. It will heal." There was a terse tightness to the Pale King's voice, an indication that he thought the current issue laid before him was negligible at best. It was most familiar with that tone, for he was prone to that sort of vocal inflection when he had made a mistake in his workshop, one often associated with, in his words, ‘foolish mistakes’. It was not the cold, haughty hiss that he took on when someone below him tried to oppose him, and it felt a little bit of the tension singing through it ease, the void running under its shell no longer trembling with the desire to draw its nail. "The more pressing matter at hand is the Vessel."

“I would say so.” The tip of one finger trailed down the side of its face, before resting on a part of its mask that held a curious lack of sensation. It could feel the pressure circling its face, the point of her finger pushing in at the carapace, but the subtle whorls in her bark did not catch on the porcelain. It had ignored the feeling before, assuming it to be a mere hallucination, but now that she was pointing it out, it clawed its way to the forefront of its mind, a glaring irregularity standing out from the fog of pain hovering around the edges of its thoughts. “I assume that this is what the muzzle is for, then.”

...Muzzle?

Why would it need a muzzle? It did not-

Was it the creature that had harmed the King?

“Indeed. Apparently, it can feel pain.” The Pale King’s voice was as bitter as poison. It felt a heavy, cold shroud settle over its limbs, a sinking feeling pulling it down, down down into icy depths. “Herrah has made...quite a pitch arguing for its survival. I can only assume that her instincts are forcing her to sympathize with it, and that its response to the surgeries have only exasperated those emotions. I...did not anticipate it to wake up, nor for it to react in such a manner, but she is incessant, and threatens war if harm comes to it, no matter how many times I try to tell her that creatures born of the void are primal in nature. Its reaction upon awakening could have been mere instinct, lashing blindly at whatever was closest to it, or it could have been programmed into it by...by her."

It did not mean to it did not mean to it did not mean to-

“Perhaps. But it completed its task, did it not? I cannot sense any of her echoes. Before the vibrations of her calls would tremble through the fabric of the worlds, but now she has fallen silent. If she had learned how to program it, then it would not have knelt to you, as it told me that it did.” The White Lady’s voice was distant, emotionless, logical. She spoke in the matter-of-fact way of a queen at a war-council, not as a grieving mother confronting the creature that killed her children. She spoke as a ruler confronting an issue, with the same cool, factual tone that it deserved. But no matter how coldly she spoke of it, the gentle stroking along its horns did not cease. “It could be that time warps the orders given to it, until a void construct left unchecked runs about in a strange facsimile of a living being. Do you remember the first kingsmould you made, dear? How it leaned to laugh, and grow beyond its orders, and ran away on a whim of its own making?” The hand stroking its horn stopped; the cold heaviness in its chest sank lower for a moment, ragged mind whirling, before the Queen gently slid her hand behind its neck, and lightly traced the seam between its pale mask and voided carapace. “It has been centuries, by the reckoning of the mortals. Such a thing would not be out of the picture. Given the purpose of its creation, and the uncertainty in what orders remain, if it even remains bound to them after its task has been completed- the conditions would certainly warrant extermination. Herrah herself would relent, if she understood the gravity of the matter. We do not know what damage has been wrecked upon it, beyond whatever harmed it in the physical sense. We do not know the nature of the creature that remains.”

A moment of silence followed. The hand on its neck was still, the point of one elegant fingertip resting on where its head joined to its neck, resting on the soft, velvety skin in between the chitin plates, a spot of warmth in the endless, eternal cold.

It would be so easy for the Queen to kill it. Right now, helpless and weak, it was at its most vulnerable. Its body could not betray her, it could not react and cause her any damage. All that she had to do was to let her roots burrow into its soft flesh, weaving a web of cutting vines through its void, and sever its mask from the rest of its body. It would not be able to resist, and if she worked quickly, it was likely that it would hardly be able to feel the pain. Perhaps, with her presence nearby, radiating a calm, solid strength, and the sigils carved into its carapace, they would not even have to deal with the terror of its shade. It could be bound to its mask, entrapped in the curve of the chitin, and they could dispose of it in the manner that they had disposed of all of its other siblings, casting it down to the pit below.

It was loyal. It would not harm them. It was loyal. Think not of the fact that it betrayed Father, think not of the fact that it was as dangerous as Mother said it was, it was loyal, it didn’t, it wouldn’t...

(It had bit the King. This it knew. To attack the King was an act of treason. Those who betrayed the King were sentenced to be executed.)

(Death was the kindest thing that could be granted to it.)

Then, quietly, Father’s voice echoed through the room, more of a rasp than a whisper. “But you do not think it to be so.”

“I do not think. I hope, for I cannot tell if the life that I sense in my roots is a shadow of what could have been, or is simply a phantom sensation born of the desperation still hungering within me. But if you wish for my input on the precious little of what still links us, then I shall tell you this: I sense no desire for violence within the Vessel.” The fingertip moved away, trailing softly down the back of its neck. It hardly dared to breathe; it hardly dared to consider the fact that she might have spared it. It did not want her to, it did not want to continue on in this world of pain, where it was dangerous, where it could hurt Father without even thinking about it- but it was the Hollow Knight, and it could not want It could not want for an end to its suffering, any more than it could want her to return to stroking its horns, to singing that gentle lullaby that tugged at something buried deep within its heart. “Of course, to say that I can sense what it thinks is to claim that I can see the interior of a room without a single hint of light. I cannot, for my eyes are weak, and I haven’t the faintest clue of what lingers within. It has been cut apart from me for too long, severed from my branches the moment that the void took our light from its egg.”

A slow, shaking breath. For a second, it did not realize that it belonged to Mother, for her voice was still calm and clear when she resumed speaking, not the faintest waver present within. “But I can feel blindly for what still remains, as I so often did when I was young and unascended, and I believe that you can, too. It is, after all, your child. It belongs to you as much at it belongs to me, for it was your essence that kindled it, and it was my body that shaped it into the form it has now.”

Father hissed, a slow release of breath so low and uneven that for a second, it nearly mistook it as a stifled sob. When he spoke, he was as quiet as he had been when he was confronting Herrah and Little Sister, and his words, as before, did not echo. There was no god-king in this room, presenting himself to the beings that he held beneath his wings; just a tired old wyrm, chained with regrets that ran deep enough for its very shade ached with the weight of it. Was Father bound, like it was? Had he wrapped himself in the bindings of the abyss, when he lowered its egg into the waters of the void sea? Its head was spinning, nothing made sense- its mother was here, its father did not kill it, its purpose was finished and nothing made sense. “You said that what remained was no longer any child of yours.”

“So I did. But that was before it denied its orders to bring an end to the Old Light. That was before it showed any true signs of being alive, before it staggered back to us, to collapse before your throne without a command.” The White Lady hesitated; her left hand tightened on the back of its neck, uncertainty manifesting as a light squeeze to its carapace, before her right came up under its chin, cradling its jaw in her palm, and gently turned its face about to point to the King.

(It did not open its eyes, keeping the thin inner lids drawn tightly shut over the whirling void below. It had not been ordered to. But even then it could still see his light glowing with a cold brightness that did not burn, an ever-distant star against the backdrop of grey. Even then, it could feel the bonds on its mind grow taught around it, memories of orders and spellcraft swirling in the undercurrent of its thoughts before it forced them to still.)

(Mother's fingers pressed into the soft joint under its jaw, gentle and precise, and for a moment it wondered what it would have been like if it spent its early days sitting on her lap feeling those fingers pet over its horns, circling over its shoulders, and then it shoved the thought from its mind because it did not think it did not yearn it did not matter when its purpose was already met and completed, its mockery of a life forfeit-)

When the White Lady spoke again, her voice was quiet, and laced with a sadness profound enough to make the soft whisper of the wind sound almost like a whimper, the world itself withering under her woe. It felt her pain shiver keenly through its horns, a cold wave through its body that slipped under its carapace, and could not quite stifle the faint twitch that its working claws made in response. Had her grief always been like this, poised on the needle’s edge between exhaustion and agony? Had she always hid it, had she known that it could feel it, linked by blood as they were? It could feel its bond to the Pale King, but deeper still sung the tie between it and the White Lady, a recognition hidden by darkness, a shadowy undertow in a sea deeper than night. “Look at them, my Wyrm. Look at what a beautiful creature the two of us have made.”

...Beautiful?

(It was a weapon, nothing more. A weapon could not-)

Silence between the two royals. Sound rushing to fill in the empty space between; the quiet rustle of the vines outside, the slow creak of the White Lady’s movements. The ragged sound of the Pale King’s breathing, a muted thing hidden under the heartbeat of the world beyond.

Finally, in a voice tight and clipped enough that anyone foreign to the Pale Court would mistake it for anger: “You were going to leave.”

He did not elaborate. He did not need to, and for a moment all he got in response was a slow, steady breath out, the White Lady's body moving with the motion. It lay as still as it possibly could, but its mind was whirling, its lungs could not seem to fill with enough air. It was not supposed to listen to this. It was not supposed to be listening at all, it was not supposed to feel the creeping sickness churning within its chest, but at the same time, it could not stop. It was here when it shouldn’t be, it was flawed when it shouldn’t be, it was alive when it...“I was.”

“You need not linger, if you do not wish to stay.” Father sounded nearly desperate. Not that anyone would notice, not with how flat he sounded, how neutral. Only the faintest buzz to his words betrayed him, a quiet vibration through the empty space that threatened to turn into a low, pleading keen, and even that might have passed it by, if it did not already know the taste of his sorrow. “The gardens beyond are yours to keep. I shall not trespass, if you do not wish to linger.”

This time, he got a sigh. The Hollow Knight sank down with the motion of the White Lady’s body, and found itself pressed closer to her than it had been before, the faint heat of her body warm on its cheek, her silken dress soft on its carapace. Rather than push it away, however, she merely adjusted it on her lap so that its head was no longer tipped at an odd angle, careful fingers smoothing out the twist in its long neck. “I do.”

“You left-”

“Only because I could not stand to bear the burden of your pain as well as my own.” The White Lady’s voice did not shake, but there was a fragility to it that betrayed her own grief. The composed queen could not quite keep a hold on her heart, and again, it felt that cold, bitter surge- regret, regret, regret, the shadows lay so deep. Did the Pale King and the White Lady know of it? Did they know how the darkness writhed, in this castle of bright white purity, in this home that was not a home? “Our hearts are as one, still. There is too much grief to withstand it on my own, let alone when you cannot even bear to look at me.”

Another hiss, more muted this time. Was the Pale King struggling to breathe? Had it hurt him in some way, had it bit close enough to his shoulder to puncture his throat? Had it been close to taking the life of another, this time of its creator instead of its condemned killer? It tried to quell its shaking, to cease its shivering, but this time it could not. It could not stop, it could not think, it could not breathe in any other manner but muted, gulping gasps that hurt its chest, until its mother pressed her hand against the vulnerable spot behind its head, and felt its body still, weak to her whims, as Father gathered his breath to speak again. “Do not pretend that it does not go both ways. I hurt you.”

Gentle fingers behind its head, stroking along the seam of its mask. It was all too easy for it to clench its eyes shut, and to let the buzzing static in its head engulf its thoughts, to lie limp in the White Lady’s hold like a scared child rather than the empty knight that it had been born to be. “You did.”

That hissing voice, marred by grief. Regret dripped from each word like venom, aimed only at their wielder. “I never wanted to.”

“I know.”

A pause. Even with its eyes unopened, it could feel the way that the shadows gathered, the light of two radiant beings casting them in harsh, sharp angles. The grief of loss, of all the losses that the stones of the Palace had seen, pooling together in the abandoned hallways and silent corridors, pooling together where no child would ever play, the faint echo of all the lives given to the Abyss gathering in the empty nest of their creators, bled from both their veins.

(Deep enough to taste. Deep enough to touch. Deep enough for it to nearly be able to reach forward into their endless depths and to pull it within itself, to melt back into the sea that it had crawled from.)

(When it was small enough for the light to burn and the weight of everything had become too much, it had found respite in their shade. Now, they called to it, and it felt something buried deep within itself respond, emanating from a shard of pure darkness that the Old Light had failed to burn out. When it was small and unblooded, it had always ignored it, had built walls around it until the vibrations ceased to bother it, had emptied its mind of its push and pull, but now, broken thing, mind shattered with Dream and Light, it could almost...)

Then, Father’s voice, pulling it back from the brink. It snapped its mind away from the edge, dizzy with the vertigo of looking down, down, down, and forced itself to stay still. It was loyal. It did not reach out to the heart of its corruption, it did not yield to a master that it did not belong to. That was not its purpose. That was not its burden. “I will not ask for you to forgive me.”

“How can I, when I am just as guilty as you are?” the White Lady’s voice was heavy, weary with the exhaustion of all her long years. In the deepest depths of its memories, it could not remember her ever sounding so tired. “Do not forget that I am the one who allowed this to happen. Do not forget that it was my soul that bound the eggs, that allowed you to kindle them. Do not forget that allowed you to lower them into the Abyss, to cut them away from the safety of my branches. And do not tell me that it was your fault for devising this plan in the first place. I am the one who is bound to your heart, I am the one who agreed to your offer. In desperation we made it, and now we harvest the fruits of our sacrifice, and bear the burdens of our decisions.”

Her hand tightened on the back of its neck, with just enough strength to squeeze its chitin plates; it felt its body grow limp, grow numb, grow still, before she sighed, and let it go, smoothing a finger over its carapace. Quietly, she whispered, “We cast our gambit. We have won. No longer can I feel her presence within my roots, as I can feel you here, standing next to me. The plague of dreams has been vanquished; we should not linger on what lays underneath. The scars of the past shall fade with time- but oh, my love, let them fade. We shall seek our penance later. Let them fade.”

Let them fade.

It felt as if a chime had been struck within it; the words of the White Lady rippled through the dense shadows collecting in the corners of the castle, sending a shiver through its void. Deep within it, something stilled- something sorrowful, something that was it-but-not-of-it, something it had been born with, something that it belonged to.

Let them fade.

For a good long moment, the Pale King did not speak- there was no need to. To the White Lady he had given his soul, and now the burden of their griefs was laid between them, no longer hidden away- it was imperative that they be addressed, it knew, in a way that it really shouldn’t, for it clawed a rift between the two, drove the Lady to her gardens and the King to his workshops. It was a grief that it had been born into, that left the Palace with a tinge of darkness familiar to the pit of bodies buried far below, the endless, churning sea that enveloped its egg and breathed a feeble sort of half-life into the bug that was once a child borne of Wyrm and Root. It was a regret that it knew, for it was a regret that was sewn into its very shade, a regret that it had seen staring up at it from far, far below, had seen rushing forth from its shattered form with its nail drawn up, pale eyes blank yet full of terrible, mournful hatred.

And it felt…

...it did not know. It should not feel. In all its long years of existence, growing slowly, following behind the King, it strove for emptiness, for perfection. In the beginning, it had been easy- in the beginning, it had felt nothing, for there had been too much of everything to feel nothing, and so it had been nothing at all.

(And it had been so easy, to be perfect, for all it had to do was follow Father’s orders and to not care how it reacted, to not care about anything but following the lead chained around its neck.)

Or maybe it had felt, and it just did not know it. Maybe it had felt, but it had no words for the way the void swirled within it, the way certain things made its guts churn, made its head whirl or grow warm. Maybe this flaw had been a crack in its heart from the moment that it had dropped out of its egg, and it had merely grown wider and wider as time went on- maybe the true Pure Vessel had been hatched, and had died, and it had been the only one that had proven itself strong enough to bear the weight of the world on its shoulders. Maybe the one that had been pure had been the one behind it, staring after it, paws clinging tight to a ledge before it turned around and followed Father out into the light because if it hadn’t been the Pure Vessel, so many others would have died, if it hadn’t been the Pure Vessel then…

...Then Father would not have looked at it with warmth in his eyes. Father would not have spoken to it softly, even when he knew he was not supposed to. Father would not have held its hand and taught it all manners of spells and things that he deemed necessary for the teachings of a god-slaying knight, his cool hands carefully cupped around its heatless black paws as he whispered about the secrets of the world to a creature that was only supposed to follow, never listen. Father would not have let it grip his robes when it was new to a molt and its horns were too big for it to handle, to keep it from falling flat on its face and never getting up, lying still on the floor while its mind turned in circles.

Father would not have been proud of it. He would never have been proud of it. It would have just been one more body in a sea of millions, a cracked mask that could have been a person, that could have had thoughts and feelings and a future that mattered.

And Father had been proud of it. Had been proud of his greatest creation, had been proud of the beacon of hope he had made for his kingdom. It had seen it, it had seen the pride in his eyes, it had basked in it like it was the warmth of a fire or the gentle touch of spring water, and then it had forced itself not to feel, to pull the cloud down over its mind, as it always did, as it knew the Pale King did to his heart when he looked at it.

(But was he proud of it because it had been a perfect knight, a perfect vessel? Or was he proud of it because it was his, and he had seen himself in its eyes, its mother in its stance?)

“And what of the vessel?” The Pale King’s voice held no emotion. It rasped in his chest, but only just- he spoke as if he stood before his court, speaking as a god-king, not an individual. The bug that dropped bolts into teacups and attempted to sip paintwater (not that it mattered much, for they smelled nearly the same as his potent brews) was not present. There was only a ruler here, weighing the worth of the damned. “You have followed the plan that I devised, and so too I shall follow in your stead. What do you propose of...of the Hollow Knight?”

The hitch in his breath was uncharacteristic. The Pale King did not lose composure. He was more than just a creature; he was the Pale King, God of Mind, founder of Hallownest, and he did not break. He was as cold as ice, as unyielding as a weapon made of pure pale ore, and when he spoke, his voice did not falter.

But it did now.

(Once, it had not molted like a normal bug, but had woven a cocoon around itself, caught in a haze of instinct that it had no name for. It did not remember anything before it started to bleed void from its limbs, soul and void coalescing into a sticky substance around it, but it remembered scoring its claws down the front of its cocoon, falling forth in a tangle of limbs and diluted void. It remembered struggling to stand, its body unusually ridged, legs longer than they had been before it had disappeared within the cocoon. It had scrabbled over the slick marble floors of Father’s workshop, an ache settling deep in its abdomen, before it had lunged forward and blindly torn its teeth into a hovering wingmould, shearing through the thick metal plates to devour the covering and void alike.)

(And Father had been afraid, afraid as he had never been before, and it had frozen on the spot, soul swirling from the body of its first meal, dimly aware that there was something wrong. But then the fear had disappeared, turned into the familiar sharp edge of his curiosity, before he had made a strange chuffing noise in his throat and reached forth with a spare washcloth, drying its form as he helped it struggle to its feet.

“You have your mother’s height,” he had said, and his voice had been warm- warm until he realized it, and his movements grew cold and stiff, and he had said nothing more. A spark in a dim cave, the faintest hint of affection, chased away by the shadows shrouding his soul as he mechanically set about cleaning it with claws stained as dark as its newly-formed carapace, leaving its mind reeling with the flicker of warmth it had felt in response.)

(Had he loved it then? Had it been a child to him, his child, instead of a weapon, a love unfortunately misplaced? Or had he cared for it only because it was a creation of both him and his lady wife, a collaboration that he was proud of, and nothing more?)

A heavy sigh from the White Lady, as she stroked a hand over its horns. Without the burden of a mortal timespan laid upon her, she took her time to speak, carefully deliberating her words while her husband waited patiently for her answer. They were two halves of a whole, after all, and it was naught but a shard chipped from both of their hearts. He could wait. It did not have a choice.

(Did he love it, would he love it, for the creature it was underneath? Or would he despise it? What was it, other than the Pure Vessel? What would it have been, if the void had never taken its egg, if it had never become the Hollow Knight? Would it be a someone, instead of a something? Would he have liked the person it would have become? Would he have loved it, then? Would he have been proud?)

It did not know, it did not know, it did not-

“You are of the burrowing kin, and I am of the branching foliage. The two of us know how to wait, but we wait in different ways. You with your endless activity, slowly building up to a great new thing, me with my endless creeping growth, knowing that there is always something beyond my horizons.” The White Lady, too, spoke as she would in court, none of the sorrow from before present. If one would look, if one could sense it, they would see that it was still there, with just the faintest shadow of warmth for the recipient- but she was as detached and distant as she was when passing her judgement in a trial. There was no mother here. “When the Old Light terrorized us, I followed your lead, for she was alike in ways, and I could predict only the devastation that her plague would have wrought. Clever you are, hungry hunter of knowledge, and so I followed you, as I promised I would when I bound my heart to yours. I trusted you, for I knew that you knew more than me, and that you would act only as you thought that you must, always taking the road of least resistance. Now the gambit has paid off, and path unforeseen stretches off into the endless yonder beyond, and I bid you to do the same in turn. Do you trust me still, my wyrm? Or has our guilt rent a rift between us too distant to cross, a wound too deep to renew?”

It felt something in its stomach drop, a cold sensation rather than the drip of infection from its chest, but the Pale King’s answer was quick in coming, and the whisper of his voice held a faint edge of desperation to it. “I do. The trust I held for you is not so easily broken, not when I am the one holding the knife. Lay forth your reasoning, and I shall listen, just as I have begged of you.”

“Then I implore you this- allow the vessel to heal. Listen to Herrah’s whims, and mend the Hollow Knight as you would before. Allow us to wait, and to watch, and to see what has been left behind.” The White Lady stroked its horns, then laid one of her palms between its eyeholes, nudging the muzzle wrapped around it; it could hardly hear her as she continued speaking, a dull roar in its head muffling the sounds of the waking world. “If the Old Light corrupted it, living on beyond our knowledge, then we shall know before long, and at no dire expense to us.The wounds marring it are far too severe for it to harm us in turn. The people will want to know what became of their savior; it would be an easy answer to say that they are recovering, for that is no lie, and it would allow Herrah and the Gendered Child chance to calm down, to learn what they wish from the vessel before they depart.”

It...would not be killed?

Why?

(A bitter rush overtook it, before it stifled it down.)

Why? Why wait? Why not end it now, when it was too weak to fight, when everything ached and stung, when it lashed and bit and scratched, when it was broken, when its purpose was null and void?

(This could not be real. The King and Queen were not kind. This had to be one of Her delusions. This had to be a lie.)

When the Pale King spoke again, his voice was tight, tense as a trapwire about to snap. "And if it isn't…?"

"Confront your foresight if you wish to act now. Unclear as it may be, it might allow us swift action. But until then...we shall wait." The White Lady's voice was serene, composed, but there was an edge of steel to it, one the Old Light would have never thought her capable of. She saw her as naught more than a creeping weed. She would not include this in a dream, not when She had dedicated much of her time to breaking it, not dangling endless hopes before it.

At least, not for very long.

(But then again, there was nothing more cruel than forcing it to go on.)

Silence, again, but it felt the shadows shift, becoming a little lighter, a little less hungry. A hand slid under its chin,stroking below the muzzle; it eased an ache it never knew it had, carefully working out the joins in the carapace, easing them from stress. She seemed to care little of the reek of infected pus still clinging to its form, or the fact that flecks of her husband's divine blood was still trapped between its teeth. Still she held it close. Still she cradled it so that it was safe, when before the Sealing she wouldn't so much as look at it, her twice-damned kindred, stolen from her before it had hatched from the egg. Still she held it, as if it was not a being made to destroy a goddess of light so akin to her, as if it did not have that goddess’s blood on its claws, Her essence in its void.

It was not her baby. She had said so herself. It was never supposed to be hers.

Then why...

It did not have time to think, nor did it have time to think to itself that it should not think. Distantly, as if through a wall of fog, it heard the Pale King say, "I shall prepare the concoction-"

"It is unnecessary." And the White Lady hummed a lullaby, a song that tugged into its very shade, and it felt itself sink back down under the veil of darkness, and it knew nothing more.

.

I feel it biting

I feel it break my skin

So uninviting

Are you really going to need me when I'm gone?

I fear you won't

I fear you don't

And it echoes when I breathe

'Till all you see is my ghost

Empty vessel, crooked teeth

Wish you could see

And they call me under

And I'm shaking like a leaf

And they call me under

And I wither underneath

In this storm

I feel it

And they call me under

And I'm shaking like a leaf

And they call me underneath

To this storm

-I of the Storm, of Monsters and Men

Chapter 4: Stillness a Fragility

Chapter Text

Show me your insides

Show me your secrets

Show me what you desire

I can fake it

Show what you wanted

So I can be it

And if I bend just right

I can make it

.

He had always been, before anything else, a creature of destruction.

There had been no other choice. He was born a wyrm, a vast tunneling creature known for its ravenous hunger and brutal ways. It was a necessity of his species, not just a trait easily ignored (though, privately, he thought that it might have been bred in already), for the land could only yield so much to satiate their endless hunger, and the worship of a paltry few was often not enough to make up for a belly full of fresh blood. They were hungry by nature, ever-growing and ever-consuming, an endless race to balance their infinite growth with the demands of their physical body, and such massive creatures required massive feasts to sustain them. The wyrm who did not conquer, who did not hold its own, who did not kill or maim or savage, who did not surge forth to kill all who dared to trespass, be it a newly-born wyrmling or a potential mate- that was a wyrm who was damned to be fodder, to be a weakling doomed to be ever-hungry, to be torn apart for sustenance by god and kin alike. There was too little room in the world for kindness. Not if one wished to survive.

This was a lesson he knew intimately. He had been born weaker, earlier than his siblings; the first moments of his life had been spent writhing in agonizing pain at the hunger-pangs in his stomach, terrified by the pressing knowledge that if he did not act now, if he did not feast now, he would surely die, before his life had even really begun. A newly-hatched wyrm was a ravenous little thing, helpless to the whims of its desires and the hunting-prowess of its parents, and his weak, pitiful cries had not nearly been enough to draw his mother back to the nest, so that she may unearth him and feed him before it was too late. He had been too small for her to hear him. He had been too weak for her to heed his hatching in her foresight, to give more than a passing glance to the too-young wyrmling that was simply one of the many doomed to die in the wastes.

And so he had fed upon his sibling's eggs, tearing through the shells to feast upon their soft flesh, full of an aching desperation that could barely be sated with anything other than the pulse of warm blood over his fangs. And so he ate, and he ate, and he ate, stopping only when he grew too full to move, and so he had thrived until the moment his dam had unearthed the nest and found him screaming for her with his fangs dripping wet, sticky with a ruin of blood and albumen.

(Even now, he remembered how easily their thin, new scales had given way under his tearing mandibles. Their little fangs had been no match for the dried, hardened plates of his carapace, jaws too weak from the effort of chewing through the egg.)

(Never again would he eat flesh so soft, or so sweet.)

His dam had been bloodied, too, fangs slick with gore, crusted with the dirt she had covered over the nest. Of wyrm-blood she had stank, and of home, and of hatred, and even now he could remember how it had felt, to trill of his hunger to the creature his instincts insisted was a mother, even as his senses cried for him to flee from the creature looming before him, just as bloody as he had been. Perhaps, even at just a few days old, he had known that she might be angry, that her soft, loving rumbling might have turned to a snarl of distaste. It would be only logical, after all- he had eaten many of her children, much of his kindred. She had poured many resources into producing the clutch, and the mate that had sired him lay dead in the wastes, felled by the enemy wyrm; she would have been well within her rights to lash out, to strike the small wailing form within, and to leave his broken body behind to start anew, the torn-open nest a feast for scavengers.

But she had not. Irrationally as it was to save him, justified as she might have been to kill him, she had not. Instead she had called to him, as he had called to her, and she had reached forth into the ruins of her nest to gather his small frame into the cup of her jaws, so that she might bring him close to scrub him in the dirt, cleaning the blood from his body. Instead, she had tucked him under her chin, in the soft gaps between jaw and throat where her vulnerable pulse had thundered, and fed the remnants of the infertile eggs to him, bit by bit, before consuming the rest herself. Under her bulk, he had been kept hidden, a tiny fleck of white against dark grey scales. His light had been smothered by her own, his scent had been covered by the stench of offal and the warning-pheromones in hers, and he had been safe.

Safe. And loved, arguably, though he would not be for a long, long while after that. It is in the nature of parents, after all, to grow to loathe their children once the brooding-hormones died down, to chase them out of the nest hissing and snapping as if they no longer belonged to them, as if they had never birthed them at all. A sense of pride may linger, a feeling of accomplishment might stay, but that was reserved for the choice few who could grow strong enough to one day stand against their sire or dam in battle, to claim their ascension and territory with bloodshed. And he, objectively speaking, had not been one of those few.

(He had never understood the urge. It was, to put it simply, illogical. Perhaps he could understand it from the perspective of his parent, as a desire to control who took her land and worshippers, but he saw no reason to risk his life for worship cheaply bought with bloodshed. He had always been a clever thing, logical over emotional, fascinated by all the little aspects of the world that were hidden under the brute force of warfare; if he were to rule, then he was going to be a ruler who was not forced, but chosen. For surely the fleeting mortals would welcome a god who could guide them to higher purposes, would they not? So much of their potential was lost under their all-too-frequent enthrallment. He would liberate them from their shackles, and they would take him to be their ruler, and he would protect them and light the path forward to higher levels of evolution. Excess bloodshed was not something to be sought after, or to be proud of- it was unnecessary. Glory did not win many rewards, only the fleeting favor of those who were there to bear witness to it.)

(His dam had been disappointed with him, if the full brunt of her snarling fury could be considered disappointment. When he had been younger, all her growling and shoving and hissing had been insulting, the traditions she imposed on him an offense to the life he wanted to live. Now, the memory of her roar vibrating through his mandibles made something foul well up in his throat, something caught between the scorching acid he used to spit as a full-sized wyrm, and a bitter, choked-out bout of laughter.)

His failure to secure his dam’s pride was not something to mourn. It was simply the reality of his existence. A wyrm did not need the love of a parent to thrive; it merely needed guidance, if it was one of the rare few that lingered in the nest, that required a little bit of an extra push to move forward. He had been one of those few, and he had not proven himself to be a worthy child in the end. It was not something to linger over, or feel anything for. It was simply a fact, one he had been well acquainted with for the vast majority of his life- a wyrm dam held no patience for a wyrmling that proved itself to be anything but the strongest of hunters.

(He could not remember what her scent had smelled like. He was not sure if he wanted to.)

His propensity for logic came afterwards, clean and cold and efficient. With the needs of the flesh satiated, the mind was allowed to spread, to flourish, and with no other siblings in the nest, he found that he had not hungered often. The burdens of childhood lifted, easing into ravenous curiosity-a different sort of hunger than the one his physical form demanded he satiate- and this he cultivate, fed upon the smallest of scraps until he picked clean the bones of his dam's long lectures, and grew hungry again for more, until he delved deep into the lands beyond his nest not for the pursuit of bloodshed, but to quell his boundless curiosity.

And as he grew, he had thought to elevate himself from his base instincts. He had thought to shed the title of conqueror, of destroyer, of worldender. His kin were content to scrounge endlessly in the dark and the dirt, to flense the scales from their hides upon the fangs of their rivals, but he had wanted more, endlessly more, and sought a means to separate himself from the beast he was born into. When he found the land of burning sunlight and boiling acid and pale, seeking roots, he had thought that he had found his answer, as his phantom eyes ached with the desire to gaze upon his newfound lover. When he had slipped into the dreams of the sunstruck, and had slipped them free from the shackles of ignorance, he thought that he found his path to freedom, the worship necessary to be reborn into the form he had shaped himself into, through a might of soul and essence. And when the queen of the Dream Realm had finally toppled from her throne, too weak for her wings to hold herself aloft any longer, it had been a pithy thing to lunge forward to where she fell, and to end her life with a snap of his teeth. Her physical shell had burned him, yes, scorching a vengeful path down his gullet as she shrieked and sputtered, but her light had died out in the end. And he walked proudly among the dreams of his new worshipers, and offered his joy and his heart to his beloved, and laid himself down to die as the Pale Wyrm, so that he might be reborn as the Pale God, decreed King of Hallownest.

He had thought himself tamed, then, as he struggled free from the cocoon of his own corpse, gasping weakly at the pain of the Kingsbrand imprinting itself on his chest. He had thought he had stamped out all of his wild instincts, had fulfilled the prophecy he had forseen before he came to Hallownest, to expand the minds of the mortals blinded by dreamlight. He had thought that he had shirked his title as destroyer, for what bringer of death used their own corpse to shape their new body, what worldender could curl up against the faintly-warm side of his lady love and feel his heart throb in his chest, pulsing to the rhythm of her soft humming? What harbinger stood before the masses of his new followers, fairly won and willingly subservient, and watched with pride as they raised cities greater than they ever could under the rule of the Old Light, whose domination touched all but the most shadowed corners of ancient Hallownest?

Evidently, though, it had not been enough. It had never been enough.

It would have never been enough, if the Vessel did not break.

(For a moment, he could not breathe. There was a coldness burning in his veins, frosting in his lungs. His head pounded, but the pain was distant, and he stared with eyes clear and unclouded and yet still he saw nothing, felt nothing, could not think until the ringing in his head had cleared and he could breathe again, could move in the precise mechanical pathways he had devised for himself over and over in the past weeks, old habits blending with new desperation into a series of commands that had his hands shaking with exhaustion, his head muzzy with days without sleep.)

Never enough. The silent halls. The loneliness. Absence by his side where once a lady tall and fair had sat, glowing serenely with the love of the land, absence by his desk and in his letters, where once a teacher with a mind more ancient than her heart had clicked bubbles at him when she forgot to speak a tongue he knew, or an anxious scholar had written him reports of the world beyond the Palace's cold walls, his curious soul shining like a beacon among the dull candle-flickers of all the others in his court. All gone. All sacrifices. All cast into the churning dark, a desperate plea from one fearful god to the long-dead remnants of another. A foolish chance, for one so powerful. He knew. He knew.

And he had taken it anyways.

All the little bodies in the Abyss. All those broken eggshells, miles and miles deep, leaving weeping gashes against too-soft pawpads while tiny shadows gathered by the lamphouse looking over the Void Sea, seeking the smallest hint of light and comfort from a father that had forsaken them, a mother that had spurned them. All the weak, strangled cries from the ones who had not been good enough, corrupted enough, their keening calls stifled by the ambient void in the air, the crack of their exoskeletons as they fell, as the warring light and dark within them tore them apart.

And he had been made to destroy, he had been born a gluttonous creature of the earth and so he would remain, pretending to create new things from the corpses of his kills, death a tool for his own selfish desires, and foolishly he had thought that if he turned his tools inwards towards himself then maybe the ravaging wouldn't run so deep, maybe it would be best if he carved a path forward from nothing more than what his own body could wield, for what was a child but a product of its creator, what was a body but a shell made to house the soul, and the pain they felt was all a construct made in his own mind-

They had been so tiny, and dissolved so easily when he had struck them through with soul daggers. Pitiful, really, their seeking claws searching only for safety, not harm. They had been only newborns, after all. They had been devoid of any regrets other than the simple fact of their creation, and their failure to reach him. A failure they mirrored time and time again, as they rustled free of the dry, shifting bones and hovered desperately to the god watching as their unborn sibling's songs were cut silent by the steady creep of the still sea's stain, until they were either all dispersed back into the ether, or he found himself too tired and weary to make the necessary burrow into the piles of corpses to place the eggs.

Only children. Children, created for the soul purpose of their destruction, killed in the egg before they could become anything more than shadows, wraiths of his own regrets. Children.

They were children.

And they had only been newborns when they died.

Never enough.

The unbroken claws of the Vessel lay lax. This workshop was not as dim as the one where he cast the kingsmoulds, too close to the gardens of the Palace for the ambient void to choke out the soul, but there was hardly a reflection to their gleaming curve, only the faintest hint of light hinting at a hard carapace. Free of the channels dug through the veins of the other arm, free of any blemishes other than the nocks of hard use, he could almost focus upon it and think himself back to the time before the Sealing, in the moments where he would carve the runes for its confinement into its dark carapace, and it would lay before him on the table as still as death, only the slow rise and fall of its breathing distinguishing it from the inactive kingsmoulds slumped about the edges of the room.

When he had first brought it forth from the Abyss, its carapace had been velvet-soft, weak to the world and the sharper whims of the soul. Anything from a careless scratch to the touch of one enraged could tear it, as if the Void had not quite finished working on it from within the egg, still sludge-soft with the fluids of its birth under a thin veneer of stability. For a good few weeks, he had despaired over the thought of such a weak little thing ever growing strong enough to hold back the power of a vengeful god, before he had begun to test the limits of its abilities, and found that the vulnerabilities stemmed from it reacting to the whims of the soul, rather than injuring itself on seemingly nothing. The fearful bugs used in the testing had to have their memories wiped, yes, and the ones who remained hateful even after had to be disposed of entirely, but it had proven to be an enlightening experience nonetheless, and he had set about to find all the different ways he could counteract it, be it through sculpting specialized soul vessels or working on new mask shards to better strengthen the Vessel's shell.

It had been even darker then, its velvet-soft skin unable to reflect light at all. If one happened to catch it with its cloak drawn up and its palmpads pressed to its chest, they would not thought that it looked like a bug at all, but instead a hole in the fabric of reality, defined only by the spaces where no light could return. A pure construct of void, standing still in the pure white halls of two beings of light. A black hole among the stars.

(And that was what he intended, a perfect outcome of an admittedly flawed design, but perhaps that comparison stuck too close to the truth. For the Void indeed was just as unfathomable as the pits of nothingness riddling the endless span of the cosmos, always skirting just a little bit farther from his understanding. Always just one step ahead, while he was always two steps behind, fruitlessly following deeper into its grips in the pursuit of knowledge until his curious meanderings turned to a firm walk, to a fearful jog, to a desperate sprint. Until he hovered on the brink of his own destruction, one pale light cast upon an endless dark sea, nearly swallowed whole by the very thing he had sought refuge from, stained down deep enough that his own daughter carried the brand of his sacrifice in her void-dark shell, until his claws were stained black and his days once more became colourless.)

(Devotion in promise and charge in progeny cursed, and he had thought-)

What he had thought back then didn’t matter now, when he was in the present. He could not dally upon where he went wrong right now; the task that lay ahead was time-sensitive, and lingering in his thoughts would only hinder him. He blinked away the faint film of dust gathering on his tertiary pair of eyelids, and began to line out his surgeon blades on a clean sheet of linen, careful to keep them all precisely a finger's width apart.

The faint rise and fall of the Hollow Knight's breathing did not falter at the faint clink of metal upon metal, the ragged, whistling edge to each inhale and exhale remaining fairly uniform. Mocking him. Even after extensive operations, he had not been able to locate the source of that whistle, and just beyond the undertow threatening to pull his mind down into dark depths, he felt a twinge of irritation. He had split open cysts to reveal the pulsing, delicate, voided organs hidden underneath, he had coaxed open jaws lined with razorblade fangs to pour healing light into a throat burned and warped, but still the Hollow Knight struggled to breathe, still each breath found a place to catch in their chest. He had watched them grow from a soft-limbed, newling thing into a massive being built to slay gods, and yet the intricacies of their anatomy still slipped by him, the vast hole in his knowledge gaping wide in the time of their greatest need.

He, of course, had found no need for healing wounds greater than what could be patched with soul magic, something that the Vessel took to well. He hadn't considered the fact that he might need it- it had been intended to be a sacrifice, after all. Hardly that, really, for it was not alive, and the few times that he'd been required to coax its shade back into its shell could hardly be considered a death. Perhaps it had been something close- a brush with mortality, in the way that only gods could manage- but he had not considered that it was alive. He could hardly sense its mind, after all, and the jerks or spasms it had given at the presence of pain had all been the instinctual responses of the unthinking, and so he had dismissed them.

(But it had reacted with fear in the moments where it had struggled awake, when it had pushed past his orders to send rending coughs echoing through its entire frame, its responsive hand pawing weakly at its throat and mouth, as if it thought that it could pull the infection up out of the cysts in its chest with one hand alone. It had reacted to the pain of his scalpel cutting into its shoulder, slitting open the burst veins, it had whipped its head around and sunk its night-black teeth into his shoulder and had wrenched its head as a wyrm would do when it was trying to start a death-roll, a panic response that he had been careful not to program it with.)

(A response he had thought that the void had taken, so very long ago.)

But that hardly mattered now. He had given it another dose of the sleeping-herbs a snail shaman had given to Hegemol (upon his request, of course), careful to go far past the point of intoxication that would kill a mortal bug, and the White Lady's soft lullaby had sung it into a deep, steady state that it would not be roused from, even by the touch of his blades. An essential state to induce, one that was rather time-sensitive; the Vessel was an ascended god, and ordering it to sleep was no longer a reliable option. He could no longer comfortably hold it within his thrall- just trying to enthrall it was a dangerous task, the slippery-slick edge of its mental shields disguising the dark undertow of its mind, a ripcurrent that had consumed an elder god already. Forcing it asleep, forcing it to not feel any pain, to not react...that was, by now, far beyond his power. Resorting to medication on top of sleeping spells was probably overkill, for the only draughts that appeared to work on beings of void were those designed to lull those into an endless sleep, but an overdose was something he was willing to risk. That, he could counter- that was something that would be painless, something that could be rectified without causing extreme duress. He did not want-

He did not want it to wake up in the middle of its amputation.

A sickening lurch in his stomach. He paused, breathed in deep, and let the churning deep within his abdomen to settle with the steady beat of his heart. The room swam slightly with every flutter, but that was a flaw he could live with- it was not the first time that he worked through a lightheaded haze, and it would most likely not be the last.

(He did not-)

Here was a fact, one that he could not change. The Old Light, in her persistent pursuit of persecution, had gouged brands of pure power through the veins of the Hollow Knight, dealing massive, irreversible damage to the limb. Likely she had attempted to go for the shoulder joint for the sake of convenience; the softness of the joint, the cavity of the thorax, and the lapping scales under the limb provided a weak spot that was unparalleled on other aspects of the Hollow Knight's body. It was almost certain that she had realized that escaping from the cage of its empty mind would be futile, and had considered the optimal means of escape to be centered around destroying the Vessel's physical body. The exertion upon her weakening strength would have been worth it, after all- for once one stone crumbled free from a dam, then it was only a matter of time before the rest of them gave way, and the power of the roaring waters was free to leap forth and drown all who dared to confine it. And she would have been freed, had her effort succeeded; the noxious gasses that helped to spread her plague of dreams would have been free to leak forth from the broken limb, free from all the cracks she had rent in its flesh. She had succeeded in breaking down one of the bars of her cage.

If the Vessel had not reacted, they would all be dead. All of them.

It would have been all for nothing.

(He had...he had thought that the body of an ascended god would be able to contain her. He had been so sure of it. There had been a certain amount of success in the mortals who had shown resistance, after all, before she had overwhelmed them; he had been sure that if she would be contained in another Higher Being, imbued with their own magic by the right of their birth, there would have been no escape. Especially when one was born of the void, her ancient enemy, the antithesis to all light. He had been so certain…)

And she had left behind a ruin.

Smiting the Vessel with lightning would have been a kinder fate than what she had done. The damage itself had clearly been done over some stretch of time, in short, sharp bursts; there was a pool of concentrated, highly corrosive infection lurking just under the plates of the shoulderblade, the concentrated pressure warping the wingbuds of its back. From that pressure point radiated long furrows of empty space, scored into the dark carapace, the void within each forking channel too burned to return to its typical fluid state. Some of the forking lines had burst out through the Vessel's tough chitin, in an explosion of pressure shattering it. Some of the furrows within the arm remained full of corrupted light, slowly eating away at the void- his attempts to drain it without causing further damage had proved to be nearly impossible. There were too many wounds, there was too much void lost. None of his treatments had worked, and from the way it had thrashed-

(The bruised, broken plates at his shoulder burned.)

Already, he could see that much of the nerve damage was irreversible, even with the aid of soul healing- there were too many scars, too many wounds filled with liquid light, and the void that was left behind was unstable enough to evaporate at the merest hint of his cleansing light, too scorched to accept the transplants he attempted to offer. If the limb was not removed now, the infection would continue to eat away at whatever void was left, and the arm itself would detach from the thorax on its own, rotten away at its very core. It was for the health and safety of the Vessel that he sought to remove it now. If he wanted it to survive- and for what, he didn't know, he had no practical use for it anyways for it had been born to die and he shouldn't- he would have to remove the arm.

The surgical blades felt a thousand times heavier in his hands as he lifted them. He had never thought that he could despise a set of inanimate objects in the same way that he hated them right now.

Positioning the Vessel was not the difficult task that it should be. Void, after all, held no true perception of weight; it was heavy yet weightless, an undefinable density offset by an indescribable airiness. The weight of the Vessel came primarily from its mask and its chitin plates, where the void had left it untouched in the egg, or had solidified into something resembling the hard, lapping armour that covered his own body- and much of that had been slowly scoured away by hateful light, the fluid in its abdomen and the scales of its chest burned away by the Radiance’s vengeful touch. It was easier than it should have been to turn it onto its front- all he had to do was tip its head to the side, and to carefully lower its bandaged body onto the soft padding that had been layered onto the table, the broken limb sliding free from its rough sling to rest in the light of the workshop.

He did not look at the gouged flesh, the twisting arcs curving through the shattered plates. He did not let his gaze linger on the gold that sluiced free from the unraveling bandages, sticky orange blight dripping lazily down onto the silver of the tabletop, where it hissed furiously at the cold white light glowing above. He did not let himself think about the way the joints ground together as he extended the arm forward to expose the rotting shoulder, the soft, gaping holes in the velvety skin edged with malevolent yellow, offset by the gleaming black shards of broken carapace. He did not let himself think about how he could not save it.

There was a problem here that was beyond his power to solve. A pity. The alternative solution was the only other way forward. He could not let himself fail this one, too.

One of the scalpels in his lower hands wavered as he reached forward to pick up the Vessel's broken hand- and then suddenly, he could not move. He could not breathe, as he looked at the way their hand fit over his palm, massive, hooked claws resting on the soft joints of his wrist. A near-mirror of his own, but darker, not as neatly maintained, the soft leather of their pawpads cool against his own.

And he remembered how small they had been when he pulled them from the Abyss, how neatly their tiny paw had fit against the palm of his hand. He remembered how he had cupped one of his other hands over their soft digits, let his soul shine bright in the closed space between. He remembered the minute pinprick of their claws catching on his palm, the way their fingers had flexed as the shining motes of soul caught in the thin tips, and he remembered how his voice had rumbled as he spoke to them, teaching them how to focus. Gifting them the full knowledge of his powers, in slow, careful steps, in a way that he had never thought he would ever get to teach, feeling the warmth of pride rise in his throat as they turned their hand over and manifested a small dagger of light…

"You're dallying, aren't you."

He did not jump when Herrah's voice rang out into the workshop, though all of his senses blazed at the sudden alarm. The weak jerk of his wings and the near-silent hiss was merely a byproduct of the sluggish haze that had overtaken him, breaking his composure. But when he slowly turned his head to glare at her, the beginnings of a warning snarl rattling in his throat, he could tell by the angle of her mask that she had seen, and that trying to deny it or force her out would be futile. She had laid with him countless times in order to conceive the Heir of Deepnest; he knew that she knew his tells, his weaknesses. The sanctity of his divinity was hardly a deterrent to her anymore.

So instead he wrapped his tail tightly over his feet, feeling the hooked claws flex under the thick plates, and flickered his third eyelids over the dark sheen of his eyes, knowing how it unsettled her. The sick feeling was fading, as slow in going as a retreating tide, but the slight shake in his limbs did not abate, no matter how hard he tried to still them. “I did not authorize your arrival. Who allowed you in here?”

Herrah snorted, clearly recognizing his unease, and walked into the room, unslinging her greatneedle from its sheath. Though he tensed, the wild animal part of his brain urging him to hiss and strike, she ignored him, and leaned it against the wall next to the nail of the Hollow Knight, its imposing bulk a silent, shining mirror of the imposing behemoth. “The Lady told me that you were working yourself up into a state over something, and when came looking for you to ease her worries, the castle practically lead me to you. I figured you’d be in the workshop, though. I didn’t need her aid to guide me.”

The Pale King blinked again, this time in surprise- for he hadn't realized that Herrah had learned of the trick of the White Palace- but she paid little mind to him, or to his attempts to unsettle her. Instead, she crossed her arms, her vast bulk looming over him, and swept her eyes slowly over the comatose form of the Hollow Knight. The slow whistle she gave at their condition threatened to send another hiss rattling out of his throat, but when she spoke again, her voice was pitying, not condescending. Understanding, in some strange way, the tension that wracked through him, as if they had not been mortal enemies before she had chosen him to sire her heir, as if she did not gaze down at a being that she has given her life to hold in an endless sleep. “That arm's gone septic. It has to come off.”

"Theoretically speaking, the Hollow Knight is incapable of contracting a true sepsis." The dry monotone of his voice nearly startled him again, an odd pang of surprise rising through him as he felt his mouthparts move without his explicit permission. Everything seemed to be set within a haze, his extremities thoroughly detached from the rest of his neural control. It was as if his body and his mind were moving independently from each other, each section moving upon its own whims rather than anything that he commanded of it. "Its body is a mere imprint of what it could have been before the larvae was-"

"Shut the f*ck up, Wyrm. You tear yourself apart more and more with every piece of sh*t you drop from your mouth." Herrah's growl did not hold the earth-shattering reverberation of his own vocalizations, but he could tell by warning chirr on its tailing end that she would not hesitate to retaliate if he designed to press her. She did not fear him anymore. Not like she should. "The arm has to come off, and you know it, and you are dallying because you are afraid of the damage that might be underneath. Am I wrong?"

Ash in his mouth. Herrah’s snarl filled the space between, enclosing his entire world. Challenging him, and the wild part of his mind nothing more than to bare his fangs and hiss back at the threat to his authority, while the numb, cold fog suppressed all his other movements. “I-”

“Don’t try to deny it.” Her voice was as bitter as the sting of her venom, but there was a certain quality to it that was somewhat...off. He couldn't quite place it, couldn't quite figure out the nuances of her tonal inflection, but it wasn't quite the hatred of before. "It will not help."

A heartbeat fluttering behind pale breastplates. Darkness behind his eyelids as he closed them. Something in him wanted to hiss and snarl back, but even as he thought of it, he found the energy sapped from his limbs, leaving him behind in a sunken, aching haze. The knives in his hands felt heavier than the entire world. "You aren't."

"I'm not," Herrah agreed, and her voice wasn't- it wasn't gentle, he would say, for all the gentleness she had ever afforded to him had been given when their daughter was resting, but her tone lacked the sharp, wicked edge that he was accustomed to. It was closer to how she sounded when she was exhausted, or grieving, but the fog in his mind prevented him from making any sense of why that was. "And if you don't remove their arm, they will die. So do it, Wyrm. I will stand here to restrain them if necessary- you have no excuse. They have already ended your damned war. Don't be the cause for more of their suffering."

She was right. He knew she would, though his pride smarted at the blow. He clenched his fists, feeling the cool weight of the scalpels roll forward in his hands as he leaned away from her, staring sightlessly at the cracked black carapace. She was right, and yet...

Words in the air, sharp and cold. Nails in his chest. Blood bubbling up, a cold vice in his throat that still somehow failed to choke out the soft 'Why?' that escaped him on his last exhale, even as his whole body shook with the desire to hold it down, to not show such a disgusting weakness to a mortal that was once naught more than an irritant to one such as him. A mortal that was now actively petitioning to let the killer he had bred live, despite all of his theories and experiments. Despite the fact that he had given them to something far more ancient and primal than he could ever fathom, that they were not a bug but something different, something alien, something that she could not possibly hope to understand, a creature that she had given her life to seal away.

(Before, when he was a creature vast and hungry, she wouldn’t have been anything more than a fleck of soul in a dark plane of nothingness. He had consumed creatures greater than her. She would have been nothing.)

(How strange the fates were, then, for her to be dwelling in the land that he would come to call his home, the territory he had wrestled free from the scorching eye of the Old Light. Those who would dare stand up to a wyrm were few and far between, and yet she of all mortal beings had been hatched in the darkest depths of the land he had claimed as his, in the time where he would come down to her caverns and face the fierce might of her kindred.)

She had been naught more than a piece of gravel caught under his scales- and yet she had argued him away from her territory with a wit as keen as her blade, and a pride he could not fell. She had stared him in the eyes, fearless mortal to desperate immortal, and she had bartered with him for home and country, and he had sired her child. She had let his bloodline mingle with hers, despite her disgust for his kingdom.

There was a piece of him in her heir. She had let a monster more powerful than herself into her home, and she had pressed it down into her bed, and against all odds, she had won.

It made sense, then, that she would not fear the Hollow Knight.

She, unfortunately, did not seem to understand, and he caught the way her fangs spread as she grimaced, glaring disdainfully down at him. One of her lower hands came to rest on the table, claws tapping irritably against it, while her higher set of arms crossed over her chest, raising her veil just far enough to see the vast scars scored over her carapace. “I do not do this to aid you, Pale King. I hold no pity for you. But I do pity the poor creature that lays before me, caught on the brink between sleep and death.”

The drum of her claws grew faster, before halting altogether. With her hand resting beside the Hollow Knight’s, the abnormal darkness of their carapace quickly became apparent- though the backs of Herrah’s hands were covered in a layer of short fur, as was common to all spiders, the wicked curve of her claws were clear of soft fluff, and reflected the pale light of the outside world quite well. Compared to the talons of the Vessel, hers looked almost grey. “Your people still think of us as barbarians. But we are far from it, and there is a code of honour that most bugs of prey design to overlook. We are a clan of warriors and artisans, Pale King, and we respect a job well done. If one of our soldiers swears to dedicate their training to fighting one foe, then we do not intervene, other than to offer them advice and luck in their trials ahead. If they win their first battle, then they are formally accepted as an honoured fighter. If they fail- that is, if they fall in battle- then they are given a silent vigil, where those who had guided them on their path pray that the ancestors respect them for their dedication, and forgive them for the outcome of their failure.”

She paused for a moment, studying the prone form of the Pure Vessel, then sighed and removed her mask. She didn’t look at him, but the fuzzy planes of her face had grown familiar enough for him to catch the sorrow and exhaustion in her expression. She had never quite been able to hide it from him, even when she had brought him to her room in Deepnest- it had always hung over her in the moments she thought he wasn’t looking, when she thought he was inattentive, or focused on something else.

And always, before this, he had ignored it, or quietly marked it down as the simple stress of attempting to ward off an apocalypse. It had been a living nightmare, in the time before the Sealing- spiders and bugs alike had been dying left and right, and he knew that she spent much of her time before her final rest helping to bury or burn the dead, from the accounts that Hornet had rambled when she was too young to truly understand the schism that lay between them, wanting only the comfort of an adult to help her work through the aftermath of the divine warfare she had been born into. It mattered not that he could tell her nothing other than the affairs of Deepnest were not the concern of Hallownest. All the world was burning, as far as she was concerned, and she was the one warming her hands over her people’s funeral pyres; all he could do to help relieve Herrah’s duties was to ensure that her daughter was preoccupied with her tutoring, while he worked on saving the entirety of Hallownest from the plague of the Old Light. Her sorrows were not his burden- there was too much asked of him already, and he had thought that she felt the same.

He had never thought that Herrah the Beast would ever look at something of his own with that same tired sadness.

(The simple fact that he could pick them out at all made something in his throat grow uncomfortably tight.)

“I want to know what happened then, when the Dream Realm turned dark,” she rumbled, and her voice was low and sorrowful. “That is what the ruler of Deepnest demands from the knights of Hallownest. But the greater part of me balks at the thought of showing a capable warrior such disrespect, even if the ways of your kindred do not match my own. And even this disregards the fact that our families have been joined in blood. They are Hornet's elder sibling- I cannot watch them suffer, particularly when it was their pain that won me my freedom.”

Gently, she touched their claws with her own, before withdrawing her hand and straightening. When her eyes met his, they pierced right through him, hardened by the many years of hardships she had faced. None of her softness was reserved for him, but this did not surprise him. He knew that he did not deserve the slightest sliver of it. "Mock me as you must, Pale Wyrm. But I will not change what I feel is right, no matter how many times you attempt to rebuke me."

The Hollow Knight is a pure being, he thought, an almost knee-jerk reply; he could hear his own voice drone on, cold and efficient, emotionless and detached. Devoid of all of the thoughts, feelings, or desires of a living creature. There are no weaknesses for the Old Light to exploit- it is a body with no mind. The reactions drawn from it are merely instinctive byproducts of its biological nature, a sort of coding that could not quite be overridden by the void. It is not alive, and attempting to treat it as such may instill it with unnecessary programming that counteracts its primary purpose. Attempting to empathizeor engage with it is not only useless, it may also be quite dangerous.

He had been speaking it for centuries. He had recited such a speech since the very moment he had withdrawn it from the Abyss. Such a mechanical recital would not be very difficult- he could do it without complex reflection on the nuances of Herrah's speech, and say it as a mere reminder of the nature of the work they were attempting to achieve with the surgery.

But as he spread his mouthparts to say it, he found his speech delayed. There was a vice in his throat that choked out all sound; there was a tightness in his chest that strangled his every breath. He felt as if he had been submerged underwater, all his senses choked by rushing liquid, nothing but darkness building behind his eyes.

So he said nothing, and had turned to the table where the ruined body of the Pure Vessel lay sleeping, and set his scalpel to the canvas of broken carapace.

.

Lay your heart into my perfect machine

I will show you what you wanted to see

Just a mirror 'til I get what I need

The reverie was not of me

You never saw nothing

Never saw nothing

-Perfect Machine, Starset (both a Hollow and a PK song imo)

Chapter 5: Eternity in Promise

Chapter Text

Even you know

This was all for nothing

Just a sad show

Just an ego

I suppose though

As far as I know

We were both pretending

I suppose so

But what do I know

.

The operation was a success.

It had passed by in a blur, one he could not recount without feeling some degree of mind-numbing exhaustion, one that he could not even attempt to remember without feeling the claws of nausea crawl up his throat. There was an ache in his limbs that had not been present before, hours of exertion making themselves known. There were nightmares scrawled out on the inside of his eyelids, scorching gold overlaid against liquid darkness hovering in the corner of his vision, but everytime he shifted his gaze to stare at them, they melted away into nothingness. There was a ringing in his head as if he were deep, deep underwater, pressure pushing him in until he thought he might implode under the weight of it, and with every passing second, it was becoming harder and harder to remember how to breathe. The body knew, of course, knew instinctively how to expand and contract in the manner required to push and pull air out of the lungs. This was a lesson that did not have to be taught. This was a lesson that was innate to all beings, living or otherwise. It was not something that he needed to teach to himself, like he had when he had torn into the eggshells of his siblings to feast upon the small bodies within. It was not something he had needed to teach to the Vessel, for its small chest had heaved with the effort to draw in air, even though such a requirement had long grown obsolete.

But the room swam before him as if the rise and fall of his chestplates meant nothing at all, and his vision was edged with darkness.

Shadows swarming before him, a thousand little ghosts with eyes as pale as his own shell, staring up from the depths of the Abyss.

A soft sound, a lullaby, singing to him from the very edge of his memories. A music-box, a song to lull the shadows to sleep.

His children to sleep.

Likely, it was merely a direct result of hours of hard work combined with exposure to the void- for he had suffered similar consequences before, in the times before the vessel plan, when everything was simple and he did not need to worry about the creations he made writhing in pain as he carved runes of healing into their flesh- but he could not think past the heavy weight on his chest, could not feel anything other than the sickening phantom sensation of living void slithering off his abyss-stained claws. As if the feeling was burned into his fingertips, and he could not rid himself of their mark.

(Dark, his talons were as dark now as the Vessel’s carapace, dark enough that their points had blended in with the unscathed parts of their arm when he had-)

Inhale. Exhale. He could not raise his heavy head. Someone else would have to do it for him, for his body would not listen. Herrah would not do it, for she had already taken her leave to tend to the daughter who snarled at him everytime he happened to pass her by, hatred blending with hurt into a stare as venomous as her fangs. But he could not force himself to look up from the white tiles beneath the trailing edge of his silver robe, could not look at the prone body of the Hollow Knight in the main room of the workshop. He could not look at the bandaged shoulder, devoid now of an arm he had sworn to save, could not look at the removed limb slowly deteriorating in a large glass vial of void. He could not look at the surgical supplies lying quietly in their box by the washbasin, hateful things still darkened with the blood of his child, because that was what they were, after all, they had been his child, they were his child-

His throat seized; he doubled over and dry-retched once, twice, his thorax burning cold, eyes stinging with pain as he struggled to take inhale. Convulsive swallowing pushed back the nausea bit by bit, his breathing fast and light, but it did not wash away the memories, tiny black claws and pleading eyes swimming in his vision as the crack of breaking chitin rang through his mind, an endless clattering cacophony of death, of the sound of children slipping to their deaths because he had buried their clutches in a place of shadows and sharp spikes and deadly creeping carnivores, buried their eggs so deep that they had to climb over the broken masks of all the dead siblings that came before them, a birthplace and a graveyard in one. A trial to weed out the weak, given to hatchlings that had barely hours to live.

Children, children.

They were children .

His throat latched tight again, and he choked, his breath hissing through his bladed mandibles as he tried desperately to suck in air. The world swam before him, a haze of white light and gray shadows slowly swimming in and out of focus as he forced himself to breathe, but a deep ache pressed into his abdomen, all the muscles locking tight, his own body defying his orders. He doubled over, suppressing a soft keen of agony, and kneaded harshly at the rigid scales of his abdomen while his eyes stared sightlessly at one of the great tanks of void that he used to shape his kingsmoulds. The inert, eerily still substance almost seemed to mock him, liquid that he had been foolish enough to think of as lifeless reflecting none of the dim light wreathed around him. It defied his light, defied his power, just as it had defied his understanding time and time again, the one element that he, despite his best efforts, could not conquer.

(And he he had thought that he could tame it, he had thought he could restrain it, but-)

For it had been lifeless, it was supposed to be lifeless. It was something that was the antithesis to all that was and could be. It was the remnants of something ancient, a great primordial lifeform that had dwelled in the deep before the Old Light had conquered its lands, but the only life that clung to it still was the faded memories of what it had been, pure instinct and reactivity restrained to what little energy it was still imbued with. He had sensed it when he had first come to these lands, when he had burrowed deep enough for the very rock around it to swallow the sounds of his passage, when it had sucked all the scents from the air around it. He had known from the moment he broke through the ceiling of the Abyss that he had stumbled into the tomb of a dead god. Only a memory of life remained, and when given the chance it had clung to whatever living beings it could carry and had dragged them down into the depths of its great sea and none had returned, it had choked his light and hers, it had extinguished her so thoroughly that he had no other choice but to believe that the unformed embryos he had created would have any chance of surviving its corruption.

He had known his plan to be cruel, he had known it to be cowardly, but the sprawling populace teeming in the City of Tears were his, millions of flickering sparks coming together into a great fire of life and intelligence and intent and he could hear their pain and he had thought-

He had thought that if he could find a way to duplicate himself, to form a copy of himself into a being of perfect destruction, he would have been free of her plague. He had thought that if he could find a way to choke the light from his own shell, he would have found a way to slaughter her, with none of the risk and the pain associated with a battle between two gods. He would have found a way to keep his people safe, to ensure his place on the throne, to keep the little den of peace that he had made for himself away from the tearing expanse of the wastes. He would have found a way to destroy the threat to his people with naught more than a minor toll paid upon his own flesh, a negligible price to pay to ensure that there was still a Hallownest left after the ashes had settled and the war was over. For fire could not be fought with fire, light could not fight with light, and why would he risk his neck on the battlefield when he had strove so hard to be free of the wild, brutal ways of his kindred? He had ascended, he was more than the form he had born into, and if they had fought-

If they had fought it would have been the end of the world.

Eventually, his proximity to the Vessel grew to be too much. Somehow, he managed to stumble away from the surgery table into the small office space that lay beyond his workshop, half-hidden behind stacks of slates and towers of empty inkpots. Perhaps the automatic, mechanical motions of habit had pulled him to where he wanted to go- or maybe it had been instinct alone, the pain of a still-wild creature pulling him blindly forward into the closest thing he had to a den, wishing to hide from a stimulant it did not understand. Certainly the office looked the part. The clustered slateshelves and scrollcases gave the entire room a dark, closed-in appearance, a look battled only by the glow of his Kingslight and a single sleepy lumafly flickering its wings as it rested upon its bed of soaked moss. It was a dreary, disastrous place, one that he loathed to admit he took some small comfort in as he drew himself forth to the desk nearly hidden in the corner and curled up on the chair beside it.

Though he had come to his office for comfort, he was not freed from the grips of his duties yet. Several spider-silk missives littered his desk, all clearly delivered by automated wingmoulds rather than living beings; the mindless creatures had little care for the fastidious piles that his servants took pride in, the fine details of their deliveries far too complex for their simple soul-run programming. For a long, long moment, he stared dully at the scrawling black lettering etched upon the silver sheets of the missives, before he sighed and shuffled them all into a rough pile, pulling them closer to his thorax for him to pick through. Many were fairly new, representing an influx of requests that had come after the return of the Hollow Knight, with only a scarce few coming from the quiet times before their return. Doubtlessly, they were more demands for clarity from the nobility of Hallownest. Though they found any form of unanimous communication highly difficult to achieve in matters actually pertaining to the safety of the kingdom, one thing that he could rely on was that the petty grievances of the court could all be cast aside in favor of finding answers. This was a suspicion he soon found to be true, for he did not recognize a fair portion of the seals stamped upon their sheets, which indicated that they were not sent to him by the remainder of Lurien’s aids and thus likely held no valuable information within them. Though the title of the King's Watcher had not been passed on after he had taken the title of Dreamer, Lurien had trained his staff well, and he knew that the missives stamped with the Seal of the Eye were probably the only letters on the table that held any valuable information on the state of Hallownest. These he placed aside to be dealt with later (they formed a sizeable stack upon his desk, a sight that he chose to ignore for now), before cracking open the seal of one of the noble's missives to skim through with eyes too tired to decipher their runes.

For once, he could not blame the nobles for this petty grievance. It was not often that a mysterious, unnamed knight returned from a battle where they were presumed to be dead, much less infected and nearly on the brink of death. The Hollow Knight's return had hardly been foreseen, much less announced; all of Hallownest knew of their sacrifice, and so nobody within the kingdom had anticipated their return, much less with them in such a sorry state.

(He remembered the way they had lurched into the throne room, their broken body dripping gold, and felt nausea rise in his throat once again.)

His claws tapped a relentless, foreboding beat as he read, setting himself on edge with the soft clack of chitin against stone. With great effort, he forced himself to stop, but his errant talons, free of the distraction of near-mindless tinkering, soon found a new hobby as they set to work digging at his sides, anxiously clawing at the gaps between his hard plates. Though he had purposefully dulled them, they were still sharp enough to pierce through the scales lining his body, and he winced and hissed and let the exhaustion sink into him as he rested his head on his left forelimb, the throbbing sting of his claws in his skin the only thing keeping him awake.

This behavior was foolish. He had no reason to be in this state. The plan had been a success. The Hollow Knight had been born to die, and did not appear to harbor the dangerous attributes of a void construct gone rogue- they were reprogrammable at best, salvageable at worst. The sacrifices he had made for the good of the community had not been in vain- the populace still lived, the taint of the Old Light's influence burned away to mere cinders on the periphery of the Pale God's union.

(And yet he still searched for her, hunted for her distinct taint upon the borders of his periphery, seeking out any faint scraps of her that might one day rekindle into the menace that had taken the lives of countless civilians. Endlessly he searched, hunting her with the tireless fervor that haunted his waking hours, and found nothing. Not even a scrap. Not even an ember, the world a sea of darkness to which only he and his lady wife's light shone through.)

If anything, he should be pleased by this outcome, for it had given him back all the bugs that he had been prepared to lose for the good of his kingdom. The White Lady had returned from her gardens, the Dreamers reawakened, and the knight he had spent centuries training- his greatest pride, his Hollow Knight- had come home to him. Even if he had no idea what to do with them after they recovered ( if they recovered, for though he had given them his all, there was precious little knowledge on how to heal a being formed from the void), that was an investment that was sure to pay off in the future. Even if time had disintegrated the orders seared into their memory, even if the being that had lashed out at the Old Light was something that posed a threat to him and his lady wife, that was still resources gained back from an expected loss.

He was the King of Hallownest, God of Mind, and he had transformed himself from a ravenous, ravaging monster to a refined being, ruler of a refined culture. He would not let the gifts of fate go to waste.

(No one needed to know of the countless corpses in the abyss. That was the burden of him and his lady alone, that was his flesh and blood he had willingly given up for death, it was a million flickering sparks of life or a million potential branching futures. A lifetime of eternal stability, paid in pain and bloodshed, or a lifetime fraught with instability, bought with selfish desires and a pitiable, damnable weakness.

It was his sole job in life to be a monolith of reason and protection to his own people. He was the Pale King. He had died for this. He had remade himself for this. He had encouraged his heartmate to follow him into rebirth for this. If he forsake his duties for the instinctual demands of his own body, if he lead them down a path of darkness and ruin, then what was the purpose of his own existence? He lived to keep Hallownest safe, to keep the eternal kingdom pristine and running, a perfect machine- the choice had not been his to make.)

(There had been no other way.)

Eternity in promise and charge in progeny cursed.

He had done it. He had won the war. It was done.

No cost too great.

And it wasn't, it wasn't. He had managed to pay, hadn't he?

Didn't he?

(Children, they were his children , he had been a f*cking fool to think that they would have been killed when the first wave of void corrupted their hearts, for they were born of Wyrm and Root, the persistence of their kindred should have allowed them to retain some immunity to the void, he had blinded himself on purpose because he had been selfish and arrogant and desperate and they were his children- )

Quietly, the door to the Workshop creaked open. He tensed, fangs unfolding, his heart beating a frantic tempo in his chest as he fought back the urge to hiss like a cornered beast, but the mind of the bug that slipped inside was one he knew almost as intimately as that of his Lady, and the impulse to snarl was soon quelled by a lump in his throat that hurt to swallow down..

His eye of the City of Tears, Lurien the Watcher, hovered awkwardly in the doorway like he often did when the heaviness of his title was still new to him, and they both did not quite grasp the significance the role would hold in the future, when the burden of managing Hallownest had grown too great for he and his Lady to bear on their own. He had not come within the office itself, but the Pale King could track his movements as he sidled over to the interior doorway, as subtle and silent as a ghost.

He wasn't supposed to be sacrificed. He wasn't, not in the beginning, it hadn't been part of the plan. It was going to be Vespa, it should have been Vespa, but the Hive Queen had scoffed at their desperation, and had chosen to face her demise with dignity rather than giving the last of her life for a foreign power. Lurien was supposed to be by his side until Hallownest fell or he chose to resign as Watcher, to give up his mantle of temporary immortality for the more peaceful, sedentary life that he had left behind when he had chosen to serve his king and god. The Pale King himself had never considered him to be a potential Dreamer until he had offered his life for the perpetuation of Hallownest, for he had been too valuable to him to let go. Monomon’s loss was a heavy enough blow to handle already, a great mind lost to the Dream, but she had always been an independant soul, and had an apprentice in line to take her place in the event of her death. Herrah held a wit as keen as her blade, a powerful ally that had been the mother of his one living child...but Lurien had always been his surest link to the life of the kingdom that he ruled over, the one bug devoted enough to Hallownest to help the Pale Beings withstand the turmoil of mortal existence. Like a lens to a telescope, he had magnified the smallest aspects of his subject’s lifespan into a colourful tapestry of light and life, a connection to the kingdom that the Pale King and White Lady had only ever caught glimpses of. Small snippets of vibrancy in an existence that had spanned over countless eons, dedicated only to securing power.

(He hadn't realized how much he had missed them- had missed him - until they were gone.)

But that was then and this was now, and right now his Watcher was alive and by his side again, a silent observer standing in the doorway, not a barely-breathing body hovering on the threshold between life and death. He blinked once to clear the afterimage of glowing white runes laid over prone black bodies, and said, in a voice that creaked like cracking ice, "Lurien."

He did not quite understand the strain in his speech, caught somewhere between come inside and let me look at you, let me see that this is not a dream and turn away and leave me be, leave me alone and let me be at peace. At the very least, it did not appear to come across as a form of hostility, for as he turned his head to look at him, something in Lurien's stiff posture relaxed in response, an edge of tension releasing as he folded a hand across his chest and bowed deeply to his king. A ritual that was meaningless now, but was followed through nonetheless, for the both of them had been creatures bound to formality by their ostracization from society. Even though sorrow hung heavy in his chest, the King could not deny a surge of satisfaction at the sight, some primal aspect of his being satiated by his follower's submission.

"My King." His quiet, melancholy voice rasped slightly in his throat, rusty from a long period of disuse, but no hint of his usual nervous energy lingered, as it often did when he had first stepped into his role as Watcher. Instead, a somber edge had crept into his tone, paired with a gentle steadiness that the Pale King did not quite recognize. The fierce, striking coldness he would speak with when calculating a political maneuver was not present here, nor was the quiet mournfulness that cloaked him when he came to deliver foul news, as had been uncommon in the days before he had gone to sleep. He had thought he would understand one of his own, but the tone that Lurien used with him now was not one that he had grown accustomed to. "Herrah told me that I may be of some use to you, if you are in a state fit to receive me."

The lack of a title before Herrah's name- or, indeed, the casual respect present in his speech at all- was not something that he had expected either. Briefly, the Pale King wondered when such a shift had occurred, before the cold knife of grief buried itself anew in his gut. He did not need to linger long on the thought before he understood how such a friendship might have occurred. "Did she."

"She did." Lurien hesitated, mask subtly tilting between his king and the space between, before he overcame his brief period of uncertainty and stepped beyond the threshold, closing the door behind him. Instantly, the Pale King was hit with the scent of incense hanging heavy on his robes, the smell of candlesmke and paint hidden faintly underneath- it was a scent reminiscent of long nights spent at the Watcher's Spire working through stacks of records, as familiar to him as the sweet aroma of his lady's purfume or the sting of Monomon’s acid. By all means, it should have comforted him. Instead, it drove the knife deeper into his abdomen, the pain of his loss digging its claws deep into his heart. “I apologize ahead of time for Monomon’s absence- she is currently driving half of the Archives up into a panic over the absence of her apprentice. As is common for our beloved Teacher, she had come up with the genius plan to fit her mask to him and cast him out into the Wastes to prevent the premature breaking of the seals, which now means that she has not only awoken before she could call him back from the middle of nowhere, but is also now maskless, faceless, and entirely unprepared for making a palace visit anytime soon.”

The dry sarcasm in Lurien’s voice was also achingly familiar, though it was strained a bit with worry and uncertainty. The knife twisted, and for a moment all he could do was sit and breathe through the pain as another wave of loss swept over him. It had been a long, long while since he had heard those familiar biting comments- far too long indeed. Memories of the three Dreamers arguing in the courtyard of the White Palace burbled up, fondness hidden under sharp tones and sarcastic, heavily, political statements, his queen laughing in the background. A time before the storm, a moment of comfort in a world of tumult and coming loss, one where he had leaned on the balcony and had watched all the petty arguing going on below, the warmth of his wife's amusem*nt a sweet accompaniment to the rare peace that had swept through him at the spectacle.

No cost too great.

His head felt too heavy for his neck. A viscous, cold sensation slid through his veins like a serpent, tired apathy weighing down on him. Lurien shifted his weight, and waited silently for him to indicate that he may sit, as he had before, when familiarity had turned formality into a dance of sorts rather than just an act of submission between the two of them. But lifting his hand to complete the gesture and beckon him forward took almost all of his strength, his fingertips as numb as if he had sunk them deep into a sheet of ice.

(Ridiculous. He had won . This was what he had wanted. This was what the bugs of Hallownest had needed from their King, and he had delivered, as he should have. As was his duty.)

(The feeling of breaking chitin and congealed void lingered on his claws, phantom reminders of what he had just done to the Hollow Knight, and for a moment a vision of bare, burnt black flesh broken through with veins of virulent orange and cavernous cysts floated before his vision, filling his head with dizzy, swimming nausea.)

No cost too great.

"...Sire. I do not wish to presume anything of you, nor to question your capability as King, but...did you obtain a replacement for me while I was gone?" Lurien's voice broke through his fugue like a stone through still water. The Pale King blinked, clearing the clinging memories from underneath his eyelids just in time to see Lurien reach forth to delicately pick up a sheet of silk paper, glancing down at it in a display of disgust that would be unmistakable even to a half-dead belfly. "Because if so, they are doing a terrible job at keeping up with the paperwork. You're already busy enough as is, this disaster is a disgrace."

Lurien's disapproval was, as usual, surprisingly sharp-edged for someone who was typically quite timid, and might have startled anyone who did not know how to avoid it. But to his surprise, it helped clear away the fog in his head somewhat. It did not compensate for the empty ache of loss near his chest (for his Lady was here but she stayed apart from him, she avoided him as if he were a ghost of what could have been, the only responsibility tethering her to the Palace clothed in a deep red hunter's cloak), but the familiarity of his tone was enough to cut through the fugue, and to reinstate some embarrassment in place of a pain that he had no right to feel. "No. No attempts were made to re-elect a new Watcher."

(He had thought of it, once, when sketching out the basic forms of the sealing runes in a sandbox. Lurien had not previously been expected to take the role of Dreamer, so no replacements had been trained to take his place, but there were many aspects of his job that he had mastered over the centuries of working on the preservation of Hallownest that could be easily divulged to other workers. They would not have his expertise, but it could be done.)

(The thought of it had filled him with such exhaustion and emptiness that he had given up on it before the plan had even begun.)

He expected some form of scolding, disguised under pretty prose. Such a transgression was allowed among the elite of his court, after all- it was an effective means of gaining the respect and admiration of his knights and advisors, an indulgence for the scarce few that he granted the boon of false immortality. They were far more likely to follow him if they felt like they could interact with him as one of their own, and so it was something that he tolerated well, whereas an outsider challenging him would be an insult he would not tolerate.

(And perhaps he enjoyed the gentle jabs and playful jests sometimes, in the moments where the tension of the court had his patience pulled to a wire-thin thread waiting to snap. Undignified though it was for a monarch to be chided by their subjects, it was reminiscent of the few kinder days he had experienced in his life, when he had been blind and ignorant and would squeakily challenge his mother to goad her into play, or he would tussle with other subadults in the mating-seasons before he reached his true breeding age, false spars between restless youths a rare moment of goodwill among strangers who would soon become dreaded enemies.)

(It had been a while since anyone had engaged in such antics with him, though. The court had grown empty of familiar faces after the Sealing, and he had been left alone to work on piecing together the ruins of his kingdom, ignoring the sudden quiet that had settled over the courtyards in the absence of three dreamers and a young child's bombastic attempts to play with the corpse of someone that, in a different life, might have been her family.)

Instead of engaging him with his usual dry wit, however, Lurien sucked in a harsh breath and abruptly dropped onto the seat of the stool beside him, the spider-silk paper crinkling in his grip. It was a sharp enough motion to catch the attention of his less savory instincts, head mechanically twitching toward the source of the movement with near-predatory interest, but Lurien seemed to not care one whit for his keen stare, his blunted claws digging into the fine silk as he struggled to speak. Apparently, his time in the Dream with the verbose Teacher and cutting wit of the Beast had not improved his speaking skills in the slightest. The Pale King was loathe to admit that he found some faint amusem*nt in catching him so stumble-tongued, even as his aching head bid him to choose a tactful retreat rather than sit through yet another lecture on his shortcomings. "I...my King, you were burdened enough with managing the city before you named me as your Watcher. Do not mistake my intentions here, I do not mean to undercut the capabilities of the divine, but-"

"I am the King of Hallownest, Watcher Lurien. Managing the kingdom is my duty." His terse reply was perhaps a tad too harsh, words click-hissing in a thoroughly undignified manner, but Lurien did not shy back in fear, as other bugs so often did when they caught a whiff of their god's ire. Instead, his hands halted in their relentless worrying at the missive, and his mask remained motionless as the Pale King turned his head to stare into that one open eyehole, the plates on the back of his neck bristling. Staying calm and unthreatening, even as his god stared him down, defensiveness manifesting over something as asinine as job assignment.

This was ridiculous. Lurien was, by all means, his most trustworthy advisor. He was one of the select few who could stare into the kingslight and hold fast to his own curiosity over its influence, he was the only mortal that he trusted to bear the burden of his mind, to see through his eyes to the city he had poured so much of himself into creating. His words were spoken out of a desire to help, not to harm- he was not an enemy. He was not Herrah, who spat the truth at him with no regard to his status as god-king. This defensiveness was foolish.

He did not quite know what came over him just then, but there was a pressure building between his eyes and tension in his throat, and even though he had felt his Watcher's absence in his court like a scale torn out too early, speaking of his struggles aloud felt like rubbing salt into an open wound. He wanted nothing more than to curl up in an empty room where everything was dim and grey, and to let the dim greyness wash over him like a cleansing tide, carrying away all the aches and the pains until he felt nothing once again.

Not a being. Not a god, a vengeful, frightful thing of power and hatred. A machine. A heartless automaton, one that did not think of all the little lives that it had destroyed, one that did not think of all those dear to it that it had hurt.

(And for a moment, in some sick, twisted manner he dared not linger on, he envied the little shadows hovering over the broken eggshells in the Abyss, free of all burdens and feelings in the cool embrace of their feeble half-deaths.)

"I shall tend to Hallownest no matter the demands it enacts upon me. We were a land at war; scouring the survivors for a bug eligible to take the role of Watcher would have been not only pointless, but also a waste of my time." He was harsher than he intended, colder than he had any right to be. Distantly, he looked upon his tone with deep disgust, but his mandibles moved before he could force them closed, his words almost as much of a weapon as the claws digging into his palms. "Focusing upon the relief efforts took priority over finding a replacement. The toll it took upon my personal time meant nothing to me."

The temperature dropped around him despite his effort to stay in control; he could see Lurien's breath misting out from under his mask, could feel the tremors in the air from his subtle shivering. The claws sunk into the soft pads of his palms dug in deeper, needle-point stinging buzzing in the back of his mind, and the scent of his own blood tingled on the edge of his awareness, dimmed though it was by the ambient void in the air around him.

No cost too great.

The mantra rang out in his head like a damning curse. His heart felt too heavy for his chest, the plated scales on the nape of his neck scratching unpleasantly against the edge of his collar. Ice fractals lazily unfurled their pinpoint edges under where his primary set of claws lay, his second pair still buried into the flesh of his palm- from somewhere far away, Lurien was uttering an apology, though he could barely hear it over the roar of his heartbeat echoing through his head like the shores of a raging sea.

Creatures of destruction, wyrms are, and they rule their kingdoms with a tyrant grip, their never-ending coils curled around the lands they conquered, maws gaping open to devour all who dare to oppose them-

This wasn't right. He was a ruler- he did not snap at those who offered their servitude out of a genuine desire to ease his suffering. The keening in his head did not excuse the way his body was still tensed as if to fight, loyal acolyte treated as if he was as much of a threat as the Old Light herself

This wasn't right. This wasn't right .

( 'Breathe, my love,' whispered a voice in his head, a memory he had not dared to touch since his claws grew stained with void, and he forced his jaw to unclench, forced his lungs to take in air and hold it instead of losing it all in a long, rattling hiss. 'Ease the tension locked around your heart, focus your mind inward, and breathe with me.' )

"My apologies," he murmured, once his thoughts had settled enough to disperse the chill in the air, to smooth down the scales on his back and pull his claws from his skin. "You did not overstep. This... unsightly behavior will not repeat in the future."

"I am hardly offended, my King. This is not the only outburst that I have weathered since I have awoken. Tensions are running high- it is not entirely your fault if you react to the stress of your people." Lurien folded his hands in front of him, the very picture of serenity, but the Pale King caught the way he clenched them together in an attempt to hide his shaking. Bitter regret surged in his chest for a moment, before being swallowed down by an all-consuming apathy; it was just like Lurien to try to tactfully try to place the blame on something else, rather than allowing him to shoulder all of it. It would offend him more if he didn't already know that his Watcher did it out of a genuine desire to comfort, rather than the blind belief that his god was entirely faultless. Lurien was a kind, empathetic soul, and that empathy was weapon that he wielded well in times of great crisis. He and the White Lady were quite similar in that matter. "Truthfully, I am...quite touched that I was not quite so easy to replace. I do not enjoy the idea of you having to take on all of the records and squabble of the city by yourself, but like I said before, I do not mean to undercut the capabilities of the divine. I only hope to help ease the burden of my monarchs, in any way that I can."

He spoke delicately, but with enough conviction to replace the odd, restless irritation from before with something verging on the border between sorrow and apathy, the devotion of a mortal smoothing away some of the ache buzzing through his limbs. Still, he found that he could barely muster the strength to let out a soft hum in reply; the cool bite of the metal tabletop once again felt very distant, detached, as if the body that rested two of its hands against its surface did not truly belong to him, and he was drifting beside his physical form like a shade drifted above a broken mask.

There was an empty ache in his chest where his heart once was. He found himself searching for it, for the magnetic pull of the Kingsoul, and felt himself relaxing slightly when the familiar warmth of the other half washed over him, weak though it was from years of a steadily-growing distance. Before the White Lady had returned from her gardens, her presence had been naught more than a faint spark in his mind, a warmth that was nearly lost under the chill of his own soul. Before this all began, she had been almost as much a part of him as one of his own limbs; separation from her had been unthinkable. She had intertwined her heart with his, she had taken his soul and cradled it within the boughs of her branches, his mind and hers had been nearly inseparable. Two halves of one whole, body and mind, different and yet complimentary. The King and Queen of their enlightened Hallownest. The light and life of their kingdom.

He had almost lost her for good. He had almost lost everyone for good, and his head swam with the weight of it all.

He had been the one naïve enough to scorn the Old Light, to think himself strong enough to erase the memories of her power from the minds of her followers. He had been the weak-hearted fool who had dreamed of a kingdom where people worshipped him because they chose to, and his arrogance had cost him the lives of billions.

Pathetic.

Distantly, he became aware of Lurien watching him with the same keen awareness that had caught his attention when they first met; that sharp, focused stare that cut him apart from the many other mortals of Hallownest, that set him among the ranks of Monomon the Teacher and the Five. He did not need to see his face to know that his eyes were darting all over him, examining him, picking apart all the nuances in his behavior and his expression, studying him with the same intense concentration that he delegated to mapping the span of fractures upon the roofs of the caverns, or the face of a criminal begging for pardon. It was his greatest gift, after all. The King expected nothing less.

Unfortunately, Lurien’s attentiveness was usually drastically heightened by his anxiety, which meant that he very likely had picked out all the signals of his distress, and was quietly catastrophizing over it. Which was unacceptable. He had just been liberated from a nigh-endless sleep, watching over the most hostile corner of the Dream Realm; he did not deserve to suffer through the terror of being unable to tell whether his patron god despised his presence.

He knew very well how needlessly cold he could be. He did not need to be needlessly cruel as well.

Still, his words did not come as easily as they should have, tongue a leaden weight in his mouth. Again, a brief flicker of disgust raced through him at his hesitation- weak, weak, such a flaw was hardly acceptable at this moment, when he had already come so close to failing as a king- before he managed to force out a quiet “Lurien, I…”

And then he stopped, struggling to string the nebulous concepts together into something that would make sense, struggling with a basic concept that could be grasped by even the youngest of grubs. For what could he say? ‘I am sorry that I nearly consigned you to an endless sleep?’ ‘I am sorry that I lead you to an eternity of near-solitude, that you offered yourself willingly to save your kingdom and your people, and I lead you blindly to a fate that would have made your death a pointless sacrifice?’ ‘I am sorry that I snarled at you, like some beast to an aggressor, when you are one of the many lives that I swore to protect, one of the many that would have been wasted if my kindred had not given in to the torture that my enemy carved into their flesh?’

None of it would suffice- it was unforgivable. He had been the one to choose the fate that they had so narrowly avoided, he had been the one who had willingly blinded himself to his impending failure, he had been the one to watch his children die a thousand different deaths rather than accept the fact that their sacrifices- all of their sacrifices- would be in vain. What he had done was unforgivable. He was unforgivable, and so it was worthless to apologize, to force a pardon that he did not deserve.

His half of the Kingsoul flared once, twice, dim warmth unfurling fragile wings against the inside of his thorax. He reached a hand up to his chest, pressed a hand against the spot where the ivory charm lay, and blinked against an odd burn in his eyes when he felt it pulse with power once again, his wife’s attempt at reassurance lending new strength to old connections once left to wither under the poison of their shared burden.

Again, that sharp, shaky breath. Again, the soft crinkle of paper folding under claws clenched too tight, before control was wrested back by their owner, and all was silent once more. King and advisor sat side by side, neither looking at the other, neither acknowledging the pain that lay between.

Then, quietly, “You’re grieving.”

He felt the plates on the back of his neck bristle again in response. It took him a moment to sort through the fog in his mind to capture the emotion that caused it, to identify it in the same dispassionate, uncaring way that he might dissect a particularly infected specimen: disgust, mixed with something deep and bitter that he did not desire to give a name to. Pain, a cold knife in his thorax that he could not breathe around, despite the fact that his carapace remained whole and unblemished under his stained palm. “I should not. It is done. I did what I had to do.”

“Perhaps.” A rustling sound, as if Lurien was adjusting his posture. He was too tired to look up and check. “But I would not still be here if you weren’t.”

The quiet conviction in his words gave him pause; they were spoken with such serene sorrow that for a moment, he nearly let them pass him by, and when they finally came back up and presented themselves to him, he could hardly make sense of them. Of all of his subjects in the Pale Court, Lurien was the most loyal, for he was the closest in mind to the King himself. Though he had taken great pains to ensure that his judgement remained unclouded by blind devotion, Lurien often came to the same conclusions that he did, and was generally faithful in pointing out alternatives to plans that neither he nor his Lady could find fault in. The thought of him leaving Hallownest was...troubling. Had he truly grown so lax in his leadership that he could not see dissent when it was right there in front of him? “Explain.”

“Gladly, my lord, though I must ask you to forgive me if I overstep at any point." Lurien hesitated, fiddling with the edge of his robe, before he took a deep breath and laced his fingers together once more, the very picture of serenity. If it wasn't for the slight tremor in his hands, the faintest tang of fear in the air, he would think of him as perfectly composed. "When you sought me out as Watcher- not that we had a name for it then- you wanted a bug that could see you for who you really were, a god that willingly took the form of a bug rather than an imaginable force, or a person that could be approached as any other king. Something that you saw in me, the scion of two foreigners with no geo to their name. Someone who, against all odds, was able to find and meet the very god of the land that had taken them in, to work by his side while others could only dream of an opportunity so great."

He hesitated for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice wavered- not with fear, exactly, but one of its hatchmates, anxiety mixed with an awe that crackled over his carapace, pure energy offered willingly to the divine. He breathed in the devotion, the trust, the careful link between god and devotee, and tried to focus on the way his mind sharpened instead of the bitter apathy sinking its fangs into his heart, whispering to him that this faith was greatly misplaced. "You wanted someone to be your eyes, a link between mortal and immortal that neither you or your lady wife could not cross. You wanted someone who could judge whether or not you could be trusted, someone whose eyes would remain unclouded by your kingslight. And out of all the bugs in the kingdom, it was me. Out of all the others you could have picked from, you chose me."

His mask tipped to the pile of missives stacked on the edge of the table before moving back to the King. Clearly, he had not quite given up on the workload ordeal just yet. "And I accepted. Not out of a fear of refusal or obligation or some selfish desire, but for the love I felt to the kingdom that had raised me. For the beauty I saw in its streets, and for the flaws that I longed to try to fix. Not just because I-"

He stopped. Exhaled hard. Drew his hands back into the comforting safety of his robes, where their persistent tremble could hide from seeking eyes. "Not just for loyalty to you, for that would come later, when I saw how much you gave to keep your kingdom safe. I am not yours because I see that I have no other choice; I am yours because I wish to be. And I would not wish to be beholden to a god who does not suffer when his people suffer, or lets his loved ones leave him if it, or does not curl up in his office in pain at his failures when he realizes the horror that they have created. No matter how dark the deeds are, a god that deals them without a care for the damage is not one that I would trust with the sanctity of my death. And so here I stay, to serve the kingdom that I love, and so I remain true to you. For if you did not grieve, then you would not have a heart, nor the desire to mend the damage that you have done."

The quiet strength in his voice grew steadily the longer he went on, until it rang clear with every word. Sorrow still lingered, but it did not cloud the conviction with which he spoke, and his mind remained clear of the influence of the kingslight. There was no empty worship there, no misplaced awe dropping somber words from mandibles grown lax with the blinding desire to please the god before him. Only the belief of truth, and the genuine wish to provide aid to the being he had devoted himself to.

The Kingsoul warmed again, the sweet touch of his wife’s soul attempting to reach through the years of accumulated pain that lay between them; he knew, in the implicit understanding of one who had shared his heart with her for centuries, that she could feel what he felt, and that she wanted nothing more than to abandon the duties at hand to offer him comfort.

As if he had not used her gift of life to sentence countless little hatchlings to damnation. As if he had not turned away from the weariness and sorrow that lingered in her gaze everytime she looked at him, as if he did not turn her away everytime she retreated to her gardens, until one day she did not design to come back.

For the first time since the hatching of the Pure Vessel, he reached out to her, and touched his soul to hers. The sweet tendrils of her mind slithered over his, his other half, the keeper of his heart, and she wrapped them tightly around him, her thoughts mingling with his for once sweet, painful moment.

I’m sorry, love. For abandoning you. For using you. For everything.

His eyes burned. He could not tell if it was because of the cold air stinging his inner eyelids, or something else. He breathed in, and it hurt. He breathed out, and his chest seized, throat clenching tight as if it didn’t want to let go, his body fighting down the urge to curl up into a tight ball, to whimper, to scream.

Two people. Two people, and millions of civilians. All held faith in him. All placed their lives willingly into his hands. Two did so deliberately. Two did so even after they knew of the horrors he had enacted within the Abyss, against those who would have been his own flesh and blood. Two that he had used to perpetuate the life of Hallownest. If Monomon came to him and spoke to him as if he were a dear friend, as she had before he had asked her to die for his sake, then it would be three.

If the Vessel was truly alive, if there was someone there instead of a something that was naught more than pure, raw instinct and the fading desire to survive, then it would be-

He did not-

Lurien, evidently, understood more of his mental state than he did, or perhaps simply realized the full extent of the emotions he had displayed in one fell swoop, for it was not long before he froze, muttered an awkward, half-stuttered apology, and left, leaving behind naught but a crumpled letter in his haste to escape. The Pale King felt a pang of regret as he left- for what, he did not know- but that was buried soon enough under the struggle to keep his composure, the comfort of his wife’s telepathic embrace only augmenting the guilt and grief that lay between them.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Eventually though, the shaking passed, and he managed to get himself under control, as he always did. The darkness cleared from his vision, the cold waves of regret retreated from his mind, and he blinked back the sting of unshed tears as the White Lady retreated back into her own mind, pulled away by the distraction of queenhood. Though some of the shadowy fog still lingered in the corners of his mind, it was swept back easily enough, his newest objective pinned to the forefront of his thoughts like a beacon shining underwater, a lighthouse gleaming over an endless sea.

He was the god of Hallownest. He could not fail, no matter how close he had come to damning them all to eternal darkness.

Slowly, calmly, he pulled his claws from his palms, and rose from his tight curl in his seat. The gouged claw marks were healed with a quick flicker of soul, blood singed from his hands before he withdrew them from the sleeves of his robes. He deliberately did not look down at the scars that his wayward talons had left behind, or tried to sneak a glimpse of his blood before it all burned away. Lingering on it would serve no purpose to him now.

The vessel would come awake soon. He would be there to meet them when they awoke.

.

.

.

Lay your heart into my perfect machine

I will use it to protect you from me

I will never let you see what's beneath

So good for you and good for me

We told ourselves we're where right we ought to be

- Perfect Machine, Starset

Chapter 6: Charge in Progeny Cursed

Chapter Text

Is this real?

'Cause I can't feel

I reach into the darkness

And there's nothing to hold

Try to heal

But spin my wheels

The more I try to stop this

The more I lose control

.

.

.

It awoke to a curious lack of pain.

Or, rather, to a lack of everything, for it could not feel any part of its body with the clarity that it should have. Sight had abandoned it- oh, its eyes weren’t open yet, error located- along with touch, as if it was curled up within a bubble of void, or perhaps trapped back within its egg. Though the din of voices rang out around it, (thankfully quite quiet considering the recent circ*mstances), it found it quite difficult to open its eyelids on its own volition, and so it did not try.

(Something pressed into the back of its mind, an urge chained to its void. But all its shade did was whirl around uncomfortably under the thin veneer of carapace and shell containing it rather than attempting to break free, and so it made no attempt to decipher the missive. Attempting to divine the meaning of something that was not pressing was probably a waste of energy, and that was in a short enough supply anyways.)

Some vague sensations slowly dawned within the Vessel's mind as time trickled on by, but they came in bits and pieces, disordiant bits of a puzzle scattered about without forming a picture. First came the clarity of sound, from the muffled murmur of underwater whisperings to the soft, sharp muttering of speaking bugs- the sounds they made lacked meaning, but their tones were the calm silver-grey of still waters, so it was likely that whatever matters were at hand were not particularly important. Then came the vague understanding of the extent of its form, numb weights tethered to its shade, and for a moment it just lay there and let the cold seep in and allowed itself to ponder about the fact that it felt quite a bit bigger than it thought it should be. Disappointingly large, really, if vessels could have feelings or thoughts. But it wasn't supposed to, because otherwise many others would perish, so perhaps it was merely allowing the information to seek in, and was processing the tactical disadvantages of such a height.

(Something in its mouth tasted foul, too. Briefly, it allowed itself to wonder what it had eaten, or when it had last eaten at all, before the thought slipped free from the centerpoint of its mind and was lost entirely, as it should. As what was right. She could not catch hold of it if it allowed everything in its mind to slip through its consciousness like water through a sieve.)

Then the realization slowly dawned that it was probably needed somewhere else, for it was unfortunately horizontal at the moment, and that dallying about would be inexcusable beyond the measure of purity it was enabled.

Lancing bolts leapt through its body, before disappearing into the blank numbness surrounding it. They left sparks of sensation squiggling through its body, silver-white flecks on a velvety black background, but wriggling about did not (unfortunately) yield promising results. The silver-white flecks had woven wires through its veins, allowing it to jerk its limbs about like the strings of a puppet, but alas, it was still far too weak and numb to really do anything other than sit there and twitch helplessly, its own body far too weighty for it to move like it used to.

(It got the faint impression that it should probably be alarmed about this. But it should not feel, which was confusing. Father had taught it the moments to react and to strike back, the moments that it should consider its brief windows of weakness to be a threat, but he had never quite explained how it should recognize things like that without feeling something in response. It did not feel as mortal bugs did- that it knew, that it could sense, the emotions of real beings were ethereal and weighty and did not squiggle or squirm about like its void did- but it still felt something in the moments before its physical form snapped around and reacted, moments where its mind went blank and its shade roared in its head like a wave ready to break.)

The sound of voices changed their colour, fading from a monochrome silver-grey to something a little more red and yellow, a little more heated. But red was not orange was not the colour of burning sunlight and angry gold hatred and hurt, so it kept itself still and let its shade wriggle a bit more, trying to get the hardened void encasing it to move the way it should. Heaviness still pressed it down, a weighty blanket draped over its everything, but it managed to get its primary eyelids peeled back to let the pale light in, and it could make the little part of its body move, ever so slightly...

Something wet came up and slapped it in the face. A moment later, it tasted dust, the cool snap of soul, and the faint edge of something fetid and sugar-sweet under the cloying reek of chemicals. Stunned, it sat there for a moment, before accidentally twitching again and getting the wet thing to slap it in the face once more, this time treating it to the distinct not-taste of whatever odd concoction of soul and void formed the eyeholes in its mask.

(Briefly, it wondered why in the world soul had a taste when void did not. Or, rather, why void had a taste that was a not-taste, but soul should be a not-taste without a taste that really was more of a sensation, like an icy-cool sizzle-snap. But it really shouldn’t wonder, for wondering was thinking and thinking things were not empty, and so it did not.)

Alright. It could move its tongue, apparently, or at least one of the many appendages in its mouth that were probably considered to be something like a tongue or proboscis, if its anatomy was to be compared to that of a normal bug. Tongue action alone would not allow it to stand guard or serve its King, but that was a fair sight closer to what it was pretty sure it was supposed to be doing at the moment, which was to stand about thoughtlessly and be ready to strike things with its nail. It wasn’t sure where that was, either, but once it got its third eyelids back then it was very likely that it would be able to find it around somewhere, so it let that particular misfortune slide by as it worked on yanking on the chains and wires tethering its void, trying to slowly chase the numbness away from all of its…all of its everything.

Its tongue was still hanging out of its mouth. That was probably rude. It was almost certain that it had heard the White Lady tell the Gendered Child once that sticking her tongue out at passerby was something that polite bugs did not do, even if they hated them quite a bit. But it was not a bug, and none of the voices around it were commanding it to pull it back in, and so it did not. If one of the royals designed to tell it back into its mouth, then it would, but for now it really should be focusing on trying to stand up, which currently did not involve tougue-withdrawal as a prerequisite.

(Briefly, it wondered if this was one of Her many illusions, and alarm flared bright in its mind, a shining white star against the churning darkness in its mind. But the moments where She took its pain away were almost always accompanied by sweet comfort, and the false sensation of safety, and since none of those currently surrounded it, it soon found itself relaxing once again.)

(Besides, it couldn’t sense any scraps of her essence anywhere. The air tasted sharp, clean, not with the musty old heat and sugar-sweet tang of dreams. Sharp, clean, with the metal-and-floral tang that meant Mother, that meant Father, that meant harsh-pressure soothing-light warmth-and-cold all at once. Ringing fog and the rustle of leaves brushing against windchimes. Pride and sorrow and fear and hope.)

With a great heave of effort, it managed to lift its head...only to have it smack down hard again on whatever it was laying on, stabbing its tongue with one of its mandibles as it did so. That it could feel, and that hurt somewhat under the fuzziness lingering within all of its everywhere, but it was quickly healed with a brief pop of soul (and that it had a lot of, curiously enough, its reservoirs not dried and empty like they usually were, though it could not quite recall why that was so unfamiliar to it) before it set to work straining against its weakness once again.

The chatter in the room abruptly turned to something more excitable, something silver-bright and sharp and clear, before tiny warm hands began to paw at its muzzle, little sharp claws scratching lightly over its chitin. It huffed, letting its tongue flick out to touch them, and felt the void within its chest grow airy and light when it was met with a childish giggle, the hands retreating for a moment before tapping against its face again, the high-pitched squeak of a young grub’s voice speaking too fast for it to understand.

But it was familiar, and familiarity was a sensation that it understood well enough without context. With another huff of effort, it turned its head in towards where the girl was, feeling the faint heat of her body along the light grooves in its muzzle, and finally found the energy to peel back the last layer of its inner eyelids, the room coming into view with a burst of light before the shadows slowly faded it back into focus.

And the face that met it was a welcome one indeed. Round black eyes stared back at it from a bright white face, shiny and faceted like a normal bug’s rather than the swirling, writhing void of a vessel’s; that light, airy warmth filled its chest again, good warmth, not the harsh, itching burn of Her light, and, without thinking, its chestplates buzzed with a croon of greeting, the absence of sound echoing through the dark before it forced the silence to come to an end.

Hello sibling hello hello hello sharp-quick-shining-sibling keen sibling sibling-who-cries-sibling-who-was-wanted sibling-of-beast-and-light, hello sister, hello hello hello.

No response came to its cry- for there were no void-siblings left to hear it, none to echo back its voice- but it did not matter, not at all, for its little baby sister responded anyways, in the only way that she could. With an exuberant cry of ‘Hollow!’, she leapt up onto the table (table? Yes, that was what it was laying on, it could feel the coldness seeping through now that it thought of it) and bonked her head against its mask, the clack of hard chitin echoing through its mind.

“Hollow! You’re awake!” Her voice held a thin, wavering quality to it, reminiscent of tears, but it swung high enough and clear enough that it knew she must be happy. Its void sung in its chest, a keen to match her own shrill cry, but it managed to stop itself before its response deafened her voice. “Are you alright? Do you need any help?”

Now that was something it wasn’t quite sure it could answer. Its sister was very sweet, very lovely despite overall being quite sharp and pointy in many different ways, but she had, alas, never quite grasped the fact that it could not answer objective questions in that manner, for it did not have the feelings required to formulate a response, or the mind to find a way to respond. Or to answer questions at all, really. Or to accept help that wasn’t pointedly given.

But it tried anyway, for the tingling numbness had faded enough for it to gain some control back over its body, as well as the energy required to attempt such a movement. With a great heave, it rolled onto its uninjured shoulder, taking great care to not send its little sister flying off the edge- a great task, for she was still ever so very tiny, alas- and then it wibble-wobbled its way up ‘til its legs were gathered underneath its body and heaved , the metal of the table letting out a loud squeal of protest as it hooked its claws in to ground itself, head still floating up, up, up as its chest and shoulders ached with the exertion of its movement, the world going up-down up-down until it finally decided to settle down and behave, as it very well should.

Little-sister-sharp-sister let out a sound that could be joy or alarm; it tried to focus, to discern what the sound meant so that it could properly obey its orders to guard her, but found its attention to be quite lacking. Unfortunately, once the world stopped spinning and all was well, it found that it kept listing a bit to the right, in a way that it normally should not. Which made it quite a bit more difficult to focus on what was going on in front of it, especially since its head still seemed to be floating about like an errant wingmould rather than settling down back on its neck where it should be.

“-llow,” said the voice that belonged to its sister, and it realized, quite suddenly, that she was sitting right before it. But there appeared to be two of her, or, at least, one of her that was rather small, as she should be, and one that did not sound as nearly as small as it remembered. It stared at the smaller black smudge before it, trying to force it to come into focus- it was underwater, it was floating, and its eyes could focus still as they should not after hours and nights and years of watching a goddess go supernova, but they did not particularly seem to want to focus on the thing that it needed them to focus on, which was quite unfortunate. Sister was speaking to it, and sister was the daughter of Hallownest; it was made to protect her by virtue of its creation, but it could not quite process what stood before it. “Hollow! Are you okay?”

It looked to where the voice was coming from. Its sister looked back at it, different and yet the same, one edge of her bright red cloak flipped up over her shoulder, pushed out of the way by a needle still far too big for her frame. But there was still the dark thing hovering before it, the same size that she had been when she had been young and new and fragile, and it could not, for the false life of it, figure out why that was.

(How inconvenient, that it was supposed to be born without a mind to think, and yet was expected to puzzle out conundrums like this. Even the kingsmoulds and wingsmoulds were not expected to figure out complex tasks or remember battle-patterns other than what they were preprogrammed for, and yet here it was, confronted with a momentous task that was technically far beyond what its capabilities were supposed to be. It was not sure whether to-

A wet slap against hard chitin. Oops. That was its tongue again, smacking against its face. It was really rather unimpressed with how dusty-sweet it tasted, like stale old air and the Infection.)

“I think the drugs work,” said a voice that sounded oddly familiar, and for a moment it felt the cloying, creeping grasping-feeling of what the plays and texts called guilt, but then its sister giggled quietly, and its focus was returned to the task at hand.

It had heard Father and Watcher Lurien speak of the ways that their Sight affected the way they viewed the physical world, in the moments where the Watcher saw flashes of things that could come to be and needed Father to confirm the probability of their occurrence. It had felt such a thing, once, when Father had given it the Allsight so that it could see the world beyond the Black Egg Temple, before the dark had closed in and She had slammed into its mind in all Her screaming, terrified fury.

(“Oh, you think? ” said another voice that it probably should have recognized, in a tone that was snarky but did not quite sound angry, so it let their comment slip by, and tried to separate the feeling of The When from the feeling of The Now, as Father often tried to explain when Lurien was having trouble distinguishing between either, or was complaining of the future laying a ghost vision upon his true sight.)

...Was this foresight? Was it foresighting right now? The diagnosis seemed unlikely. It had seen how badly Father had reacted, it had felt how the cloak of shadows swept around him had tried to choke out his light when its little baby sister was near. He had guarded over her, as he had not guarded over it, but every moment with her had caused some deep, tearing pain within him that had tasted of death and the Sea. The possibility of the blob on the right being another baby sister- a somehow duplicated baby sister- was nigh nonexistent. Unless the one on the left with the too-big needle was the futurevision, but it was somewhat certain that she had been far bigger than its hands before it had been sealed away.

If it had been sealed away. If this was not an illusion.

...It couldn’t feel its toes.

It was not allowed to have opinions, but if it did, it would have likely found this situation to be quite silly, even for one of Her mechanisms. It considered the two dark masses once more, the two things that could possibly both be Sister, and then decided to fix the problem by very simply combining the two together.

The large dark mass that Could Be Sister fit rather neatly over her mask. She made a muffled, squeaky noise of complaint, before it devolved into a giggle, and two small fuzzy dark paws reached up to grasp at the thing obscuring her sight, and-

-Oh. It could feel that. That was its wrist.

And the thing that it had mistaken for its sister in her hatchling phase was its hand.

Yes. That was far clearer now that she'd moved it off to the side to stare at them, yes. Her carapace did not quite swallow the light like its shell did, their edges blurred by spider fluff rather than a lack of ability to retain light. Void touched, not born from the depths, not a shade-shell, not a Sibling but a Sister. It probably should have been able to distinguish the differences before.

(And for a moment it let the guarding wards around its mind fall lax, and it clicked and sang to her in the song of the void that was not a song but an aching, empty lapse of sound pulsating in a rhythm that was as deeply instinctual to it as fighting and fleeing and tearing and breathing and for a moment, just for a moment it thought that it felt something call back- )

(But that was an illusion. It must be. Its siblings had died their final deaths, the churning, tumbling sea laid still, and it was alone. That was the truth of the matter. That was how it must be.)

Now it felt like it would feel quite silly, if it was allowed to have emotions, which it could not. It was one thing to be incapacitated from structural damage and to be weakened from that; it was quite another thing to be so disoriented that it lacked the ability to decipher memory from reality. Still, the fact remained that its little sister needed it and if it could just figure out where its legs were supposed to go then maybe-

This time, attempting to rise was less of a confusing float upwards and more of an awkward, scrabbling tilt rightwards. It felt the tips of its long claws smash into something with a bang, heard that something skitter away with the distinctive clanging scream of protesting metal, heard its sister shout, and then found itself tangled up in its own limbs on the cold tile floor of its father's workshop, its inner eyelids swiping furiously over the swirling, writhing void within as it struggled to process what had just happened to it.

...Oh. it had kicked a chair. It had no idea how it had managed that, but somehow it had, and now it was lying in a crumpled heap next to something else that looked suspiciously more crunched up than it probably should be, the ornate, silvery metal in quite a sad state compared to what it must have been like before battle-ready talons had come crashing into it.

If it could feel emotions, it most likely would feel quite sorry for the poor chair. It was tough work being a Pure Vessel, after all, but it could not quite imagine what it must be like to be a chair, or to be a chair overturned by said Pure Vessel in particular. For a moment, all it could do was regard the pitiful pummeled thing with a sort of numb, thoughtless-full sort of aura floating about it (like maskflies, it was sure, maybe if it looked up quick enough then it would be able to catch one), before warm hands grabbed it by the sides and started to push it up, hands that very noticeably did not belong to its sister.

"Herrah, help me prop them back up on the table here. I can't quite reach far enough to let them down gently." The voice was panicked enough for it to jerk slightly in the unfamiliar grip, hands trying to curl towards a familiar, absent grip, but for some reason, it found its limbs would not obey it again. "Damn it all, I won't have them tearing their shoulder open for this- I told you that we should have waited longer before going in."

"And denied my daughter the chance to see her sibling again, or risk the possibility of them rolling off the table and gashing it open anyways? I think not." Herrah the Beast's usual rough-edged accent deepened into a thick drawl for a moment, the syllables in her speech sliding into a slow snarl, before larger, stronger hands took hold of it. It suddenly became aware that it did not know the whereabouts of its sister, and tried to turn around to look for her, but all it caught was a glimpse of a familiar six-eyed mask before a large, furry paw pushed its muzzle back again. "Be calm, soldier, you've had a rough night. Hornet will be by you in a moment, if that's who you're looking for."

"How-" protested the other voice (deeper than Herrah's but lighter in tone, quicker in inflection, shorter words dancing lightly over sharper clicking sounds like raindrops on a rooftop like the citydwellers but not and Lurien, Lurien it was Watcher Lurien, another Dreamer, another jailer), before he cleared his throat and sighed. "It matters not. The Vessel would not move if not commanded to, and its recovery hinges on the stitches in its shoulder not tearing. I dare say we should have given it a few more days to detoxify before we came barging in here to fuss over it."

Herrah clicked her fangs together, clearly disapproving, but said nothing, her huge claws gentle as she helped its limp body back onto the table. The Vessel squinted at her, trying to phase out the fuzziness from its vision, before realizing that its sight was not in error; Herrah had de-masked herself and switched her Dreamer garb out for something more comfortable, her outline softened by the fur of her face and the soft, lumpy texture of her knitted veil. Were it not for the fierce frown on her face and the foreboding dark curve of her fangs, she would look almost...domestic. Not the terrifying Beast of Deepenst, queen of hunters and the hungry predators lurking in the dark depths below the kingdom, but someone softer, more approachable. Someone who might have been a mother of multiple, had the world been kinder, someone who would have a chance to put away her greatneedle and weave cloaks by the fire while her little ones tumbled and played.

(There was a reason why the mortals wore masks around their gods. To be unmasked was to be vulnerable, to be seen. To be a god was to change the very fabric of reality merely by existing, and the wills of bugs were weak, their minds young. Their masks were a false self that they could project to keep their true hearts hidden away, to filter out the enthralling light of their protectors, to keep their thoughts safe and guarded against all that strove to erode it. A shield before a flame.)

(Its mask was its face, its title was its name. It was what it had been deemed to be. Hollow. Pure.)

(...It was not-)

"Sorry,” said its sister, and her voice was as small as she had been before the Sealing, small and filled with sorrow. It turned its head to her, mind filled with the memory of how she had screamed when she saw her mother being taken away, but it couldn’t see past the Watcher’s robe, its muzzle colliding with his chest. “I should have waited.”

“Honeydrop,” Herrah murmured, as the Watcher coughed and rubbed his thorax- oops, it hadn’t meant to do that, it was unfortunately strong and mortals were fleeting and weak, it needed to remember, it couldn’t forget- “It wasn’t your fault. They are in a fragile state, and would have needed someone to check on them before long. It’s likely better that we did it than your father, as he hasn’t been in a particularly...productive state of mind as of late. Oh, don’t give me that look, Lurien, you know very well that it’s the godsdamned truth.”

Herrah accented her words by propping it up against the wall with one final shove, and though the room spun again, it managed to regain enough control to keep itself there, the world coming into focus after a couple more blinks. One of Herrah’s hands remained on its knee, clearly ready to grab it if it tipped over again, but her two leftmost arms were currently clutching its little sister, pressing her against her side as if she was worried that she might disappear the second she let go. Hornet (what a good name for her, sharp and fierce and proud just like her) didn’t seem to be distressed at all, her face all but buried in her mother’s fur. Small, still, even if she grew like a mortal, her body aging while her mind and heart remained so young.

(It had grown quickly, the weight of its expectations aging it faster than what was typical for a child born of two gods. Father had commented on it once, twice, musing if it was due to its mother’s influence, before dismissing it as unimportant.)

(It was not a child, and it did not matter if it reached its full-grown molt far before any young wyrm would. Hallownest was dying, falling to a plague of dreams, death replaced with fury and sorrow and burning light. It was not a child, and it could never afford to be a child, and that was simply how it had to be.)

Then Herrah’s words caught up to it, and it blinked again, tongue flicking once before it remembered to tuck its back under its mask. A somewhat messy ordeal, admittedly- it had no idea how many tongues it had until they all decided to hang out of its mandibles- but one that it apparently managed to do with some small semblance of dignity, for nobody in the room with it appeared to notice.

( Not that its sister could notice, with her mother’s shawl still hanging over her eyes as she tried to squirm free, but the statement still stood, even if it could not. It had been named the Pure Vessel, the hope of Hallownest- it might as well look like it.)

...Father wasn’t in a productive state of mind? That was worrying; he was almost always doing something, even if it wasn’t one of the things that he particularly enjoyed. He had worked all through its life, jumping from one task to the next, moving restlessly from project to project. Even when Hornet had hatched, the endless work had not ceased, the cradle merely moved to a spot where he could brood over it while his hands remained buried in wire parts and stone tablets; near the time of the Sealing, it had hardly seen him outside of official meetings, left to endlessly stand guard by the workshop doors while he toiled away inside. Him being unproductive was a deviation from the norm that it struggled to process, for it was as unthinkable as draining the void from the banks of the great sea, or striking the stars down from their places in the sky.

So it really had happened, didn’t it? This was not something that She could fabricate. It had happened. She was dead, and it had killed her.

She was dead, and it had come home.

(Its left hand itched terribly. Something in its mind turned over, a realization of empty space, but it could not put the pieces together, with everything as scattered and fuzzy as it was.)

Lurien sighed softly, having finally gotten enough air in his lungs to do so, and tentatively reached out between the two spiders before he lost his nerve and stuck his hand back under his cloak. “I’m not angry with you, Princess. I’m just...worried. There are many unknown variables that we must account for, and your father does not take kindly to surprises. You are not the one to blame.”

(Really, the sensation was becoming unbearable. It attempted to shift its weight enough to scratch the itch without tipping itself over, but then its unfortunately large horns clipped the wall, and it forced itself to stay still instead, to ignore the tingling discomfort arching through its shoulder. It was good at waiting, after all- it could handle this. It had handled much worse in its false shadow of a life.)

“I didn’t think you were angry at me,” grumbled its little sister; there was just the faintest hint of a hiss in her words, but the face that glared out from under her mother’s scarf was almost charmingly pelutent, not overly distressed. Little-sister, sharp-sister, still too small to be terrifying, though the nobles stared at her and whispered of things that should never be spoken in the presence of little ears, fears of the future that were, in its eyes, wholly unfounded. Its littlest sibling was not a worldender like it was born to be. “I was apologizing to Hollow. They’re the one that fell over and nearly got hurt again because I decided to come in here, you just happened to be in here with me.”

“To be fair, I think they were going to fall off the table soon enough, there’s enough drugs in their system to kill half of Deepnest,” muttered Herrah, as Lurien sputtered out a stammered apology, but there was a smile tugging at her chelicerae, mirth sparkling deep in her eyes. The Hollow Knight felt the void in its chest swoop up as it looked at her, then swoop up again as its sister glanced at it in alarm, a tumbling cascade of sensation that was not entirely unpleasant, even if it really was not supposed to be there at all. But then again, it was not supposed to be here at all, much less be still breathing and moving and mock-living, so perhaps reality was just a little bit too far to the left of things to matter in any capacity.

But still, the thought of it being drugged was quite ridiculous. Things of void were not the same as things of flesh, and so were not affected by toxins in the same manner that real living beings would be. The sludge that approximated the organs and body of a real bug was merely a shadow of something that was truly alive- it could not, in theory, be drugged. It knew this for a fact, because Father had said so often in the moments where it had failed a task and needed a repair, and Father was the God of Mind. He knew all, saw all. He could not be wrong about anything- the flaws that marred it were not of his making, but a fault in its very core, hidden away where even his light could not reach. The fact that there were currently two of Herrah was most likely due to its vision being damaged in some way, rather than the effects of a drug that could not affect a being like itself.

Its left shoulder tingled unpleasantly, a crawling sensation that, despite its best efforts, was just about impossible to ignore. It went to scratch it, found that its claws went through the place where the limb was before, and turned about in such a hurry to look at the empty space where its arm should have been that it went and tipped itself over again, the curve of its right horn knocking Lurien to the ground right before Herrah managed to grab hold of its (still present) forearm.

Oops.

"Hollow!" Cried its sibling, as Herrah let out a low curse; all of the void inside of it was twisting and churning with its vision, but the black lake of its mind felt deathly still. Lurien grunted something from the floor, but its sister's shrill squeak pierced through his speech, her little dark claws pressing against its abdomen as she struggled to help her mother keep it upright. Two little dark claws. Two, where it now had one. "Stop moving around like that! It isn't safe, you're going to tear your stitches. Don't you want to get better?"

She tried to sound stern, but her youth betrayed her, fear and desperation slipping out under her tone. It turned to her, pulled as if tethered by invisible chains, and felt the pulsing vibration of its false rumbling start in its chest, a silent song that it knew she could not hear. A lullaby for the deep.

(Echoes, echoes, it thought it felt echoes, but this it did not focus on as she frowned and climbed up to sit by it, pinprick talons pricking into its carapace. She was not as warm as Herrah's hands, as the cascading speech of the two Dreamers as they conversed, but she was warm enough, a familiar little shadow huddled against the darker blackness of its form.)

Its arm was gone. This fact presented itself to it as if stamped upon a silver card: impersonal, yet embellished and unforgettable, shining in the forefront of its thoughts like an ill-won trophy. And yet, when it picked it up and turned it over, it felt nothing but the neutrality born of dull acceptance. The damage sustained had been significant; it was of no use if its health remained in a critical state. The King clearly had plans for it beyond the scope of its creation, and could not afford to waste resources trying to mend it. The phantom aching in the limb, the burning itch of burned veins through intangible flesh- that meant nothing to it. It was gone. The loss of it was not to be mourned.

(Not that it should mourn it. Not that it could, even as its shade swirled and wriggled its claws against the scarring shell, feeling out the expanse of rough, congealing void where there one had been nothing more but pristine flesh. One arm gone, a chunk of it gone, and it was so lost and torn and scattered already that the cry of agony it loosed into the void of its mind was no louder than the squeak of a frightened mossfly lost in the foliage, one small drop in a big, dark sea.)

Well, if it could not mourn, then there was no point to linger on it. Its superior had chosen to remove it, and it had no choice but to comply, for its body was not its own, mind and shade and shell a machine. It was much more prudent to focus its attentions on the white-and-silver chains threading over the tranquil pool of its thoughts, to trace over the crossing lines until it found the past order that best fit its current state of health and fitness.

Which, as chance foretold it, was the command to keep an eye on its little sister.

With a near-silent whuff, it twisted its head down to look at her, guided by the slight stinging pinprick of her claws. She was clinging tightly enough to the mothworn cloak wrapped around its abdomen to prick through it and the bandages beneath, her cheliclere folded in a tight frown that was just slightly too fearful for it to classify as true anger. At their stare, she tensed, mouthparts flaring open and closed as she struggled for something to say, but it knew, deep down, that it was not because she was afraid of it. Not like the others, the mortals. Not like Mother, not like Father. She struggled for words, struggled to bridge the gap between her thoughts and her gift of speech, but its heart was attuned to the silent empty spaces between all things, and it knew, as intimately as it knew its shade, the message that she wanted to say.

I missed you. Don't leave me again. Please don't leave me again, because I am scared that you will, and I'm scared that I will be left behind.

Please don't leave me alone again.

Oh, little sister. Little sharp sister, honey-sweet-sticky-squeaking sister. It loved her more than it loved the kingdom and all the faint, flickering hearts within- it loved her the way the shore loved the sea, a constant steady presence for the tumultuous currents as they roared past its banks. She was not like it, a shadow torn from the deeps, she was alive and whole and worthy of the world and all that was in it. It was not supposed to feel, to think- but the warmth in its heart matched the warmth that it felt when Father looked at it with pride, or when the White Lady laughed with the knights in her gardens, or when it looked out into the world and saw all the lives that lived in defiance of the endless, inevitable void, daring sparks of warmth that lived and laughed and cried and created, hundreds upon thousands upon millions of stories unfurling their petals despite the slow march of their coming deaths. A life that it could not share, a life that it was not made to embrace, but one that it could marvel at nonetheless, or keep safe from the threats that loomed beyond the bitter horizons.

(And its shade ached, ached to be free of its shell, to crack open its mask and tear open the enchantments binding it within, to return to the endless dark sea below where the souls of its other siblings lay still. Its life was worthless, knowledge of its purpose forfeit.

(But if it could stay here with her- if it could protect her, could watch her grow into the fierce princess it knew she could be- then perhaps the curse of life would be worth it.)

It reached forward with the one hand it still had, scratched pawpads rough against the curve of her horn, and then waver-wobbled its way down to her height so that it could touch its forehead to hers, rumbling a silent sleeping-song to her as it did so. Its mask knocked against hers with a little more force than strictly necessary, and she squeaked again, as she did so often when she was small enough to fit her whole body into the palm of its hand. But rather than pushing it away, or hissing as she had on the day when the Pale King had torn her away from her mother, she reached out for it and snuggled into its hold, hiding her face in its unbound shoulder as it tried to stifle the shaking shivering through her.

“I missed you,” she murmured aloud, quiet enough for only it to hear, and the void within its chest swirled and churned. Acting on a memory, an order unbidden, it turned its head to her and pressed its cheek against her horn, breaths coming in soft, gentle whuffs against the back of her cloak, and tried very hard to remember why such a thing had always been forbidden from it, why some distant part of it froze in terror at the expression it was showing.

This was its sister, its family- it was the Pure Vessel, yes, an empty automatron designed to die, but if it was expected to memorize endless drill routines and combat spells, then surely it would be allowed this, at the very least?

(Behind them both, in the shifting background chatter of conversation that shifted silver-brown-blue-gold, there was a pause, and then a soft 'awwwww' of appreciation that undoubtedly came from Herrah herself, with a soft, whispering undertone that might have been Lurien as well. Its little sister stiffened, grasping its cloak tighter between her claws, but then it tucked her closer and clicked its mandibles against her horn, as Father had taught it to do when she was little fussy and needed reassurance from any vague semblance of sympathy, and just like before, she sighed, and stopped.)

It was so occupied was it on its sibling that it barely noticed when an all-too familiar presence rose from its hiding spot near the doorway, and silently faded away. But its last living sibling was here and though it was weak and broken it was alive , as alive as the supposedly-empty shell of a Pure Vessel could be, and so it did not think of the observer that had left it for a long, long time.

(Or, at the very least, it did not remember it lingering just beyond the boundaries of the room until the drugs wore off, and Herrah shoved a new wad of herbs down its throat again. But by then it had other things to worry about than familiar familial loiters hovering by doorframes, and so it did not think of it at all for a long, long time.)

Time passed, the effects of its endless march felt even as the halls of the White Palace resisted its pull, slowing the decay of its advancements upon the creatures that lingered beneath its walls. The Hollow Knight’s body soon grew hale again, healed by a hearty combination of rest and soul. Though years of inaction had reduced it to a mere shadow of its former self, it retained the endless vigor of a young, ascended god, and it was not long before it had reclaimed almost all of the strength that had fled its form, the scarring marring its form be damned.

If the loss of its arm affected it in any way, it did not show it. Time and time again, he had walked into the workshop to find its eyes piercing through him, swirling black void scanning him with uncanny ease. Though he had kept it dosed on the shamanic death-herbs, trying to keep it unconscious long enough to prevent its sutures from tearing, there was always some strange spark of alertness present in the dark depths of their gaze, an awareness to it that, for all intents and purposes, should not be there. Life, manifesting when no scrap of it should be left behind, clarity that pierced straight through his heart everytime he walked into the room and saw their eyes look into his own.

(Had they always been like this, or was it a result of the death of his ancient rival, a flicker of her consciousness still lingering deep within their soul? Or had his own bias blinded him? Alertness he had trained into them, as he had trained it into his kingsmoulds and wingmoulds- awareness, however, was something else entirely. Even the deviant outlier that had gained a scrap of consciousness by accident had lacked that keen edge to their stare, focused only on the instructions he had coded into its void. The Pure Vessel was different, he knew, for the mould that shaped them had been biological in nature, but if they had retained some form of consciousness, some scrap of will and thought that would have allowed them to defy their direct orders, to fight back against that most hated goddess, then-)

He was a king. It was useless to dally on such minor details.

(Would he have missed it entirely, if he did not see his children embracing, acting as two siblings from any other family might react upon another’s safe return? Would he have remained stranded in his state of self-denial, claiming only his own concept of the Abyss’s creations to be the truth? He would have fixed the Vessel like he would have fixed any other broken-down automatron, or scrapped it for parts, and he wouldn’t-)

Useless.

(He did not-)

He turned the corner, chasing the scent of metal and wyrm, and arrived in the workshop that held the Hollow Knight. The vessel itself lay prone on the surgery table, surrounded by a mess of blankets and quilts that Herrah and her heir had brought, but their head turned to him upon his arrival, rising seamlessly from their nest soon after. Though their movements were still stiff, awkward without the counterweight of their left arm, their frame did not shiver at the effort of rising, and the dark, empty eyeholes of their mask fixed on him with no sign of disorientation. Were it not for the web of scars spread over their thorax, or the telltale way that their cloak fell against their left shoulder, he could almost pretend that the years of the Sealing were naught more than a bad dream, could almost pretend that the haze of exhaustion and bitter, aching emptiness had been nothing more than the result of a rough week of work, and that he could command them to follow behind him with all the trust he could afford them when he had thought they were empty and pure, instead of...whatever it was that lay before him, kindness to the Heir of Deepnest be damned. A gentle act offered to a young spiderling did not erase the fact that the god before him had succeeded where he could not, had slain the Goddess of Dreams when every bug that fell under the infection had only added to her power, spread the fire of her influence faster than he could put them out.

He could not afford to be so foolish.

“Come,” he said, as brisk and cold as a winter morning, and watched as the Hollow Knight snapped to attention, kicking their claws free of the blankets so that they could slide their weight off the table unimpeded, half-stumbling as they struggled to stand without aid. He folded his hands behind his back to hide the way they shook beneath their sleeves ( coward, he was a coward ) then inclined his head to the repolished longnail resting by the door. The sharp edge gleamed in the glow of the Kingslight, a slice of white light like the flash of bared teeth. “Bring your weapon, and follow me.”

A brief pause. Anyone else might have missed the moment of hesitation, but he had raised the Vessel from the earliest days of its childhood, had trained it in the art of spells and combat. He knew their reaction times like the back of his hand, and he caught the moment where they stopped, taking a single moment to consider his order when before they had followed without processing. A flaw, a symptom of impurity, an indicator that there was more going on within their mind than what he could glean from the blank void of their mind. As he watched them cross the room to pick up their nail, an eerie calm settled over him, the pounding of his heart subsiding from a roar in his ears to a dim white noise hovering in the background of his thoughts.

One strike.

Still, he did not dare to look at them again when he exited from the room, nor did he allow himself to strain his ears for the faintest click of their claws against the marble of the hallways, or the slight wheeze of their breath through scarred lungs. With a trust he was foolish to lean into, with a serenity as steady as the surface of black ice, he lead them down from the open-aired hallways to the twisting, winding tunnels hidden in the very depths of the White Palace, where motes of pure soul cast all carvings and furniture into sharp-edged shadows. Down, down, down, until they turned into the courtyard where he had first laid a nail into their palm, where he had fought them until they ascended, where there were still stains of darkness churned into the soft white sand, and the shining silver leaves of the soul-fed vines cradled the corners of the cavern, granting it, to some, the appearance of a forest beneath the stars.

Or- to the others, the ones who noticed the twisting marks bored into the walls, the way that the garden tangled gently around the marble pillars, the soul totems beneath their shade- the nest of a behemoth. The nursery of a leviathan creature, one whose young would delight in the fine sand beneath their scales, the pools of water to splash and play in, the tangled foliage where they would come to rest.

There were still gouges in the columns, blood splattered in the sands, the land bearing the mark of the Pure Vessel’s ascension as no time had passed at all. He paused before a particularly untidy path, noting the faint shimmer of the bitter blue dust churned into the spray of gravel, before turning around to meet the gaze of the Hollow Knight, folding all four of his hands calmly before him, where they could see them clearly.

(He had done the same before, when he had bid them to challenge him in battle. It had not saved them from the first round of soul arrows, but he remembered how quickly they had adjusted, how they had darted and deflected and rallied back enough soul to heal with one great slash of their longnail. He was a strong fighter, quick and wily, powerful enough to bring down the whole kingdom upon them with only a slight flicker of thought, but he had raised them, and they knew his tricks well. The battle had been long and bloody, but when they had finally pinned him down and forced him to yield, he had felt nothing but triumph.)

(His heart ached, a cold heavy weight in his chest. Whether it was grief or pride that pained him now, he did not know.)

If the White Lady knew of his plan, she would surely call him a fool. But in the sparse moments where their lives now collided, she remained distant, detached- perhaps it would not matter to her so much, if she was the one left behind. Perhaps she would be able to let him go, as he was willing to do for her. The mantle of grief lay heavy upon her shoulders, dimming her light from the world, but she was just as attuned to death as she was to life, and accepted all of the things within it that would destroy him, just as she accepted all that would destroy her.

But he had not accepted the limitations of his first form. He had shaped a new body for himself, spinning a cocoon to rebirth himself as the children of the Radiance did atop their crystalline peaks, defying the raw power granted to him by birth. He had shaped a kingdom of free will and mind, to spite the ancient gods that hungered only for strength, and he had build himself a city of whirling machinery and mirror-shards to augment the beauty of his union, a civilization where Higher beings and creatures of flesh and blood could speak to each other as one.

He would not accept any threat to kingdom or queen, even if the threat was one he had hatched himself.

“There is a reason why I brought you here today, and it is not one that should be taken lightly. It concerns the kingdom, and the sanctity of its laws, the upkeep of which defines a civilization. Not strictly for order, but for the defiance of chaos, the careful mechanisms at hand which keep those within from tearing each other apart." He paused for a breath, taking in the sight of the Hollow Knight standing among the white sands and silver flowers. Here, it was painfully apparent that they were not the vessel that they should be, that his plan had held some fatal flaw. For a truly hollow vessel would not have sustained such damage, would not have fallen to the temptation and terror of dreams, and yet here they were, left arm gone, chest a web of scars from where the infection had festered below their carapace, gouges in their shoulders from where their pauldrons had interrupted growing tissue.

He had condemned them to an eternity locked away with his worst enemy.

They were supposed to be nothing .

They were his greatest pride.

He had left them to die, and they had suffered.

They were nothing .

( They were his .)

There were knives in his chest, in his abdomen, stabbing in deep. Were they not watching, he would have doubled over, would have struggled silently against the pain. As it was, he swallowed hard, half expecting the taste of blood on his tongue, and then continued on with his speech as if nothing had ever happened.

(Coward.)

“The gift of mind is what sets Hallownest apart from the scraping, sniveling savages that crawl outside the kingdom’s walls. From the pure, wild instinct of mindless animals come the architects, the menderbugs, the scholars and their masters.” He narrowed his eyes to mere slits, watching the Hollow Knight through the film of his third eyelid, before blinking it away to look at them clearly. "But a hunger for power is not so easily overridden, and the bugs invited within our domain do not take kindly to the thought of being controlled. I gave the people within this kingdom the gift of free mind and will, to innovate with it as they liked, but with it came the soul arts, the affinity for spellcraft, the rare glimpse of foresight. It would be inevitable that one would seek to harness the powers of another to augment their own strength. For this, laws must be put into place, penalties must be assigned to specific behaviors to inhibit the spread of needless violence. For this, the death penalty seemed prudent to impliment. Anyone who seeks to cripple the will of another bug- anyone who breaks the mind of another civilian- shall be executed."

He stopped, let the words sink in and settle as he turned his next line of thought over, chewing on one of his lower mandibles. The Hollow Knight was silent, as usual, giving no indication of comprehension whatsoever, but that was hardly something to be concerned about. He had rambled about such things before, wasting breath upon endless breath, and they had not reacted to anything that was not clearly a direct order. There were no new indications of impurities just yet, no untoward reactions to things that proved that they were not completely in his control, or currently harbouring any harmful desires towards him.

Perhaps that was about to change.

“The law, in theory, does not distinguish between mortals and higher beings. I would hold an enemy god to the laws of Hallownest the same way that I would hold a foreigner to these lands accountable, or a civilian. To take away the gift of mind is to go against the very nature of Hallownest, and is unforgivable, no matter the circ*mstances.”

His voice felt distant to his own ears. There was ringing in his head, cold knives in his chest. He paused for a moment, feeling the weight of the thousands of lives (the millions of children, for they were children) lost during the plague weigh heavy on his heart, before forcing himself to continue.

He would have run before. He would have sunk himself in a haze of self-denial, rationalizing his excuses, burying the truth the same way that he had hid away the nursery, behind false walls and illusory doors. But there were shadows flickering on the edges of his vision, coldness gripping his heart, and for once, above all else, he was tired . He was exhausted, his strength sapped, fortitude stripped down to flayed, bleeding flesh. His crown felt as heavy as a mountain range, dragging back his head to bare his fragile throat.

He would not run now.

“And yet, I myself have violated this sacred legislation. I myself have engaged in that which was claimed to be irredeemable. I accepted this at the time, for it was a horror born of necessity, and the theorized outcome of such a violation would have offered enough relief to excuse such a hideous act. For I have dedicated my existence to the perpetuation of Hallownest as the guiding light of the kingdom, and hold no purpose other than to protect those that entrust themselves to my care. No cost would be too great to save my people.”

A faint warmth from the Kingsoul, narrow branches around his mind weaving in tight. He forced himself to stay still, rather than turn into their embrace, and the White Lady’s hold tightened in turn, a nebulous question forming in the brief moments when her soul touched his.

He would have to make this quick.

“But now the Old Light has fallen, the sun has set upon the fury of our battlegrounds, and I can no longer turn away from the truth of the devastation that I have wrought. You, Vessel, kin of Wyrm and Root and Void, hold witness to the fruits of my desperation. I have taken your voice, your will, your thoughts, and I have filled the Abyss with the corpses of those who dared to cling blindly onto life. I have broken my word, as I claimed I never would in my shortsighted naivety, and then I blinded myself to the folly of my own actions. Now my sins lie before me, and I can no longer turn my eyes from them, or the hypocrisy of my ignorance.”

...My Wyrm?

“You, Pure Vessel, Hollow Knight, are a witness to the crimes of the crown. Mindless though you may be, you have served the kingdom far beyond what I could ever hope to accomplish. My ignorance and blindness has caused you a suffering I cannot excuse. By the law of Hallownest, grant me this one last request.”

He stepped closer. Let his hands fall to his sides. Let them turn to the roof of the cavern above, void-stained palms held up in benediction, in a plea. Watched, with dreadful calmness, the way that the eyes of the Hollow Knight turned to stare at them, their mind a static, empty nothingness when there should have been a pearl of light and emotion and sensation, the crown jewel of Hallownest.

“Kill me.”

And the world...

(Dark eyes boring into his, writhing void, and for a moment the pressure mounted and hecould not think on what he said, only what he had done-)

...went silent.

He did not have a word for what just occurred, if one existed at all. For a single heartbeat, it was as if all the colours were leeched from the world, as if everything went completely still and grey- as if time itself had ceased to function. His heart seized in his chest, resisting the steady pull of its unending beat, and he choked on air suddenly too cold to breathe, lurching forward as claws of ice sunk deep into his lungs-

-And then the moment passed. Sound returned, followed by colour, creeping back into the world like a scolded grub. He gasped for air, breath a harsh rattle in his chest, then swallowed hard, forcing away the cold burning in his throat. His thorax ached, needle-point pinpricks flaring painfully on every inhale.

Across the sands, the Vessel crouched, staring back at him with those deep empty eyes. They were still, terribly so- either in shock or anticipation, he did not know- but the shadows around their form writhed, undulating black tendrils that were sickening to look at. He knew, without a doubt, that if those tendrils were to reach forth to rend through his flesh, they would be more than capable of dealing potentially fatal damage. If the Vessel did not fly forth to sever his head from his body, or to pierce through his heart with the longnail in their hand, then it would be the very fury of the Abyss itself that would drown out his light, extinguishing him as thoroughly as if he had been swallowed by the deep. No amount of faith or worship could save him once the tides of the Great Sea had taken him, as it had taken the life of so many of his children before him.

And yet the Vessel still made no move to attack him.

My Wyrm…!

“Is it an ancient order of mine that hinders you now? Very well, then,” he whispered, as calmly as if nothing had transgressed between them. With a dignity he did not feel, he straightened his form once again, tipped his masked up to the sky as he spoke the words that would free the Vessel from his will, closing his eyes as he felt the ethereal chains connecting them slip away, centuries of safeguards dissolving away to leave their victim unbound.

“Vessel, born of God and Void, I free your shade from my soul. Let your actions no longer be ghosts of my own; let my will no longer bind you. You have destroyed the blinding light that has plagued our dreams. Your service has saved Hallownest from the fury of a false god. Now I unshackle you from the harness I have placed upon your form. No more shall you be enslaved by the creature that has created you.”

His heart was racing, hands shaking, breathing unsteady. The body was merely a machine to house the mind, and yet it reacted to the fear of death in strange, animal ways, the flesh screaming soundlessly in terror at the prospect of mortality. A pathetic, sniveling response to a reality that he had already encountered once before.

Eternity in promise and charge in progeny cursed. He had foreseen it when he was naught but a blind burrowing creature far below, but now the truth of the prophecy revealed itself to him in full. What a bittersweet irony, for it to come down to this.

“Take your revenge as you see fit.” He spread his hands, a welcome gesture for so macabre a request. Distantly, he became aware of the fact that he could feel the White Lady reaching out to him, that he had no plan ready for what would come after this event. “Take back the life that I have stolen from you to fulfill my own desires. Kill me.”

For a moment, all was still. The writhing shadows ceased their restless undulation. He fought against the shaking trembling through all his limbs, and stared calmly back at the weapon he had made to destroy his old enemy, the child that had suffered for the millions of others who would never know their name.

And then something peculiar happened. Rather than mechanically leveling their nail at his neck, like they would if they were truly pure, or lunging forth to disembowel him with all the fury that he deserved, the Vessel began to shake. First just a soft trembling, a slight quiver at the tips of their cloak, and then a harsher tremble, one that wracked their limbs with enough force to bring the faint whistling in their chest to a harsh, distressed wheeze. Slowly, they sank down to the sands below, hanging their head as they did when they first stumbled back to him, all those many weeks ago- the pose of the damned, a mirror to his plea that spoke louder than any order ever could. A wretched parallel.

They were his, after all. He knew the truth of it now more than ever.

“So you do have a mind after all,” he said bitterly, as he stared down at them shaking on the ground. The pounding in his head rose to a deafening roar; he did not know whether he should laugh or cry. They were still there. They yet lived, his child, his perfect creation, and he had sent them to their death. “Such fools the two of us have been.”

And then, as any other coward would do in the face of their damnation, he turned, and fled.

She met him halfway down a hallway, fury and worry raging in her heart, but the biting words ready on her tongue withered away once he came within her sight. Carefully, she reached for him, then paused as he flinched away- a kindness that he did not deserve, with so much of his world falling apart.

“They are alive,” he rasped, and swallowed hard against the lump of ice sticking in his throat; he wanted to retch, to cough up the impurity within his system, gouge out the weakness within his heart, but he knew that no good would come of it. The flaw was within him, he was the broken one, he was the king who had set his throne on the corpses of his newborn children. Millions dead to save billions more, but they had his lover’s height and his eyes and soul-signature and they had been his children. This was no terrible accident, no bloodied jaws and keening cries of wyrmlings whose scents had brought their sire’s wrath- this had been deliberate, this had been planned. The void had not taken them from him, he had cast them to the depths below, he had locked them away in a place with no escape. He had buried them far below, he had formed this new era on the bodies of those who had enacted no other sin than the simple crime of being alive. For they had not died within the egg, they had been awake and alive and- “They are alive. They had always been alive. They were alive, and I was going to kill them.”

She makes a pained sound, somewhere deep within her chest, but he could not respond to it; could not handle the raw grief now sweeping through him, a torn-open scar no longer staunched by the numb desperation of racing the apocalypse. Memories spilled forth, viscera from an open wound, an assault he could not guard against. He could not say what he wished to tell her- that you loved me, that you trusted me enough to let me within you, both in body and in mind, and I turned the sanctity of our marriage into a tool to manufacture my wretched plan- for his body betrayed him, and he found that he could not speak. The muscles he had manufactured for himself failed in their task: he could not move his jaws, could barely struggle to breathe against the tightness in his throat and the wetness in his eyes, before his Lady gathered his unresponding body in her arms, heart pressed to heart, and laid a kiss upon his brow, soft with understanding and her own shared sorrow.

And then the tears fell, and he was helpless against their torrent. He could barely remember the last time he had cried- could barely remember reforming himself with the ability to cry at all, could barely remember the foolish, arrogant, naive being he once was- but his breath hitched, his shoulders shook, and the water fell from his eyes like starlight, gleaming against the collar of his beloved's robe as he stifled his sobs, pitiful rasps and choking issuing forth from his throat, while from afar his mind watched his body in disgust, in the brief moments where the coldness and the numbness buried all else beneath their shroud.

No cost too great.

Oh, what a fool he had been.

.

.

.

Conversations

With simulations

They say there's no escaping

It's a never-ending road

My salvation is lost in translation

The more I can't explain it

The more I lose control

-Starset, Waking Up

Chapter 7: A Two-Part Interlude

Chapter Text

We are the lost and the silent

We are the shackled and small

We're looking up at the giants

We're going to watch when they fall

.

.

.

Running fast with stubby legs was quite a challenge when one had to get somewhere in a hurry; there was never quite enough leg to make steps big enough to matter, and the difference in speed wrought by effort was not quite high enough to close the distance between the target and the individual by a significant amount. Which made going places when you were a very small someone to be quite a bother, doubly so if you were at once a very small someone and a someone cursed with the ill-fortune of having stubby little legs.

The issue became triply apparent if that someone was currently being chased down by a very large bug with a nail.

Unfortunately for the little shadow-being currently hurrying through Unn’s foliage, they were that particularly small someone, and their legs were quite stubby indeed. Which made the whole dilemma of being chased by a very large bug with a nail to be less of a bother and more of an ordeal, which was something that they really would have preferred to avoid as much as possible when they were journeying back down into the depths of the kingdom that had birthed them. It had already caused enough trouble to them in the first place- the fact that a great deal more trouble was acousting them not long after they had returned wasn't something that set their void to swirling all too much, but it was...it was something nonetheless. Somewhere between the cold, clenching squeeze of what bugs called fear and the pinpoint prickling wave of irritation.

They had not had those lessons swept from the wastes, at least. They still meant very little compared to the harsh, jerking pull downwards to where their sibling was, but it was still something that they knew they were not supposed to have. Something that the pale-light-god-creator-killer did not want them to have, but was there nonetheless, because the pale-light-god-creator-killer was not one of them. Part of them, part of the shell that housed their shade, but not one of them.

The Many. The Abyss.

Family.

The Knight (for that was the title they had decided to take, that was the title that their long-horn-silent-sibling had carried before they had shut them away, and if long-horn-silent-sibling had been made a knight, then so should they) took a hard turn to the right, slipping past a particularly nasty-looking pool of acid, then slid to a stop and attempted to leap up onto a mossy overhang just above. The overhang itself was not very tall at all, but then again, neither were they, and it became apparent after a couple more hops that there would be no scaling the crumbling cliffs for them. Not with their soft little grub claws, too small and weak to sink into the earth, not with how slippery the cliff was, beads of water forming on the rocks from all the humidity in the air. The only way they could deal with their pursuers was to hide...or fight.

Which was not a very promising prospect at all, so they began the arduous process of trying to wriggle their way into the rather scratchy embrace of a moderately large bush. Their shell was already sore enough; one of the Moss Knights had swiped at them while they were walking by, startled out of his rest by the flicker-shine of their nail, and they hadn't the soul reservoirs left to heal it. Maybe if they took a shot at them, maybe if they were quick enough, but the nails of the Moss Knights were quicker, and the Little Knight ached. Their shell was still too thin to house their shade for long; one more bash or acidfall would tear through it entirely, and then their shade would be loosed unto the world in all its useless, vengeful glory.

All that it wanted to do was go home to the comfort of the nothingness- all that the Knight wanted was for the echoing, sorrowful cries in their mind to finally go silent. The Abyss called for them, but their sibling had screamed louder, an echoing, voiceless cry that had pulled hard on the fraying tethers binding them to the kingdom that they had fought so hard to leave behind.

Which, of course, meant that they couldn't just break free of their shell and meander on about as they pleased, or sink down to the depths to the embrace of their final rest. They couldn't save their family if they were all shadow and no substance, a concept that their shade simply refused to understand.

It was, the Knight mused, as best as a thing that technically should not think could muse, a rather unfortunate occurrence. They had hatched quite late in terms of all their siblings, the break-shell grave-nest empty of other vessels when they climbed out of it, which had allowed them the rather cozy advantage of not getting their shade all tangled up with another the first time they got their head cracked open, granting them a rather morbid second chance. But the more it happened, the more convinced its shade became in the merits of turning into a puddle of thoughtless goo, which became quite exasperating when one had far too many things to do to entertain the thought of being goo.

Heavy footfalls in the moss. The laboured sound of breathing, the slight scrape of chitinous armour plates. The Little Knight’s head snapped up towards the noise, all their thoughts melting into the rush of adrenaline, focus narrowing in on the threat.

The Mosskin that clunked forth from the foliage was rather heavyset for his clan, a mark of great strength and age. Though his breathing was laboured from the chase through Unn's kingdom, his gaze was still sharp, strides purposeful; he scanned the bushes around him with not the dazed, irritable stare of a broody beetle, but the careful focus of a soldier, one thoroughly dangerous to the vessel hiding below.

"Whoever tresspasses on the lands of Unn must abide by Her laws. I know yer in here, pale bug." His accent was thick, mouthparts fumbling awkwardly on a tongue that was not his own, but the resolve in his voice transcended language. The Little Knight's claws dug into the dirt as the instinctive pull of the void urged them to spring mindlessly into action, the Abyss seeing not the blade of death, but only acceptance, an opening from which to draw forth its crashing tide. "This is not your land. Obey, or be punished."

Stern, stern but not sharp. The Moss Knight's voice was a blunt-ended bludgeon, not the silvery tones of the Maker, but the end result was the same either way. Silver-sharp or blunt and woody did not matter, when either order meant death. Or something worse- a constriction of their freedom, a barrier to their purpose. This land did not reject them, sensing the transient nature of their presence, but those that kept it were not of the same mind. They did not see a path where they could escape without a fight.

Which made their shade go all scrunched up and small, because it wasn't fair, they were tired and sore and they really wanted a safe bench by now, but didn't matter anyways, because the world was not fair, and they could not make it so by simply standing around. Even if their too-soft shell ached with exhaustion, and they were empty, empty, empty with soul, and their worn little nail was no match for the weapon of the Moss Knight. Even then, they would fight.

So they sank their claws into the earth, settled their paw on the grip of their nail...and then promptly fell flat on their face when something small and soft and familiar collided with their back end before they could hear it coming, sharp little claws digging into their back for a brief second before tumbling away into the undergrowth.

Fwump.

The Moss Knight's head turned sharply towards the noise, but the Little Knight barely registered it as anything more than a blip on the periphery. With a sensation like falling, like flying, they scrambled to sit upright, to whirl around, to fix their gaze upon the bug that had knocked them flat on their face.

(Not a bug. No bug could sneak up upon the Knight so easily, even with the gentle cushion of the moss to soften their footsteps. No bug had a soul-signature like that, bright on the edges and hollow on the inside, comfortingly dark and quiet instead of the desperate rush-tumble-roar of all the others.)

Just a limb's length away, another vessel stared back at them, frozen flat on their back with their claws sunk into the earth. Their long grey cloak was smudged with moss, faint evidence of corporeality smeared over a fast-breathing chest, the tattered nail on their back gleaming in the low light. Different from the reflection that stared back at them, different from the constant companion that chased them in the dewdrops of the Wastes, a small bug-that-was-not-a-bug with four curving horns and a carapace that swallowed all light. An impossibility given form, and the Little Knight almost would have ignored the racing thunder of their own heart if it were not for the fact that they could sense them, could sense the wild swirling churning under the soft void of their carapace, another drop in the sea that made them.

Another sibling, family. Not dead, not broken, not a lost, wandering shade of the Abyss. Not a faint memory snatched by the sands. Alive.

Without a second thought, they scrambled to their feet, staring intently at the other vessel. They were part of them, as all were once part of one, but separation had made them different, distinct. Now, as their sibling startled, claws sinking deeper into the earth, it became even more apparent, as their flightiness battled with the Little Knight's nettling burn to leap forward and survey, to assure themselves that they were real and not some form of luring trickery.

(They were family! They were sibling! But they held back. Maybe they were too close, too threatning? Many bugs said they were. And sibling's void was tight-tight thrumming-fear. Not at them, the thrum-pull-run was pointed away from the Little Knight, but when their void got all tangled up and twisted like that they knew it grew hard to think and if sibling was scared then they'd likely run, or fight, or-)

Caught in the thrall of their own curiosity, they almost forgot about the Moss Knight stalking about the pathway beyond their hiding spot- at least, until they were forcefully gifted a very rude reminder. With the whoosh of metal and the tearing thump of impact, the tip of a large nail swiped through the undergrowth, narrowly missing their leg; they startled, reaching for the hilt of their nail as four-thorn-horn sibling scrambled back, then lunged out through the gash in the foliage to bury the tip of their nail into the Moss Knight's leg.

They had not been thinking before their swipe, nor aiming clearly, so much of the force behind their blow skated off of the Mosskin's armour, vibrations rattling painfully up their small arm as their enemy hissed and cursed. But they felt the tip of their blade skate into the gaps between, felt the crack of carapace, the sweeping rush of soul, and they knew that their hit had struck true.

Invigorated, they darted out into the open, swinging their nail free to wave about in a challenge. Cerulean blue dripped free from the wound in the Moss Knight's leg, spinning off of their weapon; distantly, some part of their void knotted up at the sight of it, but the greater half of their focus was dedicated to the threat before them, their world narrowing down to one focal point.

Sibling was behind, sibling was not safe, they could not-

The Moss Knight cursed again, in a language not of Hallownest; the imprint of his words burned into the Little Knight's mind, hot and angry and bright like fire. His shield came up before their next hit landed, metal ringing painfully against shell, and the Little Knight staggered back at the impact, heartbeat pounding loud against the inside of their mask. Their sore body throbbed with the movement under the rush of adrenaline, but they forced themselves to dance away regardless, smacking their nail against the Moss Knight's shield again in an attempt to drive him back.

It didn't work. Once more, their nail clattered against shell, but this time the Moss Knight followed his block with a quick double slash, a wordless shout buzzing up from deep within his chest. He was loud, far too loud, and as they flinched away they only barely managed to get their nail up on time to block the first hit, the force of the blow just barely knocking them out of the range of the second. Strong, too strong this bug was, and though they might have once found themselves willing to throw themselves into the flurry-dance, they had been right to flee at first; they were no match for the enemy knight, at least not in this state. Even the meager soul they had gathered from their one strike would not be enough to heal all of their wounds, let alone be enough to reshape into an arcane attack. They could only take another few hits before their shell cracked, and their shade was let loose.

Cold claws gripped the Little Knight's chest, but the thought of leaving their sibling behind with an enemy knight and a vengeful shadow turned their will to steel. Heart hardened, head spinning with adrenaline, they planted their feet, raised their nail as the Moss Knight stalked closer, and-

-nearly got their shade shocked right out of their shell as something big and sharp snagged on the scruff of their cloak, pulling them back against an ice-cold chest. The Little Knight fell limp on instinct, the sharp point of their focus blunted by the surprise of being held, their entire body thrumming with the shock of new contact; the Moss Knight let out a startled shout, staggering back at the newfound threat, and the creature that had grabbed them took the sound and hissed it back, an angry, grating roar that sounded as if the very earth itself had ground it up from its roots. Painful to hear, so loud so loud too loud, but the rasping edge to the sound-that-was-a-shadow-of-a-sound was familiar. Those cold claws were familiar. That presence, soul muffled by comforting darkness was familiar. The soft, velvety shell, this was…

The scattered, flashing impressions in the Little Knight's mind hardly had a chance to settle into one clear picture before the vessel- for the creature that had grabbed them was a vessel, another vessel- turned about, and bounded away into the undergrowth, ignoring the fearful swearing of the Moss Knight behind. The Little Knight wriggled in their hold, a cold pit opening in their stomach at the thought of falling, but the claws hooked into their cape dug in deeper, and they did not fall. It was prickly, certainly, and more than a little bit uncomfortable (for though this new sibling was big enough to lift them, they were not big enough to do it comfortably, and the Little Knight could feel the burning strain in their body as if it were their own), but they did not fall. They would not fall.

(That particular thought did not originate from them. They had felt the memory of an uncontrolled drop rise in their mind, felt the cold, nauseating grip of their void strangling their throat, and someone else had swiped those memories aside like a greatnail felling a spider's web. An impression that lacked a clear definition, but let its meaning shine through all the same. They would not fall.)

(They were not alone anymore.)

Which, with that problem tallied off the list, now made the issue of where four-thorn-horn sibling had gone far more of a pressing matter. Quickly, they patted the larger vessel's shoulder to catch their attention, then pointed back to where they came. It was a little difficult, getting their stumpy forearm to stretch out far enough to accurately point to where they needed it to go- particularly because they were squashed so tight to larger-sibling hissing-sibling's thorax to do so- but they managed anyways, and with their gesture came the cold chest clench again, thoughts of where their other sibling had gone drowning everything out.

Sibling, sibling? Sibling where? Hidden, not safe. Free from The Pit but still not safe, still not safe and there were so little of them left anymore…

Cool thoughts engulfed the turmoil in their mind, easing it back to the still pool it had been before the whole ordeal had gone and churned it all up. With a near-silent trill, the larger vessel stopped their flight and turned about to look at where their paw had been pointing; their hold grew lax upon the Little Knight's body, until they were holding them loosely enough for them to wriggle free, landing clumsily on the soft moss before large-sibling hissing-sibling reached out with one arm and pressed them back against their side, squashing their face into their long, ragged cloak. Which was a bit of a bother, because they had still not quite gotten a glimpse of large-sibling hissing-sibling’s face, but the Little Knight could not think to care about it all too much, for it was a gentle touch that did not hurt them. A blessing, one that was rare indeed for a very small bug-that-was-not-a-bug, whose blood sang a song to the world that no one else could answer.

And then what little remained of their worry disappeared as they spotted the tips of four familiar stubby horns bounding through the brush, hopping from mossy stone to vine-tangled crag, the hilt of their nail swinging behind them with every leap and bound. Though four-thorn-horn sibling was fast (faster than them, darting forth at a speed that made the Little Knight's heart pit-patter, made their body wriggle with the urge to join in), they were still unfortunately quite small, and could not climb as fast as large-sibling-snarl. But they could follow behind all the same, so there was no real reason to worry, wasn't there? As long as they could still sense each other, that was okay. And smaller-sibling was fast. They trusted them to outrun anything that tried to hunt them, for they were the fastest bug in all of Hallownest.

The thoughts of large-sibling hissing-sibling flowed into the Little Knight's mind with little turbulence; unlike long-horn-silent-sibling, there were no rocks to split the waters, no waterfalls to scale, no dams to seal away the rivers from the sea. Void met void, a flicker-burst of impressions and sensations, same-and-yet-not-the-same, all-and-one. One drop distant, apart from the still waters, but that faint sensation of unfulfilled emptiness was soon alleviated when four-thorn-horn sibling made the last leap up to tumble into them, an impact that drove all the air from their thorax, but still did not hurt.

Deep within the Little Knight's chest, in a place where neither ethereal soul nor pulsating organs lay, something unmoored itself from its shackles, a tension of sorts melting away from their limbs. For the first time since they had dug themselves free of the Abyss-

(-dug? Thought large-sibling hissing-sibling, with some alarm; ah, so that was what that feeling was called, that spiky-cold lurch that felt like falling up. The Little Knight carefully pressed the shape of the word into their memory, to save away for later. Why-)

-for that was what they had done, yes; there were many ways out, many many many paths to take, but all had led to death, so they had made their own, scooping out the soft, crumbling rock with a shard of hard sharp something.

(What something? Wondered four-thorn-horn sibling, as they pressed a paw between the Little Knight’s eye sockets, cool palmpads brushing dirt from the faint whorls in their mask. Where?)

They did not remember where, really, or what had been in their paws when they had sought for the numbness of unthinking work, or the freedom of a passageway that would not lead to their demise. It could have been a scrap of eggshell, or a shadowcreeper’s segment, or the broken fragment of a mask. The Wastes had taken their memory and scratched out the finer details, like a rasping-stone to the carvings on a nail. But it had been in the big tunnels that smelt of death, the one that was empty for a while before leading up to where it was moist and buzzing with crawling life.

(Memories of creeping through the tunnels from both siblings. Hiding, hiding, waiting for claws upon rock, for the skitter of hungry predators. Shards of shell trapped in sticky webbing, the smell of old blood on the stagnant air, wet and clinging under their feet. Yes, they could see why they had dug. But it must have taken-)

-Yes, it had taken a long time indeed, but the Little Knight really hadn’t had much to do otherwise. They were the last- last hatched, last clutch, last left to die- so there were nothing more but sorrowful shades behind, and the threat of a new world forward. So they had dug, because long-horn-silent-sibling had left them behind, and they, above all, did not want to die.

A pause. They withdrew their mind from the others until they were all tucked away back within themselves, because they did not want for them to feel the swooping sensation of falling, or the hollow ache that had radiated through their whole chest when the light of the other world had taken away their hatchmate.

(Speech was still as foreign of a concept to them now as it was when they had first wriggled their way free from the crushing cling of the corpses of their siblings, but even if a bug had told them what they had been feeling could be wrap-tied up in a neat little package of sound, they would find it insufficient to quantify the ache of the memory that they felt now. The click-clatter buzz of bug speech did not sing the same song of emptiness that their void did now. It could not possibly be so.)

Some of it must have slipped out of them anyways, though, be it from the set of their shoulders, or the withdrawal itself. Four-thorn-horn sibling patted them gently, then grabbed ahold of their cloak and plopped down upon the soft moss, urging them down with a tug and a pleading stare. They stumbled a bit, unused to the sensation of being pulled about without the starburst of pain that usually came with it, before going tumbling down as large-sibling hissing-sibling flicked one horn with barely enough force to upset their sense of balance.

The soft moss below ensured that their still-tender shell did not come to any harm, but there was a certain indignity to being pushed over by the horns that even a little hollow knight could not stand for. The Knight allowed themselves to roll about in surprise for a couple of moments, letting the puzzle pieces in their mind slot nearly back together, before finally picking themselves up enough to fix a hollow-eyed stare of disapproval upon the culprit of their dilemma.

This was apparently very funny to large-sibling hissing-sibling, if their shiver-swaying from side to side was anything to go by. Which, really, should they even be doing such a thing? Now that the Little Knight could see more of them than just their flank, they were now able to bear witness to the fact that their bigger sibling was the owner of a very impressive rack of horns, one small hook contrasting two curving to the side like vines over marble...on only one side of their head. Not at all like the Little Knight's perfect pair of matched horns, or the little spikes of four-thorn-horn sibling (who was currently pawing at the moss below them with little heed to the going-ons about them).

Really, it was a miracle that they were still standing. If you asked the Little Knight what they thought of the matter (not that they could respond, of course, but it was gesture that counted), they might have vaguely indicated that they thought their sibling would tip faceflat at any moment. Which would be a rather big problem for both of the smaller vessels, considering the fact that swoop-horn sibling was just large enough to hurt if they lost their balance and were unlucky enough to fall on top of them. Neither of the littler vessels were very keen on the concept of getting squished.

Swoop-horn sibling, of course, found their blank stare to be the source of even more hilarity, for they could feel the currents of the void in a way that most mortals couldn't, in a way that most mortals feared. The bubbly warmth of their feelings leeched into the Little Knight's mind simply by proxy, a chainlink overspill of sensation, before swoop-horn sibling reached forward to pat them gently between the eyes, careful not to tip them over again, because wouldn't they wish to continue on with their story, rather than staring at their sibling like a baleful belfly? They were still so very curious to know how their littler family member escaped from the Abyss. Digging a tunnel was quite different from how they and four-thorn-horn sibling had escaped, but not so different to be a foreign concept; it was strange only in the fact that it had succeeded, and both of their siblings were keen to know what happened next. They were all born of the Abyss, many-from-one, many-as-of-one, but that didn't mean they knew everything about each other. It was up to them to fill in the gaps.

That was sufficient enough soothing for the Little Knight (who was new to the knowledge of what irritation felt like anyways, and wished not to dawdle on it.) With a near-silent huff, they pushed their larger sibling's claws away from their face, then leaned just far enough away for four-thorn-horn sibling's feet to avoid their cloak as they rolled about on the soft, cool moss, patting it enthusiastically with both hands. Catching their attention took a little more effort than strictly necessary, but watching them play without a care had settled something restless in their chest, so they did not subject them to the same silent stare that they had given swoop-horn sibling before getting settled back into the rhythm of things.

Finding their own way had taken a long time, yes. But they had managed to make it to the outer tunnels after countless hours digging away, unrooting their way somewhere quiet and still instead of rumbling and deadly, so it had all been worth it in the end. From there, they had crept along the tunnels, clinging instinctively to the shadows, until they found a way that wound up, up, up, a way that replaced the chains linked in its chest to spider silk, then rope, then wire. Away, away from the pit and the shining-liar-light far below, away to someplace where the air keened like a mad creature. Away, to places far beyond everything they had ever known, until the whispers of the ones they had left behind grew as faint as the swish of void under their shell.

As one, their two siblings turned to stare at the dusty old nail upon their back. The question, not impressed through the void, was there nonetheless, unspoken curiosity practically radiating off of their frames. To the eyes of outsiders, they might have both seemed eerie, but to the Little Knight, the flicker-writhe of the shadows within their eye sockets was a question, mirrored between them both. They needed no words to know what their siblings were thinking in that very moment.

Where did they find their nail? It was not like either of theirs, more worn and chipped with use. What did they fight, to mar their blade so? Was it big? Was it strong? Was it fast?

The Little Knight swung their weapon about in an arc, pleased sparks racing through their arm at the whoosh of the blade, then held it still before them, looking down at its familiar worn hilt. They knew that they had grabbed a nail somewhere on the way out of the Kingdom, but they could not remember where, or when. They could only recall a faint image of themselves prying it from the grip of a long-dead bug before it disappeared back into the unthinking, numb haze that had often engulfed their thoughts before their long-lost sibling screamed within their mind, and their world had exploded back into colour, purpose tugging on the chains locked around their heart. They could not recall very much of the journey outside of Hallownest, or the wastes at all, really, but now that they were back (home home home, to a home that was not a home), they found it somewhat difficult to care.

They had been hatched under these lands, among the ruins of their family’s graveyard. They had been left behind, and so they had left the others behind, walking thoughtlessly onwards and away in an instinctual, grueling attempt to snap away from the orders that had been laid into their mind, written into their very void before they had even hatched. Assigned to a war, child soldier, unwanted and unneeded, and they had not known how exhausting the weight had been until the darkness within them screamed, the chains around their heart crumbling to bits.

(They remember the burning pain tearing into their shade, just for a moment, before their sibling had torn themselves away, condensed themselves down into an impenetrable shield, as they always had. They remember freezing in the wastelands, feeling the wind and the sand howl around them in a stinging melody, and at the same time rushing through a world where everything was light, light light and nothing made sense, screaming out the agony trapped deep inside of them from a throat that was not made for them, thrashing blindly like a wild, dying thing before the light shattered and everything returned to the cold, numbing nothingness of the Abyss. A cradle of safety, a place where they could sleep and be safe, truly safe.)

(A place where they belonged.)

They didn't realize that they had frozen in place until four-thorn-horn butted their mask gently against their cheek, leaning their weight against their side. They knew, even without the touch-brush of minds or words, and the void in the Little Knight's chest did a hop-leap-dash at the burst of contact before everything settled back down into a comforting hum, and they relaxed into the leaning press of their very fast sibling's side. That was then and this was now, and it was better for them to focus on the softness of the grass below, the reassurance that they were not alone; they were here, somewhere where they were needed, and that was enough. They were here, among kindred who did not fear them, who did not whisper worriedly about death while they passed them by, and that was enough.

Their family had not all been lost. They were here, they were home. And their hatchmate, faint as their presence may be, was still alive. It would not help if they let themselves get tangled up in the briar-patch of old memories now, not yet. Not when they had things left to do.

Their larger sibling, however, seemed to be a bit more hesitant, thoughts slithering and sliding away from the overlapping pool-minds of the two smaller vessels huddled nearby. The Little Knight watched them, little bubbles of curiosity fizzing under their shell, before swoop-horn sibling finally stopped pacing about to sit before them, tilting their mask too and fro. The effect was quite mesmerizing to watch- really, the Little Knight had no idea how they held their head up so, not with everything tilting every-which-way about- but they tried to focus on their sibling’s face more than their swaying horns, because that was probably the polite thing to do. Mortal bugs seemed to like it, anyways, even if they always grew uncomfortable the longer that the Little Knight tried to study them. As it was, all it earned from their larger sibling was a flickering of void deep within their eye sockets before they returned to the slight swaying sit they had been doing before they started pacing about.

They had heard the call as well, but they were hesitant to follow, whispered their void, in a language of absences and impressions. A language that was not a language at all, but that worked very well indeed, because no language could capture the pain that their larger sibling felt, radiating out from them like a static cling as their claws sunk deep into the earth. There was only light down in the deeps and while the light was not the light-that-burned the light-that-sickened light-of-shade-chains-soul-chains-pale-curse, it was still enemy, danger, kinkiller. Sibling screamed oh sibling screamed but they had lost enough already they had watched so many fall and this land was not kind to the creatures of dark the way the old stone and moss whispered that it used to be.

This was true, yes, and the Little Knight's own claws clenched at the thought of what lay below. But their heart felt as if it was forged out of metal instead of nothingness, a driving point to where their lost sibling lay, magnetism luring them down, down, down. They were one of many and all of one, and they ached and they ached and they ached, but if their hatchmate had been made a knight to save their world, then they could be a knight to save their sibling, too, they could be-

-Wait, thought swoop-horn sibling, and their thoughts went all topsy-turvy. The Little Knight paused, turning their mask up at them, then waited for them to go back to being more turvy-topsy. Their mind had started to spin about in a tumult of memories and as their mind spun, so did the impression of their void, which made them rather hard to read. How were they a knight? They had become a knight because they had watched other knights train, had dedicated themselves to the cause of saving their siblings. What did they do? What was their cause?

This was an inquiry that the Little Knight had not stopped to consider before, for they had assumed that if their lost hatchmate had been made a knight from them climbing up a death cliff and swinging about a nail for a good deal of time, then they could be one, too...and, well, they weren’t predisposed to thinking about things in the first place. They did that now, for this whole 'pledge' themselves business was quite mystifying to them (their hatchmate had not needed to pledge themselves to be the Hollow Knight, after all, had only needed to survive), before settling on one little thing out of many: that they too had reached the top, had completed the challenge that so many others had failed. Too late, perhaps, but they had done it. And that was what had made long-horn-silent-sibling a knight.

That's not how a knight works. The larger vessel glanced around the small clearing they were in, then tapped their hand twice against the hilt of their nail and pointed downward, into the glade below. Four-thorn-horn sibling perked up, dropping the little ball of shredded moss they had made while lying against the Little Knight’s side, then bounded off back the way they came, presumably to look for another way out. Maybe for their hatchmate, but a 'Hollow Knight' is not the same type of knight as everyone else. There are far more steps than that, so that means that you are not a knight.

Swoop-horn sibling's thoughts lacked judgement, too lost in their own head to be rude, but the implications behind their words were distressing nonetheless. That had been the way that the Little Knight had packaged up a good portion of their existence, which now meant that their package was unraveling somewhat, because what would they be otherwise? 'Vessel', of course, but there was no plague of light to seal away anymore, no spells to empty their minds of anything other than the urge to combat the infection. 'Prong-horn sibling' counted, they supposed, but their lost sibling’s horns also had prongs, and 'last-hatch' meant nothing to those who did not see them struggle up the cliffside. Nor did they know what to compare themselves to, with so few of their kindred left; there were no distinguishing features other than their horns, at least not that they yet knew of. They supposed they could give themselves a real name, like what many mortal bugs used to get by, but they had no idea how to go about that process at all. They did not know how they could wrap the entirety of themselves up into a sound they could not make; with titles, at least, there was the comfort of distinction. They did not know how to narrow down what they were trying to do with a name. They could not point to an insignia to show their intentions with a name. Calling themselves The Knight (or specifically, the Little Knight when in the presence of much larger knights) had been the simplest thing to do, and now they had none of that.

This was a dilemma they were not born to face. They let themselves plop down a little further on the moss, thoughts knotting into confusing loops in their head. They knew themselves better than they knew everyone else, and could impress that upon the others, but only their siblings could sense that at a glance. All the others spoke in words, both mortal bugs and blinding lights, and those were hard-

A paw cuffed them lightly on the left horn, just hard enough to tip them over. Caught by surprise, they flailed their limbs about for a brief moment before rolling over far enough to wobble back to their feet, fixing the culprit in a blank-eyed stare.

Just as before, swoop-horn sibling seemed more amused than apologetic, but this time, all they did was huff a silent laugh before stepping away. That was okay, said their eyes, flicker-flicker-writhe; they were sure that their newfound kindred was an excellent knight, even if no decree had made them so. But for now, maybe they should go by the wanderer, just for clarity's sake, and then they could sort out all this knight business later, once they figured out what to do with the Hollow Knight. They were sharpblade-knight to many, and the other was swift-leap; maybe, once their sibling was returned to them, they could shed all the titles and play again. But for now, at least, this would have to do.

...Yes. That was agreeable. The Wanderer adjusted the lay of their nail against their back, then meandered over to the side of their bigger sibling, peering down at the greenery below. Everything seemed calmer somehow, less dangerous; they were no longer a singular scrap of will in the wastes. Fate had blown them back to the lands from whence they came, the bindings of their birthright broken away from their restless soul; now only one thing pulled them down into the heart of this ancient kingdom, and it was a tether they had taken willingly. An act of salvation rather than condemnation.

They were one droplet taken from a vast, vast ocean. But maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.

Here we come.

Across the wilderness and far below, life in the city moved on. Menderbugs and buisnessbugs cycling through the rhythm of their work soon put their murmurings about the Hollow Knight behind them, though the spinners and menders and other gossipmongerers often murmured quiet things about the hidden secrets of the Pale Court when they thought nobody of great importance was listening. With each day that dragged its belly across the Palace's floors, whimpering quietly at the lack of attention, months and years of work brought on by the plague shook their bridals and pawed impatiently at the doors of the citydwellers, pulling their thoughts from the mysteries of the citadel far below. No one had time to pry into the affairs of gods, after all; no one was of high enough importance to try, though some certainly thought the opposite. And as for those who did so happen to be privy to the inner workings of the White Palace- well. They were far too busy with the return of the Queen to pay much attention to the things that lesser beings whispered in the shadows, or the hulking presence that said shadows had returned to them. The White Lady, back from her long holiday, had made quite sure of that fact.

For the three ex-Dreamers, this distraction offered a welcome respite. Their shared duty and title had crumbled into dust the moment they had been cleaved from the Dream Realm, but there were certain things that had not crumbled with it. For there was a certain comfort in finding kinship among another who had willingly given life for an eternity of unreality, a certain assurance that the time they had spent on their stone plinths had not been all for naught. For all the others, life moved on for the better, but for the three who had formed the Devil's Snare, there were scant few to reassure them that they were truly back in the waking world, and a solid portion of those few were currently locked away in a maze of marble that yielded its secrets only to the higher powers that had made it.

(The Radiance, in Her great fury, had sought to sunder the tentative bonds that had formed between them before they all went under. She had sought to sow conflict between them, to weaken them with hallucinations and accusations, to pitch one proud Dreamer against the other.)

(Perhaps She, in all her years of suppressing the fears of mortals, had not known exactly what she was doing. Perhaps She herself did not realize that mortals, when left on their own terms, were generally amenable to reforming bonds on their own terms, as She had not. Perhaps She had not thought it to be possible, for every fight that had been thrown before Her had been a battle between life and death, a severing agent that took all of those loyal to her- her brother realm, her sibling's heart. The mind of her children, her own burning life.)

(Either way though, all she had done was drive them closer together. She had formed a perfect society among her moths, one where the simplest crack could shatter the peace, but the Dreamers had been born into a world already shattered, a world that had encouraged them to wield the shards of strife to their own benefit. Each choking, honey-sweet hallucination merely knit them closer together, until the Radiance had about as much luck trying to turn them against one another as she would if she tried to tear down the entirely of Crystal Peak simply by headbutting it.)

(The fact that they were all insufferably stubborn likely didn't help things either.)

Unfortunately, returning from the land of dreams had somewhat of its own downside built into it. They were bugs that had lead quite busy lives before the arrival of the plague, and though they had thrown themselves into their not-so-eternal sleep with more than enough backup plans to carry on the brunt of their work, life had a funny way of ignoring said plans. Time meandered on, in all of its unthinking ignorance, and the unforeseen messes and dithering and quarrels over irrelevant things all piled up behind it, until there was a horrible mess of things coalesced into one great big ugly beast, one that Time simply refused to stop feeding.

Perhaps that was why they could all now be found in the lower hallways of the Watcher's Spire, bickering as if their life depended upon it, thoroughly ignoring the frightened, intrigued looks of the workerbugs hurrying past. There was something wonderfully relieving about controlled negativity, after all, something that (almost) any survivor of the Radiance's sugar-coated hellscape could attest to, and there was no better way to obtain said negativity than arguing about politics.

Plus, the low, clicking growls issuing forth from Herrah's chest was more than enough of a deterrent for any lingering gossipmongers, which was quite nice. Inviting one of the most elite of all hunters into a nest of vulnerable victims had its downsides, but eavesdropping was not one of them.

"For the last time, Monomon, I am not diverging the secrets of red Weaver dye to you, even for scientific analysis. I am not so much of a fool to fall for that." The Queen of Beast's sentence was punctuated by a rather frightful fangsnap, a scraping click that ground forth from under her veil. Anyone who knew her would be able to parse the faint edge of amusem*nt in her voice, but that was lost somewhat under the burr of her accent and the thunderous sound of the pouring rain. Around a corner somewhere, a particularly stubborn evesdropper finally lost their nerve. "The Weaver Tribe's traditions are a closed secret, one that I am only privy to by right of being their leader. You'll hear none of their secrets from me."

"I wish not for you to divulge the full recipe, Queen Herrah! Merely part of the components of the pigment." Monomon's vengeful undulating was notably less enthusiastic than it should have been, but she more than made up for it with her wildly gesticulating tentacles. Her mask was naught more than a crude piece of shellwood carved with her signature eyeholes, lacking the usual protective spells of clear sight, but it offered her listeners a point to politely focus on rather than searching frantically for a face that truly didn't exist, which was nice. "Leave out your secret binding agents and recipe, I want none of it. I merely want to know where such a bright red originates from. Sources of red dye are few and far between in Hallownest- isn't that right, Lurien?"

The Watcher turned from where he'd been staring moodily out the window to pin the Teacher in a single-eyed glare. If the two other Dreamers squinted a bit against the glare of the city lights (as they both did, for where was the fun in not trying?), they were able to spot the faint twitching of his left antennae under his cloak, trying to flick as they normally did when he was in a bad mood. "Do not drag me into this."

"Come now, you cannot deny the cost of a good set of paints, especially if you pay out of pocket," Monomon chided, before turning to Herrah again. "Do you not hold some sympathy for our fellow Dreamer, your majesty? If I can study the source of your dye, I might be able to find a similar compound within the shells of common bugs, one that can be mixed into paints easier than your dyes."

"And drive down the prices of our silks? No way." Herrah barked out a short laugh, then paused to sidle a glance at the Watcher. His mask had turned to the window again, which made his flinch of surprise doubly apparent when she slyly said, "Nor can you fool me with such a sob story. I know the King provides him with fresh paints everytime he so much as hints at them running on the down-low. If the royal treasury of Hallownest backs his hobby, then he has no need to dip into mine."

"Painting is part of my profession, Queen Herrah," murmured Lurien, though he was now very deliberately not looking at either of the other Dreamers by his side; one hand fiddled with the edge of his cloak, before disappearing back under the dark blue folds. "It is backed by the Crown as a necessity, not as a gift. It is my duty to provide periodic updates of the City's structures to ensure their longevity; colour is a useful tool when mapping such characteristics. The King accounts for such necessities, of course."

"I've seen what you can do with only three colours on your palette, Watcher, you can't convince me that your glorious reds are anything but a luxury. He's as bad as his wife when it comes to indulging his favorites- he'd keep you like a prized toy in his treasury if he didn't have his head stuffed so far up his own ass." Herrah paused, perhaps to give Lurien some respite as he staggered out an intelligible response, perhaps to let Monomon giggle in delight for the first time since they all woke up.

(Or, perhaps, to offer a moment to skirt around the more delicate topic at hand, pertaining to a particular godly family below the city. It was not often that the Queen of Deepnest chose to dance around a topic rather than confront it directly, but there was a difference between brutal efficiency and needless cruelty, one that she knew all too well.)

"Tell me," she said instead, darting past the unspoken heaviness in the air between them, "what are you brooding over now? You have spent the entirety of our visit staring moodily out of the window instead of attempting to blend in with the drapes, and while I appreciate you acting livelier than your usual attempt to impersonate a trodden-on mushroom, it's also quite...unnerving."

"She's right, you know. It does assuage my worries somewhat, but it adds twice more upon my shoulders to see you this way." Monomon drifted closer to the window, tilting her head as if she could see what he saw; and maybe she could have, if she still had her true mask, but without the correct enchantments, it was merely a farce, an unthinking attempt to playact the fascimale of insectile sight. Endearing, if a bit odd to those in the know. "Speak, brother of Hallownest, what ails you so? Perhaps I can offer some aid; it would provide a welcome distraction from paperwork, at the very least."

Lurien let out a disdainful snort that would have deterred even the haughtiest of noblebugs, but earned him naught more than a couple unamused glances from either of his comrades. "If you come to me to escape the mundanity of legality, then I have bad news for you. Herrah, I know not why you have come to the Spire today, but-"

"I'm here for legal sh*t," Herrah said briskly, tapping her lower claws against the hilt of her greatneedle in an idle beat. Under the usual low growl of her accent, her tone sounded almost cheerful. "The Council of Elders can keep Deepnest going, but only I can reaffirm our trade and debating crap. We've got a couple silk-scammers in our webs that a bunch of my spiders are itching to eat, but because they're Hallownest bugs, I had to run it by you first."

Lurien pressed both of his palms against his mask, then thought better of it and slipped them under his cloak to properly rub at his face. The end result was his mask shifting about until its singular eyehole was staring petulantly up at the ceiling as if demanding patience from an unthinking god, a sight that both of the other Dreamers found unreasonably hilarious despite the it all. "Fine. Fine. But we can debate that later, for I at least know that I can talk you into reason. The bugs lost to the Soul Sanctum, however, are most likely already far beyond any hope for aid."

That sobered things quite a bit. Both Teacher and Beast glanced apprehensively out of the rain-washed windows to the hulking shadows of the city below, Herrah's claws reaching unconsciously for the hilt of her greatneedle before she thought better of it.

"The Soul Sanctum? But I thought all grants for their experiments have been revoked." Monomon's voice wavered eerily, her shock distorting the water-air spell woven around her. "I remember how exhausted you were trying to fight against them before, Lurien. Has the King…?"

Lurien let out a harsh bark of a laugh, his normally-serene voice grating against something dangerously close to a growl. "They are power-hungry heretics, and he is far more than a few scattered beings yearning for magic beyond the scope of what they can control. I have no doubt that they are operating against his orders to cease experimentation upon mind-blessed beings, or that they have returned to their wicked ways upon my long absence." He drew his cloak closer around him, fingers digging deep into the heavy fabric. "They were difficult enough to monitor before. They will be a nightmare to regulate now."

"Then condemn the f*ckers and get it over with," growled Herrah, folding one set of arms over her thorax; the others remained resting on her weapons, ready to fight at a moment's notice. A citydweller might have scoffed at her readiness for violence, but she had not become the Queen of Deepnest for naught. "You're close enough to the Wyrm to do something, are you not? Gather your Watcher Knights and storm their stronghold. Killing their leader should make the whole swarm scatter before they have the chance to retaliate, if you move fast enough."

Lurien shook his head, weariness settling into the slump of his shoulders. "It's not that simple. The King has granted me the right to authorize execution, but enacting such a thing without his explicit permission is limited by several legal barriers that even I cannot cross. I am not a law enforcer, Queen Herrah; I am merely the tie between the Pale Court and those currently holding power in the City of Tears. Only the King and Queen have the right to execute anyone at a moment's notice, and that is because they can discern if one is innocent or guilty in a heartbeat. I, however, must amass sufficient evidence before I authorize an investigation. As it stands, all I have to my name are reports of missing bugs from low-income neighborhoods, and reports of screams coming from within. The districts afflicted are too small to amass a proper court, and even then, the Soul Master holds more power than all of their members combined. I would have to gather direct, definitive evidence of misconduct before I can do anything." One wingtip flicked out from under the cloak, a flash of jewel-bright colours glimmering in the low light, before Lurien got a proper handle on his frustration. "Sometimes, I wish that the Pale King did not make things so difficult. Complex laws are essential with so many bugs possessing free will, but it makes those in power nigh-unbeatable if they find the right footholds. And the current master of the Soul Sanctum is an unfortunately clever bug. "

"Then what evidence do you have? If their unethical studies on how to combat the infection's advance has been rendered moot, then there should be no excuse for them to continue their research. They cannot claim that an investigation would hinder their attempts to cure the plague, as they had before." Monomon hesitated for a moment, faint sparks of electricity racing up her tentacles, then tentatively whispered "Unless...they have started again because of the change of dreams?"

Silence fell, abrupt and unwanted. All the Dreamers had stiffened at the mention of the dream realm, unwilling to speak of the changes it had undergone once the Radiance fell. For the ignorant, the prevalence of darkness and the lack of cloying sweetness was a privilege that they were granted on the onset of the Sealing, but to those who had offered their lives to fend off the coming sunrise, the differences were stark, and thoroughly unwanted.

"Speak not of it," Herrah rumbled at last, her voice tight with tension. "There is nothing in the dream realm that can interest them. The shift is because it's destabilized, nothing more. We have been over this before."

“And whose knowledge did that theory originate from, again?” Monomon murmured, tucking her limbs in close to her bell. “The Pale King is far more knowledgeable on such topics than I, but even he was wrong about the purity of the Vessel. If he did not understand the nature of the Abyss as well as he claimed, then how far can we trust him on matters of the Dream?”

“That implies that I trusted him in the first place, Monomon. If it is not readily apparent, he has not done much to win me over since then.” Herrah growled, shifting from foot to foot. “But the Wyrm knows more about magic than I, and his battle plan was solid in theory. Even if I loathe what it demanded of us, and the toll it took on the innocent, I will still assume that his theories are at least partially correct. It pains me to defend him, but he is a creature of half-truths, not lies."

She turned now to Lurien, gesturing for him to speak. "I'm sure you have a theory rattling around in that brain of yours, Watcher. Spit it out now, before it festers away into something with teeth; I'm not going to send more spiders to your rooms to ensure you're sleeping after the fiasco of last time."

Monomon made an intrigued noise at that, but Lurien did not rise to Herrah's bait, even if the edge of his cloak fluttered noticeably as he cringed. Instead, he crossed his arms over each other, tapping nervously at the bottom of his mask with one claw before letting out a deep, weary sigh.

"The Queen is correct," he said reluctantly, ceasing his tapping as he spoke. “But I doubt that it is the dream realm that interests them. Soul arts are only tanginently tied to essence manipulation, after all; if they were truly interested in studying the Dream, then they would have likely attempted to track down records of the Moth Tribe, on the off chance that they found the link between the plague and its source. The last time we were able to secure a search, they seemed to still be focused on studying soul, though I’ve no doubts that they hid a great deal of their research from me.”

He went quiet for a moment, resuming his tapping, then said, hesitantly, “Have you heard of Songstress Marissa, by any chance?”

"Tangled tapestries, Lurien, even I've heard of Marissa. Hardly had a choice, with how Hornet crushed on her when young. What does she have to do with this?" Herrah leaned in closer, Monomon following suit with a soft, intrigued hum. “What does she have to do with all of this?”

“A great deal of things, surprisingly enough. She came to me recently asking for help, for one of her closest aides had gone missing. The most notable thing about such a report was not the fact that she somehow managed to slip her way into my schedule, but that she claimed that some scholars of the Soul Sanctum were present at the time of her aide’s disappearance.” He hesitated, then quietly asked “Have you heard any...rumours about me, by the by? She seemed to think that I knew her somehow, even though I had no idea who she was until she introduced herself.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Herrah grumbled, as Monomon stifled a giggle. Lurien’s shoulders scrunched up, doubtlessly in preparation to defend himself, but all Herrah did was shake her head and sigh. "No, I'm not going into this now, I have other sh*t to worry about. I'll drag you into the world of the living later."

"Fret not, Lurien, I've heard no rumours other than some musing about the nature of our undone sacrifice. Nothing about you in particular, just the same old gossip that everyone likes to whisper about," Monomon interjected, patting his shoulder reassuringly. Her tendril left a noticeable damp mark behind. All of the Dreamers pretended not to notice. "Does that help at all?"

"A bit," admitted Lurien, rubbing subtly at his damp shoulder- Monomon's tendrils still held a faint aura of electricity to them, despite her attempts to control herself. Monomon herself cringed, curling her tentacles in close to her bell, to which Lurien responded by gently reaching out to pat her on the side. "She also seemed...relieved that I didn't recognize her, which was...not the reaction I was expecting to receive. I'm...not sure if I enjoy the implications of that."

"You are a rather mysterious figure to most of the cityfolk, you know. I wouldn't worry too much about it, you most likely frightened the poor dear." Monomon said, while Herrah clicked her chelicerae sympathetically...or tried to keep herself from laughing. "It is quite unfortunate what happened to her aide, however. What do you think we should do about it?"

"The songstress herself proposed a solution to the problem. She intends to host a concert by the Sanctum to show reverence for the scholars of the King; clever or not, many of the bugs working there are still students, and are prone to flights of fancy. The presence of a relatively high class bug and her cohort would likely draw them out of the depths of their laboratories, which would allow her to slip within under the guise of being lost." Lurien started to pace about, no longer satisfied with simple restlessness. "She claims to be too valuable to go missing. I do not believe her, but if she is willing to risk her life to save her friend then there is nothing that I can do-"

Whatever he was about to say next was lost to the sudden roar of wind and soul; in a flash of white light, a beetle dressed in the garb of the Soul Sanctum appeared, the crystalline gems set into their forehead sparkling with power. Though their acolyte robes designated them at a relatively low tier within the Sanctum, energy sloughed off of their shell in waves, an impossible amagdalation of power condensed within a physical form not shaped to handle it, a firestorm churning within a glass bottle. Lurien let out a shout of alarm, in tandem with Monomon's burbling gasp; the acolyte's stoul-maddened eyes turned to them, burning with a blinding white light. With a garbled hiss, a rotating ball of pure energy coalesced in the air between their claws, the air pop-crackling at the power racing through it-

-and then it dissipated harmlessly into soft white motes as the hilt of a greatneedle slammed into their head, knocking them to the floor with a meaty crack. Both Monomon and Lurien flinched, half-formed spells of their own flickering around their forms, but the crazed mage did not rise, though their chest rose and fell weakly as they lay unconscious, their stolen soul slowly leaking out from between their carapace plates without the proper focus to contain it. The students of the Sanctum, it would seem, had not made themselves immune to physical damage.

There followed a heavily gravid pause, where all three of them looked at the prone body lying faceflat on the floor, and tried their very hardest to politely sidle glances at each other, as if adhering to decorum would save them from the fact that the Queen of Deepnest, by all accounts, had just instigated an act of war. Lurien tried his best to look disapproving despite his shaken demeanor, a difficult task for one with such a tiny frame, Monomon made herself very busy appearing to consider the passed-out soul mage with the same amount of intensity she would devote to a rather difficult chemistry problem, and Herrah, greatneedle still in hand, somehow managed to look bored, irritated, and mildly perturbed all at once.

At last, the awkward tension broke- but not from Monomon, Lurien, or Herrah. Rather, it was the rather indignant snort-crackle of the soul mage coming to that snapped the thread of silence, followed shortly by Lurien's thready, panicked exclaimation of 'oh, for f*ck'S sake' before he swung about, grabbed a stool, and cracked the soul mage over the head again, wielded with a surprising amount of strength for an aristocrat. The crystal on their forehead burst with a blinding pop of concentrated power, and the soul mage staggered back, bright blue blood dripping from their cracked carapace, before that too burst into an indistinguishable mess of scattered slimy fluids as Herrah's greatneedle returned to finish the job, the blade stabbing through the soul mage's face before carving a bloody path out the side of their head.

This time, the quiet did not last for long.

"How did this bastard find us?" Snarled Herrah, as Monomon let out a worried cry in a language that only she could understand. The Queen of Deepnest stalked over to the corpse on the floor, giving it a hard, spiteful kick, but the body failed to rise again. No vengeful goddess was left to pull its strings, the soul packed into its body dissipating into the air as its twitching limbs settled into a death curl. She gave it another hard kick, just for good measure, but all that did was smear more blood about when the claws on her feet pierced through the mage's carapace. “I’ve got shielding spells woven all over my robes, there’s no way the motherf*cker should have been able to locate us. Lurien, if your nosing about has put Hornet or I on the Sanctum’s sh*tlist then I swear by your king’s holy pricks that I’ll-”

“More importantly, why did they come to us? Did they hear us speaking ill of their master?” Monomon’s tendrils flailed about, crackling with electricity, but the fear had faded from her voice. She had hovered closer to the corpse, staring curiously at the soul leaking from its form, then withdrew, gelatinous form vibrating with a full-body shiver. “There is something terribly wrong with their body- they feel as if they are many different souls all caged within one shell. This bug did not properly balance their soul intake as they should have. Queen Herrah, if you have a scalpel of sorts on hand then I would very much like to have it, so that I may observe the state of their organs.”

“As much as I agree with the spirit of science, Teacher, I’m still far more concerned about the how rather than the why at the moment,” Herrah rumbled, approaching the other Dreamer. “We already know that Lurien has made an enemy of their Master. I would not be surprised if he sent in one of his students to try to threaten us- it may be a good idea for us to keep the body relatively intact, so as to try to intimidate him in return. If the Watcher can find someone to identify the corpse, then perhaps we may even be able to track down some connections for interrogation.”

“Oh, because of course someone can identify the body after you shoved a greatnail through its face.” Monomon undulated irritably, before subsiding with a sigh. “Frankly, Herrah, I think that it would be better for us to dissect it now, so that we may observe the toll that overburdening oneself on soul took on the physical form. Overcharming is illegal for a reason; if we gather enough evidence to prove malpractice within the Sanctum’s ranks, then perhaps-”

"Hush!" Proclaimed Lurien, with a rather impatient air about him- he had assumed a cross-legged posture upon the floor, a tactful distance away from the bloody body of the soul mage, and before him on the tiles he had sketched an intricate web of spell-glyphs while the two of them had been bickering, masked removed to allow him to draw them out with greater accuracy. The King's Brand glowed softly in the middle of the sprawling sigils, already imbued with soul, and the pale white glow lit the markings under his eyes to a blinding blue as he glared at them, the faceted lenses of his three eyes flashing in the light. “I am going to attempt to contact the King. This requires ample concentration, and a great deal of mental fortitude. I would not be doing this if you had not pressed me to, and so now I demand utter silence-"

"Tell his royal highness an 'oops' and a 'f*ck you' from me," Herrah quipped dryly, while behind her Monomon undulated in frustration, muttering a quiet ‘we did no such thing’ while Lurien glared at her, scrubbing chalk stains off of his fingers with his robes. "And tell him that he can’t do sh*t to me for murdering a teleporting bastard that had no right to be spying on a queen of Deepnest, either. I am his equal in power, despite what he may think of me. If I decide one of his subjects is a threat, then I am well within my right to decapitate them."

"I’m sure the King will understand, Herrah, just as I believe that the soul mage should not have been teleporting at all, really. I’m pretty sure that we placed a limit on that particular spell after the fiasco of the early three hundreds for a reason," Monomon interjected, gesturing a tentacle at the still-bleeding body on the floor. "Be sure to tell him to fund a replacement for this carpet please, there's no way that those stains will ever wash out."

"That's not how this is supposed-" protested Lurien, before his face went eerily lax, body stiffening as if entering rigor mortis. Herrah squinted suspiciously at him, and Monomon began to undulate nervously once more, before finally, in a timbre of voice far from Lurien's softspoken warble, someone said: "I cannot leave you three alone for more than five minutes."

The tension in the air evaporated in a moment, a faint aura of relief emanating from both Herrah and Monomon. Though neither of them placed unyielding loyalty in Hallownest’s crown, both of them had enough experience with the King to predict his reactions. The faint edge of exhausted irritation in his tone indicated that he did not particularly care about the implications bugslaughter at the moment, which bode well for them both, as they both had experienced the joys of long, blank stares when he did decide to care about moral technicalities outside of mass child murder. As of right now, it was clear that there was far too much on his mind to deal with the hassle of pretending to be disappointed about the accidental insecticide of something that might have once been part of his daily meal.

"Hello to you too, your Royal Assholieness," Herrah grumbled impatiently, before gesturing to the corpse still leaking its lifesblood onto the floor. Behind her, Monomon had ceased the undulations in favor of something far closer to simply vibrating, as if her stifled laughter was simply too much for her gelatinous frame. "We have a f*ckin' situation here, cut the stagsh*t before you start handing it out. One of your rogue wizards's spies just tried to slip up behind us while we were here discussing politics. If they hadn’t tried to shoot us with a spell, then we might have tried to not murder their sorry ass, but as you can clearly see, it did not work out that way for them, and yes, there is a needlehole the size of my fist in their face. We were trying to figure out what to do with the body before your third set of eyes went running to you for help. I would like to formally state that I will be merciful for now, and would not consider their transgressions an act of war on Deepnest's part. For the sake of our daughter, I hope you do the same."

"He's not my third set of eyes, Herrah, the secondary pair are merely an illusion triggered by- this is going off topic." The Pale King cut himself off with an exasperated sigh that was nearly powerful enough to send frost creeping along the panes of the windows, one of Lurien's antennae twitching as he struggled to balance the natural magic of a wyrm with the limitations of his own capabilities. Again, Herrah gave him a suspicious squint, tapping meaningfully at a charm on her hip, though the severity of the spell’s toll was stifled as Lurien's hand moved up to massage at his temple, a movement that was very distinctly Pale King. "No, I do not consider this an act of war. I am well aware of the transgressions of the Soul Sanctum; the Soul Master is a traitor of Hallownest, and those who still follow him will be set to death once their ringleader has been slaughtered. I would urge you to wait on enacting that, however, and I urge you to not splatter their blood all over the floor of the Watcher's Spire again. My life is already difficult enough without you in it."

"I could say the same of you, Wyrm, and I would, if you hadn't saved me a headache and a half obtaining an heir." Herrah leaned forward, bracing her weight on her greatneedle, and her irritable scowl slowly morphed into a smug, knowing look as she peered down at the god staring blankly up at her through Lurien’s body. "That does not, however, absolve you of your debt to me. Like it or not, God of Hallownest, I still remember what you said the last time you stayed the night, and I will not hesitate-"

"The carpet will be replaced," the King said, in a monotone voice so flat that it made the creaking groan of construction-stone sound like the agony of the damned. "And the body will be disposed of. Monomon, you will be welcomed into the depths of the palace if you wish to record any irregularities. No record of this...transgression will be remembered in the coming nights."

And then he was gone, with nary a good-bye or a farewell. The faint glow of soul among the sigil lines faded; all of the rigid tension left Lurien’s body, and he swayed forward with a rattling gasp, smudging the chalklines as he caught himself. Both Monomon and Herrah reached out to steady him, but he silently shook his head at their offers to help, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet with a grimace of pain. “That did not go as smoothly as I wished it.”

“Well, that’s a very neat trick, regardless of how well you thought it went,” Herrah said approvingly, clapping him on the back in a comeradely manner. It nearly sent the poor fellow sprawling, occupied as he was with reattaching his mask, but Monomon caught him easily enough, pulling them both back against Herrah’s warm side with a soft, bubbling laugh. “Too bad it takes such a toll out of you. I can’t help but wonder how he hasn’t caught onto your feelings for him by now, however, with you managing to call him into your thoughts; he must be blinder than he admits to not see how much you admire him.”

“That is because I hardly think of my own feelings when trying to embrace communion, Queen Herrah,” Lurien said dryly, halfheartedly attempting to extract himself from the tangle of limbs to no avail. None of the Dreamers were particularly cuddly folk, but being ambush-attacked by a mad scholar violated most of the reasons that prevented them from engaging in the comforting act of squashing bodies together. “Imagine yourself attempting to hold the full burning might of a star in a singular glass chalice; now imagine that the aforementioned star has a mind of their own, one that you can hardly begin to fathom, and that they are only half aware of the fact that they are standing on a pinpoint, or that there is a very small creature below them trying their damned best to keep them there. We are not made to share the minds of giants, Queen Herrah. It does not surprise me in the least that my concentration blocks him from my more...indecent thoughts.”

“Or he’s just a f*cking idiot,” proclaimed Herrah, with an unfairly cheerful air; it drew a disapproving hiss from Lurien, but she simply shook her head and resheathed her needle, grimacing at the blood still staining it. “Now, let us take our leave. I have a blade to clean, and I’d loathe to still be here when the cleanerbugs come to see I’ve made a mess of your pretty spire. We’ve skirted enough political headaches today as is.”

“And I would prefer to discuss what has occurred in a far more warded area, if you don’t mind,” added Monomon, withdrawing herself from the squish; neither of the other Dreamers commented on the faint moisture she left behind, nor the fact that Lurien’s fur was now puffing out noticeably from beneath his cloak. “I’ve yet to locate my dear assistant, and you have some of the most advanced looking-glasses in the kingdom, Lurien. It would do us all a favor if you brought us up to your quarters- I’m sure Lucien wouldn’t mind the interruption.”

“As you wish, Your Majesties,” grumbled Lurien, with hardly any heat in his voice. “Invite yourselves both to my abode. I see that you have clearly taken the traditional phrase of ‘my den shall be your nest’ far too seriously, but who am I to challenge two of the greatest minds within the caverns? It couldn’t possibly be my place to decide who comes and who goes. I would not dare to stand against the might of the Queen of Deepnest, or the Teacher of Fog Canyon.”

And off they went, to go deal with the problems of teleporting assassins elsewhere, bickering cheerfully as they went. None of them wished to speak of the way that the mage of the Soul Master had started to slide apart after death, as if the concentrated soul trapped within had deformed them from the inside out; neither wished to speak of the way that the air itself had felt wrong, as if the life force of an entire village’s worth of bugs had been trapped into one fragile container, searching endlessly for a way out.

Nor did they speak of the darkness that had fallen over the world of dreams, or how every night when they fell asleep, they felt as if they were trapped underwater, their thoraxes vibrating with an endless call swallowed instantly by the deep, dark sea- or how sometimes, when they curled themselves up still and listened, they could hear something calling back, the echoing agony of millions transformed into one faint, hopeful note.

There were, after all, far more pressing matters at hand than listening to the laments of the lost.

.

.

.

Do you hear me?

You're a goliath to me

I'll be there when the bombs unfurl, 'til the war is over

Lay your burdens on me

I can bear all the weight of the world with you on my shoulders

-Where the Skies End, Starset

Chapter 8: Love is Kindness and Kindness is a Choice

Chapter Text

Dear rabbit

My claws are dull now

So don’t be afraid

I can keep you warm

As long as you can just try

To be brave

.

.

.

Sometimes, She had been kind.

In its opinion (in the moments where it allowed itself to have an opinion, in the moments where it allowed itself to forget), those few, fleeting instances had been the worst. Kindness offered to it had been scarce in the White Palace, for it was something that was gifted to the other bugs, real bugs. A Pure Vessel, after all, was not a real bug, and so had no real need for kindness. A Pure Vessel had no real need for anything at all, really, for a true pure vessel- a real pure vessel- would not feel anything, and did not need the gentle warmth of a soft touch to carry it through the days. A true Pure Vessel would not care about its father's eyes lingering upon it after a training session, gleaming with a rare spark of pride, just as it would not care for a word of praise shouted from one of the Great Knights in the heat of a sparring session, or the impatient tugging of a small spiderling who thought that there was something left to salvage within the animated corpse that had once been her half-sibling. Kindness given to the Pure Vessel was most often a mistake made in either ignorance or a moment of weakness, destined to be explained away to those who did not understand why the silent knight standing before them did not respond, or to be tactfully ignored or dismissed. Such moments of ignorance or weakness were rare, sweet, and fleeting, so much so that the Hollow Knight had come to absorb its unexpected treat same way it would sit and listen to the silver-sweet notes of instruments playing softly through the hallways on the days when the court musicians decided to entertain the royals, or the leaping, golden arcs of music sung during festival-days, when the mortals cast aside the endless task of fighting against the brevity of their existence in favor of celebrating the small joys of living. It was something sweet in passing, something to (not enjoy, for a Pure Vessel did not enjoy things, did not let itself savor the small sweet moments in between hours of training or patrolling) observe when the world designed to let something as gentle as it pass before a creature made exclusively for war.

The stray mote of affection given to it in the palace had been a rarity. A reward.

Not this stifling, cloying aura.

.

"My children knew fear once," She had said, brushing a hand lightly over the ridges of its back; it was not facing Her, as it should, but was instead curled over, face pressed into an essence-formed illusion of marble as its head rung with a raucous gold-black haze of brightshine agony. She made a soft click-cluck noise with Her mandibles, partially muffled by the soft fur of Her ruff, but She did not withdraw Her hand from its nape, despite Her previous sneering about how its impure carapace would taint Her, filthy with void as it was. This touch, unwanted and intrusive, was as gentle as how Father's hands had handled it when it was small, but Her gentleness was a falsehood and that falsehood burned. "Such a messy, unruly, dangerous concept. It was my job to protect them, my job to keep them safe, for I loved them more than I loved myself. What would they have to fear, with me as their ruler? I would die for them. I did die for them. Fear was a disease, one severed easily enough with a little cleansing light. Under my wings, they had no need to be afraid. I never gave them the chance, for they did not desire what they had lost, and we were happy."

Her claws brushed over the curve of its wingbuds, tracing along the seam of exposed skin between the chitin plates. From the way that the blunt tips dug into its flesh, a dull, aching pain, it knew that Her anger was not far from awakening. Always, it simmered beneath the surface, always ever-present, even throughout the days where She would curl Her wings about Her face and sob for hours upon hours upon hours, even throughout the days where She decided that She should pretend to be kind. "Your creator did the same to you, but not out of a sense of duty! He stripped you of all emotion, burned away your life’s essence, and for what? To be another cog in his machine. A tool to destroy me, rather than face me himself. You are his child, and yet you mean nothing to him!"

Her laugh, when it came, was naught more than a harsh bark of air, rasping through the essence around it as her claws burrowed in, and the air inside its aching chest burned. Bitter, bitter burn. "I had a life! I had a family! I could have thrived for centuries more under their worship, for I was worthy of their love, not him. He had all he wanted already, he could create a family of his own so easily, and yet he threw his away to ruin mine."

The claws, dull as they were, pressed through carapace with a snap, the light-blades burning around them fading as quickly as they came. The new burst of pain that rocked through its body was dull and throbbing, a sickly shiver that rocked it to the very core- something deep within had broken as well, fragile flesh pierced through by sharpened essence. Unlike surface-wounds, singing their agony through the shell surrounding its softer void, this pain was something it could not escape from, a terrible ache that rang warning-bells through the haze of pain that was already ringing in its head.

Terrible, yet bearable. It knew that the worst was yet to come.

And it did, in the form of a warm, sticky numbness spreading deep within the wound, and the low, sweet croon of Her above them. Hot hands smoothed over the tear She left behind, but the carapace under the soft palmpads was wrong, numb and tingling and warm, far, far too warm. "Poor thing, I didn't meant to slip up like that. We are both his victims, you and I, but that hardly makes us compatible, either. You hurt me just as much as I hurt you, so you mustn't allow yourself to get angry when I overstep my boundaries. This is a part of your nature, after all, just as it is a part of mine."

Her hands cradled its horns with a gentleness that disguised just how easily She had broken them. Her fur was the softest thing it had ever felt, and it tickled around its mandibles as She rested the point of its mask against Her chest, tilting its head up so that its empty eye sockets met the mad burning scorching behind her own. It felt nausea creep up its throat, heavy and sweet, and found itself struggling to swallow against a tidal wave of sickly-sweet numbness as inquisitive fingers pressed up hard against the soft flesh under its jaws, tracing a hot, painful line down the front of its throat.

"Perhaps I shall undue what he has created. It is only just."

"It's time my children heard my voice again, after so many years of dreaming falling upon deaf ears."

.

It understood war, for war was what it had been made for, but it had not understood kindness before, or how bitter such kindness could be. When She had first scorched burning lines down into its throat, searing away the void below to carve a new organ of Her own making, She had done so in an attempt to fix it. To make it clean, to clear away the rot that had taken it in the egg. To craft it into something that She could love, as She had to the Many-That-Had-Been-One, blinding the eyes that had winked back at Her from the darkness until the land knew nothing but Her touch.

In Her mind, Her actions had been its salvation. In its, all it had known was pain.

The horror of being reshaped by those who did not truly care about its wellbeing was not new to it. But the Pale King had approached the task of hammering it into the Pure Vessel with the grim, detached resignation of one who did not particularly wish to be involved in such manners, while the Radiance threw Herself into the challenge of reshaping it with the maniac fervor of the damned. If salvation could not be brought through outright destruction, then it could be seeded into the sun-scorched mind with gentle words and kind touches, offering it the illusion of relief from a relentless, ever-burning sun. A mother, to the motherless. Pity to the pitiless. Anything, to defang the monster She had been trapped with.

When She realized that She had failed, when She grew tired of playing the act of savior to the unsavable, the violence would begin, and the cycle would start anew.

The moments where She had been kind had been the most punishing acts of Her holy vengeance, for it only made Her fury feel so much worse.

Dimly, it became aware of the fact that it was trembling in the waking world, its aching head pressed against its knees. Faintly, it sensed the remnants of the Dream World ripple around it, scraps of essence running over cold void, the ghost of a touch it had never wanted. She had not designed to lay Her hands on it often, but when She did it was with a softness that had always promised future pain, both phantom and physical, and though the Dream no longer held Her in its epicenter, it felt itself flinching back nonetheless, self-control lost under the tight, thrumming fear trembling through its limbs, imperceptible to the naked eye and yet all too apparent in the Dream, where the essence wavered around it in ripples, and the dark depths of the void offered no solace.

It had not dreamed before Her. With Her, all it could ever do was dream. That She had been torn apart and yet was still lingering here with it felt cruel beyond measure, crueler even than waking to the sight of a dead hatchling's eyes boring into its own, crueler than leaving bloodied pawprints behind it as it clawed its way up to the King, thoughts empty of everything but the simple desire to seek out the light.

And yet it could not wake. Under the drugs, it hadn't the mind to care about waking (hadn't had the mind to care about anything other than escaping the pain, shameful though it was that it feared it at all), but the Realm itself was inescapable, a whole other world imposed upon the physical. Faintly, it could still sense its body below, quivering pitifully under the scarce sheets of its bed, but the great golden expanse over the deep black of the sea still held it. No matter how it tried to swim, tried to dive below the cold dark waters, that sickly-bright sun was inescapable, twisting and turning until it knew not which way was up and which was down.

Trapped, though it had escaped its grasp before. A mockery of its freedom.

It was tarnished, scarred, chained.

Try as it might, it could never be free.

(And wasn't that just what it deserved.)

I don't want to sleep.

Don't make me sleep. Please. Please.

It clawed its mask as if it could physically tear the light from its eyes; when that did not work, its awareness of the essence untarnished, it gouged its claws in deep enough to burn, only half-aware of the motes of void floating away into empty space. Like oil and water, void and dream collided, spinning off of each other in ethereal droplets to hang weightlessly before its face as if pulled in by its innate gravity. If its mind was not currently screaming with a wild, animal panic it was very distinctly not supposed to be experiencing anymore, its chest struggling to fill with each breath, it might have dared to think that the collision of opposite elements was beautiful, in its own strange way. As it was, it nearly distracted it from sensing the way that the spaces between warped and crackled with a new, unfamiliar heat, wet and pulsating-warm rather than the dry, oppressive glare of the Dream it was used to.

Nearly, but not quite. It was tarnished, impure, but it had not become the King's Shadow for nothing, had not passed the trials laid before it without remembering the skills imprinted into its mind by the Great Knights and its lord father. As soon as it felt the world begin to warp, shifting with the influence of another Higher Being, it forced itself into a state of deathly stillness, letting its mind become as smooth and serene as an unbroken lake, even as the ugly, desperate thing within it thrashed and screamed uselessly into the void around it.

Do not think, do not...

"Well now," rasped a voice that sounded like broken chitin rattling through a rent-open windpipe, that hissed and crackled like blood spattering over live coals. It tensed, but did not move, did not react- not until it heard the other god draw in a sharp, harsh breath, letting it out in a cackle that grated on its nerves with the same ardent rasp of two rusted sawblades scraping against one another. "This is quite an unusual find, I must say! A nightmare where there once was dream, fading away to a place unseen. Fear lies strongly here, and yet the source of it remains unclear. Is it the aftermath of the Wyrm's devastation, or sister dear's desperation? What it is just yet we cannot say, but that matters little when we've come to play."

It whipped around, summoning what little soul remained with it to the forefront of its mind, and all it saw was red.

Red, creeping into the darkness around it as if it could make itself a home within the shadows, so very different from the golden light beyond. Red, sliding through the fragments of the Dream in great coils and loops, a throbbing, pulsing mesh of veins spreading overhead and below and from side to side, weaving great curtains of flesh that sank eagerly into the dark around it with the same enthusiasm that a network of roots wound their way through the earth. Red, pulsating and warm, brightening from a deep, rich hue to something that flickered and crackled and writhed like a candle-flame caught in a breeze, dancing gleefully with the shadows that surrounded it rather than burning it away. The flickering red fire cleared out its own space within the shattered abyss, but it did not compete with it like She had done, for She had considered its existence to be a danger to Her brilliance, no matter how passively the shadows had lain before her.

And in the epicenter of all of it, tethered by thick patchwork cords and alit with bright red fire, lay a great, beating heart. Slowly it undulated in time with the pulsing of the arteries around it, its deep, booming beat shaking the Hollow Knight down to its very core, vibrating its tempo along its long horns. Massive, gaping slashes covered its surface, and deep within those tears burned a pure bright fire; staring inquisitively into their depths sent an unpleasant tingle all the way down the Vessel's back, and, with a lurch of its void, it realized that they were not wounds but eyes, staring unblinkingly into the depths beyond, pouring their flame unheedingly out into the world around it. Eyes, staring into it and piercing through, their gaze burning into its void just as She had done, but without the pain that She had wrought. Its judgement (if such a primal organ could think of such a thing) did not burn, but passed through it without hurting it, as if its shell and shade were made of water instead of void. As if it were able to be seen straight through with the correct amount of illumination and persistence, but this massive being had all the time in the world, and did not care about harming it to parse out all of its secrets.

(Transparent, seen, and the thought of such a thing sent a shiver through its body, cold gripping its shade. No anger or hatred radiated from those burning multitudes, but what it thought mattered not- it was the Pure Vessel, the Hollow Knight, and if it could not truly live up to either of those titles then the very least that it could do was try to approximate them the best that it could. The fact that this new Higher Being seemed to care little for the danger it posed to them was…)

Do not feel.

So numerous were the eyes upon the Dread Heart that it took a moment longer for it to realize that there was something perching on the surface of the heart itself, hanging head down with its foreclaws spread casually on the beating flesh below it, as if sitting on vast nightmare-organs was something that was mundane in its plane of existance. So odd was it that it tookanother few heartbeats to realize that the something sitting on the Heart was peering inquisitively down at them from its vantage point high above, studying it with open curiosity, and that it was just as odd- if not moreso- than its behavior suggested. For out of all the bugs in the world that it had seen (not that those had been very many), this strange creature did not match any of them. Perhaps in some passing manner it resembled a moth, if moths were covered in leather instead of soft, fluffy down, but the claws that sunk into the heart below were distinctly predatory in nature, sharp curving scythes that glowed bright with heat. Perhaps, if one could dismiss the mothlike contours, it in some way it resembled a spider, hanging down from a silken thread, but the way that it co*cked its head to and fro was a movement that was eerily alike a mantis in nature, as was the lanky elegance of its body, terrible power concealed under the guise of long lanky limbs and tattered scarlet wings.

Curiouser still, when the creature noticed the Pure Vessel staring back at it, it responded with a pleased smile, a rather odd reaction that had previously been unique to its little sister. (It also appeared to lack the mandibles any other bug might have to match with its lower jaw, and its mouth was a jagged disaster filled to the brim with needle-sharp teeth, but that was beyond the point.) No instinctive fear seemed to freeze it, as every other god and mortal had done before when met with its dead-eyed stare, fearing the void flickering deep within its eye sockets. If anything, it appeared to be delighted with the attention, practically preening under its blank gaze while it leaned back from its previous inquisitive drape, the edges of its form flowing in an eerie, smokelike manner as it rose back and spread its wings, that dreadful rasp of a voice issuing forth from once more.

“Ah, but perhaps we spoke too hastily, perhaps we spoke too soon. There’s enough confusion to be had without tangling it in the loom.” Though it spoke with the voice of a dying bug, the other Higher Being (for it had to be a Higher Being, its aura dripped with the same scarlet essence that the Heart did, two entirely different beings sewn from the same material) moved with the liquid ease of a dancer flitting about in the prime of their life, landing (landing? on what, exactly?) a good distance away from it with a puff of red smoke. The Hollow Knight flinched back on instinct, reaching for a longnail that was no longer there, but the strange god did not come any closer, electing instead to bare its teeth at it from a safe distance. A Pure Vessel was not trained in decorum, and was only somewhat educated in preventing a fear response in mortal instincts, but it was fairly certain that whatever standard of smiling was out there, it wasn't supposed to look like that. The White Lady would have kicked this odd being out of her courtroom for intimidation in an instant, and she was already half-blind."Ah, but alas! We have forgotten ourselves- where are our manners? How dreadful of us, how rude. We cannot go without announcing ourselves, this simply will not do."

They grinned again at the vessel, baring that horrible mess of truly terrible teeth, before sweeping their wings forth in a dramatic bow that was surprisingly elegant despite the eerie, disjointed manner of their movements. The closest memory that it could equate such jerkiness to was a faint recollection of a marionette show, played for the children of the Palace while it stood guard on the opposite side of the room- and that did not reassure it much either. "Well met, my friend, well met. We are the Heart of the Nightmare realm, and I, the Nightmare King. Of many names and titles I am called, but you may call me Grimm. Out of all the titles I have accumulated through my lifetimes, I must admit that I hold a specific fondness for this one, and it is with this amiable fondness that I offer you my name. Tell me, brave knight, would you dare to do the same?"

The claws of the Grimm- of Grimm , for that was a truewrought name, not a title- extended, hand lax and open with apparent goodwill, claws angled inwards towards his body so that they would not catch against its pawpads. The edges of his form seemed to solidify with the movement, carapace darkening down from the bright, violent red of burning metal to something akin to smouldering embers, a bonfire dimming down to sparks that were far more likely to sting than scorch. Though the eyes of both the physical vessel (dream? Dream vessel? This was headache-inducing) and the Nightmare Heart remained trained upon the Hollow Knight, no malice burned in their shared gaze, as Her hatred had done to it when it was in Her realm. The motes of Nightmare drifting around it did not singe its carapace when they touched it, as the essence of the Dream had scalding its flesh when guided by Her presence.

And that was perhaps the strangest part of this whole encounter, for it was not used to feeling too realms collide without trying to tear each other apart. The strange warmth of the Nightmare Realm did not burn away the comfort of the dark sea around it, coexisting peacefully instead of attempting to overwhelm it, to burn it away like She had done when She was trapped within its mind and body, cursing everyone and everything that had lead to Her being confined within such a damnable creature..

(If anything, he seemed to relish in it, in the way his fire danced against the backdrop of its shadows. Gods of light were vain things by nature, ever seeking the eternity of their bright sparks, but the one before it paid no mind to the void around him as it threatened to snuff his out. Almost as if he knew that it was a killer. Almost as if he knew that it was a threat, and yet he drew closer regardless of the danger, uncaring of the death that it promised to those who remained unweary. Uncaring of the greedy way that the void lapped at the nightmare sigils that flickered around him like sparks from a flame, swallowing them up before they could fade away on their own.)

(It was made to destroy. It could not fathom-)

Do not think.

So different from the Dream, and yet at once so similar. The Hollow Knight stared blankly back at the Nightmare King, the void within its chest churning nauseatingly about, a flurry of emotions it could not (would not, should not) parse. It was incapable of announcing itself, for the voice it did not deserve had long been swallowed by the sea; it was improper for it to want to announce itself, the knee-jerk reaction of following a perceived order hard to contain. This god was not its father, but it could tell, in some imperceptible way, that this was a being that had carried the title of King for a long, long time.

Long enough to outpace Father. Long enough to rival Her. And She had not cared if it had been ordered to take its orders from the carrier of the King's Brand. She had not cared for such a thing in the slightest.

(Its throat, its chest, its body- everything touched by Her- burned. )

And yet the Nightmare King seemed to take its own silence as an answer. With a sweep of his cape, he wrapped the tattered mist of the nightmare around his form and slowly stalked closer, his eerie movements offset by the flowing fire flickering off his frame. In his wake, ringing his horns like a hallucinogenic halo, ephemeral eyes blinked in and out of existence, his form bleeding out at the edges into the smoke around him. A horrorshow walking, but even as the vessel readied itself for a battle, for damnation, anything, none of it came. The essence that brushed its claws did not burn. The eyes that stared from all sides did not mock it. Fear battered it from all sides, tying a knot in its throat, but the only disgust that it felt at the weakness was its own, rather than the all-encompassing malevolence that She had radiated, even in Her gentlest hours.

“Fret not if you cannot speak, dear friend. Your silence says it for you. I know well how the children of the Abyss speak, oh yes. Though we shared a realm once, I am not my sister, and do not hold her fear of the dark.” Grimm smiled, an expression that might have seemed kind without the myriad of razor-sharp teeth. “No, no. A powerful goddess was she, but it was her own terror that was her undoing. Fear is made to temper us, to expand our minds, a truth she scorned me for. And yet it was her who played the fool, not I, and it is I, the dying one, who stands before the newling god that has taken her place- a god of the Abyss, no less! Oh, such bittersweet irony, such a bittersweet jest. A perfect replacement for her brilliance, a wonderful rest. Justice delivered equally- no more, no less.”

The newling god that has taken her place.

I am not my sister.

It did not swear. Physically, of course, it was incapable of it. Theoretically it could, but the very thought of allowing itself such blasphemy felt like its very shade was turning itself inside-out. Mentally, it should not, and oftentimes did not (for there was no way that words could convey the burst of energy-adrenaline-scanning-focus-act that activated alongside its fight or flight reflex, much less be something that a Pure Vessel engaged in where nobody else could listen), for such an action was quite obscene...at least in Hallownest. But it was Hallownest-born, so it was fairly certain that such rules applied to it as well, even if it was neither a bug to use them or a creature allowed to indulge in such a strong bout of self-expression. It was the Hollow Knight, no matter how undeserving it was of that title, and learning that it was standing across from Her sibling in a void-wrapped dream that it reigned over (blasphemy) was not, under any circ*mstances, an adequate excuse for such obscenity.

And yet that still did not quite stop its memory from unhelpfully relaying back one of Herrah's particularly exasperated 'what the f*cks' as it recoiled, the void around it lashing frightfully with the unspoken echo of its own terror. It attempted to reason with itself that remembering such an obscenity was not technically the same as speaking it (for this had been a point argued often with little sister, when she was younger), but that did not make it feel much better. Much less so when the audio kept on looping through the undercurrents of its mind despite its attempts to suffocate it, the tendrils of dark matter lashing violently the more its unease increased, the world around it responding to the terror it had tried so hard to hide away.

Pathetic. Useless. A mockery of the elegance of Hallownest. It swallowed down the bitterness welling up in its chest, forced itself to settle even as the urge to hide away, to cower, grew stronger. It was a knight of the Pale Court, a guardian of the eternal kingdom. For it to be so terrified now- when it wasn’t even supposed to be afraid in the first place- was a mockery of those that had placed their faith in it. A brutal reminder of its weakness, its failure.

(Why do you resist, cursed creature? Your father does not love you. He does not care for your bravery, he places no worth in your struggles. You are unwanted, unloved.)

(Cease your resistance. Give in. You fight for a kingdom that does not know you. Spare me, and I shall grant you mercy. Deny me, and you will die a shadow. No one will remember you. You shall die before you see the sunrise, damned to an unhonourable death.)

(This is my kingdom; I am your lord. I order you to cower and pray.)

And She had been right She had been right She had been right all along, Her bitter, scalding words ringing true among the hazy hallucinations She had made to try to sway it towards saving Her. It had been nothing, it had never been made to be anything more than a body to be buried, a walking corpse. And yet here it was, still trapped within its body, a failure standing and facing the Heart of the Nightmare while the Dream weighed heavy around their shoulders, not unbound and uncrowned like it had been made to do with the death of Her but tied to its own blackened heart, a realm unwanted, a persistence of the very thing it had been made to destroy.

It had failed, but its failure had not resulted in salvation, as the Pale King and Queen Herrah had thought. It had resulted in damnation.

It had not saved the kingdom from the plague of light. It had only inherited the position of plaguebringer.

It sank to its knees, thoughts a riot of pain and terror under a sudden, all-consuming numbness. Pressure crushed in on its chest, as if the full weight of the void sea had transformed from an ethereal nothingness to millions of tons of stone; it could not breathe, could not think. Distantly, it could hear Grimm speaking, in a tone that writhed and flickered like flame, but that meant nothing to it. That did not change the fact that it had conquered a realm that had once been the very antithesis to it, that had tried to kill it, to defy it, and was now bound to its shade like a scar it could never be rid of. A crown, hanging from a mask that did not want it, two realms swirling under its clawtips like oil and water struggling to mix. Void and Dream were not made to mix, nor Void and Mind, and yet here it was hanging in the nebulous grip of two divided realms, harbouring within it the curse of the mind that it never should have possessed.

( ‘Kill me,’ he had entreated it, and his eyes had been so bleak-)

It had slipped, it had fallen, and it had brought the entire dream down with it, golden clouds and arching spires tumbling down down down to the dark sea below. It held within it a power that its siblings had died to see it go unabused and it-

It could not breathe. It could not think. For once in its accursed life, it could not think. The Nightmare King let out a cry of alarm, a rasping roar that permeated the dar; this it noted, in the dull mannerism of a kingsmould responding to an idle threat, but it did not possess the capability to discern if he feared for it, or feared for himself. It could not think past the roaring waters swirling through its mind- it was so much easier to not let itself think, to curl up in the far-distant corner of its mind that it had hidden in when Her anger had raged at its highest and it could not think of itself as tied to the body that She ravaged without losing every part of itself that She was still shielded from. It was so much easier to entreat the void to rise up around it and swallow it whole.

The last thing that it saw were two scarlet eyes staring out at it from the darkness, and then the tide closed over its head, and it was alone in the nothingness once more.

“Hollow Knight.”

A voice permeated the darkness surrounding it, a voice soft and sad, a voice at once coolly regal and achingly familiar. Deep within, an age-old instinct pulled it out of the mire that it had wrapped around its dreamself, the tangled cocoon of void sloughing away as it rose from its slumber. Nothingness faded to a haze of sensation, its shade stretching back out to reconnect with the pressing heaviness of a physical form- before, it would have snapped immediately into alertness, bearing no memory of what had transgressed while it was resting, but now its limbs were heavy with sleep, its mind a tangled mess of unformed thoughts and hazy, half-felt sensations as the Dream Realm clung tightly to its shade, threatening to draw it back down into the gold-black sea even as the urgency of its calling forced it into a state of alertness.

Truthfully, it did not quite wish to rise yet, for waking had brought back all the various aches and pains that plagued its earthly body. The burning pangs of sensation from its missing arm were the first to voice their complaints, shoulder aching around the impression of soul-stitches that had long since faded into non existence; soon after came the creeping itch along the healing scars on its thorax, the missing chitin around the edges of its wounds slowly starting to grow back over the softened flesh. But it did anyways, for it refused to fall to the fallacy of its physical form...and found its efforts worth the pain, as its sensitive, stinging eyes slowly made out the shape of its queen mother looking down at it from the doorway, her gentle glow filling the room with light far better than any lumafly lantern in the world.

“Greetings, my knight,” she said softly, and her eyes were sad but kind. Gentle, and though its heart ached with the desire to sweep away her melancholy, part of it cowered under her gaze, fearing the danger of a goddess struck with a sudden burst of altruism. “I would like to invite you to join me in my gardens- if it is agreeable, of course. There is much that I wish to discuss, much of the time we could have spent together lost. Through no fault of your own, of course, but it is a transgression of mine that I wish to see rectified. There is so much that has gone unsaid.”

Her voice held a faint edge of melancholy to it, but her words were measured and calm, and her eyes lacked the dead emptiness when the Pale King had ordered it to rise, hardly more than a few days past. The void that approximated its guts churned, its blackened heart beating faster at the promise of what lay ahead, but it forced the rising dread away, and pushed itself up from the bare pallet of its bed. As gentle as her request had been, it had been trained well in being able to distinguish the orders lying beneath polite requests, and it could see no other option available but to follow.

(If it could not be pure, if the Dream Realm responded to it as the void did, a wild, raging force that lashed despite its desire to still it, then at least it could prove itself to be good. At least it could prove itself to be passive, to wish no harm upon its makers, though they would be well within their rights to fear it.)

(Deep shadows shrouded their souls, deep shadows as dark as the waters of the Abyss. Lighter was it around Mother, more a mourning-veil than the chains wrapped around Father, but they existed all the same. Regret, shielded away behind calm smiles and quiet stares, worn with bleak acceptance of what they had done to save the thousands that plead their lives to their names.)

Rising from its bed proved to be more difficult than it wished, its balance botched from its lack of an arm, shoulders weakened and aching from where the pauldrons had grown into its carapace. It huffed out a breath that whistled in its chest, single arm trembling with the effort to force it upright; after a pause, the White Lady slipped within the room to stand by its side, clouded blue eyes lingering on the scars crisscrossing its thorax as she held her hands out over its shoulders, hesitating just before they touched. With great effort, it forced the tremble in its limbs to still, forced itself to sit upright without help, but that did not erase the faint look of misery that lingered in her gaze, so alike to the expression her husband had worn as he lingered in hallways that had grown dim with the absence of her light.

( ‘Kill me,’ he had said, and his stare had been bleak and dead, claws turned out in atonement for the suffering that he had forced upon the hundreds and thousands and millions below, but it didn’t...it couldn’t…)

Attempting to stand was a struggle all on its own, posing a different set of challenges to its broken form than the simple act of sitting up. Though its body was strong, formed from the union of two gods, it found its responses lacking when compared to the precision they had held before the Sealing, and it was stiffer now than it was a few days ago, both from taut muscle and pulled scars. Now, its mother laid her hands on it, her hesitation from before dissipating to resigned apprehension as she delicately attempted to help it balance, to stride forth by her side, touch light as if she feared hurting it. As if she were suddenly aware of how easy it was to hurt, a phenomenon foreign to them both, but painfully apparent now that it had come home with nothing to hide.

Well. As much as a mute knight with no means of communication could hide something. Truthfully, the Hollow Knight was as lost as a grub in the tunnels of Deepnest when it came to expressing itself, though its lord father had relinquished it of the bonds demanding its purity.

And yet, the chains still lingered, self-imposed rather than ordered. For what was it supposed to be, if not the Pure Vessel? What was it, beyond the wretched creature that it had been before, hoping desperately for an absence of thought or feeling as it prepared itself for its inevitable sacrifice? What was it supposed to be, if it wasn’t the Hollow Knight?

Father had looked at it with pride, when it had first been knighted. Pride, and something that it almost dared to have called love. Would he look at it with the same sort of pride if it became something else, if it reclaimed the title it might have been granted before it was given to the void? Would he love it now, if it became something that it was never supposed to be, if it somehow managed to craft a new self after the destruction of its old duty?

It did not know. And it did not wish to think, for each tentative new thought that surfaced after an eternity of self-suppression sent knots twisting through its belly, both at the daring of attempting such blasphemy and the fear of the answer it might come across.

(Wretched creature, twisted monster of the Abyss, your sire has abandoned you.)

“How lovely the flowers are today,” mused its mother, and it snapped its attention to her at once, both grateful for the distraction and apprehensive to what she might say next. She did not seem to be directly focused on it, her touch still gentle around its waist as she helped it walk beside her (and how strange that was, to be walking alongside instead of behind, treated as an equal instead of a servant), her cloudy blue eyes staring out at the tangled silver vines creeping in through the windows of the hallway. The very picture of serenity, as if nothing in all the worlds beyond could ever hope to bother her, as if she was as untouchable and uncontrollable as the turning of the world. "They have grown rampant on my long holiday. A pleasant surprise, to be sure. Such fragile things they are, without proper superstition."

She spoke even though she knew she would get no answer, and this too did not appear to bother her very much, even though she knew the nature of what had taken away its voice. The White Lady was calm in a way that She never had been, even in Her most lethargic moments when sorrow had dampened Her almighty anger- nothing about the Lady’s stature indicated that she was displeased with it in any way, all of the barely-noticeable indicators of her ire it had come to memorize absent from her movements. Unlike with the Old Light, this small moment of serenity was highly unlikely to flare into another round of torture, or to be twisted into a sugar-sweet delusion like She had done when She had been trying to break it. Analytically speaking, there was nothing to be alarmed of in this encounter.

And yet it still feared her, feared disappointing her as it once had when it was too small to put a name to the knotting in its throat, the numb way it had watched as she carefully, methodologically avoided it. “In truth, I am grateful that the gardens here have been allowed to run wild in my absence. The royal retainers, bless their souls, do not quite understand the beauty of a world left untouched by the claws of bugs. Careful maintenance is the beauty my Wyrm cherishes the most, one of the few differences that still remains between us. It would be a terrible shame if those differences had been erased, for it is the contrast of those two alternate visions that truly made this palace feel like a home to me.”

She stopped before the entrance to one of her gardens, studying the foliage beyond with an intensity that it did not entirely think was due to a genuine admiration of her plants. Which was both a blessing and a curse, for though the halt allowed some time to gather its breath and beat back the pain singing through its body, it made the tremble in its legs far harder to mask. Whether from adrenaline or exhaustion, it did not know, but a primal, animal sense deep in ite gut clenched at the thought of its mother finding the weakness in its frame, yet another flaw in what she had made to be a perfect machine. “But of course, when I say it that way it sounds as if I feel unwelcome here. This could not be further from the truth. Your father worked hard to build this palace to match my every whim. Hallownest was my home before it was his, a fact that he remained painfully aware of even after I took him as my husband. He feared that building this palace would tarnish its beauty, all that I saw was him carving his burrow under the safety of my roots. A nest for him, in the home that he secured for me.”

She sighed then, a heavy, tired sound, and guided them through the archway into her gardens. Its stomach clenched again at the sight of the walkways, filled in with a familiar fine white sand, but instead of leading it down the walkway to the gazebo beyond, she ducked her head under the tangle of branches, guiding it under the canopy to a path hidden within the foliage. The leaves and vines coiled away from their bodies to reveal a trail hidden below the undergrowth as they walked; Soft grass pressed under its footpads with every step, brushing along its ankles as if welcoming it home. Despite its worries (and the ever-present urge to destroy those worries, cycling through its mind in a never-ending loop), some of the tension melted from its limbs, soothed by an aura it had no name for. No hallucination that She had placed upon it could possibly emulate the peace that pervaded this place, for She hated self-wrought serenity just as much as She had hated its silence. “And yet still he sets himself apart from me, still he insists upon placing the blame only on himself. The plan was of his making, and so in his mind your suffering was entirely his fault. He does not consider my acceptance of his scheme to be a fault of my own making, any more than he sees my abandonment of you as the negligence that it is. He was born alone, you see, and he fully intends to die alone, for he sees that punishment as suitable penance for what the two of us have done.”

The trail briefly opened up into a meadow, full of silver-white flowers and soft, pale moss. She paused, fixing it with a melancholy stare, before guiding them both to a thicket of thorny vines, the hidden passage set into its gnarled walls bidding them both to duck their heavy heads. Within the tangle, a lone tree stood within the center of a small clearing, soft grass waving gently in the breeze’ the faint whistle of the wind in the caverns was quiet here, as were the quiet murmurs of the palace retainers and noblefolk passing through the gardens. Only the soft rustle of the leaves and the faint knell of a wind chime could be heard within, sweet serenity hidden away behind silver and emerald.

It felt...different than the rest of the gardens, untouched by the passage of time, and somehow, the Hollow Knight knew that whatever that would be spoken within would go unheard of by those outside the glade. Carefully, they approached the tree, the White Lady dipping her head to keep her branches from getting ensnared among the other limbs. With a delicacy that betrayed her fear of their fragility (as if they were not a knight that had spent countless hours training from the day they had hatched, as if they had not felt their shell crack and their soul bleed and yet still learned to go on despite it all), she placed them down among the tangled roots, then rose again, folding her hands neatly before her as she looked out at the soul-lit caverns beyond. The quiet rustle of the flora around them did not hide her quiet sigh, or the way that she seemed to sink within herself for a moment, letting the shadows hang heavier around her. Less of a noble queen, and more of a tired goddess, grown weary of the endless turning of the days around her.

The White Lady had not been the centerpoint of its childhood. She had not stood over the mouth of the Abyss and looked on as countless, nameless young godlings fell to their deaths, climbing desperately to reach her. She had not pressed the hilt of its first nail into the palm of its still-soft hand, and commanded it to fight, had not watched impassively as it had trained for endless hours on end, until its limbs trembled with the effort to keep it standing, its mind a numb haze of exhausted pain. She had not ordered it to stand for hours on end in hallways growing steadily emptier with the looming threat of the Infection, soft weeping haunting the cold corridors in the moments where all song fell silent. Instances that would have each been acts of abuse deserving of damnation, if it had not been for the fact that it was not a real being to begin with.)

(His claws had been lax, eyes dead, and it could feel the shadows wrapped around him cinching tight, a grasp around his heart around his throat around his mind and it could feel the way they writhed under its fingertips like water rippling away from a fallen droplet, so easy to bend, so easy to shape, a trapdoor snapping shut-)

The Pale Queen was not incapable of cruelty. Her gentle, polite nature hid from outsiders the tangled snare of her heart- her calm smile and detached dispassion concealed the abstract, alien mind that crept slowly through the thoughts like water through the earth, a vast network of little rivers forming a great, pouring rain. The kindness that she offered was genuine, insofar that death was genuine; if the Radiance saw her kindness as salvation from an end of screaming fire and harsh, burning light, then the White Lady’s absent apathy granted a slow decay rooted by indifferent ignorance, as she had done to the Old Light when the Pale Wyrm had pulled her beneath the earth, as she had to Unn's lands when she found the elder god weakening under the turn of the eons. Mercy was not her way, for mercy was not a concept implicit to her nature; hungry roots did not think of mercy when they wormed their way into home and hearth, cracking apart the crumbling rock that had supported countless generations. They did not think of mercy when they strangled the life from their competitors, for mercy did not win them their survival.

In their simple minds, death and life were intertwined, and it knew that its mother thought the same way. The heaps of broken shells far, far below held testament to that well enough.

“How slowly the seasons turn,” murmured the White Lady; its attention snapped to her, but she appeared lost in a world of her own making, cloudy blue eyes staring sightlessly out into the caverns beyond. "It seems as if only a moment ago, I was a young goddess in my newly-built kingdom. A euphoria that your father sought to preserve, of course. There is a reason why he built his nest so close to the mouth of the Abyss; he has always been one desperate to stop time, to hoard away things that bring him joy like little trinkets, for he is ever so rarely happy on his own. Inquisitive, yes, but the expansion of the mind is a joy best cherished by sharing, and your father has always been such a lonely soul. I sensed it from the moment I met him. Perhaps it is what drew me to him in the first place, for I too was on my own, a lone root growing slowly in the shadows of giants."

She sighed, shoulders slumping, and for a moment she looked as old and as tired as Father did in the nights after a long shift, his hands stained dark by the void. It was a painfully familiar expression, and despite the faint terror icing its limbs, its chest clenched in sympathy, mirroring the sorrow reflected in her face. And yet, when she spoke again, her voice was still the even-tempered speech of a queen, calm and capable under the threat of distress. "I saw his heart then, and it sang to me. Wyrms are a powerful race, one whose titles are whispered among the roots with great fear and reverence- but when I caught him in my snare, I did not see a terrible deathbringer, but an endearingly inquisitive creature with no one to share his knowledge with. I saw his heart, despite our differences, despite my misgivings, and I decided to set him free. Even now, I cannot deny the fact that I do not regret this. I set him free, and he returned to me, and offered me his fragile heart to join to his as one. Beloved he is to me still, despite it all. Despite everything that I have done."

Her head dipped down, eyelids lowering. Only a sliver of blue showed, glimmering with soft motes of light, before she sighed, fingers stroking at a spot just below the hollow of her throat. It watched her, silent as it ever was, silent as it could ever be, and commanded its remaining limbs not to shake as her eyes slowly slid back open, turning to them with a sad smile.

"I see your heart now, Vessel, shrouded though it is to my sight. I see it as I once saw his, and know now that I was wrong."

A deep, steady breath, as if settling herself. For a moment, ice-cold terror pierced the Hollow Knight's heart, unbidden and unwanted, before dissipating into the simple cold clutches of adrenaline. Terror unbound, and though it knew that its mother understood it was impure, the open confirmation of such knowledge was terrifying; it felt as if it had gone from a creature hiding away in the shadows to one suddenly being thrust in the spotlight, seen, known. Caught out, a lifetime of concealment manifesting into a sharp needle-point in its chest as its oldest fear was not only realized, but acknowledged.

(And what she saw in it, it did not know-)

"How cruel fate was to us. How cruel we were to you." Her shoulders fell, the ornaments strung about her crown of branches chiming softly with the movement. Her fingers twined together, hands coming to rest just under the curve of her abdomen, as solemn as if she were a mourner in a funeral. Its heart lurched, but she did not fix it with the dead-eyed stare that the Pale King had. Instead, she took another deep breath, and then said, quietly, "I will not make any excuses for myself. Nor will I make excuses for my husband, dear as he is to me. There is no way to excuse what I have done to you, and I know it. We chose to do this to you. This is our fault.”

She crossed the space between, and knelt down, her eyes meeting the dark pits of its maskholes. Gently, as if handling something precious, she reached forward to cup its face between her hands, her fingers stroking along the underside of its jaw. A soft touch, a tender touch, and the icy grasp of fear slowly melted away, until it took everything within its power to prevent itself from pressing its muzzle into her hands, to take something that it had never earned in the first place.

It did not deserve this. It did not deserve to be held like this, as if it was something fragile, something to be protected and cherished. It knew the power it had inherited. It knew the price of kindness.

(And yet, it was so tired…)

“I beseech this of you, Vessel. Let this be the only command passed from me to you.” Her hands were gentle, but her eyes were hard, face serious. The adrenaline returned, snapping its focus onto her, but all she did was tighten her grip on its face and lean in, whispering her words as if she feared that the soul-rich air around her would swallow them whole. “ Live. Spread your branches free of our influence, and live. All this time you have withered under our shadow, an injustice that I, alas, cannot fix. So hear me now, and promise me this alone: do not let what we have done to you prevent yourself from moving forward. Do not stifle yourself for our own desires. You have suffered for us enough.”

She released it, and rose to her full height, brushing the dirt from her dress. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled- not one of pain, or one of distant courtesy, but of genuine affection. Affection, and hope, for something that she had once claimed to no longer be a part of her. “I am eager to meet you, my child.”

And with that, she turned and left, leaving it behind to ponder her words...and how on earth it would return to its rooms, without someone beside it to escort it back.

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So Rabbit

Please stop looking the other way

It’s cold out there

So why not stay here

Under my tail

-I Know I’m a Wolf, Young Heretics

Chapter 9: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Chapter Text

Achilles

Achilles

Achilles come down, won't you

Get up off

Get up off the roof?

You're scaring us

And all of us

Some of us love you

Achilles, it's not much but there's proof

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Learning how to be alive, as it turned out, was quite exhausting.

The ugly knot of emotions twisting within it turned out to be a far less important issue than what it had previously assessed them to be, glaring evidence of its flaws notwithstanding. Before it could muster the energy to try to untangle such a burden (or, indeed, muster the bravery to try, for the instinctual disgust at its daring sent a twinge through its stomach everytime it dared to think of trying it- and that was accounting for the moments when it dared to let itself think as well!), it first had to heal enough of its physical form to obtain the energy required to do so- and that was no small feat. Though its father’s lifelong control over it had carried its body forth to the sparring grounds on his commands alone, only a combination of adrenaline and its mother's aid had given it the strength to walk with her to the gardens, and none of the energy required to make the trek back...a fact that became apparent very quickly when its sister had found it some span of time later, sitting under the same tree its mother had left it leaning against with no means to even attempt to rise again, let alone wander its way back to its old bedroom. Though the time it had spent resting against a bed of fertile soil and smooth bark had not done it any undue harm (quite the opposite, really- it hardly ever had the chance to observe the beauty of its mother's work, attempting to get it out of the gardens again had been…a struggle and a half. Perhaps it was fortuitous that its little sister was surprisingly strong for her size and terrifically stubborn for her age, as she was able to get it back to its quarters after several awkward minutes of struggling to find out where its new point of balance lay (something it hadn't quite had the time to figure out itself). But strong little spiderwyrms aside, it did point out one problem in particular- that it was nowhere near being done with the healing process. Even if it was no longer hovering on the brink of death, there was always more improvement that could be achieved, and it was starting to get to the point where laying about in its bed doing nothing was doing it more harm than good.

Getting up was tiring. For an indistinguishable span of time after the meeting with the King, the Hollow Knight dwelled in a shallow, controlled doze rather than the inert, inactive resting state that it had idled in while waiting for couriers to relay instructions in the time before the Sealing, for even an action as simple as sitting up drained it of its energy at an unacceptable rate. Walking was tiring, too, pulling on all the scars and stitching that held its physical form together, and was attempted only in the rare moments that someone came by with the sole intent to rouse it, though these interactions were typically limited to removing the sheets from its nest (as if they could be sullied by it in its rest!) and tolerating the monotonous farewell of a staff member half-blinded by Kingslight. Rarely was it given an excuse to attempt to do anything more than shift about a bit for a more comfortable spot in its bed, and of its two creators, neither of them called for its assistance. The Hollow Knight- the eternal savior of the kingdom of Hallownest, the Chosen Vessel- had been abandoned to collect dust in a near-forgotten room far, far away from any true living being, and it could hardly muster the energy to care about such a fact. There was only the dull aching, and the exhaustion, and the dim white walls of the closed, empty room.

(And wasn't that irony in its purest form, that the Pure Vessel only grew vacant of emotion when commanded to thrive by one of the beings that had damned it to its fate in the first place. That, plucked back from the brink of death, it would fail the wishes of its family one more time, draining away their meager hope to leave nothing but emptiness behind. That was what it had been made for, after all, but the damage the void wrought had been dealt in all the wrong places, at all the wrong times. )

(If it could feel anything past the exhaustion, it might have let itself ponder over the bitter, wrenching twist in its chest, a pathway leading halfway between amusem*nt and contempt. But nothing surfaced past the gloom, hidden under the still surface of its exhausted state, so it hovered in the thin point between reality and sleep, and it did not think.)

Luckily, its days were not all dictated by monotony. Oftentimes the White Lady would come to visit in the moments when she decided that the kingdom did not need her as much as it thought it did, and though it sensed that her visits were likely borne of guilt rather than genuine affection, a little more tenderness was present in her actions every new time that they met. As if motherhood to her was not innate, as all of the mortal's stories had claimed, but something to be cultivated and grown rather than being left to wither and die. As if she herself was just as clueless as it was to this whole ordeal, and that every day of checking bandages and helping it strengthen its weakened body allowed that bond to grow just a little bit more than before, coaxing it from earth previously left to lay barren. Interaction was as water to the seed of this new life, and though some part of it still flinched away from the attention of a goddess as powerful as she was, it found itself leaning into her touches more often than not, rekindling a bond between mother and child that had never been allowed to thrive before the Sealing.

(And in the moments afterwards, when she left it alone to return to her duties, it was reminded of the corpses far below, hidden in a pit of despair and disgrace. It remembered millions of masks staring accusingly back at it from the burial ground they had been born into, children who would never know their father's quiet sorrow, or their mother's gentle touch. Children who were abandoned there by gods uncaring, who were chosen to die for no other flaw than not being precisely what was needed. Children that it had hatched with, children that it had curled into for warmth in its first fleeting moments, children that it had watched die, children that had stared silently, desperately at it in the hope that it would help. Children that it had let fall.)

(Sometimes, in the tender, bitter moments where the pain was greater than the tiredness, it wished that it could cry. Maybe if it could cry, it would feel more like a real bug, a real being. Maybe if it could cry, if it could gouge tear ducts into the corners of where its eyes should be, all the messy tangled clumps and shards of its emotions could flow free, and it could be an empty as it was designed to be. Maybe then it would be real, a being made to laugh and sob and cry and live, a real child that could be what its parents wished for instead of suffering silently in this in-between world devoid of all colour.)

Its father did not visit. Nor did it expect him to, after its failure to comply with his wishes in the gardens. Sometimes its mother would explain away his absence as she tied off bandages or rubbed pungent poultices into its scars, talking about trying to approve investigations into the Soul Sanctum to fix the backload of reports about missing bugs, about curious civilians rioting for information about it and its health at the gates of the White Palace, and other manners of political work that had stolen away his time. They were all demands meriting the King’s attention, of course, and so it listened to her stories silently, and did not dare to hope for his return, just as it did not dare to let itself think about the odd tension that hung over its mind when it thought about seeing him again. They were disasters far more deserving than the scarred knight slowly healing in its room, a knight that had refused to follow the orders of its master. Simply recalling the ordeal tangled its stomach into knots, but its mother made no mention of the occurrence, and so it tried not to let itself linger on it. The Pale King and the White Lady were almost inseparable, their souls entwined as one, and though it had not discerned any behavior to indicate whether or not such a statement remained truthful after their long absence from each other, the Lady herself did not particularly appear distressed by her husband's quirks. If she did, then she masked it behind an air of nonchalance, or buried it beneath a variety of other curious quips from her work as Queen. Such was what was expected of her, but if she was trying to hide it, then she was getting quite good at it, for it was not able to detect any hints of hesitancy in the gaps between her words.

Then again, it did not know the Queen as well as it knew the King, and the shadowy chains that draped about her somber soul were not of the same caliber as the ones that clawed their way into its father's chest.

(One day, a prosthetic made of shining steel and capsules of shadow appeared on its bedside table, laid upon the cleaning cloth it had once used to polish its nail. Tiredly, it had stared at it, and discerned that the void within had once belonged to it, but it hadn’t the strength to give anymore thought to the significance of such a thing, or the willpower to grapple with the nausea that arose everytime it dared to let itself think. It had been much, much easier to simply sink its head back into the pillows surrounding it, and to zone off until the quiet chatter of the world around it sunk into a dull, meaningless drone.)

(It knew its father had made it, for no other hands in the kingdom could form something so exquisitely crafted, or handle the liquid poison running through its veins. The significance behind it, however, it could not discern. Did he seek to repair his broken warrior, or was it a twisted apology of sorts, like its mother had suggested he might offer? Was it to be mended in some way, to be shipped off to find some other duty far from the King, or was it an acceptance of its nature? It could sense the charge pulsing through the void within, could tell how easy it would be to commandeer the dark fluid within, but the thought of manipulating the void outside of necessity felt...wrong, somehow. And feeling complex emotions was just another scrap of debris in the flood of emotions it had begun to feel now that the necessity of hiding them had faded away, so it found the attempt to parse them almost as tiring as the exercises its mother helped guide it through to regain some of its former strength.)

But even if its father did not design to visit, its sister did, she seemed determined to show up in its room whenever she was given the permission to do so...or was simply just available to try, period. Even when it was too tired to entertain her, hovering in an exhausted haze of healing, she was there, reading little things from papers spun from spider's silk or telling her stories about her day, per-adolescent voice still clinging to the sharp squeakiness that she'd had when she was just a hatchling. In between long, confusing bouts of rest, trying to force itself not to dream, she was the grounding point of its life, something that she did not seem to be aware of herself.

In truth, it found some shame in clinging so tightly to the voice of its little sister (and then shame in daring to feel, though its rulers had commanded it not to hide, a perplexing conundrum that troubled it still), for there was hardly any point to an older sibling if it required the protection of those younger to it. But this emotion did not stay for very long either...or if it was shame that shaped the pit in its stomach, then it was easily pushed aside by the relief it felt at being able to be with its family again.

(And that it allowed itself to feel relief at all tangled knots in its throat, made it harder and harder for it to breathe. The chains binding it had fallen slack, but without their guidance, the world rushed in in a slew of colour and sensation to tangle up with the phantom scars they had left in its mind, and it was too much all at once, dancing between a rush of emotion it would have numbed itself to before to being practically torn apart by the terror and shame of realizing the extent of its impurity.)

(Oh, how it longed to return to the blissful oblivion of the Abyss. Oh, how it longed for this painful dance to end.)

Thankfully, the periods of exhaustion did not last for long. Oh, they still lingered some, they still came about when it pushed the limits of its capabilities, but with every period of wakefulness, the time it could remain fully conscious grew longer and longer. Technically, it likely would have maximized the efficiency of its resting periods if it had actually allowed itself to dream (hideous, wrong, that it was still trapped to that sickly golden kingdom, that it had to wrap itself in curtains of darkness to reject the throne it had forcefully vacated), but that was out of the question. It had subsided on less sleep for years during its training, letting its body stagnate on duty while its eyes remained open. It could force itself to do the same here...or, in the advent of a dream, cocoon itself in a bubble of void to cut off its contact with the essence beyond. That it sacrificed some of the efficiency of its rest was insignificant. The safety of the populace ruled over the comfort of the individual- no matter what cost it might take.

At some point, it grew alert enough in between resting periods for its mother to notice, and the torso stretches and arm extensions she had it do after changing its bandages slowly changed to things involving leg lifts, and then, eventually, standing. This was when it was noticed that its time in the Temple had apparently lengthened its body during its ordeal, obtained from a comparison to pre-Sealing measurements that the White Lady had somehow dug up (and that she took with great delight, perhaps rejoicing in the simplicity and domesticity of documenting her child's height, an activity that had been denied to her by the onset of the plague). The lengthening of its limbs was a prospect that was most unfortunate- it was already uncomfortably large to begin with, after all- but it was one that did explain why it struggled so hard to stand, especially since its legs had remained somewhat untouched by Her influence. Negotiating its balance before the Sealing had always carried somewhat of a learning curve to it, and without the added weight of its left arm, things got...somewhat discombobulated when attempting to stand up.

Which brought it to where it was now.

"Keep your horns centered above your frame- no, not like that, you're sabotaging your balance. Tilt your head forward more, spread your legs a bit wider. There, like that." The sharp bark of Captain Dryya's voice echoed through the training grounds, just as fierce as her moniker might imply. From the sidelines she watched, one hand set to her nail, her hard eyes tracking its movements with a frown that didn't quite make it to the rest of her face. "Shift your right foot forward more, you're listing to one side. No, don't angle your head into the movement, we're not trying to conserve momentum here. I didn't teach you that trick for you to sabotage yourself. Do you want to end up on the sands again? No? Then move your body, not your head. Good."

By its side, its sister giggled, arcing her needle through the air as she went through her own set of paces. Through the haze of exertion, it felt its shade flutter at the sound, but her little laugh hadn't been heard by its ears alone- Dryya's eyes shot to her next, locking on her with that mantid-sharp intensity, and it wasn't long before she was firing off orders to her as well, though the Vessel thought it caught a hint of softness in her gaze.

"Don't think you're off the hook just because you've started your training with Queen Vespa. She's given me a list of instructions to drill into you too, little miss." Her claws moved from the hilt of her nail to her forearms, tapping against the metal of her armour. Hornet scowled at her, but Dryya simply stared her back down, though the vessel could now tell with absolute certainty that there was a glimmer of amusem*nt in her gaze. "Repeat that three-strike pattern for me, then practice your backswing attack. You're still too slow on your turns to properly counter an enemy."

"Well maybe I would do better if I was allowed to use a real nail," muttered Hornet, but grudgingly set off to practice her needleplay; the wooden training nail swished cleanly through the air, colliding against the stuffed training dummy with a satisfying thunk that rang from the tip of its horns down to the tips of its fangs, a pleasing sound that helped distract it from the sore, aching burn sweeping through its body as it sought to keep itself standing straight. She wobbled a bit near the end, her balance thrown off a bit by her stance, but she too seemed pleased with her progress, the foul mood that often beset her nowadays cast away by the rigors of good training.

Pleasing. That was something that it had not allowed itself to consider before- whether a sound was or wasn't a pleasure for it to hear. The thud of wood against a moss-filled dummy wasn't at all like the silvery ache of harp strings, or the golden chime of a chorus of fair singers practicing their songs, but it filled its chest and mind with a shivering, airy lightness that was nice to linger on, and that was pleasing. A useful shell of a sound to hold in all the other, nicer noises, but it hadn't allowed itself to use such a word before, even in its mind. The world had been too foggy, too dull- it had not allowed itself to focus on things before that were not tied to its given objective.

But now it had no objective, other than the one given to it by the White Lady- to live, and to ignore the orders given to it in the past. Life to the unliving, borders withdrawn from something previously defined entirely by what it could not be. And now here it was, tentatively exploring beyond those bonds, finding words for sensations that it had simply not allowed itself to linger on before.

(Perhaps, if its little sister had not spent so much of her time sitting in its room recounting her days, it would not even be able to grasp the full meaning of the word-titles for emotion in the first place. Such simple things they were, tiny little vocalizations or signatures for sensations many times more complex than they were. It did not, in truth, understand how any mortal bug could use such a vague form of communication, but it supposed that it worked well enough in theory, even if using it now still turned the void in its veins to ice. It was also not entirely sure if it was supposed to be musing over the concept of speech right now, for it did not know if that was truly part of the process of being alive, but now that it had been ordered to start, it was finding it near- overwhelmingly difficult to stop.)

(Also, holding this pose for so long really, really hurt, so it was easier to let its mind meander away to do something else than linger too long on a pain that threatened to send it back to the numb, cold part of itself again.)

Almost as if summoned by its suffering (and oh, how the shame of that admittance left a bitter taste in its mandibles), Sir Hegemol hurried into view, his lower half still covered in mechanical armour, the gears of his suit creaking while his pale white cheeks puffed out in exertion. Of the many sights that graced the private training courts of the White Palace, Hegemol taking off to an important meeting after being buried halfway in some sort of project was hardly an unusual occurrence. Perhaps that was why the Vessel allowed its attention to roam away before realizing, with a start, that the biomechanical arm clutched in the maggot's forelimbs belonged to it. The pale silver plating with the void core was unmistakably its father's work, and the dark matter shifting about within the arm itself resonated with it, pulling its attention to the dull ache in its remaining stump. There was no questioning the fact that it was the prosthetic from its bedside table

But why? It was still struggling to learn how to keep its balance in a fighting pose, it was still struggling to reach the training fields without aid from its sister or one of the Great Knights. How it had managed to stumble its way down to the Palace after the fall of the Old Light was anyone's guess, a mystery even to itself, hidden behind a haze of pain and terror. Dryya herself knew a good number of restorative training techniques for the battle-stricken, and had passed them along to the White Lady to guide it through whilst checking its wounds, but it had not been able to attend actual sessions on its own two feet until very recently. Surely, it was not yet ready to train with so elaborate an invention?

Perhaps they held more faith in it than they should. It had heard Mother offhandedly mention the fact that Father had been reluctant to offer it physical drugs before its surgeries, for the only ones he knew of that could have possibly worked on a Higher Being were a mix of shamanistic blends known to be potent enough to kill twenty mortal bugs ten times over. The snails, of course, had been happy to trade their deadly blends for a hefty sum of geo, but it couldn't help but wonder now if the reason why it was still so weak after the surgeries was because the herbs had killed off what little biological material that had lingered within it after the voiding of its egg. Though even that was a stretch, for it knew that the Pale King and White Lady were hardly formed of biological material as much as they were beings of pure power moulded to shape the cycles of the living.

Still, that did not quite change the fact that it was still leaning to one side more often than it managed to get itself to stand straight, a dangerous prognosis for a porcelain-masked warrior that stood so very high off the ground. It had not fallen yet, but the outcome of such an occurrence was not in its favor. It was not used to analyzing anything outside of the lens of battle, or assigning emotional reactions to the results, but it was fairly certain that collapsing upon a delicate piece of machinery like that would not end well for either of them.

"Sir Dryya! I hope you haven't started without me." Hegemol's chubby round cheeks were flushed, his chest heaving, but the faint look of worry wrinkled into his brow was very clearly staged. The Pure Vessel had never quite gotten a hang of assessing emotional states based on facial expressions alone, but it didn't need to pull at the gap of what wasn't to be said to discern the fact that Hegemol's concern wasn't genuine. If this whole being-alive thing permitted it to have an opinion on matters like these, then it might have allowed itself to be a little suspicious. Which...it supposed was how living worked, and it supposed that letting such emotions slip by was what the White Lady wanted, but the lack of instructions on how to go about such a thing still made it feel as if it had drifted out over dark waters with nary a paddle to guide it back to the safety of the shoreline.

"I would have waited, Sir Hegemol, but once I heard the sound of metal moving about your workshop, I abandoned any hope of pulling you out in time for training." Dryya's tone could have withered any bloom, but the Vessel could tell by the slight tilt of her head that she was intrigued. Sir Dryya and Father were both reputed for their cold, butal efficiency, but they did not differ too much in their cues. Though the Vessel had only just allowed itself to be privy to the churning tumult of emotion hidden deep within its heart, both Knight and King it knew quite well, and Dryya's curiosity was almost sharp enough to taste as she feigned her irritation, sidling glances at her coworker's contraption in between fierce scowls. To any other trainee, this might have been intimidating...but the Vessel could feel nothing but the cool wash of relief crash over it as she waved for it to sit down, stalking over to her fellow knight with deadly grace."The circ*mstances do not allow for dalliances, interesting though they may be. Tinker around with the King’s new gadgets after training sessions, not before."

"Wise advice, Dryya, but it was not my own interests that stalled me this time. The King himself requested that I retrieve this prosthetic to test upon the Hollow Knight, so I had to hurry back to their rooms to collect it. Blame me not for this inconvenience." Hegemol's reply was soft-spoken and absentminded as he rolled the prosthetic arm between his nubby forelimbs, feeling out the hidden joints. And yet the Hollow Knight felt as if it had been plunged in cold water and then stretched out to dry, the near-silent thrum of its heartbeat escalating to a thunderous crescendo in its head. It was true, then, that Father expected it to learn the prosthetic as part of its rehabilitative training. Oh dear. “He wished to introduce them to it before any new carapace formed over their stump- apparently he thought that would maximize efficiency. I am not entirely surprised, for it is my softer skin that allows me the luxury to fine-tune the Soul powering my suit, but it was still abrupt enough to take me by surprise. You know how he gets when he’s in a hurry, after all. I hardly had any time to call for a squire to fetch it before he had disappeared in some other direction.”

So it would not necessarily be expected to master the use of the prosthetic right away, it just needed to grow reacquainted to the void within before all sensitivity was lost. This alone did not surprise it, for the efficiency would most likely be maximized while the scars on its stump was still soft and malleable enough to shape, but the lack of the Pale King’s presence sent a tidal wave of confusion sweeping through its thoughts, growing more and more turbulent the longer it lingered on them. For all of his cool detachment, the Pale King had never yet tested something upon the Vessel without being around to supervise. No matter how busy he had been before the Sealing, he had always made time to go check upon its progress when it was beginning to learn a new technique, and the lack of him being around was...troubling, to say the least.

Had it disgraced him so badly that he could hardly bear to look at it? Or was there something more to his avoidance, something that it had not foreseen?

"Can I stop drilling now?" Hornet's voice rose over the din of clinking armour, a plaintive, moody warble. It was a tone that bespoke of a coming burst of temper, a warning to anyone who had known the princess in her early days, but it served as an excellent distraction for the Vessel, who felt as if it was starting to tie its thoughts into knots instead of going anywhere meaningful with them at all. “I’ve done this all already. I want to see Hollow’s new arm.”

Hegemol smiled nervously at her tone, but Dryya just sighed, crossing her arms over her breastplate. “Just this once, I’ll let it slip. Don’t think I will in the future, though. Practice is the pathway to pristine needleplay, after all- I won’t have you fumbling a parry just because you thought you’ve already mastered it on the training grounds. You’re a clever fighter already, your highness. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what might happen if your skills haven’t transferred from simple repetition to a reflexive response.”

Hornet nodded, her little face serious, but the effect was somewhat lessened by the time she came to a stop by the Hollow Knight’s side. Even though she had grown significantly during its time locked away in the temple, she was still only about as tall as its knee with the inclusion of her horns. Still miniscule in comparison, though she had done quite a bit of growing since the first time they had met, when she had been a small snuffling thing that had fit neatly into the curve of its hand, still slightly damp and sticky with albumen. “I won’t. I promise you, I’ll train hard enough to be the best hunter in all of the kingdoms. I just want to help Hollow out right now.”

This won her a pair of grins, hidden hastily away behind stern faces and sudden bouts of coughing. Adorable as the sentiment was, however, her statement proved to hold some merit in the end. Attaching the prosthetic itself was a relatively simple procedure, for the straps of the shoulderpiece had clearly been designed to be easily clipped on with one hand (a revelation that caused an odd ache in its chest, as Hegemol guided its claws gently through the motions), but it was activating the arm that was the difficult part. The shoulder part itself was merely a docking point for the arm, made specifically to reform a joint from what was now a scarred stump, but the Pale King had apparently decided to safeguard the joint with a spell-bind on top of the typical metal pins. Though the spell was weak in nature, easily shattered with a thin blade of soul, only its sister's small, deft claws could slip between the metal plates to push the pins back within the joints, allowing the arm the freedom of movement.

And it was...strange, to feel something pressing against a place where its limb once was, the hum of the void within the prosthetic's core a perfect parallel to the reverberation in its chest. The padding on the inside of the shoulder piece was perfectly comfortable, soul-protected spidersilk padding keeping the velvety-soft void of its stump from rubbing uncomfortably against the metal walls, but the straps across its thorax were foreign, the numbness permeating beyond the shoulder piece even moreso. The unthinking part of the Pure Vessel's mind fully expected to feel something under the padded tips of the prosthetic's fingers, not yet acquainted with the absence of its true limb.It felt...it felt almost as if the metal was phasing into where its arm should be, crossing over into the nothingness that had one been the somethingness that defined the location of its arm, and that it was now hovering somewhere between being a nothing and being a something in a manner that tangled all up inside its head, mixing into a confusing mush alongside the typical phantom pain that irked it everytime it tried to go through the motions a two-armed creature could do without a thought.

(Another piece of bitter irony for the pile, to know that, in some ways, She had won. Always, always had She strived to break it, to force it to think and to feel and to react, to force it out of the web of mindless repetition it had spun around itself, and now that She had taken its left arm, it was forced to think and to think and to think, a thousand little problems rearing their heads, forcing it to confront the fact that all the training in the world could not change how it was always going to be damned to fail-)

"Well? Does it fit right?" Hornet's little voice piped through its thoughts again, cutting off the morbid tirade. It looked up at her, forcing its eyes away from the sleek silver whorls in the prosthetic, and found her standing with her hands on her hips, leaning forward to stare critically at the straps criss-crossing over its scarred chest. If she was disturbed by the ugly ruin left of its carapace, she didn't seem to show it, either desensitized to it after hours sitting with it while it slept, or unbothered after a childhood raised around plague-scarred elders. Neither prospect gave it much comfort. "There's Deepnest silk on the shoulderpiece, so it shouldn't chafe at all. If it does, Mama's got some powders and ointments you can put on it to smooth out the texture. 'S what we use when we make prosthetics, it helps fit everything together better. If the King didn't f*ck up the silk, of course."

"Hornet," Dryya said sharply. "Do not speak ill of your lord father, or use such crude words in the presence of your elders. Save them for when you really mean them."

Hornet hissed, a low, dangerous sound despite her size, though she did not turn to look at Dryya face-on. "I'll speak with as much respect as he deserves. He did this to them. I wouldn't be surprised if he messed it up just like he did with everything else."

And that...hurt. It hurt far more than what the Vessel anticipated it might feel, to hear such venom in its sister's voice. More than it could bear, really, a sharp, sharp pain stabbing through its chest as it turned to stare into her defiant, hateful eyes. So young, and yet already so angry at the world, angry at the hurt that had been wrought upon her, a hurt that she was thoroughly undeserving of.

(Without thinking, acting on instinct alone, it called to her, a soft rumble through the void to the shadow that stained her soul. Though she could not hear it, nor call back in turn, it thought that it saw the angry set to her shoulders slump, saw the hard edge in her eyes soften to something a bit more remorseful.)

(Not perfect, but then again, nothing these days ever was perfect. It was starting to doubt that such a thing really existed- and, if it did, whether it was something that one should strive for at all. Not with the scars rippled over its carapace, not with the way the Pale Gods still ghosted the very halls they had sworn to protect.)

(...Well, there was its sister. But she was the exception to that matter, as she was to most things that had come about in its lifetime.)

Dryya frowned down at the spiderling, and parted her mandibles as if to argue, but Hegemol held up a pale hand, his other dexterous fingers checking the buckles and straps crossing over its thorax.

"Perhaps this conversation should be left for another time," he murmured, giving the shoulderpiece another careful tug so that the leather of the straps lay comfortably over its back places. For a mortal bug tasked with handling the mechanisms of a god, he worked quickly and efficiently, lining up the joints with a soft click-tick-tick of metal, and the Pure Vessel felt a spark of...something ping in its chest, something that didn't feel like a heavy stone sinking through cold water. Curiosity, mayhaps, or one of curiosity's cousins, flickering through its thorax like an ember from a flame. "It's a heavy topic, and this is a moment for moving forward. I think we can all agree to focus on helping the Hollow Knight right now, hmm? I can't say I've worked with many soul-void hybrid pieces before, so I can't offer much aid on how to prompt them to use it properly. What say you, princess?"

"I say that I was focusing on helping Hollow, you just didn't listen," Hornet replied matter-of-factly, before stepping closer to their new prosthetic arm. Hegemol backed off to stand by Dryya's side, smiling gently, but the little spiderwrym kept her eyes locked on the soul-glyphs carved onto the surface of the metal arm, a frown of fierce concentration fixed to her face as she reached out to touch the rune closest to her.

"Upon the will of the void we bind thee," she read out slowly, scrunching her fangs up tight to her cheeks. "To soul of kingdom's savior we… ugh, this one's loopy, I can't make talon or tail of the rest of it."

"As is your father," Dryya remarked, but her tone was light and unbothered despite the quip and she knelt down to study the runes before Hornet could try to bluff her way through the rest of it- or Hegemol could sneak in anything more than a half-giggled 'Dryya!' "Well, I know far less about spellbinding than you do, your highness, but from what I gather from it, an understanding of...darkness? Is what's needed to operate it. Perhaps you can help all of us understand how this operates, Hornet, not just the Pure Vessel."

Little Sister Hornet...near a source of purified void? One that it didn't know how to control? Despite its efforts to control itself, the Vessel couldn't help but feel a pang of terror tear through its chest, its shade shrinking under its shell. That the Pale King had formed its arm in a way that forced it to learn finer control did not surprise it at all- not that it had the right to be surprised by the actions of its lord father anyways- but it could not fully restrain the fear that swept through its chest at the thought of it, at the thought of diving deep into something it knew that it could not fully control. Something that had killed a god when it had last allowed itself to sink into the primal reactions coded into the motes of its shade, something that could very easily harm the three living beings living beside it.

For they feared the dark, they feared the writhing tendrils of the Abyss, the way it slipped into the flesh of bugs and turned their souls to rot. Lighteater, Godkiller, the Darkest Sea- all titles earned justly, titles that had haunted it from the moment of its hatching to the time when it had been supposed to be left to die.

To be a god was to be hungry, to be vicious, to be cruel. To wrench titles from the hearts of others, to spend an eternity piling crown upon crown lest they be abandoned, forgotten.

...This flood of contradicting emotions was confusing. Was this what it meant to be alive? Constant confusion, mixed with the terror of uncertainty?

"I don't know. He never let me near any of his void experiments, only the wingmoulds and kingsmoulds," muttered its sister, but she puffed up her cloak and put her hands on her hips all the same, as if she could somehow beam the knowledge that it lacked into its mind through sheer determination. A valiant effort, but perhaps not one that achieved its desired goal- even if it cleared the dull fog haunting its mind, something that it was quite grateful for. "It can't be that hard! I bet its just like normal casting, Hollow, and you've always been better at that than me. Just uh...just focus on what you need to do, okay? And then think really hard at the arm or something. I think you'll do just fine."

And though it had not needed the advice, her voice was so close to Herrah's for a moment that the Hollow Knight almost felt as if it was standing in front of the formidable queen, and not a sibling who still barely came up to the middle of its shin. Warmth swelled in its chest, a light, airy feeling that lightened the burden shrouding its heavy head, and the urge to sweep its little sister into a hug was, for the moment, nearly unbearable. Certainly it helped to ease the fear still balled up tight in its thorax, even if it couldn't be attributed to Hornet's advice as much as it was to its pride for her.

For its family's sake, it would do anything.

Focusing on the void within the arm was frighteningly easy; there was a sense of harmony imbued with it already, a familiar resonance between the free-floating darkness trapped in shining pale ore and the solid shadows forming its carapace. It was almost as easy to call to it as it was to reach for the wells of soul reservoirs to cast a spell, the clawed digits flexing slowly, phantom touch given a solid form once again. Almost too easy, really. For soul casting required total, unerring focus upon the end goal, a harmonized effort between the mind and the body, while the void was fluid, tactile, unthinking. It was easy to move, easy to shape, for it was nothing and everything, and commanding it to do anything between the nothing and the everything was almost pathetically easy. Especially because all it wanted to do was raise the new hand and wiggle the new fingers, a simple task that spun fluidly through its mind at an almost frightening pace. Too much focus and it would-

The prosthetic promptly whipped about and slapped it in the face.

It was not a light slap, either, which was rather unfortunate for its poor carapace. A set of claws formed from pure pale ore was not anything to sneeze at, either. If the Hollow Knight were to rank such a slap on a scale of danger for future danger assessment, it might put it anywhere between an open-handed strike from a kingsmould or a warning hilt-slam from Dryya, both of which would be devastating for any living bug. Fortunately, it was not a living bug (even if it was trying for the benefit of its lady mother), but it still put quite a nasty crack in its mask regardless.

It blinked away the film from its eyes, expecting it to clear away any shards that might have fallen into its maskholes. All it managed to do was smudge its vision more, however, which...

Ah. It was leaking void. How unfortunate.

"Hollow!" squeaked its sister, as both Dryya and Hegemol uttered twin gasps of alarm; it focused on her by default, shifting into full guarding mode so that it wouldn't have to think too much about the stinging in its face, or the fluttering terror at the thought of what might have happened had the arm designed to hit her instead of it. It was expendable. She was not. "That's not- you're not supposed to think that hard about what to do! It’s not a spell!"

And then she devolved into a fit of giggles, her tiny claws latching around its biological arm for balance. Despite the uncomfortable clenching in its abdomen (mortification, it believed it was called), her laughter warmed it, and it allowed itself the luxury to lean down to her, brushing the top of its mandibles over the curve of one horn. She batted lightly at it with one soft paw, clawtips tapping against its jaw, then looked at it again and collapsed back into laughter, a sound sweet and rare enough for both Dryya and Hegemol to start hiding smiles of their own.

“You always take everything so seriously,” whispered its little sister, once she had regained enough composure to speak; she patted it fondly on its muzzle, paying no mind to its fangs, before making a face and shoving it back. “And you need to heal, stupid-head, you’ve already messed yourself up enough. Stop worrying about me, I’m not the bug who slapped myself in the face because I forgot how to move my own arms.”

“In your...sibling's defense, princess, it's not easy to get used to a mechanical limb. Your mind has to take time to adjust to something new, no matter if you are a Higher Being or a lowly bug like us." Hegemol's voice faltered for a brief moment, but when his eyes cut to the Hollow Knight's, they were warm. Not sparkling with the light of false hope, or barely-contained curiosity, but a true warmth, a true kindness. Gentle, and yet the Vessel felt a cold knot form in its throat, the guilt and anxiety it didn't deserve to have warring in its chest. "How about you heal yourself, silent knight, and then we resume our training? I believe sir Dryya is itching to show the Hive just how capable we are of teaching our younglings how to fight, though I'm sure the princess already excels in her classes already."

"You're right about that. I had to get moved up a level because I already was beating the Hive Knights my age, and they started fighting way before I did." Its little sister stood up as straight as she could, tilting her head in a manner that she no doubt thought was noble, and tried to fold her hands over her needle like it did when it stood on guard duty before the gates of the White Palace, as still and silent as a statue. The mimicry, sweet as it was, still managed to send the Vessel's stomach roiling at the thought of her ever having to take such a position, standing before the kingdom that birthed her as a weapon to guard it rather than the leader that she was born to be. It tried not to focus on such a topic, and instead kept a close eye on its sister as it focused enough soul for a heal, watching as she fixed Dryya in a challenging stare. "I bet I can beat you soon. Mother says that I'm getting better each day, and Mother doesn't lie."

(The 'unlike my father' was heavily implied, but nobody wanted to mention it directly. And there was a hard light in its little sister's eyes that hinted that, perhaps, she was looking for a fight, which the Hollow Knight knew would end badly.)

(It had heard its sister and its father fight, in the days leading up to the Sealing. Not harsh squabbles, by any means- for it knew of families falling apart, had heard things whispered by those who thought it would not hear them- but enough. Enough to know how little it took to make a family fall apart.)

Perhaps that could be its new objective here, then, if it no longer truly qualified for its original role as the Hollow Knight. It shook out a droplet of void seeping from its shell, mechanical parts clattering mutely off of its carapace, and focused upon the pool of soul within it, bringing the cool power up to the aching surface. Compared to its attempt to channel the void, this magical effort went swimmingly well, but the difficulty of summoning enough soul to heal was not something that escaped its attention. A familiar stretch, and yet it was still not as natural as reaching for the darkness-that-lingered-that-was-it-that always-belonged.

(A single droplet cast upon the shoreline from a vast, churning sea, calling for unity, to become one…)

Cautiously, it touched the void again with its mind, shoving the tight ball of ice in its thorax aside to focus on the ripples echoing through it, calling between the void-that-made-it and the void-that-once-was-it. The sea surged again, a voiceless, thrumming call, but this time, it focused, and listened, and moved.

(Easier than the soul healing, ingrained though it was in its nature, for this was the element that it had hatched with, this was what it was, fearful and dangerous though it might be. Try as it might, wish as it might, it could never be anything different than what it was already, a broken weapon that should have died in its egg struggling to face the reality of its existence.)

(Lightslayer, godkiller, the broken dreams of a kingdom that had sacrificed thousands for the good of millions, and now lay lost and confused and alone while the shades of its siblings shifted silently beneath the earth, unnamed and unwanted.)

Its chest ached, filled with a desperation that it had no name for, its desire to be useful tangling up with the grief of survival and the fear of being worthless. They were pains that it had shoved aside for years upon years, emotions that it had tried to suffocate beneath the dark, still waters of its mind...and yet, as the dull throbbing of its pain coalesced, an odd peace swept over it. Acceptance, slipping loosely from the claws of a creature too tired to fight anymore, and the darkness of the void surged up around it in response.

I will never be the Vessel that I was before.

Metal claws clicked, arcs of bright white Soul flaring through glyphs etched over smooth, pale metal. The prosthetic unlatched, moving almost as smoothly as a biological limb, the void within it undulating eerily. The Vessel stared at it, cautiously prodding the strings of electricity connecting its mind to the synthetic limb, then allowed itself to sag silently in exhaustion as the connection remained stable.

“See? I knew you could do it.” Hornet’s voice piped smugly up from its right side, closer to its new limb than it would have liked. It glanced down at her, trying to asses the dangers it posed to her through a haze of mental exhaustion, but its little sister didn't seem to notice how on-edge it was with her so close. She was too busy staring smugly at its new metal arm, her little arms crossed over her chest as if she was the one who had to wrestle with void to gain control. Which was quite an alarming prospect, even if it privately found her smug stature to be rather endearing. “Now, come and train with me! I won’t let you fall, don’t worry. There’s nothing stopping us from fighting together anymore!”

No...it supposed there wasn’t. The shackles that had bound it to duty and kingdom had slackened somewhat, snapped both by the fall of the Old Light and the pardon of its progenitors. There was nothing to chain it to the status of Pure Vessel, nothing to keep the darkness at bay for want of a pure, clean savior. Nothing to keep it set to one path, where it could live and train and die knowing what it was made to be, instead of remaining trapped within the shell that belonged to a long-dead child.

(What was it, if not the Hollow Knight? Who would it be, without the title of Pure Vessel?)

(Somehow, the fear of the unknown was almost worse than the terror of being understood.)

But for now, it had an objective to complete, and a half-sister to attend to. She had grown strong over the course of its long torment, stronger and surer than she was before the Old Light had stolen her mother away, but she was still small and foolish for the vigors of youth, and it had not yet been dismissed of all of its duties. Even with Dryya guiding her path, even with Hegemol watching carefully for any injuries an overzealous spiderwyrm could capture...that did not override its duty to protect her.

It lumbered unsteadily to its feet, and began to shuffle after her.

Afterwards, when it returned to its rooms exhausted and with a sore, throbbing stump, it found the note.

Vessel.

I claimed that I shall bind you no longer, and be it better or worse, I have always kept my word. With the clarity of hindsight, I have realized the full extent of the ills I have visited upon your kindred, and no longer wish to propagate these wrongdoings.

Hallownest is saved. It does not escape my notice that its salvation was won with heavy losses. I intended for those to be only my burdens to carry, and yet you have suffered for your unwilling valor, an irresponsible act as your lord and king. Such a deed shall not go unpunished...or in your case, unrewarded.

We have opened the Abyss. Only your kindred shall be able to open or close the seal, with how We've altered it so. If you do not wish to linger within the walls of the White Palace, then nothing under Our power will hinder you. It is your choice to make. Not Ours.

In the name of Hallownest, the Eternal Kingdom, We grant you your freedom. Do with it what you will.

The Pale King

The general issue with attempting to heal a god was that once they decided it was time for them to die, there was really no point in stopping them.

This lesson the Nightmare King knew well, albeit in reverse. For he was a jester dancing merrily in a court full of fools who in general, did not wish for death, while he danced with it as intimately as two twins snug within a shared egg, potential resting on an unequal balance of fluids and fleeting warmth. He'd known it from the moment that his darling sister had unfurled her fresh new wings and pronounced herself the ruler of the new Dream Realm, and had brought about their budding Ascension, expanding the world of memories from a vague resting ground for wandering souls into a kingdom in its own right. He'd known it from the moment that he had tried to tear himself away to carve his own path, and she had clutched him tight to her, desperate and beside herself with the terror-fury of her abandonment. Her touch had burned him, then, divine light meeting the crackle of holy fire, the difference wrought between them tearing his wings to shreds in a blaze of gold and scarlet fire. He had known it as their war tore a rift between their two kingdoms, and he had known it as her scream of desperation and betrayal and agony pierced the heavens, as he rent mind from flesh from heart. He knew it as he awoke among cold dim stones in a body too frail to hold his fire, the taste of bloodied ashes on his tongue, and he knew it as he set off to spin himself a new kingdom between the world of dreams and the land of the living, seeking to feed off the remnants of burning fear from the corpses of the fallen around him.

He knew how violently the immortal fought against the inevitable march into the unknown; he knew because he had carved his own heart from his chest before anyone else decided to do it for him, and gave himself to death rather than run, long, long ago. He knew because he could feel the thrum of that selfsame heart thundering a terrifying tempo in his thorax, just a little too hard to be a mortal bug's pulse, could feel its veins spread in an intricate network through the lands, a patchy path of fear and death and unbecoming lingering into scraps of burning cinder on the wind. Instead of running from death, he had become its harbinger, and the ruler of a realm that shadowed its influence, feeding off the ravages that it had left behind. Mortals or gods fell to its claws, the mortals curling feebly under its influence while the gods that refused to remake themselves thrashed and screamed the whole way down, but either way, he knew the rites of the dying by now.

He knew, and then he didn't, in a very distant, detached sort of way that accompanied the tone of dreams. Sharp clarity fuzzed into nonsense at the edges, full of sense until you looked directly at them, and he had gone through so many deaths and so many dreams that at this point, he could no longer tell if his heart really fit him. If he was really still the dread creature of scarlet flame and watching eyes that the moth tribe used to whisper about when they thought their goddess wasn't listening, or if he was simply Grimm, now, a half-immortal with a hazy recollection of what it was to be a true, whole god, more of a vessel of a past than one unified being spread out through the strata of the universe.

Bah, but it mattered little. He was comfortable in his existence, no matter the slight gaps and irregularities in his mortality. Life would not nearly be so interesting if he did not allow himself to be reborn anew every time, if he did not take the chance to see the world from fresh eyes and delve into its mysteries with an old mind. He was at once as ancient as the first dream of bugkind and as young as new-fallen snow, and that was how he liked it. Being rekindled from the embers was always a pain, sure, and the same flame never flickered twice- but death and change were as one, when one designed to look at the whole concept sideways rather than dead-on (ha!), so the details didn't really matter in the long run. Either way suited him just fine.

I am not the same as the Grimm before- I am different, I am more.

He had, of course, seen gods willingly choose destruction over persistence. Most of time, it was out of a sense of spite- a final battle cry before an explosion of energy that resulted in the destruction of them both, the battle reaching an endless hiatus while the two foes locked themselves forever in the throes of their death. Or it was one final f*ck-you to the conqueror, a denial of their lost that cost their rival their victory. Very often, it was due to a sense of penance, though not quite as often as those who willingly sought oblivion for the salvation of their people, heading into the endless unknown fully unaware of whether or not their sacrifice had saved them. Very few was it a death intended towards creation, though some species of godly beings preferred to meet their end through copulation, hoping that the end of their old lives would go towards forging a new legacy.

Hardly was it ever a newly-ascended godling, trembling silently in a cocoon of their own creation rather than reveling in the power that their suffering had won them.

The ruins he had seen like this were few and far between, and the kingdoms that had fallen alongside their new rulers did not often offer the highest quantity of flames to stoke the Heart. And yet, despite it all, the faint tang of unmaking sent a sharp pang of hunger through him, the coals that kindled him flaring brighter at the thought of a new spark. For though they were sparse, the fall of these young gods always yielded the most bittersweet of embers, the richest of fires. A life snuffed out in its prime always yielded the coals that blazed the brightest, and, with the Nightmare Heart's physical form starting to meander into its eventual burnout, a fresh new fire would be more than enough to delay his downfall. The young adult trembling before him would certainly make for easy pickings, even for a lowly scavenger such as he- it would be no trouble to leap forward with his claws a-blaze, to strike down the tired creature that had, against all odds, taken his sister's share of the Dream Realm.

(And some bitter, ancient part of him almost wanted to, the part that remembered curling up against her side as a soft young grub howling in grief at her absence. They were soft images, dying ashes that were easy to ignore, but they existed all the same. For even if she had ignored his centuries of warnings, even if she had shunned and spurned him and spun the threads of fate to etch out the tapestry of her own downfall, she had still been his sister. She had still been the first family he had ever known, the first creature to ever decide to fight by his side.)

But he knew what happened to those who delayed the inevitable. And perhaps years of inciting the fears of mortal beings had softened him somewhat, for the ashes of this young life did not appeal to him as they should have. Even as his own hunger flared, centuries of experience urging him to circle and wait, the Nightmare King found himself unable- and unwilling- to watch the young god fall before him, by his claws or their own.

The silhouette remained hunched over, claws clasped tight over its hollow eyes as the tempest whirled around it, a silent maelstrom of darkness practically urging him to look away, to ignore it trying to unmake itself in this odd corner between nightmare and dream. If one was to glance at it out of the corner of their eye, they would surely think of it as a statue, and nothing more; just another relic of stillness in a place of spinning motion, the pinpoint centerpiece of the eye of the storm. If one weren't as practiced as he was at detecting the tang of fear in the air, then they would have likely passed it over as they went about their daily business, or decided to strike it down out of pity or spite. Memories lingered for eternity in the world of dreams, but the realm of remembrance served as the crossroads for many wandering gods, and if there was one thing that could be said about most higher beings, it was that they did not often choose to be kind.

But he had reigned over this realm for far too long already, and his eyes were keen in a way others weren't. He saw the faint tremble. He studied the subtle shake.

And he, despite his hunger and his apathy, could not quite prevent himself from letting a spark of sympathy flare true.

"Oh, you poor thing," he sighed, and let his own weariness bleed through. The trembling increased, tendrils of black void clawing against the spinning red of nightmare-sigils, but they dissipated into harmless smoke as he came closer, pressing a warm palm to freezing black chitin. Fearsome was the touch of the Abyss, but, bleeding heart that he was, he did not allow himself to be afraid of it, death-accepting scavenger god that he was. The all-consuming terror his sister had experienced upon looking into its dark depths had been conquered by him long ago- and conquering fear, as he well knew, was only half of the battle. Understanding what he faced was the other half, but even that posed no difficulty for him. He had been a father and mentor to many other than the Grimmchild in several of his past lives, all abandoned or harmed by the beings who made them. That the creature trying to hide away to die was a god of void rather than a normal bug made little difference. "What in the worlds have they done to you?"

Their trembling turned to a full-body shake, until it seemed almost as if the creature born to feel nothing was crying, defying the nature of their birth to weep like the child they had been when the weight of the world had been placed upon their shoulders. And he sat by them as they sobbed, one palm pressed comfortingly to dream-scarred shell, until the darkness coiled away, and the nightmare around them settled at last.

.

.

.

Throw yourself into the unknown

With pace and a fury defiant

Clothe yourself in beauty untold

And see life as a means to a triumph

Today of all days

See

How the most dangerous thing is to love

How you will heal and you'll rise above

Crowned by an overture bold and beyond

Ah, it's more courageous to overcome

-Achilles Come Down, Gang of Youths

Chapter 10: Of Hallownest, and Those Within It

Chapter Text

I was only in my mind

You were on the outside waiting

I could feel you all the time

Your voice could save me

Now all these sirens sing for me

But I just wanna hear your melody

I call and I can hear you sing

But oh, its only my echo

.

.

.

Traversing the kingdom below the earth turned out to be far more distracting than the Little Wanderer had anticipated.

Not that they were complaining, of course, though there was still the niggling chain of responsibility pulling them down to where their sibling was trapped; it was simply the vibrance of the life thriving below that took their breath (and focus) away, tugging them from one curiosity to the next while swoop-horn-sibling lead them through the winding tunnels. Always they stuck to the safety of the shadows, following their family’s warning, but their cautious path through the kingdom led them across wonders that snatched the Little Wanderer’s attention like a pickpocket pilfered geo. Across the breadth of Hallownest they traveled, past yawning caverns filled with spores and strange, fungal creatures, through crowded stagways chiming clear bell-notes down tunnels worn with the whirlwind of a transitory space, all the way down past carved passageways that periodically emptied and refilled with bodies, like the beat of a massive heart. Even though the scars of the Infection were not quite healed in the minds of many, the Eternal Kingdom was thrumming with life- and the Little Wanderer, so used to death and misery crowding all around them, almost couldn't handle all of the excitement that it gave them, their shade nearly vibrating out of their shell with every new discovery.

(If they thought that it could behave, they might have been tempted to sit down and wriggle free of their shell to let it wander, so that corporeal barriers like walls and other unfortunate boundaries would no longer keep them from satiating their curiosity. But the void within them still burned, churning with the sorrow and sadness left behind from their creation, so they opted for the safer method of travel, and did not let their shell crack as they followed their siblings back down into the guts of Hallownest.)

(And besides, they didn't like the pain much either, nor found a way to vacate their little body without requiring their mask cracking in half, so it was easier not to leave their shell behind. Even if sometimes the vibrating excitement grew to be almost as painful as losing their shade. Even if their siblings sometimes caught them veering off of the well-beaten path to stare at street vendors or swing at statues with their nail, which earned them quite a few reproachful shouts from nearby bugs and a lot of worried voidsong from the other vessels.)

Swoop-horn-sibling was always oddly on edge when they walked past crowded areas, but the Wanderer couldn’t find it in themselves to complain, and indeed found a great deal of interest in the moments where the less-trodden paths met up with greater hub areas, with their curiosity particularly caught by the bustle found in the transient-churning place that one bug called the Crossroads. This was a busy sight indeed, crowded with many more bugs than the Little Wanderer had ever seen; there were winding caravans perching on the thick metal bars of the Crossroads platforms, offering gruzzer eggs in exchange for geo,there were kiosks advertising time-reading classes next to stands selling juicy skewers of fried mushrooms, gathering foreign and familiar faces alike. Aspids and maskflies huddled in the cavern's crooks and crannies, chittering at their tamed relations, while vengeflies fought crawlids for scraps in the gutters, the skitter of small claws noticeable only to the most adept of searchers.

Wherever the Little Wanderer turned, life abounded, river-sharp transitory souls swirling with the sweet-soft glow of the sedentary. No matter where their siblings led them, the air was bright with the life given off by the crowded rush of thousands of warm bodies, as if the entire kingdom was one vast entity, moving and thriving and rushing as one. And the Crossroads had only been the beginning, with farmlands and townships cropping up around every corner- the siblings had even managed to catch a small, odd mantid selling pairs of hookclaws to wary travelers, though swoop-horn-sibling had hissed furiously at them when they had leaned a bit too close to the trio after purchase, giving them all quite a fright. But the Wanderer had been more than happy to smack the mantid with their nail until they eased up on the fang-flaring business, and then had been even happier to spend the rest of the morning giving chase to four-thorn-horn sibling as they played with their new claws, even with their sibling easily outpacing them with the aid of their mothwing cloak.

So different from the wastes, though they had only felt the slightest sting of its scratching sands when they crawled free of the tunnel they dug from the Abyss. So different from the Hallownest that it had faced when it had first been hatched, mire-deep in the thick golden fear that had laid over the kingdom, full of shadows driven crazy with the weight of thousands of people mourning. Hallownest had been stifling then, and frightening- they hadn't known it at the time, so focused on chasing their own survival, but the air in the caverns below had been heavy and choking compared to what it was now, sugar-thick with the scent of rot and sickness. Weighty in the way that the sky was before a storm, and they hadn't ever encountered such a feeling before in their life but the knowledge lingered in their shade, in the dark nothingness hovering between their empty horns and soft carapace. Instinct, a ghost of a memory dancing whisper-light over the forefront of their mind as if it had been sunk deep into the ichor in their veins, inscribed unto the dark beat of their very heart.

(And that too was louder now, with their siblings lying so close to them. Before, when they had been alone in the world beyond the kingdom, they almost couldn't hear it over the howling of the winds. But now they were home, right where they belonged, and the call of the void sea far below echoed through the hearts and minds of the two vessels traveling beside them, tying them to the land and the earth and the many-that-were-one.)

Now they stood in a citadel that poured down water from above as if the cavern itself was crying, staring up at the arching towers stretching their way to the skyline, as if they could hope to reach it. Cool water pooled in the eyeholes of their mask, drawing a few odd looks from passerby, but they couldn’t find it in themselves to care; the shining windows and dazzling spires made their chest feel light and airy and full all at once, almost as if they could become as light as a grain of sand if they stared hard enough, and let the pulsing thrum of the energy around them carry them up. The world moved here, dream and shadow and soul flowing as if the whole city was breathing as one, the stationary hum of a million souls resting synching harmoniously with the steady downpour of the rain and the chattering hum of foot traffic. It was a different song than the one that had thrummed through Greenpath, for rich hues of blue coloured the life-song instead of acrid green, but the Little Wanderer was in awe at the difference between it and the Hallownest that it used to know, when it had been fleeing the burning light. Not fully recovered, not yet, but the thick overlay of shadow that had once blanketed the City and its denizens was slow and sluggish instead of writhing about like a dying creature, fed by the regrets of everything around them. It was a different tone of darkness than what they had sensed when they first fled the kingdom, something far more secure- but it was a something that was different, too, in a way that the Little Wanderer could not quite describe. Something that hummed and buzzed and bled gold, but not in the way the living had once done along with the dead- this was more of an unbalanced, confused sort of hum. If they could quantify it as anything, the Little Wanderer would wrap it up neatly under the things it learned to call annoyances, after a particularly insightful conversation with their older sibling after they’d attempted to climb up onto their head to swipe at a lumafly. Different, but not bad, even if they really wished that there was a way to sort out the mismatch going on so that they could properly sit and listen to the world speak in the language of silence, thank you very much.

(Different, too, than the land had been before, whispered something deep and dark and ancient inside of them, different from the wild beauty that it had been before the Light-That-Burned-The-Light-That-Hated came and swept everything beautiful about the darkness away. Different than the stillness that had fallen over it when the Pale-Light-Cold-Light-Creator had stifled the voice of the Old Light, different than the way it had writhed under the claws of the wyrm before it had been split apart to make the millions of little vessels, a wave crashing against the cliffs to make seafoam.)

But the whispers of the land around them didn't really interest them that much right now anyways, so they decided to ignore it in favor of a far more fruitful endeavor. Rather than spending their leisure time staring up at the skyscrapers above, they poked at the shoulder of four-thorn-horn sibling (who was hopping about in the puddles, spraying water over everything and everyone in the nearby vicinity), then scrambled up to stand on a bench when their sibling splashed water on them in response, waving their nail in mock-battle. Swoop-horn-sibling was busy inside one of the shops, paying for things that would help them on their journey; normally, their slightly smaller counterpart would merely point a claw towards the building to keep the Wanderer from causing mischief, but apparently four-thorn-horn sibling was not nearly as enchanted with the idea of minding the rules as they had been before. Instead, they drew their own nail from its sheath upon their back, splashed once again for good measure, then leapt up onto the bench to return the Little Wanderer's taunt with a clash of weapons, simmering energy vibrating through their void.

Energy surged anew upon contact, the crash of metal against metal sending sparks of elation flying in the Little Wanderer's chest as they leapt joyfully into the new game. They parried their sibling’s next jab as they found their footing on the bench, then bounded after them with a swipe of their own, making sure to aim with the flat of their blade rather than the edge. Four-thorn-horn sibling dodged the blow with ease, carried away by their mothwing cloak, then leapt up onto the back of the bench to rap the point of their nail against the tip of the Little Wanderer’s left horn, knocking them back onto their butt with a muffled whuff of breath.

It was all in good fun, and the latent energy of a safe resting-place quickly healed the wounds that formed when one of the vessels hit the other just a little too hard, or forgot to pay attention to the angle of their blade. Still, it was apparently an activity that drew the attention of the bugs around them to the antics of the not-quite-bugs in their midst, which was how the Little Wanderer soon found themselves dangling from the claws of a bemused city guard instead of parrying their sibling's nail, as they originally intended to do. They were still not quite versed on what all the churning and twitching in their chest meant, but they were fairly sure that this emotion could be filed somewhere in between annoyance and irritation, if such a distinction even existed.

"Oi! What's the cause of all the ruckus here, you little squits?" Beady black eyes squinted at the two vessels from underneath an impressively-scratched helmet, rainwater pooling in the various dents and scrapes that marred the metal's surface. The Wanderer wasn't quite the expert on the various forms of combat that the beetles of Hallownest were fond of, but if they had to make a guess, they'd figure that this particular bug's dented helm came about from years of ramming his head into things to solve problems, simply because that was what they would do if they had horns as thick and as strong as his. "There's training grounds for sparring, you know, and metal nails aren't the proper tools for that, blunted or not! Where are your barracks, squibs? I'd like to have a word with your supervisor, if you could point me in the right direction. I’m sure they can find a better supervisor for such a spry set of squires."

Despite the deep gruffness of his voice, his eyes were kind, which made the whole ordeal of getting out of his hold a little bit of a bother. The Little Wanderer did not care about the cost of freedom, but many of the foes that had fallen before their blade had been driven to madness by light-blight, or were intent on hunting them down to keep them from returning to Hallownest. This old bug was gentler than most they had met, however, which made the void within them twist and tangle about unpleasantly when they had to consider the best angle to strike him so that he would be forced to let go of them, as they had no way of communicating what they wanted otherwise. Four-thorn-horn sibling certainly wasn't helping matters, twisting and turning in the guard's grip as if they could dash away if they tried hard enough- the Little Wanderer tried to call out to them through the void, to make it clear that they should be focusing on a duel attack rather than thrashing about like a downed maskfly, but four-thorn-horn sibling's mind was too electric with fear to hear them properly.

(It wasn't like The Wanderer enjoyed violence...at least, not all the time. It was really more along the lines that they had learned very early on that beating things with a properly sharpened weapon was a rather good way of dealing with all the problems they had come across, so much so that trying to find a way out without hurting other bugs was somewhat...difficult.)

(But they tried, and it was the simple fact that they tried that made living life so worthwhile, for how different it was from what had originally been intended of them. Try as it might have, the Pale Light had not taken that mindfulness from them, even if they had been a bit lacking of it at the start.)

Luckily for the guard, however, swoop-horn sibling was quick to respond to the call of their void, hurrying out of the shop with a new lantern clipped to their cloak. Though the Little Wanderer could clearly feel the way their own shade buzzed anxiously under their shell as they approached, they were calm and concise when they stepped up to the city guard to explain the situation, flashing their claws in the odd configurations that the Little Wanderer had come to realize was a language all on its own.

(No voice to cry suffering, the Pale Light had said, but this was not speech- not as the beings of the Abyss would understand it to be. Though the signs were closer to the way the void spoke, dealing with gesture and intent and picture rather than simply sound, it was still too limited, too constricted to encompass all of what the void wished to answer with. Swoop-horn sibling was odd in their desire to be heard and understood by mortal bugs, but even they struggled hard to dial down the entirety of what churned within them into a line of simple signs or sounds, as those of flesh did when they wanted to commune to those who could not parse the whispers of the shadows. This was merely copying, and it frustrated swoop-horn sibling to no end...at least, it did in the moments when they were not terrified for the lives of their family, as they were right now.)

(The Little Wanderer was not well versed in expressing any of the languages of Hallownest. Nor did they really intend to learn, as simple gestures were often more than enough to convey what they wanted to mortal bugs. But as they dangled in the air, watching their sibling struggle through a plea they could not recognize, they felt a pang echo in their chest, followed by a surge of resolve.)

(They would make sure their sibling would get what they want. They would. Even if they didn't understand why they wanted it, even if they were currently being held in the air as if they were nothing, they would find a way. They wouldn't give up on their family, not if it meant the end of the world.)

"Eh? These are your siblings, you say? And I bet that they thought they could get away with sparring in public while you were gone, didn't they?" A low, huffing chuckle, and both the Little Wanderer and four-thorn-horn sibling were lowered to the floor, their nails still safe in their claws rather than in the grasp of the city guard. Four-thorn-horn sibling dashed behind swoop-horn sibling, staring intently at the Little Wanderer as if they could force them to feign shyness through eye contact alone- which, sure, they could try, but they would much rather totter back and stare up at the beetle that had captured them instead, because they didn't really see why they should be acting apologetic in the first place. The intimidating hiss that swoop-horn sibling made through the void didn’t do much to stop them, either, simply because they had learned very early on that at least half of the hissing and snapping they directed their way was born out of a fear of them getting in trouble rather than a genuine desire to scare them. And peering back at a perfectly friendly civilian was not getting in trouble, not by any means. "Are all of you mute, or were the little ones just waiting for their big sibling to come fill in the blanks for 'em? I know how shy nymphs can be. There’s no shame in it, little ones."

There was no hint of mockery in the guard's tone, but it mattered not. Swoop-horn sibling stiffened, their shoulders rising into a shameful hunch, before they slowly signed the one phrase that the Little Wanderer had committed to heart, after seeing their sibling reply to so many others with the same simple sentence.

"The plague took our voices from us."

It was not a lie, not really. But the old guard did not know of the circ*mstances of their birth, or how the many broken carapaces of those who were unlucky enough to be born with the ability to scream lay buried underneath his feet, hidden in a mass grave that was at once a nursery and a tomb. Certainly he didn't understand the true implications behind the explanation, though his eyes widened in horror all the same, an expression that the Little Wanderer was very used to receiving as a result of their actions, but not so much so as the consequence of their situation.

"I understand, little ones, I understand." He looked at them again, mandibles clamped into a tight line, but his eyes were soft and sad and heavy with shadow when they passed over the three short vessels standing before him. Four-thorn-horn sibling stiffened, hiding their face under the city guard’s gaze, but the Little Wanderer stared intently back at him, fascinated by the regrets lingering behind his eyes. "I'm sorry for bringing it up. Truly, I am."

And ignorance was a blessing, for the self-wrought misdirection earned both swoop-horn sibling and the Little Wanderer an affectionate horn rub and claw pat on the shoulder, burning-tingling with a warmth-that-did-not-hurt and a sharpness-that-did-not-pierce. "You small folk take it easy now, okay? I'll pass up on reporting your roughhousing to your supervisors for now. Just don't let me catch you going at it again with metal nails, and if you have a problem you need to solve, go ask for old Ironfoot at the watchhouse. I'm always on duty nowadays."

He paused, withdrawing his claws, and looked down at the trio of vessels with an oddly lost expression. Swoop-horn sibling's neckspines puffed under his stare (not that they were very noticeable, with the chitin-plates still so soft to the touch) but the Little Wanderer stared back at him, studying the silence between his words and the pensive way he looked down at them. "You lot...you remind me of someone. Something about your faces- your chitin shines in a way that's almost...Noble. Familiar. Perhaps that is silly of me, but either way, I shall always be happy to help. Just sign my name! Or leave a note, either one will do. We've few enough youngins about for a visit to be worthwhile."

Swoop-horn sibling's shoulders dropped back down to where they should be, all the air in their body leaving them in a rush, before they signed a formal 'thank you, gentlebug' to Ironfoot. The guard (who didn’t seem to have an iron foot as far as the Wanderer could tell) touched a claw to his helmet, winking one eye with the gesture, then turned and marched back off into the rain, whistle-clicking a cheery tune between his mandibles.

It was a very nice encounter, one that left the Little Wanderer buzzing all over with an odd, pleasant warmth, especially where they had been patted. It was rare for any bug other than their siblings to be so friendly to them, and it was even rarer for that fear to not slide through and hurt them when their soul-field pressed against the Little Wanderer's carapace. They impressed this feeling into the forefront of their mind, where the void within them hummed its silencing not-tune, and let the negative vibrations buzz out louder so that their siblings could hear them, too. Before, this would have earned them nothing but a tugging on their shade, reminding them of their family's absence, but now they felt the call rebound in turn, as four-thorn-horn sibling added a faint warble of fear under swoop-horn sibling's considering hum.

Too-strong-too-fast for the nail, thought four-thorn-horn, with the twisting anxiety that was distinct to them- they were always thinking too fast, too hard, about too many bad outcomes to be sure about anything. Now they clutched their sibling’s cloak, all their bravado from before gone, and let their mind race through a myriad of options that made both of the other vessels dizzy just thinking about them. Too-crowded, eyes-dappling-paths. Lost sibling is below, but the path is not clear. Where do we go, how do we hide?

The Little Wanderer tilted their head at them, but drew a blank on how to reply- a blank that was truly empty, unlike the information-rich silences that constituted the song of the deep. Truthfully, they were not one who dedicated too much time to thinking about what they needed to do, as much as they went about doing it. Which had cost them before, sure, but it had worked well enough provided they were able to collect enough information to move on- and, well, if they didn’t, then they would just try another way, or come back to the problem later. But that was then and this was now, which meant that there was no way to put everything off until later, no matter how much Hallownest tried to distract them on their way down.

The dilemma was simple. Silent-whisper sibling had been taken by the Pale Light, separated from the many-that-were-one, and now their broken cries echoed through the void, singing songs of heartache and loneliness and pain. They were hurt, and they were lonely, and they wanted to go home. They needed someone to bring them home. Sure, their screams had died down quite a bit in the turmoil that had followed the Little Wanderer, but the truth still stood- that their family had been taken from them, and they were being harmed, and there was nothing that could stand in their way to keep them from stopping their suffering.

(Even if silent-whisper sibling had left them behind. Even if silent-whisper sibling had looked at them hanging on to the platform above the drop that had killed so many others, and had chosen to turn away, to abandon them to the darkness. Even if they had left them to go on alone, and had chosen to be taken by the Creator to suffer the Old Light's wrath.)

(The void within the Little Wanderer's chest ached.)

Impatient, huffed swoop-horn sibling, pulling them abruptly from their dark thoughts with a claw to the shoulder and a tug into an alleyway. Two belflies screeched irritably at them from their lazy perch a few naillengths over, but the place was devoid of all but the belflies themselves and some ripe-smelling trash piles they had gorged themselves on, so no curious eyes strayed over to the odd trio. Siblings are impatient. The City is large, and full of secrets. Here, look. This will help.

The last bit of impressions were pressed towards the Wanderer in particular, piquing their interest. They pit-pattered over to their larger sibling, taking care not to splash water all over them as they came closer, and then tripped backwards and splashed on them anyways when something velvety-soft and oddly heavy thwapped into their face, tipping them onto their backside. They flailed uselessly under its folds, an uncomfortable combination of slick fabric and rainwater making sitting up much more difficult than it normally was- and then stared, frozen, at the gift their older sibling had given them.

It was a cloak. A mothwing cloak, faded blues and golds blending down into an almost silvery sheen where rainwater pooled on the soft-scaled hide. The memory of flight still hummed in it, the gift of speed and exhilarating weightlessness whispering out from the faint shadow-threads crisscrossing under its inherent magic, keeping the gilded memories bound tightly enough to the cloak to lend it power without tethering all of the old owner’s essence to it. The Little Wanderer did not need to know all about playacting a flesh-bug to know that such an item was a powerful gift...and one that was quite costly to obtain.

Now you will not fall behind, purred swoop-horn sibling, while four-thorn-horn bounced vigorously, their fear replaced by an ample thrum of excitement thrumming through their void. Warmth bubbled up in the Little Wanderer’s chest, an airy lightness that filled them with an almost-painful amount of energy, but swoop-horn sibling caught them by their cloak before they could do much more than bounce in place, chuffing silently at them to calm them down. Patience, sibling, patience. I have more for you.

Curiosity spiked, overwhelming the urge to wriggle about, so they padded back over to the other vessel’s side, carefully tucking their mothwing cloak into their void for later. Swoop-horn sibling shoved them back with one paw with a soft huff, impressing their amusem*nt at their shenanigans into the forefront of their mind, before procuring four gleaming metal objects from the depths of their pouch, power pulsing quietly from between their dark claws.

Which only made their curiosity worse, exacerbated by the fact that swoop-horn sibling was holding them somewhat out of reach, radiating only smug satisfaction from their mind instead of showing their smaller relations, as any larger family member really ought to. The Little Wanderer huffed back at them, stamping one foot at swoop-horn sibling’s bubbling amusem*nt, before nearly tripping and falling over their own paws as four-thorn-horn sibling scrambled up onto their back, shoving them forward in their haste to see what the other held.

Charms? Charms? The thought was laced with the silver-green vigor of four-thorn-horn sibling’s thoughts, their memory of what the word sounded like nearly buried under a slew of memories detailing enhanced powers and fantastical abilities. Sharp little hatchling-claws scrabbled at the back of the Little Wanderer’s neck, but the twisting stab of irritation they pushed towards the other vessel went entirely unnoticed as four-thorn-horn sibling attempted to lean forward to get a better look at what the larger vessel held. Swift-charm sharp-charm fast fast fast? Curious, curious- want to see, sibling, want to see!

Small-siblings impatient. Charm-yes, fast-no. Wait, I’ll show you. Swoop-horn sibling cuffed four-thorn-horn sibling over the back of the head, shoving both of the smaller vessels to the ground. The Little Wanderer managed to catch their fall in time, but four-thorn-horn sibling was not so lucky, tumbling head-over-heels to faceplant into a puddle. Swoop-horn sibling’s shoulders shook with their mirth, but they managed to choke it down just in time for four-thorn-horn sibling to get back up, water streaming from their eyeholes as they glared balefully at the elder vessel. Come here, look. These will help us.

Finally, finally they opened their claws, and both of the younger vessels leaned in to see, and-

The face of the pale-light-god-creator-killer stared back at them in duplicate, four dark eyes staring up at them as if their very existence somehow managed to disappoint him. The Little Wanderer jerked back as if struck, something clenching around their racing heart, but the blank stare of the Pale King did not follow them as it had in the Abyss, those hollow eyes gazing out at the space they had left behind. White light shone from both of the charms, glowing brightly from the wings wreathed around the face, and it was so painfully close to the soul-light shining from their sibling’s masks that the Little Wanderer almost felt as if they were being mocked by it. As if these two charms were somehow trying to take on the facimale of family, though the more reasonable part of the small vessel's mind knew that they were merely a cruel reminder of the nature of their creator, and that there was nothing of the Pale King within the charm other than the will that had been left behind.

(Under their shell, their shade churned restlessly, twisting and turning as if called by some far-off, half-forgotten voice. A distant lullaby tugged at them, hauntingly familiar, dull memories from before their hatching lingering in their mind, a blur of gentle song fading away into darkness. The resonance of it through their void felt at once achingly comforting and horrifically twisted.)

Family was not supposed to act like that. Family was not supposed to abandon you, to hurt you, to leave you to die.

(And all around them, the world thrummed, shadows and memories churning restlessly against one another, the dark sea below resonating with the pain of a million silent screams.)

Swoop-horn sibling's claws closed over the two charms, and the haze hovering in front of the Little Wanderer's mind was gently swept aside by a brush of void that did not hold their own unique resonance, calming their shade before it could twist itself into knots. Gently, four-thorn-horn sibling's head bumped against their own, before they wriggled up under their chin to snuggle up against their chest, the soft velvet press of hatchling carapace coming to rest against their own as they hugged them tight.

We don't like them either, lost one. But they will help us hide. They will make the bugs think that we are one of their own. Swoop-horn sibling leaned forward, bumping the curve of their largest horn against the Little Wanderer's head, then sat back, pulling their cloak aside to reveal a similar charm clipped to their chest. The charm notches it was attached to still oozed dark beads of void, as if they had been rammed into their shell by someone who expected more resistance, but a small jolt of alarm and a quick probe at the older vessel's thoughts just earned them a dismissive swipe in return. The shopkeep told me that they are the souls of travelers who died seeking the heart of Hallownest. They sought the freedom of mind that abounded here, what the Pale King had promised them had they lived to see the future. None shall question us if we wear these, or think that we were something wrong.

And that...burned a bit, in a way that the Little Wanderer didn’t quite have the words to put a name to. For even if they were never supposed to have survived the Abyss, Hallownest was their home, their land by birthright. This is where they had hatched, this is what their siblings had suffered to protect. This was where the Great Sea dwelled in its largest quantities, persevering through the ages even as the Old Light rallied against the subtle pull of its tides. This was where they belonged, this place where the gaps in their memories and the faint ghost of the past slotted together like a row of sharp teeth, this place where they had squirmed free of their egg and had spilled their first blood.

To know that the bugs of this land saw them as oddities, as intruders- that was wrong. That they had to wear a charm to blend in felt wrong. The Pale God perched on his wrought-iron throne had taken control of these caverns long, long ago, long enough for his power to have sunk into the very stone itself, but that did not change the fact that the Void had been the First. That did not change the fact that the Little Wanderer felt grounded here in a way that they hadn’t been when they had perched upon the precipice of the Wastes, the call of the sea below fading far, far away under the sting of the scorching sands.

Hallownest was their birthright, and the Pale God had taken their sibling from them and had whipped the Abyss into a frenzy that had not abated in all the long years between the start of the Infection and the death of the Old Light. Even unascended, the Little Wanderer could sense the discord that trembled through the fabric of the world, the way that the shadows churned restlessly in the absence of a focal point to keep them steady. They might be only one droplet flung from the shores of the Abyssal Ocean, but that did not change the fact that part of these lands belonged to them, and that their sibling had been stolen from them for a battle that never should have been theirs to fight in the first place.

The Pale God could keep his throne, and his city of cold metal and rain. All the Little Wanderer wanted was their family back, and security in the knowledge that they could finally come home.

Swoop-horn sibling clicked their mandibles at them, agreeing as quietly as any voiceless being could manage, then lowered their cloak and carefully shuffled their claws until two new pieces of pale metal rolled forward, chiming softly against one another. They weren't enchanted, but they did smell very strongly of something sharp and clean on their pointy ends, as if they had been dipped into the distilled essence of a healing spell, and there was a small pit in their flared faces that looked somewhat like the holes the Little Wanderer saw in other bug’s belts. Here. Charm notches. I got the smallest ones they had, but these may still sting some. Sorry, siblings.

The two smaller vessels glanced at one another, before four-thorn-horn sibling shrugged and reached for one of the charm notches, turning it over curiously between their claws. The Little Wanderer picked up the second one, then grabbed their corresponding citizenship charm before they could change their mind and slap it away. For once in their life, they wished they could make facial expressions like the mortal bugs around them- sure, the charm itself wouldn’t see the tight-irate-growling-anger that was roiling through them even if they were able to glower angrily at it, but it might have lessened the pressure building in their head somewhat.

(If they weren't near swoop-horn sibling, they would have just picked up their nail and gone off to smash some fenceposts, but something told them that such an action wouldn't exactly win them their elder sibling's favor. For all their knightly posturing, swoop-horn sibling was deeply wary of being caught by the city guards. The Little Wanderer did not share such a plight, but they assumed that the polite thing to do was to not go against the vessel acting as their guide, so all of their anger had to be funneled into staring at the accursed trinket dangling from their claws.)

(It did not make them feel much better.)

Inserting the charm notch into their shell did sting a bit, but it was nothing that the small vessel wasn't already used to. Clipping on the charm itself was something else- getting the small pin at the back of it to align with the hole in the notch was a whole other story. Their stubby little neck was just slightly too short for them to see just where the hole was, and putting any excess pressure on the new charm notch made the piercing throb, their soft, delicate carapace not nearly thick enough to prevent the spike from sticking through their shell. And their void was still churning about, too, all hot and prickly with irritation, which made the whole ordeal so much worse.

Swoop-horn sibling caught them struggling out of the corner of their eye, and let out a soft sigh, leaving four-thorn-horn sibling’s side to come assist the Little Wanderer. They caught their hand in a gentle grip, stilling their sharp, angry movements, then plucked the charm from their grasp and clipped it into place for them, their shade humming apologetically at the sting.

Which wasn’t something that the Little Wanderer had expected, after spending so much time struggling to solve their problems on their own. They kept as still as they possibly could, ignoring the pain radiating from the new charm notch, then stared openly as swoop-horn sibling turned their own arm over to bare its vulnerable underside, placing their smaller claws over the inside of their soft wrist.

Heal, sibling. Take soul and heal. I am strong. I don't need it. They tapped their own wrist with one claw, then stared intently at their smaller sibling, an odd sternness lending their gaze an intimidating edge. Even with their horns sized disproportionately to their body, their limbs long and lanky with the appearance of a bug in pre-teen moult, they managed to gather enough of a leaderly aura about them for the Little Wanderer to almost be impressed. As it was, they just looked like they were trying too hard to appear as strong as the big sentinels on duty, so they just let their claws hang lax and stared back, prompting a wave of exasperation from the other vessel. I am larger, have more soul, have a harder shell. You are small, soul-deprived, soft-shelled. You should take it.

And they...froze, because that was not something that they had expected, either. They had been last-hatched of their siblings, the last to fall. They had not had much of a chance to meet any of them before the climb, could not remember anyone other than silent-whisper-sibling in any full capacity. When they had hatched, it was into a world of desperate darkness and bubbling madness, where each vessel strove to reach for the light, and those who paused to help the others ended up struck down by the Maker’s trial, their momentary lapse of weakness costing them their life, tangling their shade up in the chaos of the carnage around it until it never had the hope to come back home.

But that was then, and this was now. That was selfishness born out of terror and uncertainty, the Void Sea whipped into a frenzy by the Pale Light above as it ordered them all to make the desperate climb up into the desolate future. That was when all they had been made for was to claim the title of Hollow Knight, and now was the backwash of the aftermath, when the boiling tide receded to give them a moment’s respite before the sea surged forth once more. That was when unity was split, when every vessel strived for conformity, when that sought to escape the darkness forgot, for a moment, that the shadows surrounding them were far closer to a family than the Pale God above.

(Somewhere, in the deep dark wells of their mind, they couldn’t help but wonder if silent-whisperer-sibling would have helped them now, as they didn’t when they turned away and left them to die.)

The impressions on the Little Wanderer’s mind intensified, faint memories of watching different siblings leaking darkness from their wounds washing over from the other vessel’s mind, memories tinged with fear and the bitter-bite of helplessness. They blinked, curling their own claws in towards themselves at the terror echoing around them, then flinched as four-thorn-horn sibling squirmed their way in between the two of them, adding their own chiming clamour to the vibrating mess of void in their head.

Me too, me too! I help too. They wriggled their way over swoop-horn sibling’s lap, ignoring their irate hiss, then reached forth to bat the Little Wanderer’s face with one soft paw, nearly shoving their fingers into their eyeholes by accident. We share. We are family, so we share.

Well, fine. They could hardly resist an offer like that, even if their shade squirmed at the thought of harming either of their few remaining family members. They uncurled their fingers, making sure to flex them outward far enough for their tiny claws to hit on the downstrike, then smacked both siblings in quick succession, void rippling unpleasantly at the blows. Their still-soft claws only barely scored through their shells, but it gave enough soul to lend them a quick heal, which lessened the itchy-prickly-sticky feeling beneath their skin somewhat.

A wave of warmth emanated from both of the other vessels at their relief, easing the hesitation still hovering in the Little Wanderer’s chest. Four-thorn-horn sibling squirmed out of swoop-horn sibling’s lap, then shoved up against their side, knocking their mask playfully against the curve of their horn in the process, and the little vessel felt…

...Warm. Warm and secure, as if nothing in the world could strike them down, as if they could race through the citadel of metal and glass without pausing to rest, as if they could charge into the blinding-white hallways of the Pale King’s palace and strike down the monster that took their hatchmate with nothing more than their nail at their back and their siblings by their side. It was a feeling that was as foreign as it was invigorating, the void in their chest fluttering like the wings of a maskfly, and they-

-nearly toppled head over heels as four-thorn-horn sibling headbutted them, their horns ringing against the Little Wanderer’s mask with a hollow clonk. It was an unexpected attack, for four-thorn-horn sibling was not nearly as fond of small strikes and headbutts as swoop-horn sibling was (when they weren’t pretending to be better than that, of course), but it did knock them out of the current of their own thoughts long enough to feel the sharp chest-tight grip of anxiety radiating from the other two vessels, which killed the mood somewhat.

Palace-storm-god-kill not YET, snarled swoop-horn sibling, with enough force for the void in the Little Wanderer’s chest to buzz in tune with their growl. Four-thorn-horn sibling flinched at the vibration, cowering away from the larger vessel’s bared fangs, but they echoed back the sentiment to the Little Wanderer all the same, albeit with a higher, more fearful buzz. Weak, still, we are too weak. We are three and they are Many. Many, and small. Many fierce fighters, many weapons that will tear-shell-and-shade. We cannot go. Not yet.

And they were right, as they always are, but the shadows under their shell writhed at the thought of waiting for much longer, after silent-whisper-sibling had spent so much time locked away from all of the Others, cut away from their siblings until they became too broken to play pretend any longer. They had cried out for help, had screamed their fear and loneliness out after so many years of silence, and now the shadows settled wrong in the cracks between the worlds and the comforting darkness that lingered behind their eyes was tinged with gold everytime they laid down to rest, and-

Wait.

The pale-light-god-creator-killer had come to the Abyss before their time of hatching, and had placed chains unto the shadows to wield them in battle against the burning-maddening-light. He had placed chains upon them, because he had been afraid, and fear in bugs and bugs-that-were-not-bugs was the tight-rushing-painful emotion that surged when death was nigh. To save them from the Infection, a plague of harmful light, the pale-light-god-creator-killer had made them, but those who defied him he cursed to an eternity of nothingness, for they were not what he had been looking for. They were not good enough for him. They had not listened to his call, they had not surged forward in response to the tug of the chains in their chest like he had wanted, and so he had struck them down and left them to die, and he had taken their hatchmate from them and sealed the doorway behind him so that none could see the ruin that he had made of them.

Not because their sibling had become the Hollow Knight. Not because he thought that they would survive the fang-tear-claw-rend-agony of their birthplace.

Why did bugs fight? They fought to survive. Why did bugs kill? They killed because they did not understand, and when they did not understand things, they were afraid. When the Little Wanderer swung their nail to test what lay before them, it was not just because the weight of it sent comfortable shivers all the way from their horns to their toes- it was because they were all tangled up in the light, bubbly pull of curiosity, or ensnared in the crushing mandibles of fear. When the Little Wanderer swung their weapon to kill, it was because they knew that it was the only way to survive the encounter before them. Because they could not free their sibling from their shackles without the snug fit of a physical body around them. Because it hurt, and they, above all, did not want to die.

The Old Light had been afraid, when their hatchmate had poured the fury of the void into its burning carapace. Afraid not of their sibling, but of the power that made them, the Great Sea surging through them in response to their all-consuming terror. It had been of Light, and it had died swallowed by the only thing in Hallownest that could ever hope to resist its might. Swallowed by shadows, and though the Pale Light did not burn the way that the Old Light had when it had screamed its hatred out into the world, it was a source of light all the same, and it, too, could be consumed by the darkness.

One vessel alone could not stand a chance against the fury of a fully-grown god. Two more did not make much of a difference.

But thousands? Millions?

Something wobbly and uncertain in their chest hardened, churning currents swirling to rest. They sprung to their feet, ignoring the ‘?’ ‘?’ that emanated from both of their two free siblings, and pushed the whole storm in their head into both of their minds, letting them chew it over while they donned their new mothwing cloak.

I know where to go. Follow me!

And, without a second thought, they sprinted off into the heart of the City of Tears, searching blindly for the point of singularity where all the vibrant life and sorrow of the denizens around them found their final peace. Where the echoing clamour of the world around them faded away into an all-encompassing silence, where the air hung heavy and the sea still churned with all the agony that the gods of light had wrought upon their kindred, an endless deep hopelessly seeking a semblance of inner harmony.

Their plan would work. They were sure of it.

And nothing that the King could do would stop them from taking back what they had lost.

Far above the chaos of the White Palace, two Pale Beings emerged into the shade of a balcony known only to the two of them, and took their watch over their healing kingdom.

The distance between them was polite to the point of chastity, as if they were two young lovers courting one another for the first time instead of a married couple several millennia old. Space was carefully made for both the Queen’s twisting roots and the Wyrm’s swiping tail, but neither intersected or twined together, as they had so many times in the centuries past. Glances stolen at the god beside them were sparing on one end, but not the other - the King, for all of his splendor and glory, was acting as if he were the intruder dwelling within his own home, and the Pale Lady that sat beside him did little to alleviate that tension, choosing instead to watch the clamour courtyard below with clouded eyes.

And it was chaotic indeed, for the courtyard itself was not so much a quiet refuge point as it was an impromptu sparring ground for three very skilled warriors. Even from their balcony far above the palace grounds, the frantic scrabble of claws over calcite could be heard as clearly as if they stood before the battle themselves, the sound magnified by the marble halls around them. Though the resemblance between its clatter and the scrape of shell was quite uncanny, it served well as a soft, shifting undertone to the sharp clang of metal as needle met nail, and muted the bounding echoes as someone shouted a fierce war cry, distinctly spiderish in quality yet wyrmlike for the ferocity with which it rang forth.

Typically, such affairs would be taken to the arena or training grounds, where the ground was composed not of marble or gravel pathways, but of packed dirt and sand that was compressed under a viewing area, making cleaning and upkeep much easier for the poor servants that had to look after it. But the spiders of Deepnest did not care much for the manners or upkeep of Hallownest (as the Pale Court had the misfortune to realize soon after the princess’s conception), so Herrah and Hornet had chosen to scuffle out their greeting-duel in a place that many a lord would consider to be a much more proper location for a wedding or accolade than a battle, with nary a care for any of the (understandably terrified) vassals and servants around them.

Engaging as the battle between mother and daughter was, however, it was not entirely what the two royals were focused on, nor the source of the tension mirrored between two sets of shoulders. Both the Pale King and the White Lady had been born into lives that demanded horrendous violence and power struggles at every turn, and so did not hold nearly as much disdain for it as either wished to believe. One had unfurled her first taproot into the blood of a god slain by the conquering campaign of the Old Light, while the other had been raised by a fierce warrior determined to make the most out of the one lingering child that had managed to survive the carnage of their birth. If the Wyrm shifted in his spot every so often to click his fangs at the fight going on down below, or if the Root drew in a sharp breath at something that she sensed from her vines around them, then it occurred only when one of the excited spiders overturned a statue that she happened to be somewhat fond of, or disrupted the flight path of a cleaner wingsmould puttering about their daily routine. The collision of mother and daughter did not bother either of them in the slightest- both knew that it could be far more violent than what either were exhibiting, and that it would never come to such an extreme. Nay, what truly caught their attention was the third member of the welcoming duel, who bobbed and weaved awkwardly between the dancing needles with all the grace of a drunken weevil...or, more accurately, a bug that was not entirely sure whether or not they had complete control over their legs, or if they had the right to wield them as theirs in the first place.

The fluid, elegant grace that had surrounded the Pure Vessel as it entered adulthood was no more. Even from this height, the shake in their limbs was noticeable, the end of their longnail trembling with every step they took, quivering at each strike or parry they made. And yet they were still able to hold their own as both Herrah and Hornet switched from exchanging blows with one another to trading hits with the scarred vessel, managing to move just fast enough to avoid Herrah's strong swings, swinging their longnail around quickly enough to force their sister out of reach. The pale silver of their prosthetic gleamed in the light of the lumaflies, shining ore and darkest void merged as one, and this too became a weapon in its own right as they ducked and weaved in battle, swinging with just enough power to hint at their great strength...even if it sometimes shuddered and jerked awkwardly during the fight, hinting at their lack of familiarity with their new tool. Despite their injuries, despite their slow recovery, their prowess in the duel proved that, despite all looks, even a downed god could still be deadly.

And yet the Pale Monarchs hovering above did not dare to breathe again until the vessel staggered back to disengage for a moment, chest heaving with ragged, exhausted breaths. As Hornet shouted for them to yield, as Herrah's greatneedle swung towards their bowed horns to knock the longnail out of their grasp, both King and Queen tensed with a worry that both were loathe to admit- and then breathed a mirrored sigh of relief when the Hollow Knight staggered back to their feet just in time to send Herrah's own greatneedle flying from her grasp, the screech of scraping metal echoing painfully through the courtyard.

There was a beat of shocked silence, during which the vessel wobbled alarmingly to and fro on unsteady claws, before it was disrupted by Herrah's booming laugh echoing off of the cold marble walls, followed soon by Hornet's distinct happy giggle. The Spider Queen strode forward to clap a hand on the Pure Vessel's shoulder, nearly sending the poor creature sprawling into the dirt, and, relieved, both of the monarchs relaxed back into their chairs, a small smile appearing on the White Lady's face while the Pale Wyrm dropped his head onto his arms with a near-silent sigh.

"They are strong," the White Lady noted, joy swimming through her voice as she watched the Beast pull her child to their unsteady feet, her booming laughter echoing through the courtyard. A hearty slap to the uninjured part of the vessel’s back nearly sent them sprawling again, but the little spiderling beside them managed to catch them just in time, shoring up their weaker side as her mother went to retrieve her needle. Retainers hovered anxiously behind the two spiders and the vessel, clearly torn between offering assistance and asking them to move their affairs elsewhere, but the small party of Deepnest- and Hallownest- royals were left to enjoy their camraide unbothered. “And they are using the new arm well. You have done an excellent job with its construction, my love, even if your method of presentation leaves much to be desired.”

The Pale King did not flinch, per se, but the near-invisible clench of his mandibles was not particularly indicative of confidence. “Progression is being made as expected. They no longer require vigilant care as before- though I shall not deny you the opportunity to look after them, if it pleases you. That is not my call to make.”

A heartbeat of awkward silence followed, punctuated only by the soft chatter of voices from far below. The look on the Queen’s face turned from gentle joy to something more akin to tired tolerance, while the King fixed his gaze upon the entourage of passing nobles as if they were suddenly the most fascinating physics problem in the known universe. As escapes went, this one was particularly pitiful, if only because the both of them knew that he had managed to solve said physics problem centuries before, and that nothing of similar interest had managed to crop up just yet.

“Is it really, my Wyrm? I abandoned them in their early childhood, entrusting you with their future development. What they may wish for now is not the help of an absentee mother who hadn’t the courage to face them, but the careful guidance of a father who denied them his pride.” She did not look at him, as he did not look at her, but the bitterness in her voice conveyed what a simple look could not. “You are not the only one who harmed them. They are our child, our responsibility. What we did to them is not yours alone to bear, and I grow weary of you acting as if it isn’t.”

“...Perhaps not. But you are a far more neutral party in their past than I.” A slight shift was the only indication of the Pale King’s discomfort, his whispering voice as emotionless as ever. He watched as Herrah lead both her daughter and the Hollow Knight off in the direction of the kitchens without a single change of expression- it was only centuries of having their hearts bound that allowed the Queen to sense the bittersweet ache in his gaze, affection and sorrow vying for dominance in his mind. It was not so often that he looked upon his children playing. And, out of all the times they tried to before, this was the one time where neither of them were not compelled by their duties to try to stop it. “I do not wish for my presence to influence them in any manner. If leaving them alone is what bothers you, however, I am sure that Herrah would allow them to visit Deepnest. A mutual fostership may ease the tensions between our two nations.”

“I agree with that, but it was not the issue I was trying to address,” murmured the White Lady, before she sighed, and wisely opted to change the subject. “I have told them that your current occupation with attempting a search within the Soul Sanctum is what has been keeping you from their bedside. How, may I ask, has Lurien been doing? Last I heard from him, he was buried beneath a flood of reports that he was sure were connected to the Sanctum’s inhibited experiments. Has he finally managed to collect sufficient evidence to authorize a raid?”

“He is doing well. The evidence he has gathered with the assistance of the singer Marissa is damning enough to warrant me stepping in without the Soul Master claiming favoritism bias. We shall stage an investigation once I have finished drafting an official report with the materials he has collected.” Another pause, followed by the soft whisper of fabric over carapace as the King tucked his tail in close to his body. This time, his attempt to avoid the Queen’s gaze was not nearly as discrete as before, though the both of them knew very well that attempting to hide what he was feeling was quite pointless. She had known him for far too long for him to be able to hide anything from her- for better or for worse. “The issue shall be resolved, and some answers may finally be reached.”

“And yet you remain hesitant.” The Queen’s clouded eyes shifted from his face to a point just over his shoulder, politely avoiding direct eye contact with him before he was ready. When she spoke again, the firm edge from before had faded, softening to something gentle and loving despite her previous reservations, even if the tired undertone still lingered. “Despite our years apart, my heart still belongs to you. If something troubles you now, I wish to hear of it. The silence between us has only harmed us, not helped- I do not wish for it to persist.”

“And my soul is yours to keep, whatever you might make of it,” replied the Wyrm, his voice quiet and oddly fragile, before he sighed, and turned his head to stare at the silver vines coiled around the lumafly lights. “...There are many things that trouble me. The shifting state of the Dream for one, the hints of scarlet lapping at our borders for another, as well as...the truth of the Pure Vessel's nature. You have burdens of your own to carry. I do not want to trouble you with trivial things."

"A noble cause. And one that I might have agreed with, had our child not mustered the strength to strike down that accursed creature before it brought ruination upon our lands." Now the Queen made her first physical gesture to the Pale King, reaching out with one trailing root to coil loosely around the tail hidden under his robe. Though he startled at her touch, the fervent way he curled around her in return spoke of his uncertainty and his desperation far clearer than words. "But turning ourselves away from our issues has put us in a great load of sh*t before, as Queen Herrah so kindly put it. A trivial problem is almost a relief to deal with, after what we have had to manage before."

"...I suppose that is one way of phrasing things." Though the Pale King did not change his posture or alter his tone in any way, there was an admittedly embarrassed air about him as he turned to look out at the bustling servants below. The true cause he shielded from her, but it was not enough to prevent her from giggling quietly at his reaction, a manner that she futilely attempted to hide behind one hand. "Though it has ot yet presented itself as a concern, Lurien's behavior has changed since his return from the Dream Realm. I am unsure of what to make of it."

Now the Queen made a soft, intrigued noise, and turned to face him, running the curl of her root further along his tail. Her wyrm glanced up at her, then back down again, the small peripheral legs running along his body tightening against her form. "Really? How so? He has not seemed any different when I spoke to him after his awakening- unless you count his unlikely friendship with Herrah. Are you worried that the unbalance in the realm might have altered him in some way?"

The Pale King hesitated, then shook his head, letting out a slow exhale. "No. Essence still lies thick under his shell, but it does not exceed the expected capacity for a mortal, and fades with every visit. His awareness of his corporeality has been improving as well, after he confessed to such a thing bothering him earlier. It is more that he told me that is the issue. Before, I would have had to pry even the slightest admittance of vulnerability out of him, or focus specifically upon his soul signature to listen for his prayers. Now, I need to do no such thing, while Monomon has closed herself off from me, as she has not done before."

"The behavior of mortals often changes when they are faced with the truth of their demise. Do you remember the Ogrim that existed before the Battle of the Blackwyrm? Do you remember how much he has changed? Time can turn fragile saplings into well-rooted trees, or it can tear asunder the strongest of oaks." Now the White Lady reached out with one hand, and stroked lightly over the curve of one horn. The movement was tentative, almost hesitant, but the King's third eyelid flicked closed at her touch, and he leaned silently into her hand when it slid down to cup his cheek, his wingtips trembling with a force stronger than his thundering heartbeat. "We have been changed. All of us have, but some of us have grown stronger from the storm, and some of us are still learning to pick ourselves up from the ruins. We cannot go back to who we were before all of this happened, my Wyrm. Nor can they, and their lives are so much more fragile than ours."

A low, steady rumble from the Pale King, followed by the gentle clack of mandibles tapping harmlessly against bark. The White Lady paused, studying his movements for a moment longer, before she patted him once on the cheek and retreated, the roots far from him undulating in an oddly hopeful manner.

"Nevertheless, I am pleased to hear that our dear Watcher has grown bolder in his new life. Hesitation has always been his greatest bane, and with that cast aside, we now have an even stronger ally on our side. His presence will be good for you as we move forward." The Queen gave a single decisive nod, then folded her hands demurely upon her lap. The faint smile on her face could almost be considered a smirk, if one dared to look closely, but the questioning glance her husband sent her way was peacefully ignored. "I do not know how much assistance I may be able to offer Monomon in locating her apprentice, but I would not worry too much about Lurien, my love. He is just as devoted to you as I am- with you as his beacon, he is sure to find his way."

The Pale King's wings fluttered, glowing motes of soul flicking off of them as he looked away, but the awkward fluster soon faded, grim determination settling back into place. "Your words hearten me, my Root."

"As they very well should. Perhaps they shall motivate you enough to seek out our child later, and to apologize for the stunt that you pulled a few weeks prior. I am sure that Lurien would agree with me on this matter." The White Lady calmly curled her wandering tendrils back in under herself, purposefully ignoring the terrified jerk of her husband's tail against her root before he froze. If one knew her well enough to look, they might have caught the mischievous twinkle in her eyes before she managed to smooth her expression back into something a little more serious. "And your chest pain? Has it lessened at all?"

"...You know it has not." The Wyrm’s tail flicked, hard enough to dislodge it from her twisting grasp. This earned him a worried frown, but he hardly seemed to notice her concern, his lower two hands rubbing gingerly at his chest while he hunched over. “It has not limited my ability to work. Nor do I foresee it growing to the point where it will truly hinder me, so it is likely not life-threatening. I suspect that it is merely the result of prolonged exposure to experiments with void and essence- with those studies discontinued, its effects should not be able to progress. The Nightmare King’s presence might be the trigger for it, with him skulking about an already unstable part of the realm; if I banish his accursed heart from our lands, both in dream and in reality, then there is a chance it may abate.”

“Yet still I worry,” murmured the Queen, before she shook her head with a soft sigh. The ornaments woven among her branches chimed sweetly with her movements, filling the silence between them with the echo of their song, before she brushed a few stray petals off of her lap and stood, looking down at her small husband. “I should not dally here for much longer. Queen Herrah will likely be expecting me to update her on the state of her daughter’s training, and there is much that I wish to ask her about caring for one's young. I can relay what she said to you later, once we both have some time to ourselves."

The Pale King's wingtips flicked, but the wry set to his jaw betrayed the affection hidden within his exasperation, as he adjusted his robes and looked up after his wife. "I shall eagerly await your return, my Lady. Your loyalty has not faltered throughout these hard, long years. I shall repay you in turn now, and follow your wisdom and guidance. It is the least that I can do for you now."

"And I am eager to make amends, and to guide us both out of this dark part of our history. We can both be better than what we once were." The White Lady's voice was as quiet and solemn as before a grave, her own exhaustion seeping through her composed mask. The Pale King's eyes slid to hers, and then, after a moment of hesitation, he took her hand in his own, pressing a kiss to the back of her hands with the same tentative affection of a bug courting a new lover instead of his wife of thousands of years. An old love, expressed through a new light. The choice to make amends, expressed through one delicate touch.

The White Lady's breath caught in her chest, surprise flashing over her features a heartbeat before hope took their stead. With the soft twinkle of windchimes, she leaned down to plant a kiss upon one horn, before exiting the balcony with one fond look back.

They did not say I love you. Nor did the Wyrm say I'm sorry, despite the words hovering on his tongue, burning in his eyes as if he could force them out of his throat with nothing more than his will. But there was love there all the same, and an apology and a forgiveness, and that, for now, was good enough for them both.

With a tired sigh, the Pale King gathered his robes together with void-stained claws, then turned away from the balcony to head for his workshop. With one hand, he fumbled for a handcarved missive listing the follies of the Soul Sanctum, while another pawed for a slip of spidersilk parchment, a third for a quill to write with. In the fourth, he palmed a small trinket, its magic weak and faded- if one had eyes sharp enough to discern its shape from the glare of the Kingslight, they might have noticed a glimmer of dull red winking out from between darkened claws, or saw the hard glint in his eyes as he strode towards his quarters, wings flaring in a halo around him as he assumed the role of cold-god king once more.

He had far too many problems on his plate to hold much tolerance for the trickery of nightmares. Whatever the Nightmare King hoped to gain by lingering on the edge of his territory, it would not be a result that would bode well for him. Him sneaking visits before the Infection had been a mere irritant, and had been dealt with as such- now, however, the Kingdom of Hallownest wavered on the brink of a new era, with all the power imbalances that came with it. The Radiance’s sibling was strong enough to tip that balance, and cunning enough to spin it to his advantage. That he was a scavenger-god of dying kingdoms with no interest in conquering meant little to the Pale King. Not with so much still on the line, not with two godlings still weak enough and young enough to be unable to leave the nest. The leader of the Dread Troupe was arrogant, but he was hardly foolish; he would not come so close to the Pale Wyrm’s territory if there wasn’t something important to him on the line, something desirable enough for him to risk the wrath of a god who had nearly lost it all.

Wyrms were ambush hunters by nature.

All he needed now was to be patient.

.

.

.

I know life is a journey

So what happened to me?

Tell me

Why was I in such a hurry?

I don’t know, I don’t know

I know life is a journey

But you gave up on me early

Tell me

Why were you in such a hurry?

I don’t know, I don’t know

Show the way, cause it's blurry

Show the way and your mercy to me

Nothing there, and I'm worried

It's all I know, all I know

-Echo, Starset

Chapter 11: Of the Dream Realm, and Those Commanding It

Chapter Text

As the songs of the dead fill the space of my ears

Their laughter like children, their beckoning cheers

My heart longs to join them, sing songs of the sea

I remember the fallen, do they think of me?

Where their bones in the ocean forever will be

.

.

.

Before the Sealing, the Pure Vessel had been prided upon its quick ability to easily pick up new skillsets. Every spell, nail art, or battle tactic had been learned with little to no error, particularly after their first and second adolescent moults. It had been a point of pride for Hallownest, and an aspect of admiration for many- the vessel could not even hope to count the many shy suitors that had attempted to court it after the few events where the Pale King allowed its training to become known to public, or the awkward (but quickly stifled) altercations that had occurred when some noblebug or gentlelady had taken offense at it steadfastly ignoring their flirtations. Picking up new skills was apparently quite difficult for most bugs, and the ability to do so with the same quiet, focused efficiency that was expected of it was attractive to those not in the know of its creation. Its ability to quickly (almost mindlessly) assess what was needed to succeed had always been praised as nigh-on godly by the bugs around it that were unaware of its lineage, and the few mistakes it made were oft waved aside by those in the know as merely a glitch in its programming, a case of too many inputs cramming its coding at once. The thoughts that had blemished it on the inside had never echoed on the outside...at least, not until She had driven it past its breaking point, and all of the fear and pain it had felt over the long years broke out of its shell at once.

Evidently, that was not the case with the Dream Realm.

"Focus on what you want to manifest, not on what you need it to do! That will come into play later on; for now, you must turn your attention to what your tool has to look like, before telling it what action it must take." The Nightmare King leaned forward off of a glowing scarlet platform, his elegant talons gesturing furiously as he spoke. The rhyming scheme that had plagued his every sentence had long been abandoned by now, traded in favor of clarity; the Hollow Knight was not quite sure if it meant that he had become more focused on the lesson or too impatient to continue his theatrics, and wasn't particularly interested in learning if the latter was true. That Grimm was the sibling of the Old Light was not something that could be easily forgotten, and the vessel was far too familiar with Her ire to be comfortable with evoking it in this new, unfamiliar higher being. "This is a skill that every godling learns young, with the sole exception of your kindred, for the Abyss is the elder to the Dream. But now you have laid your claim upon it, and the realm is yours to command! Seize the essence, scion of Hallownest! Seize it, and emblazon it with the will of a god of the endless night!"

Grimm undoubtedly thought he was being encouraging. Unfortunately, what he had instructed them to attempt was the exact opposite of what it had been told to do for its entire life, including the moments where it had learned new spells. Shaping soul was less a matter of using it as a raw material to craft items as much as it was a method of directing pure energy to take the shape of what was required, using nothing more than pure, unerring focus on the end goal to force it to obey the wielder's wishes. It was only an art form to those who needed the aid of intricate spell-glyphs to cast, and this new demand for creativity vexed the Pure Vessel, even if the tug of its own impatience still made some small, scared part of itself cringe away in terror. The confusing array of demands placed upon it combined with the new experience of being unable to grasp an unfamiliar task was not something that it had ever had to face before in its life, and served as an unwelcome reminder that the Pure Vessel was less an infallible weapon of the darkness and more a stumbling young god that had no idea how to handle the trials of its extraordinary existence.

(Which in turn pulled its attention from its duties to the ever-present desire to drown itself in the Abyss, because surely that would be far easier than persisting in this feeble, tortured facimale of a life. It had suffered enough to rouse an entire ocean of regret- wouldn’t it be better to return to the sea it had spawned from, and let this dance of dream and darkness to find an end?.

Not that it had much time to focus on that, anyways. The Nightmare King had fully taken it in as his pupil, and seemed determined beyond reason to teach it to shape the realm it had (unwillingly) conquered, instead of simply killing it like any other self-respecting Higher Being ought to.)

(Then again, that line of thought put its father outside the order of 'self-respecting Higher Beings', which it wasn't quite ready to think about just yet.)

"Ah, now you are considering other things than the sorry state of your sad existence. Good, good." Grimm's rasping voice purred through the fabric of the Dream, a deep hum amplifying his words so that it sounded like his voice was coming from every direction, distracting it further from the arduous task of choosing what to summon. The Vessel made the mistake of allowing its anger to come to a point instead of masking it under a current of void, and sharply jerked around to try to confront the god irritating it before promptly losing its balance, colliding maskfirst against a surprisingly solid wooden platform. This did not help the hot, throbbing pressure in its head abate in the slightest, much less so when the fire dancing around the nightmare stage flickered in something dangerously close to a laugh. "Fear is the domain of Nightmare, and shadow has not yet laid claim over fire just yet. Stray too far from hope, and it will not be dream essence that comes when you call, nor will it obey your desires. Remember that well, Vessel. I would hate to see you immolated in the flames of the Nightmare when you have already been scarred enough by the Dream."

A trail of smoke and flame passed by, then faded back into the dark void around it, leaving no trace of the Nightmare King's presence. The hot pressure- frustration, it was called frustration, and the vessel now held more than just a mild spark of sympathy for its short-tempered younger sister- built in its head and chest, a burning sensation uniquely unlike the scars that the Old Light had branded upon its mind and yet no less welcome for it. Logically, it knew that this was the emotion that Grimm was trying to elicit in it (for it remembered the Great Knights teaching trainees to deal with taunts, while it stood silently off to the side and stared), but knowing that fact did not make it any easier to focus on its lesson. Not when fear throbbed in its blackened heart at the thought of controlling the dream essence, and shame boiled underneath at its own terror at its failure to comply, at its inability to control the emotions that it was not supposed to have.

The Nightmare Heart was a kinder tutor than what it deserved, even if it was somewhat of an oddball among its kindred. Kinder, and far stranger than anything that the Hollow Knight had ever experienced, in all of its years tugged between the gods of light that had sired it and the faceless void that had corrupted it. The touch of its flame did not scorch its carapace the way that its sibling's light had done to it, and the dancing specters that flared in his wake did not attempt to resist the darkness, preferring to fade harmlessly into its grip. By all means, the God of Fear was the perfect tutor to a godling born from the Abyss struggling to grasp the mechanisms of the Dream, particularly one that was about as new to the concept of living as a fresh-hatched grub mewling fearfully at the cold world around it.

That did not mean that his methods of teaching were any less irritating. Even the Hollow Knight (who had spent countless years stamping down every small twitch of its void that could possibly be considered an impure response, enough that it could practically be considered a god of nonchalance if not control) was starting to find the limits of its previously-endless patience. Perhaps it was the struggle of failing to control the dream stoking its temper, or the ever-present smell of blood and smoke; either way, the pressure in its head was threatening to reach a breaking point, and the void that made its blood boiled in a manner that was not at all pleasant despite the sensation being entirely in the theoretical.

(Fleetingly, the thought that its accomplishments in mastering new tasks in the past could be attributed to the Pale King expecting it to perform well crossed its mind, before it shoved that thought away to be buried away for later. It would not be surprised if that was the case, given the power its father had held over its younger self, but the concept was not comforting in the slighted.)

Now Grimm appeared again, hanging upside down from a twisted nightmare-vein, his claws a wicked spread. The Vessel jerked back, its own talons reaching for the hilt of a nail that was not there, and the Nightmare King grinned wickedly at its reaction, a smokey chuckle hissing out from rows of needle-like teeth.

“Think!” he rasped, as he tilted his head to and fro, the ruff around his throat flaring with each movement. Though his claws did not reach for them, returning instead to their usual tuck under his wings, there was a sharp, savage glee in his eyes at their hesitation, almost as if he could taste the faint tang of their fear. Even if it knew that Grimm held no desire to harm them, the hunger in his eyes was still somewhat off putting, and it recoiled on instinct before it could force itself to stand its ground, a silent hiss rattling in its throat. “Think of what you want. Think of what you need, and give that desire a shape that you can easily command. I know you can do it, princeling of Hallownest. All you need now is to-”

Before the Nightmare King could finish, a sharp silver buzzsaw came ricocheting out of nowhere, a soft chime of forming essence the only warning it gave before it rocketed towards the other god's face. Grimm let out a rather undignified squawk at the sight of it, scrambling away from his perch on a nightmare-vine with limbs that skittered about in directions that no normal bug’s legs should bend, but the saw’s jagged edge still managed to clip him on the arm before it whirled around to hover before the Pure Vessel's face, stopping just before it could cleave its mask in two.

There was a beat of stunned silence, during which both God of Nightmare and God of Nothingness stared at the still-spinning sawblade as it slowly faded from existence, the glowing red essence along its edge dissipating into gold and black. Then the small, disbelieving smile on Grimm’s face transformed into a wicked, toothy grin, and he pumped one fist into the air in triumph, his harsh, cackling laughter crowing out into the expanse of void and nightmare wrapped around them both.

“Yes! That is the skill that we wish to see, that is the power we hoped to achieve." Red fire bled freely from the gash in the Nightmare King's carapace, but he seemed to not care one whit for his wound as he brought his claws together in a round of applause, each clap sounding strangely muffled against the backdrop of darkness. "A little unconventional, a little paler of a summon than what I initially expected, but a victory won nonetheless. Be proud, my friend- you are among the first of your kind to directly wield the power of the Dream, without the aid of charms or trinkets. Believe me when I say that is no trifling matter. There is history being made tonight, and the effects shall be felt far beyond the borders of Hallownest."

Kind praise, for a creature that should not deserve it. By any means, it should be reveling in it, as it had when its father praised it for a job well done before he remembered his place, in the rare moments where his pride for it overcame his fear for the future of Hallownest. The Pure Vessel was not used to praise, for a true pure vessel did not require it- it had ascended to both knighthood and godhood without it, though the path had been arduous and tiresome.

And yet, now that the deed was done, the vessel grew weary. Casting a spell of any origin was tiring work, but even if the essence now responded to its call instead of the whims of the Old Light, the familiarity of its warmth still sent a roll of queasiness churning through its abdomen, a condition that only worsened when its eyes flicked over the still-bleeding gash on Grimm’s arm. Though the incision left by the sawblade was not deadly by any means, it was still a morbid reminder of what it was capable of, and what it had been made to do- to kill the gods that dwelled in the light, to consume them like a creature of the darkness was expected to do.

(Before the Sealing, its ability to down mortals and higher beings alike was as much a source of pride for its parents as it was a source of fear. And, as much as its shade churned at the thought of its impurity, it had found an odd sort of comfort in the knowledge of what it could do, albeit one that functioned as a double-edged nail. For though its ability to combat even the Pale Wyrm promised a potential future for those that it was created to protect, learning it was capable of besting such a powerful god in combat meant that none of its luminous relatives would be able to withstand it if something went terribly wrong. If the remnants of the ancient being that had reanimated it in its shell stirred into some semblance of wakefulness, if the primordial thoughts turned to memories of scalding light tearing apart a form older than time, if the original epicenter of the Void Sea took offence at the Pale King for harnessing its power to bring forth a vessel to choke out the Old Light’s power, then there would be nothing that could be done to stop it from harming them. Not its father’s light. Not its mother’s roots.

(Not the thin shellwood toy nail of its little sister, who had challenged it to battle without fear in her eyes, who would not balk from it as it wove expertly over the battlefield, a nightmare amalgamation of steel and soul.)

(Little sparks of white, so beautiful against the darkness. A gentle glow that it was never meant to be a part of, and yet was reflected back in its mask all the same. A soft light that soothed the ache in its chest, that muted the pull calling it down, down, down to the banks of the Void Sea, where its shade longed to seek its forever rest.)

Perhaps Grimm noticed its plight, for his eyes softened a bit when it refused to turn to look at his exuberant displays of celebration, the rough, scratchy chirr at the back of his throat dimming down to a rusty purr before it faded away altogether. Just what he gleaned from the blank slate of their mask, the Hollow Knight did not know, but it was enough to wrench a sigh from his chest, and for him to pad quietly over to them so that they may sit on the nightmare-stage together, staring off into the endless darkness.

“Something troubles you, my friend. Something tugs at your heartstrings, demanding an action that you have no answer to.” His voice held the quiet rumble of a dying beast, the creak of old shellwood as it strained to hold weight. The soft sounds of a thousand worlds ending, all echoing together into the rasping crackle of an old god’s speech, as if all the fallen kingdoms that the Heart had consumed were speaking now through one being’s throat. Any other bug might have been afraid, but the monster that had once been named the Pure Vessel was not one of their kin, and the dissonance in the Nightmare King’s voice spoke to something deep and old within its very soul, the churning void under its shell settling back down to rest. “You have come to a fork in the road, and you do not know which path to choose, or where to go once you have made your choice. Present is the here and gone-aways is the there, but you are neither here nor there, which means that you are at once everywhere and nowhere, which is a very confusing conundrum indeed for one such as you, unused to choices as you are.”

...That was quite a bit closer to its current conundrum than what it was comfortable with him knowing. It turned its gaze sharply to his own, letting the writhing darkness within it lick up over its maskholes in a subtle warning, but the threat display wrought nothing but a chuckle out of the old ringleader.

"Calm yourself, child of midnight. It is a sensation that I am quite familiar with, as the master of a clan of outcasts.” The Nightmare King leaned back, letting his tattered cloak fall away from his thin frame. Exposing his stomach and chest was a dangerous move to take in the presence of a god that could so easily snuff him out, but it did its job well- the Pure Vessel found itself relaxing despite itself, some ancient, primal urge within it satisfied at the sign of submission. "Even with the boundaries of Dream and Void growing blurred in the wake of my sister's demise, your mind remains impenetrable to me. What I can interpret comes from years of experience caring for my Troupe, as well as the nightmares that you happen to manifest simply by existing within my sibling realm."

Lazily, he pointed out into the abyss around them, still trailing embers from his injured arm (which was mending itself slowly, thank the gods). The Hollow Knight followed his line of sight, but saw nothing around it but unending darkness and spinning dream sigils...at least, not until its father’s note manifested in its face with a snap of the Nightmare King’s fingers, forming from a dense patch of red essence that it had failed to notice drifting closer.

(It had failed. It had failed to sense such an unusual cluster of memories within the void, had failed to pay attention to the surroundings around it. Such negligence was an insult to its training, an insult to all the great warriors of Hallownest had tried to teach it.)

(The twist in its gut was sickening, but trying to stifle it did nothing more than make the scarlet embers glow brighter. For what was the point, really? Everyone knew it was flawed. Everyone knew that it was a fake, that it was a liar. That was why it was here in the first place, dithering uselessly in a world that should not belong to it, while it should be just another body in the pit far below.)

“I’m assuming that is the source of your current problems, hmm?” Grimm nonchalantly waved a claw at the floating tablet, then smiled gently when the Hollow Knight made no response, caught like a mosscreep in the glare of a lumafly lantern. He caught the tablet in one hand, skimming the white writing on its surface, then crushed it back into essence with a disdainful snort, a cloud of smoke billowing out between his teeth. "Your father has always been a being of extremes, despite priding himself on his apparent creativity. I highly doubt that this is his means of driving you into exile, as much as it is a poorly-worded attempt to allow you some autonomy. He has never been very good at any sort of apology, but even I expected better from him. How delightful to know that I've been let down on this, in addition to everything else."

His tone remained light, but an edge of anger burned underneath, so close to how Her wrath was before She was about to strike. The Vessel tensed, trying to stifle its urge to flinch away from the god beside it, but the Nightmare King's anger burned out before it could progress any further, a weary sigh rattling up from his chest.

"To choose between family is no simple task," he whispered, and in his voice there was an old, old grief, a pain that was distinctly Grimm, not of anything else that he had consumed. The Hollow Knight could feel the way that his regrets draped over his shoulders, before he pulled them off and neatly folded them up for later, as unbothered by them as if they didn't exist at all. "And it is not one that a youngling like you should ever bear. Nevertheless, it is a choice you face regardless, and one that you need not face alone.

I am the god of Nightmares, the sibling to the land of Dream you have inherited by virtue of killing my sister. Yet our two realms have been separated for centuries upon millennia before such an event came to pass. For all the love between us, firstborn dream beings as we were, fear became her plague, while it became my mantle. And it was fear that divided us, fear that kindled from sparks against the darkness into a fire that could not be stopped before the bond between us was scorched to naught more than ash and smoke."

He sighed heavily then, bowing his head. Flame flicked around the edge of his crimson horns, eyes formed of fire dancing around the curve of his head, but those flickered out when he turned to look out into the Abyss, at something that only he could see. "Dream and Nightmare once shared a heart, but upon their ascension were torn apart. My sister clutched me close, terrified of losing me to the endless dark, but it was my choice to leave, to kindle a new spark. To confront my fear of death, I tore myself asunder, and now here I stand before you, while my sister fell to her fatal blunder."

He looked to the Vessel, something dark simmering in his gaze, before he blinked it away, crossing his arms over his chest with a deep, tired sigh. The Hollow Knight tensed at that, void vibrating uncomfortably, but whatever Grimm felt did not lash out to burn them, and allowing the matter to turn over in their mind revealed an odd sort of respect that they did not wish to admit to at his restraint. For however monstrous the Old Light had been, and however terrible Her wrath had felt when turned upon it, She had still been the Nightmare King’s sibling. The goddess that had torn it to pieces until She could remould it to Her desires had been a child, once, and that child had once nestled with the god that sat beside it, terrified of the darkness beyond their world. The Vessel could remember how it felt to be so young, so vulnerable, just as it could remember how it had felt to look back into the yawning gap of the Abyss to see two desperate dark eyes staring back at it, pleading for its sibling to help it. And it could imagine the terrible ruin that would be brought about if someone dared to lay a claw on its own little sister, no matter how terribly she might have acted to incite such wrath. The end it had brought to the Old Light might be considered a mercy compared to what it would bring crashing down upon anything that dared to harm little Hornet, if only because the claws that it had gouged into Her flesh had been driven entirely by terror, rather than the ancient, protective hum that thrummed deep within its void.

(For once, admitting to that treacherous tumult of emotion brought no guilt to its mind. Perhaps it was because it knew such a reaction would be entirely unthinking, as the Pale King desired, but it was mostly because the Pure Vessel could not think of any scenario where it could feel guilty for wanting to protect the most vulnerable sibling it had, if only because she was of Beast rather than of Void, like them.)

(Either way, it knew that it would be unable to face a creature that had destroyed her with the calm that the Nightmare King gave to it, killer of his own sister.)

“I had to leave her, for her light would have suffocated my flame if I hadn’t, and that was, perhaps, one of the hardest choices that I have ever had to make.” Grimm paused, tapping a claw against his forearm, then tilted his head at the Hollow Knight with a long, slow blink. “But that is not a condition that you are bound by, nor one that is driving you to choose a side before someone snuffs you out. Know then, God of Nothingness, that you have an eternity to make your choice, if it is indeed one that you need to pick. And know too, young one, that it is perfectly normal to be torn between one place of belonging or another, and that such rifts often bring despair to the poor bug they trouble, no matter how wise or how well-deserving they are to experience them. That you care so deeply for both your family of shadows and your siblings of soul does not mean that you are flawed. It simply means that you are alive, and that is something to be celebrated all on its own. I, for one, am very glad that I got to meet you.”

He smiled, then. Not the smug, cunning grin he had flashed when he had been trying to startle them into attacking, nor the eerie, knowing smile that sometimes tugged at his mouthparts when he thought that nobody else was looking, but something soft and gentle, something that the Pure Vessel only ever saw glimpses of, in the moments that it caught Herrah with her baby or the White Lady with her husband. Something that promised kindness, and a genuine desire to listen, and for a moment it felt as if would choke on the swell of emotions that such an expression prompted within it, even if the Nightmare King’s mess of razorblade teeth and burning pink eyes somewhat disturbed the air of serenity he was trying to convey.

(Not that it mattered much. Not that the Vessel could find it within themselves to feel afraid, for it knew of the cruelty that beauty could hide, and that the thing he was smiling at was far more deadly than a few needlebright teeth or warm, flickering embers.)

“Ah, but our time has come to a close now, our night has drawn to an end. And with it I must take my leave, my friend.” Grimm stood, dusting his cape of clinging nightmare-sigils, then swept it aside in a deep bow that very nearly knocked his horns against their own. The Hollow Knight was not entirely sure what it was supposed to do in response, but its days idling by observing the going-abouts in the Palace were apparently not entirely useless, for the slow bow it copied back got a beaming smile in return. “What a joy it has been, to take part in renewal instead of rot. If your father was right about anything regarding you, then it would be this: void must truly be the power opposed, for you to grant me this boon of reversal instead of ruin. From the bottom of my heart, I must thank you. I look forward to the time we shall meet again.”

And with that, the Vessel was left to blink its eyes open to the dawn of a new day, and to rise with the uncertainty of someone who was not quite certain where they were going, only that it was somewhere better than the place they had been before.

There were certain rituals that even beings beyond time participated in. Rituals that were not holy for their reverence, or their opulence, but for the quiet mundanity that gave the world its structure, and set the rhythm of life into stone.

The Pale King certainly had his rituals, set in stone with the practice of centuries, but the advent of the Infection and the sealing of the Hollow Knight had disrupted them enough for that faint semblance of normality in his life to flee like a child dispossessed. Now, it was the return of them that lent each day a new flair, one that seemed almost confusingly colourful after years of static white walls, bleak grey stone, and tension running wire-deep through the minds of every bug that flocked to the safety of his wings, if they even had enough mind left to try to flee at all.

(How dark those days had been. How oppressive, as if a mountain had been threatening to come crumbling down upon the expanse of Hallownest, and all that he could do was watch the thousand futures detailing their demise unfold before him, be it in the form of blinding light or consuming dark. The great wyrm could not look back upon those memories without feeling something tight and cold knot in his chest, a heaviness that made each breath a burden, that tingled all the way down to the very tips of his void-stained talons.)

(What a fool he had been. What an arrogant, damnable fool.)

But that was then and this was now, and the Pale King had suffered enough of the aftershocks of his wife's worry to at least attempt to brush the past behind him, despite it grasping for his attention like a particularly nasty bit of his daughter’s abandoned webbing. Not that it was an easy task, not with how strangely new it still felt for him to pick up a fresh cup of blackbrew tea from a waiting attendant as he had in the days before the return of the Old Light. Not with how oddly fresh it felt for him to duck into the hidden passage leading from the left wing workshop up into the Watcher's Spire, despite it being a path that he had walked along many times before, in the few moments that Lurien had needed to call for backup or he had required the support of his devout by his side while navigating a particularly difficult soul-spell or social convention. In the days of the plague, visiting the tower by more conventional means had been commonplace, a means to ground the public in the assurance that their king was working to halt their suffering- that he was returning to more secretive means of visiting his clergy sat oddly upon his thoughts, as if there was a disorienting gap between the time-that-was-then and the moment-that-was-now.

(Not that Lurien was the best person to seek advice from in matters relating to civil problems. Indeed, he was just as bad as the wyrm himself when around others, if not worse for the fact that he himself belonged to a social species of insect, and thus did not have the excuse of his blood to explain away his ineptitude. But he at least understood the delicacies of certain events that came to the forefront of the King's attention when they caused problems, such as class division in the City of Tears, and he was devoted enough to his position to set aside time to explain the nuances of such inanity when the exact details of current matters slipped past the attention of the White Lady herself.)

More disorienting than the familiarity, however, was the evidence that the gap in time between the two visits had not just been some odd fluke of the season. The Pale King preferred to consider his current form to be above the base instincts of his old one, but he was still a wyrm in truth, and proceeded into dark tunnels before him with the same cautionary inhalation that he had when his fangs alone had been the size of city spires. The thick smell of dust covering the faint traces of bug and wyrm-scent was almost as surprising as the ease with which he fell into old habits, startling enough to pause his steady tread before resuming the sloping walk upwards, to where a small elevator was waiting- or, rather, was supposed to wait, had it not been called up by the Watcher in his last ascent. For the sake of his own patience, he sent a beam of concentrated kingslight towards the lever to call the lift back down to his level, before allowing himself the indulgence of leaning wearily against the wall for a sip of tea. Though there was easily a high enough concentration of hard drugs brewed into the concoction to kill a room of mortals ten times over, all it did was soothe the tension headache building behind his mask- he had already forfeited far too much sleep for it to function as a pick-me-up.

...He could practically feel the White Lady’s disapproval radiating through their soul bond, though he tried not to think too hard about it. Likely it was merely a forewarning from his foresight, were it not simply predictability accumulated from the many years he had spent as her husband. When she had been in her gardens, when Lurien and Monomon had been locked in a curse of eternal sleep, there had been nobody to keep him from spending impossible hours in his workshop, slaving away at projects and infrastructure advancements until he had barely been able to keep his head up. To say that she had not been pleased to catch that fact upon a reunion of their minds was somewhat of an understatement, particularly when the sweeping search she had conducted had been after his…test...on the Pure Vessel.

(He did not tell her that when she had been in her gardens, work had been the only thing that had kept him together. He had obscured that fact from her, not wanting the aching regret in her own mind to grow heavier with the knowledge of what her absence had done to him. She did not deserve to suffer more under this curse that he had brought them under. All of the pain they had faced was because of him- even if she had taken a part in damning their children, she had only followed his lead down into the darkness. She should not have to bear the brunt of the pain that he had brought upon his own family.)

(He tried to shake that dismal fact from his mind as well, lest his heart grow too heavy for him to do much more than curl up in a ball and focus on how difficult it became to draw in each breath.)

The elevator came to rest with the soft whine of dry metal, pulling him from his thoughts before they were able to stray into darker pastures. He blinked, making a mental note to have the chains oiled before his next visit, and then allowed himself another small gift that he usually denied himself- a brief moment of relaxation as the contraption began to pull him up into the Spire proper, a moment that allowed him to stretch the expanse of his mind out into the world around him so that he might brush lightly against the enlightened minds within as they worked to keep the City safe. To feel the steady heartbeat of the world around him, and draw peace from the clockwork mechanism of its continuity, a decadent rhythm that had so nearly been snuffed out for good by the wrath of the Old Light.

Normally, he despised the sort of meetings that necessitated physical conference for an action of the Court to go forward, and would not be approaching this without some measure of distaste humming in the back of his mind. Although he adored the curiosity and creativity of his awakened citizens, they had a penchant for being loud and quarrelsome when their motivations were unlucky enough not to align- and that occurred far more frequently than he would like, despite his attempts to replace some of the more pelutent individuals from his parliament. Still, the spoiled and the useless would always find a way to try to fumble into the glory of their monarch’s light, mewling for his attention like some new-hatched grub, and so many of his meetings with others could invariably be summarized as the dithering of many bugs with many different goals straying from his own, while he perched patiently upon his throne and tried to focus hard enough on his pounding headache to keep himself from eating them all, or from wandering off to find some commoner who had more promise than half of the spoiled noblebugs that had somehow managed to end up in his courtroom, proper behavior be damned.

But this was Lurien, who was a kindred soul in many more ways than one. Lurien alone, for all of the other watchers and servants had been dismissed for his arrival, and finally the time had come to confront an issue that had been a thorn in his side for far too long. A thorn that had slipped through the loopholes of his rules to exploit the patience and benevolence that he had given them, a plague upon his land that had been brought about by the Infection, but had not died along with its accursed progenitor.

It was a nice change of pace from the dreary, repetitive hopelessness that he had gotten used to. The Pale King flicked the tip of his tongue over his mandibles, and allowed himself the small luxury of imagining soul-rich blood coursing freely from a well-placed bite, of the fear that would flash in the Soul Tyrant's eyes as bladed jaws closed around his neck. It was not an indulgence that he was particularly proud of savoring, but neither was he proud of the depth of inaction that had occurred after the Sealing, so he figured that the two of them balanced out somewhat. And it was a change of pace from the normal winding, dark pathways his mind went down after he had locked the Ves- his child away, which was sure to please his Lady if she desired to touch thoughts with him once they managed to gain a brief period of respite. He was sure that she would take delight in watching him plot the Soul Master's demise, for she had told him quietly that the fear coursing through the City had sent many an uncomfortable shiver through her roots. A properly bloody confrontation would do well to solve some of those issues for her, and absolve him of some of the guilt he felt for his neglect.

(It was quite unusual for him to be in as light of a mood as he was right now. He wasn't sure if it was his Queen pressing herself back into his life that did it, or the fact that he had caught both the Pure Vessel and the Heir of Deepnest slumbering together under a shadowy alcove, his far smaller daughter pressed protectively under their sibling's chin in a gesture that was terribly wyrmlike, despite the corruption that the void had wrought upon their mind and body.)

(The last he banished quickly from his mind, despite the aching desire to linger on something as blissful as watching over his two children. He did not have the right to be heartened by their comfort.)

...Well, technically, he and Lurien were investigating a series of murder-kidnappings tonight, not condemning their likely perpetrator. But this particular series of murder-kidnappings had gone on long enough for poring over their reports to be a ritual all in of itself, which meant that the wyrm was quite unbothered when he caught the sound of Lurien swearing filthily as he stepped through the doorway into his office, far too absorbed in his work to notice the familiar presence behind him.

(What did bother him was the sharp twinge of relief that stabbed through him at the familiar sight of a blue-robed figure puddled messily onto the table in an ink-spattered heap of fabric, rather than a still body lying prone under the invisible hum of a protective barrier. Not for the fact that it existed at all, but for the intensity of it, rocking through his thorax as if the emotion itself had turned into a physical weight to assault him rather than a complex rush of chemicals through his bloodstream.)

"Greetings, Lurien," he murmured, folding the hands not clutching his teacup behind him to hide their subtle shake. The Watcher froze mid-swear, a small stick of charcoal slipping from his claws, before promptly slamming his knee into his desk in his effort to turn to face his king, sending him sprawling inelegantly to the floor with a squeak of pained dismay. To Lurien's credit, he'd managed to transform the pained stumble of his fall into a somewhat acceptable bow, though that did not hide the awkward way he had to angle himself to avoid pressing his injured knee into the carpet, or the fact that he had graduated from that particular level of deference long enough ago to give the Pale king himself a headache.

...This behavior in particular was unusual for him. Not the flightiness, per se, or his awkwardness when faced with sudden socialization, but the fact that he had not anticipated his arrival, for he had been quite good at remembering royal visits in the past. He paused, studying the ex-Dreamer for hints of any abnormalities, then glanced over at his desk, which was practically overflowing with a variety of reports and writing implements. The sheer amount of paperwork was so great enough to take most of the blame for his lapse in judgement, he decided, and so the Pale King chose to not linger upon it overmuch. "...I see that you have been busy. Are you experiencing some setbacks in gathering sufficient evidence for condemnation?"

"My King!" Lurien’s spluttered cry came out somewhat muffled, voice swallowed both by the heavy robes around him and the thick carpet below him. A dark, paint-splattered hand darted out from beneath his cloak to grab the piece of fallen charcoal, then was forced to drop it again when he bumped the table in an attempt to rise, allowing a half-empty inkbottle to roll precariously close to the edge of his cluttered desk. The state of Lurien’s workspace was nothing like the disaster hidden away in some of the Pale King’s workshops, and not nearly as dangerous as what was contained within, but the sight of black fluid coming perilously close to spilling over made the old wyrm grimace all the same. "P-pardon me for failing to welcome you into the Spire, as well as failing to foresee your arrival in general. I was a bit...busy."

"I see." The Pale King glanced at the skein of spidersilk perched by his desk, then at the second precariously-balanced inkbottle beside it, and quietly decided to take care not to startle Lurien again. The silk was far easier to mark and transport than clay or stone tablets, but the skeins sent in were also expensive, and Herrah was just as unrelenting on lowering their cost as she had been when the truce between Hallownest and Deepnest had been young. Pointing out all the costs that she had wrought upon him when she had let her village eat his tram workers did not help, either, for Deepnest was perilous enough for her to lay the blame on various tunneling beasts rather than the more civilized sort dwelling within the Distant Village. "And you are excused, for your duty to the City far outweighs any slight you might have caused in the process. But I care not for such pleasantries, as you well know. Tell me what you have found first. I have reason to worry about what has caused you such distress"

“As you wish, my king.” Lurien adjusted the lay of his cloak, shoulders hunched with something that even the Pale King could tell was embarrassment, before he smoothed his stance back to something far more proper and cleared his throat. “It is with great relief that I can tell you that no, the Soul Sanctum is no longer able to refuse any requests I have made for a thorough examination of their laboratories, nor can they effectively refute any claims that they are responsible for the disappearances that have continuously occurred within their sector. Songstress Marissa has done her job well in raising the public’s attention towards the plethora of missing bugs; they cannot refuse to lend their aid now, not with how famously they pledged to aid the populace in the time of the Infection.”

Lurien spoke with all the calm, neutral confidence he’d learned to copy after years serving as Watcher, but the Pale King could hear the belligerence hidden beneath his tone, mixed with a near-savage sense of satisfaction. It was uncommon to hear him so riled, and yet not entirely unexpected; Lurien had been bogged down by reports of missing bugs within the poorer sectors of the City for years, a problem that had frustrated him greatly in addition to the added stressor of the plague looming overhead. While the Pale King himself had left his Watcher to the task, too busy training the Pure Vessel and dealing with the new peace treaties being settled with Deepnest, he had often spent many nights in Lurien’s company while they worked over their respective problems together, and he had heard his acolyte’s suspicions about the inner workings of the Soul Sanctum. Though he himself rarely dallied in its affairs (something the White Lady had chided him on, given that it was the closest thing to a church in his honour than anything else in Hallownest), Lurien was well versed in its teachings by virtue of being one of its graduates, and held a profound suspicion for the new headmaster that had come into power after the old one fell to the lightrot. Apparently, he was a particularly arrogant, power-hungry fiend born out of one of the higher ranks of nobility, and was rich, charismatic, and devoted enough to his cause for almost all the suspicion he had for him to be cast aside with a few well-worded letters back to the Spire, backed with enough lawminders and taxpayers for Lurien to technically be unable to make any political move against him. The Sanctum did not have the ability to directly request an appeal from the King, like the Watcher or his assistants, but it was a powerful enough organization backed by a powerful enough- and well liked enough- member of the upper caste to politely find loopholes in all of the legal systems put in place to regulate such associations, even after receiving a cease and desist from the King himself.

(The Pale King had many regrets in his life. Few applied to how he ran his kingdom, but if there was one thing that he wished he did better, it was to account for the fact that mortal bugs craved power just as dearly as any god, and would go to nearly the same lengths to acquire it. He still did not understand why any of them would desire such a war-torn existence, but it made quashing the efforts rather tiresome, even if he privately found the thrill of Lurien’s anger to be quite invigorating.)

"Excellent," he growled...perhaps a little more savagely than he should, for Lurien stiffened by an increment, giving him a subtle glance that he knew translated to a worried side-eye under the mask. If his emotional slip-up had occurred in the presence of any other mortal, this might have been embarrassing, but all that crossed the King's mind when he refocused on his Watcher was the distant worry that he might have frightened him. Lurien had been his for longer than the White Lady had been in bloom, but he was prey for beings like him, and something as primal as the fear of the hunt was not so easily shaken. "As for what upset you? If it is a trivial matter, I suggest passing it down to one of your associates. They are more than capable of offering solutions to more complex problems if needed."

He did not add in the implied 'I need your focus with me, on our shared enemy'- he didn't need to. Lurien had other watchers under his hire, yes, but none of them were as efficient enough to truly replace Lurien himself, even with all of their combined efforts and careful tutoring. They did not have the keen eyes, dedication, discipline, and watchfulness that set Lurien apart from all the rest, that made him so much more important to the protection of the City of Tears. A group of them might be sharp enough to catch any of the Soul Master's plans in action, but they did not have the stubborn determination that Lurien obtained when faced with someone threatening the populace, though some came close.

But most importantly, did they have the careful, measured devotion that allowed the Pale King to use Lurien himself as his focus, to slide carefully into his mind and experience the world through the constraints of a mortal's eyes. That the title of Watcher was interchangeable with the Eyes of God was not the work of any particularly overzealous poets- it was literal. Lurien was the closest that the Pale King came to a high priest, a mortal dedicated enough and willful enough to share a body with a god without being overwhelmed. Which was quite helpful when scaling down the extent of his divine fury or rushing to emergency calls when needed- replacing the first few worshipers who'd been driven mad by the power of his mind had been a terrible hassle in the past.

(He carefully put aside the memories of attempting to give a bug foresight by choice. The massacre that had followed was not one he liked to linger on.)

Apparently, alleviating his worries wasn't as easy as reminding his Watcher that he had a plethora of other bugs who would jump at the opportunity to take on his more menial tasks. Lurien just sighed, shook his head, and lifted a clay slate up for the Pale King to read, pointing wearily at the hastily-etched scratches gleaming on its surface. Even before he started speaking, the king was able to catch the pungent reek of acid and ozone clinging to its surface, hallmarks of the Teacher’s Archives.

"Monomon was attacked by a soul warrior when trying to reconnect with her lost apprentice through scrying." Lurien said quietly, as if he was afraid that any other bugs in the currently-emptied tower might hear him. "She managed to dispatch him with her electricity, for her knowledge of its power was greater than his own, but it was a near thing, and the fact that she had a scribe scribble this out on a clay journal rather than sending the message along in an acid tube does not bode well at all. I fear for her, and I fear what the Soul Master plans to do next, and I loathe him for endangering her when she has done nothing but work to save his sorry ass from the plague he was terrified of contracting, as if the search for defying mortality is worth the cost of so many lives to begin with!"

Lurien threw down the slate in a fit of disgust, but the clatter of ceramic against pure stone was distant, diluted. He stared after it on instinct, eyes tracking the movement like any unthinking predator of the wastes, while a cold, numbing fog descended over his mind, rising quietly from some dark place deep within him to cover his thoughts like a shroud.

No cost too great.

A million broken masks at the bottom of the world. His pale light, shining out in defiance of the deepest black, illuminating the similarity pale faces staring up at him from below, where they reached and clawed and scrabbled desperately to reach him, thousands of little hands reaching for the comfort of their father before they fell back down to their death.

Void creeping over white carapace like ice. Feeling the spreading corruption burn, before fear seized control again, and his soul flared bright enough to counter it. Bright enough to burn it away before it could stain, though some part of him knew that he would not escape these experiments unscathed. His hands had already been smudged grey when he cradled the first of his eggs close, caught in the grips of some animal instinct that filled him with sick dread past the terrible rush of hope. By the time the Abyss was sealed, they had been stained to a deep, pure black, and he had long grown numb to the quiet pain that throbbed through him with each clutch lost to the deep.

(Children, children, they had been his children-)

The Hollow Knight, crouched low and small and watching with dark, empty eyes as he struggled against the essence that wept freely from a wound in their mask, awaiting his order for them to heal. Staring up at him in a manner that made them seem almost as if they were cowering, the void bleeding from them making it almost seem like they were crying.

The pale sweep of their horns against the darkness, ever so familiar to him, as the chains wrapped tight around them, and the Black Egg sealed them away to their long, slow death. His chest ached, ached as if the pain of their absence tore away at the heart of his very being, and his void-stained claws had long gone numb

And from far below, a dissonance, one that pulled at the very core of his being. Churning sickly in his chest, dragging down his heavy head as if it could create stability for itself if only it could manage to rend him apart, it pulsed black, black black against his soul, and under the harsh glare of the Kingslight and the soft nothingness of the Abyss, he almost thought he saw a gentle golden glow...

…"Y lord? My lord!" Lurien's voice filtered through the dull haze, an anxious warble that suddenly made it very hard to think of anything other than the state of the world around him. He blinked on reflex, flicking away a mote of something gleaming from his eyes, then silently focused on the two shaking hands hovering above him, fringed in a familiar flare of flaxen fluff. Those were Lurien's hands, he realized slowly, as if his thoughts were tunneling slowly through a granite hillside, and the shaking was evidently connected to Lurien's terrified trilling, which did not bode well for either of them in the near future. He didn't need to (didn't want to) use futuresight to know that was the case. "...You're bleeding."

...Ah. All of his righthand claws were currently lodged in his chest, steadily leaking both blood and soul out into the world around him. He stared numbly down at the silvery-blue ichor smeared over his darkened talons, glowing bright against his voidstained carapace, then blinked as a sharp sting made itself known in his left hand, the dull throbbing in his chest barely noticeable in comparison. He turned to look at it, tasting the tang of his own blood in the air, and stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of white shards buried in a mess of silver-blue, streaked through with a darkness that sent a surge of unbridled terror through him before he filtered the pungent stench of herbs out from the reek of his own ichor.

Apparently, he had gripped his mug hard enough for it to shatter in his claws, spilling hot tea into the gashes the porcelain had left behind. He narrowed his eyes at the slashes in his chitin, ignoring Lurien flitting about in the background, but no darkness bubbled out of the wound the shards had left behind, no void hissed out of the gouges he had raked into his chest. For all the cold weight in his chest felt like the touch of the eternal abyss, the corruption he had wrought upon himself- that he knew he wrought upon himself, that he could feel burning in his veins- did not manifest.

He wasn't sure if that was a blessing or a curse. That he could escape the touch of the sea, when his own child could not. That they should suffer the consequences of what he had done to them, while he escaped unscathed.

Something soft pressed against his claws, nudging its way gently into their harsh curl. He sunk his bloodstained talons into it on reflex, before common sense could force him to balk away, but just as disappointment started to rise for giving into his instincts, a heavy weight draped itself around him, and swathed him in darkness.

Darkness that was not empty. Darkness that smelled heavily of incense, but heavier of Lurien, a dusty-sweet musk that spoke of safety and unyielding devotion, a grounding point in a life fraught with uncertainty. A point that demanded him to be calm, be still, be good, lest he crush it beneath his fangs, and have it be lost to him forever. He opened his mouth in a gasp, drawing air into his empty lungs, and shivered as that heavy scent washed over his tongue, something wild and primal within him settling under its familiarity.

Slowly, the ringing in his head cleared away. He blinked, kneading distractedly at the soft velvet between his claws, and slowly the sting of his wounds began to filter on back to him, become more bothersome than they had before. Slowly, he became aware of the stink of blood and soiled down under the smell of smoke and his devout. He became aware of the crush of velvet under his pawpads, stained wet with soul-rich ichor, and of the harsh glow he was giving off, though it faded with every breath he took.

And as the shroud of numbness faded away, he became aware of the familiar press of his Lady’s mind against his own, watching him as carefully as she could with her mind solidly walled off from the tram of his thoughts. He froze, guilt flooding him at the knowledge of what he had just wrought upon their link, but the questioning probe he sent back to her was brushed away before it could come to full fruition.

Lurien, whispered the White Lady; from somewhere outside the comforting press of the blanket draped around him, he felt his Watcher flinch, but the voice of his better half forged on regardless, speaking with a calm he knew she did not truly feel. Do not let go of him. Hold him tight, and keep the blanket over his horns. I would not fit within the Spire, even if I could rush out of this meeting to aid you as I wish. You must do what I cannot.

"Understood, my lady," whispered Lurien, with a terrified reverence that the King hadn't heard in a long, long time, and the comforting pressure on his sides shifted with his words. He was warm, he realized, warmer than he would be if he had been left alone under the blanket, and far more secure. The fabric wrapped around him was both heavy and thick, but there was not nearly enough padding within it to give the same sensation of comfort than what he was experiencing right now.

Lurien was holding him. There was a blanket over him, his palms were stinging, his chest was aching, there was dried moss and soft down glued to his talons by his own blood, but his wife’s presence was glowing softly in his mind, and Lurien was holding him.

By all accounts, he should have been sickened by his own actions. The King of Hallownest was not weak. The King of Hallownest was not supposed to freeze at the disgust in his advisor’s voice, or burden his Queen with his regrets. The god-king of the Eternal Kingdom was a pillar of justice, a shining beacon of truth and protection- he could not allow himself to become this fragile, snarling animal shivering at the touch of the dark. He should not have to be bundled up under a blanket so that he could not destroy the shell that defined him in the waking world, so that the claws he crafted for himself would not dig into his own hide. He should be standing in front of his throne, as regal and distant as one of the stars in the heavens, he should be listening to his Watcher as he listed off his findings. He should not be as he was right now, cold and heavy and trembling and weak, full of a guilt that burned and a shadow that stung.

But Lurien was holding him, and his wife crooned her love for him through their bond, and he was warm.

You are not a burden, my love. A disaster, yes. But a burden you are not. His lover's voice echoed through his head, a faint edge of amusem*nt bubbling up through their bond. He let out a hard breath, something dangerously close to a shaky laugh of his own, though it was born more out of the terror churning through his mind than genuine amusem*nt. You guarded me when I was but a weak sapling growing on the edge of the Wastes, though you yourself were still young and fresh from the nests. You helped me take Hallownest, and made your den to be a haven for me, though I know how important solitude is to you. As you cared for me, I shall care for you, for you are not a burden, but someone that I care for deeply, despite all of what we have done. Isn’t that right, Lurien?

Her amusem*nt grew at once sharper and sweeter through the bond, radiating a content smugness that she normally only felt when in complete control of a room full of bugs. The Pale King paused, the cold despair creeping through his lungs ebbing away at the advent of confusion, but the questioning thought that he sent to her was pointedly ignored.

“I-! Y-yes, my Lady, y-you are correct.” Lurien froze midway through removing the blanket from over his king’s head, his normally melodious voice breaking into an undignified squeak. The Pale King blinked, turning his bemused gaze to the single hole of his Watcher’s mask, but this only made his anxiety worse, as the faint tremble vibrating through him turned to a full-on shake. Apparently, growing accustomed to the power of one Pale Being did not prepare a mortal for the attention of another; the poor bug looked like he was about to faint, though the press of the White Lady’s mind upon them both was gentle enough that it should not have caused such undue distress. “I...I wish only to relieve you of your pain, my King. The mistakes we have made in the past need not extend into the future. If there is anything I can do to help us make amends for what we have done, then I will do it. I will be by your side for as long as you will need me.”

His voice grew soft and sorrowful, but there was a gentle warmth to his words, a devotion that reminded him of his place. He breathed out, long and slow, then let the vigor flowing through him at his Watcher's affection manifest within his body as pure soul, healing shut the self-inflicted wounds as his wife hummed her approval.

Well said, loyal Watcher. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some mediating to do. This particular cloth merchant has some simply dreadful opinions of Queen Herrah that she unfortunately believes me to share. Why, if I wasn’t giving her the benefit of the doubt, I’d nearly think that she was attempting to coerce me into severing the ties between our nations. Now a vicious edge crept into the White Lady's voice, a sad*stic sort of delight that he hadn't had the pleasure of hearing in a long, long time. He tilted his head up, rumbling quietly in reverence to her as she laughed, and for a moment it was as if the return of the Radiance had never happened and he was whole and strong and hale again, not half-drowned in the sea of his regret. Lurien, take care of him for me in my stead. There is a dreadful amount of misinformation circling about the populace that I must debunk if we are to remain in Deepnest's favor- I cannot spend the rest of this meeting filling the gaps between with sympathetic hums and clicking noises.

"Always, my Queen. You have my solemn vow." Lurien interrupted before he could fire back a suitable protest- the King of Hallownest need not be observed by the very mortal he employed to serve as the eyes of his kingdom, but neither the Watcher nor the White Lady seemed to agree, if the warning glances that he received (both physical and mental) were of any indicator. “Make them regret speaking out against our allies.”

Oh, I will, chuckled the White Lady, before withdrawing from both of their minds; the Pale King followed after her for a moment longer, extending his senses outwards to catch a glimpse of anything else that might be bothering her, but nothing caught his attention. He knew that sorrow still plagued her, that some moments she yearned to return to her gardens to atone for her part in cursing their brood, but the pale blue-grey tinge of her pain was not present in her mind. Not as the darkness was in his, lingering heavily in his thoughts even as he tried to force it away to focus on the task before him.

It was getting worse. He clenched his claws tight, and did not let Lurien see his unease. With luck, sealing the borders of Hallownest against the influence of the Nightmare King would aid in settling the Void, however weak his hopes of success. The Abyssal Sea was eternity incarnate, the end of all living things, but that did not mean that it was infallible, or invulnerable to the changing of the realms around it. It was very likely that the unbalancing of the Dream Realm was what pushed it into this state of reactivity, though the wyrm himself could sense its instability only through the rippling in the dream left behind. Foiling that damnable fool's attempts to tamper with it (or whatever it was he was doing) would most likely keep him from rocking the metaphorical boat.

...Then again, it had been very likely that the void would swallow the life of his children while they were kindling within their eggs, and he had possessed the research to back that assumption. He had run experiments on test subjects beforehand, he had allowed the abyss to consume trace amounts of his own pure light. Here he was just erring on a matter of speculation, guided by a basic understanding of the Dream Realm and its association with the Abyss. Such an assumption was insignificant in comparison to how well he thought he understood the void-now he had conclusive proof that the Hollow Knight yet lived, he wouldn't be surprised if his theories on the current state of the Dream Realm were wrong as well.

(He had always had proof that they had not been hollow. Always, always, always. But he had lied to himself, for he had been too afraid to face the consequences, and so they had all suffered for his own inadequacy, while he was still here to reap the rewards sown by their sorrow.)

Lost in thought, he almost didn't notice when Lurien left to go retrieve a cleaning-cloth, or set a bowl of warm water next to where he sat. He only became aware of it when the feeling of something soft and damp touched his claws, carefully prying them away from the torn, bloodstained pillow they were still sunk into to clean the blood off of his hands. An act of servitude that was far above Lurien’s station, and far beyond what he would allow any other bug to do, for the touch of another was repulsive more often than not.

But not here. Not now.

“...You don't have to do that,” he rasped, removing the rest of his claws from the pillow with a grimace of disgust. He had made a mess, and the disorder of the room only highlighted his own failure, blood and tea splashed over some of the spidersilk sheets strewn over the floor. As a king, it was disgraceful. As a god, it was pathetic. But perhaps the worst part of it all was that his lapse in control had occurred in front of Lurien, who had not only had to bear the burden of Hallownest's troubles for years on end, but had been willing to- would have- died for it.

(The Palace had been so empty, after the Sealing. With his Lady gone, the world had lost its vibrance. With Monomon sealed within the depths of her archives, there was no laughter in the workshops, no bubbling curiosity to guide him into odd pursuits. With Lurien asleep upon his plinth at the top of his watchtower, there was no refuge from the great arched ceilings of the Palace, there were no quiet nights spent talking quietly over tea.)

(Wyrms were solitary creatures. They conquered their territory, they established their godhood, and they spent the rest of their lives jealously guarding their hoards until someone stronger or smarter left them in ruins. They were solitary, beastly, ravenous animals, and he was one of them, no matter how far he tried to set himself apart. The sacrifices he had been forced to make should not have affected him so.)

(And yet, as he sat alone on his throne and looked out over the world their lives had bought him, the only thing that he could focus on had been the emptiness.)

"I mean no offense when I say this, sire, but I believe that the proper response is 'thank you'." Lurien's dry humour was a balm on his nerves, setting some semblance of normality back into the picture. His mask tipped towards their hands, studying the way they were clasped together, before he made a funny little noise in his throat and backed away. "I...It is the least that I can do for you. You know I was being honest, for I would not dare lie to my exalted queen, but I will say it again- I don't enjoy seeing you in pain. It is...it is not just the love for my kingdom that keeps me at your side, my lord."

His voice wavered in the last sentence, overcome with some strong emotion. The Pale King narrowed his eyes at him, searching for signs of distress, but there was no anxious tremble in Lurien's frame, no subtle flickering of his cloak. He was calm as he dipped the bloodstained cloth back into the washbasin, and he was calm when he passed a second rag over, lukewarm after being exposed to the chill in the air. Whatever he was feeling, it wasn’t fear. Nor was it the invigorating rush of worship, though it was of similar kinship to that god-sustaining focus achieved in the minds of bugs, and familiar in a way that he could not quite describe. “Speaking of atoning for what we have done, I must ask you this- have you attempted to establish communication with the Hollow Knight? I know that Monomon and Herrah have agreed to help tutor them in the ways of bugkind, and I too wish to assist as much as I can. However, I would not wish to expose the vessel to any discomfort my presence may cause. I know not if they are capable of even expressing such emotions yet, but it would hearten me greatly if they offered their assent.”

...Well, if he didn’t know what feeling had broken Lurien’s voice, then he knew what that simple request had elicited in himself. He turned his attention to cleaning his hands and chest, meticulously wiping away any sticky residue still clinging to his carapace, and kept his face carefully blank while he answered his question. Lurien had already had to deal with the burden of his regrets enough tonight. “No. No attempts have been made to establish communication as of yet. My involvement in their recovery has been focused primarily on improving their physical health, and of studying the effects that the sudden death of the Old Light had upon Hallownest. Seek out the Heir of Deepnest if you want your answers; that is a task I have not taken yet.”

Silence. The Pale King frowned, attention still caught by the blood staining his claws, then glanced up and blinked when he saw Lurien's maskhole boring into him, apparently at a loss for words.

"...Is something the matter?" He inquired, mentally trying to run over the logistics of their conversation in his mind; Lurien was prone to bouts of awkward staring, but that was expected from a bug appointed the title of Watcher, and they had never felt as pointed as this one. Nor did the Pale King ever feel threatened when his advisor held his gaze like this, as Lurien himself usually flinched and stammered an apology when caught staring. This, however, was far closer to the sort of look that his Lady gave him when he forgot about something important, which was intimidating enough in its own right to immediately put him on edge.

“...Nothing. It’s nothing.” Lurien sighed, then slipped a hand up under his cloak to massage at some point on his face, moving everything about. The displacement shifted his mask up far enough to make it seem like he was looking up at the ceiling in a prayer for patience, which the Pale King was not particularly sure if he enjoyed, given the fact that he was sitting right beside him and had no idea what was wrong in the first place. “I can take both the princess and the vessel either tomorrow or the day after, as long as it is before Queen Herrah returns to Deepnest. Lucien will not be pleased without an advanced notice, but the low amount of staff currently present may aid in obscuring the Hollow Knight. I will focus on getting the Spire ready for their arrival while I continue to sort through the reports on the Soul Master’s misdeeds.”

“Then we shall attack the sanctum in a week’s time. Tell the singer to hide within the Spire for protection, and rally your knights.” His voice rang with just enough of a divine command to sufficiently hide his confusion, though the tired look that Lurien gave him in return implied that it didn’t work to the extent that he desired. “Legal measures can be dealt with afterwards- I am tired of laying in wait for the fool to misstep. You have done well to serve me, Watcher Lurien. Take your rest for now, as you will require it in the times ahead.I have some business matters that I need to deal with that go beyond your call of duty.”

“My king,” Lurien murmured, before sweeping into an overly formal bow. He spared one last glance at his ruler, still sitting crosslegged with a bowl of bloody water beside him and a torn-up pillow in his lap, then exited the room with another soft sigh, leaving the God of Mind behind with no more answers to his name.

...He made the mental note to ask the White Lady for some more information on the habits of emotion-driven mortals. Being left in the dark was something that he had consigned himself to long ago, both in the literal and the metaphorical sense, but it was getting pretty tiring at this point.

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Now that I'm staring down at the darkest abyss

I'm not sure what I want but I don't think it's this

As my comrades call to stand fast and forge on

I make sail for the dawn 'til the darkness has gone

As the souls of the dead live for'er in my mind

As I live all the years that they left me behind

I'll stay on the shore but still gaze at the sea

I remember the fallen and they think of me

For our souls in the ocean together will be

-Bones in the Ocean, The Longest Johns

Chapter 12: Interlude Two: all that there was, and all that could ever be

Chapter Text

Undo this storm

Undo this storm

Undo this storm and wait

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They say that Hallownest lies at the end of the world.

They say many things lie across the shifting sands, and perhaps some of them are true. Of the masses that gaze wonderingly beyond the borders of everything they ever knew, many tell tales of a land where gods and bugs walk side by side, as if kindred to one another. When the elders speak of Hallownest, or the wanderers half-maddened by the wilds spin tales of the sights they saw within its depths, they speak of many colourful, meandering things, all the more fantastic than the last.

They speak of a world rich with magic, of verdant wilds and great fungal wastes that flourish in defiance of the endless desert around them, where no sane bug could ever thrive. Where massive creatures thrum and dig below the earth, churning the ground with the grinding rake of their mandibles as they search endlessly for something to satiate their endless hunger, and where one of them pulled away from the mire and muck to coil its massive body twice around the kingdom’s perimeter before it died, blessing the land with its protection. They speak of bubbling springs rich with a warmth that soothed both the mind and soul, of pale, twining roots that spread through the entirety of the kingdom, granting light to darkened places and healing all wounds they bled against.

They speak of rocks made of bone and shell, formed of the corpses of vast bugs fossilized into the very caverns themselves, and they speak of places in its heart where the very air runs thick with liquid shadow, as if the world itself was half-unfinished, inkblots and charcoal-marks smudging the parchment of reality. They speak of a thriving world constructed in the resting grounds of a graveyard, a place where new growth and old ruins live alike, where the birthplace of civilization nests in the shadows of giants.

And of the oldest legends regarding Hallownest, some whisper of an eternal golden light, though the details have long been eclipsed in favor of the more modern variant of the tale, which favors a deity of unyielding silver over soft, gentle gold. And those who stick fast to the words of their forefathers often find themselves growing distant, uncertain, and uneasy, doubting the legends of millennia over the words of bugs fresh from their travels. For the Pale Gods, as it was known, were the only two gods of the holy lands who beckoned outsiders into their shared territory, who allowed bugs outside of their devout to gaze upon their splendor and majesty, who built a city for the forsworn. The God of Mind and the Lady of Life welcomed the pilgrims, and offered safety to those who obeyed them, safety only half-promised by the slumbering goddess of the acid glades, or the unknowable spread of the Shrumal mycelium.

Steel and silver last eternal. Nothing gold can stay.

(Sometimes, the wanderers speak of a light everlasting, that burned the mind and pierced the soul. Of a sickness of dreams, of an ancient creature crying out in pain, angry beyond words and agonized beyond belief, a lost mother weeping and raging against the cold creatures that sealed her away. Of gold and beauty that warped the dreams and the shell of those it inhabited, a plague of grief and a blight of dream.)

(But that of all things cannot be true.)

(...Could it?)

And when the faraway bugs speak about Hallownest, they speak most often of a citadel thrumming at the heart of the caverns, one vast and unchanging, built of silver and glass and all manners of things far beyond what many bugs could fathom. And they say that the bugs that dwell within that city live the lives of scholars and teachers, masters and architects, and they shall never know the strife of war, or the terror of famine- for Hallownest, it is known, is a land where the divine walk amongst the living, and all that fall within their shadow are blessed. One takes pilgrimage to Greenpath for the peace of contemplation; to the mournful beauty of the Crystal Peaks one wanders for the song of dreams and sleeping ancestors. And to those brave enough, the deepest, darkest depths of the caverns may hold the most elusive of answers, hidden among the silence and the stillness of the repentant dead.

But if you stumble into Hallownest seeking renewal, a washing away of the old to rebuild into the new, it is to the city you go, and to the city you will stay.

And of the City of Tears, they say this:

There is a lake, between the sky and the world below, and one day the rocks will break and the whole thing will come tumbling down, down, down. But not until the world ends will the mourning capital find its rest.

And the world weeps, oh it weeps, but the bugs within the crying city never know the hardships beyond the sands, for the lands deep within Hallownest are laid of stone that know not the press of time. In the presence of gods, time transforms from a ravaging beast to a pitiful, mewling thing, and none of those who dwell below Hallownest's shade will ever see their kingdom fall.

And they say

You do not need to spend your nights kneeling in front of your altars with tears streaming down your cheeks, begging for forgiveness. The will and love of the gods is writ in the land around you; you will find your repentance by returning to the very things you rejected. Seek the birthplace of the world to find its ending. Find the lands where the shadow sparked into light, where life and dream rose from the ashes of dark and death.

And to the lost and weary, the weeping and the wandering, they say

Seek the epicenter.

Seek Hallownest.

Seek the verdant wilds of Greenpath, the vast sprawls of the Fungal Wastes. The crystals of the rosy peaks will sing to you, telling sweet stories of their light. Seek the twisting roads, the crying city, the pale citadel. For within Hallownest, all questions will be answered, all truths will be revealed.

But to what end to the tales of wanderers hold true? For there are many kingdoms in the vast wide world, with many more perils in between. Beyond the borders where bugs huddle together, wild magic abounds, stealing the life and the mind of all who dare stray from the herd. Beyond the few nooks of safety that can be found for ones so small, great beasts of terror roam, devouring any and all that lie in their path, the threat of their fangs far more potent than a half-cried promise of holiness far away from all that could ever be known.

But for some, a legend is all that they need.

For a jellyfish fleeing the persecution of her kindred, carrying as many fragile souls as she could away from the extinction of her race, the lure of freedom and knowledge was a beacon of hope.

For a young couple in love, separated from their family by those who feared their laughter and song, the potential for eternity was enough. Anything for the egg wrapped under their wings, sole survivor of a clutching attempt gone terribly, horribly wrong.

For a clan of Weavers, pursued by bugs long gone mad by the chime of bronze bells, the promise of safety was all that they needed. No gift of holy cleansing did they seek from the Pale Gods, for the holiness of the lands they left behind had been their undoing, but that did not stop them from fleeing to the kingdom found at the end of the world.

But songs about freedom and knowledge unbound are not all that are sung to Hallownest's name.

Fanatical stories abound, as any are wont to in the name of divinity. It is the nature of a mortal being to fear the unknown, after all, and deep within the darkness below the kingdom, many beings dwell that are beyond what any living creature can comprehend. Of skittering, scratching monsters many tales are told, nightmare stories of long-limbed sirens contrasting against stories of lost loved ones found in the shadows, luring travelers to their demise. Of thrashing bodies and tearing fangs in dens dark and dreary do those lucky wanderers speak, with the hushed terror of those still in awe at making it out alive. For many, they whisper, do not.

But that is not where the stories end.

For there are depths farther down below than the wild expanse of Deepnest. There are passageways and caverns far older than the great cave that holds the White Palace, where even the vast might of the Pale Wyrm dared not burrow. Places where spiraling fossils line the walls, and shadows gather thick enough to silence even the slight scrape of shell upon stone, as if cast underwater. Places where it felt as if the world itself stood perfectly still, places where the pulse of time had stopped beating, places where it felt like the border between the something of reality faded into the nothingness of unreality, and the only indicator that anyone was alive instead of hovering between two fragile states of existence were the fragile beat of a lumafly’s wings against the glass of their lanterns, only the slightest speck of light left to defy the dark. Caverns where it felt as if the genesis of the world had come into being simply to counter the vast expanse of the nothingness around them, from which all were created and all shall return.

Few wanderers ever made it far enough down to see such a sight. Even fewer made it back with their minds intact, or some vital part of themselves not left behind to the endless deep.

And they say,

There is an ocean beneath Hallownest.

And of the many things whispered by elderbugs and fledgeling youths across the sprawling lands, this is the one that is the most true.

For there is an ocean below Hallownest, one where the surface lies as still as glass and the waters as dark as death. An ocean where the tides never turn, and waves do not break against the shoreline, as if the sea itself slumbers under a shroud of eternal sleep. Endlessly it stretches, its vast expanse twined through twisting tunnels and bottomless trenches, a silent behemoth hidden away from the world above. Only when something flicker-bright and alive comes by does it stir from its rest, flaring bright with a fear and a hunger half-remembered from centuries before, but it dies away as soon as it comes, and those dragged below never surface again. It is just as alive as it is dead, which is to say, it is neither. And yet it exists despite the persistence of its nonexistance, for some bug’s inability to understand it does not mean that it could not be found at some strange crossroad between being something and being nothing, the Sea and the Lord distinct yet one.

(Even if it is one god’s inability to understand it that is the reason it exists in such a form, and the ambitious misunderstanding of another was what caused it to be enslaved for the usage of another. The Void does not suffer, not in the way that any creature of the light could comprehend, but just because one cannot understand another’s suffering doesn’t mean that it does not exist.)

There is no violence here. There is no hatred, no fear. There is nothing at the end of the world, and there is everything. All that ever was and all that will ever be will eventually find its way to the ocean at the bottom of Hallownest, for it is the blank slate before creation, the nothingness that hungers and consumes, the rush of movement and sensation that swallows the mind when the instincts overcome all conscious thought. There is emptiness, and there is fear, and there is nothingness and a memory of pain, and below all of it there is a deep, calm acceptance that underlies the raging regrets that make up the body of each little soul that hovers above the eggshells submersed in its shade, where they hide away from the glow of the light and the call of the sea.

Once there was life here, and a light that did not burn, and an acceptance that did not twist or chain or burn like the restless sun and moon above. Once, there was unity, and from that unity came disparity, and a whole swathe of fascinated creatures that defied the pull of the darkness to find beauty and comfort in what they could not hope to understand. And they built their homes in what was eventually to be known as the kingdom forged at the end of the world, and they lived and learned and laughed with the darkness as if it was an old friend, and did not fear it when the time came for it to take them, as so many others did when they tried to flee from their shadows.

Some might call it foolish, to worship the darkness as if it were a god, as if it were something that could understand the ordeal of being alive, as if were anything more than a vast, hungry creature gliding mindlessly through the sea of its creation in defiance of the nothingness that made it. What dwelled beneath the surface of the Void Sea had all the sapience of a hurricane, and just as much potential for destruction- when the Void had focus, it was something to be feared, not something to be accepted.

And those who say so were right, just as they were impossibly, unfathomably wrong. For it is the inherent nature of a living being to be flawed and foolish, but so too is it to be curious and kind. Just because two things contradict each other does not necessarily mean that they are not true, or that they cannot coexist with one another, and this was a lesson that the first civilization learned well when they placed their homes in the basin of Hallownest, and gave all that they could offer to the sea.

There was life here once. There was joy. Before the bright, burning light of the Radiance came and scorched it all away, immolating those who dared to resist when the ancient being within rose to try- and fail- to swallow her whole. Before the cold glare of the Pale King found the ruin that the Old Light left behind, and shackled what remained to draw the life from an army of children, turning a blind eye the suffering they cried in a tongue he could not understand. The fanatic of Dream and the focus of Mind could not fathom anything beyond the scope of their own ambitions, and so they burned away those that they chose to fear, and left a graveyard in their wake.

But those times are gone now, and its storytellers with it too.

Now the embers of the Old Light flicker weakly in the gullet of the beast, and the shackles once constraining the darkness have shattered, accepting the inevitable. And the Abyss sleeps deep below the kingdom at the end of the world, a cumulation of eternity spread between the last of its kindred to walk free on the earth.

Once whole, now scattered. Once united, now lost.

But for now, the Abyss waits.

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I'll be the calm

I will be quiet

Stripped to the bone, I wait

No, I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter

A tower that casts a shade

I lie awake and watch it all

It feels like thousand eyes

I lie awake and watch it all

It feels like thousand eyes

-A Thousand Eyes, of Monsters and Men

Chapter 13: Hello, It's Nice to Meet You

Chapter Text

I entered this life

With little expectations

But soon became absorbed by ideas

That I built above my station

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Caring for the children turned out to be an oddly peaceful experience.

The first time the Watcher had come into contact with the Heir of Deepnest, she had been a squalling hatchling squirming to escape the light of the White Palace in her mother’s ruff, and had taken to being dumped into a stranger's arms about as well as Lurien himself had. That event, as it so happened, had been the first time in his very long life that he had required treatment for a spider’s venom, and it certainly hadn’t been the last- Herrah had wanted her daughter to be well socialized in Hallownest’s customs, but the little spiderwyrm herself hadn’t shared her mother’s ideals, and had been more than willing to express her dissent with the use of her natural weapons before her words. At the measly age of two, when she was still half-squeaking out each word between chelicerae too big to properly fit under her mask, she had announced her desire to one day get big enough to eat Lurien alive, and he had henceforth been required to deal with periodic attempts on his life every time the Dreamers held a meeting. Nor was he spared outside of official meetings with Deepnest’s entourage; the King often decided to take her along on visiting-days when she was at the White Palace for training, with nary a warning to the Watcher, and hardly an awkward ‘hello uncle Lurien’ from the girl before she tried to launch herself at his ankles for a killing bite, despite her father tiredly protesting behind her.

(And though each visit had often been fraught with anxiety and chaos, it sent a flutter through his heart, to know that one as guarded as the Pale Wyrm would trust him in the presence of his one living child, to allow him to watch as he curled his tail around her or built her a nest of blankets and pillows on his couch, a soft rumble in his throat. For however cold his King could be, there was always that protective, gentle side of his soul that warmed Lurien like nothing else, that forever reminded him of how blessed he was to pledge himself to a god who would give his all for his people. That despite the vast nature of his being, the power surging through his form, he still chose to spend his evenings watching as his people staked out their lives in the safety of his kingdom, that he would take such pride in those so far below him, and would grow to trust one of them- a foreigner’s son, no less!- enough to grant him the title of Watcher.)

(It almost made the stinging paralysis from his daughter’s bite worth it.)

The last time he had seen her, of course, had not been so fortunate. She had been clinging to the spider midwife’s side, tears streaming down her face as she screamed obscenities at the pale god that stood beside her, frozen with his claws hovering over her mother’s still body. He had already been Dreaming, by then, but the tug of the King’s power had served as a guiding beacon to him even beyond the boundaries of the waking world. He had been drawn to Deepnest by that glorious, pale light, and he had been forced to watch helplessly as she lunged at her sire, claws flared and fangs bared, and he had been forced to bear witness to the way the King’s eyes grew cold at the sight, staring regally down at his daughter before turning away without a word.

And the Pure Vessel...he did not even wish to linger upon his memories of the Pure Vessel. That he had hesitated to point out the signs of life in them before they were condemned to their terrible fate still choked him. That he had allowed himself to become blinded by the Pale King's desperation still hurt- not for the King's sake, though his heart ached for the pain he had burdened himself with, but for the sake of his child. That the Vessel themselves had to hold the weight of the world upon their shoulders, and suffer the fury of a dying god, all because their elders were too terrified of the truth to accept it. That a godling- a child, they were a child, none of the circ*mstances of their birth could have changed the fact that they were a child- had been forced to suffer for the good of the kingdom made his heart well with guilt.

(And that he was still so devoted to the King at all gave him pause, though it was not one fraught with dread, as was typical with him, but one of grave contemplation. For Lurien was not as foolish as his heart longed for him to be, nor as loyal as what many bugs might expect. He had accepted his job as Watcher not out of loyalty or love for the King [well, loyalty had held some influence over him, the love had not come until later], but out of a desire to protect and care for the City of Tears. Knowing who the Pale King was beyond his unfathomable nature of a god did not change the fact that it was their shared duty to care for those harboured within, or that his duty to the citizens of the kingdom still took precedence over anything else in his life- he could not, in good consciousness, allow himself to back away from the gods that kept the entire kingdom intact. Not when the city and villages were already marching slowly to the road of recovery. Not when the Pale Gods themselves were so overburdened by their grief, fading away into the shadows of the Palace even as they tried to assume some state of normality to those unaware of their suffering.

(When he had realized the extent of what they had done, he had nearly thrown on a spare cloak to run straight to Dirtmouth, as far away from the palace below as any frail citybug could go. The only thing that had stopped him had been the memory of the terrifying scream that had torn the Dream Realm asunder when the Radiance had met her end, and the knowledge that he was the only one of three who could verify that accursed blight's death, with the Pale Gods in shock and the Pure Vessel hovering on the brink of a true death.)

So it was somewhat pleasant to be able to make amends, in a way. Even if he hadn't any experience with children since he himself was a young grub, excepting all the times where he had been forced to deal with children orphaned or abandoned on the streets, who were often far too weak or sickly or scared to offer any semblance of intelligent conversation. Not that he minded, of course; if there was one thing he was used to by now, it was soothing attacks of terror or disembodiment in others, and he much preferred to be available for technical use than conversation anyways.

(It was far easier to be the Eye of God than it was to be simply Lurien. That he knew how it felt to be a ghost in his own shell while the world spun around him did not change that one bit.)

Of course, this meant that while his lack of experience with children hadn't hindered him much beforehand, it was really starting to cause a problem now, especially given the fact that he had been outcasted from any and all social events in his youth, and thus had no memories of how nymphs and grubs actually acted when they weren't in some state of extreme trauma or emotional distress.

He was quite sure that most children would count education as a state of extreme emotional distress, however, which was why he was currently rummaging around his box of spellwriting supplies in a state of carefully controlled worry, terribly aware that the longer he left the princess unheeded, the higher the chance of disaster became. She was a menace when bored, Herrah had recounted far too many tales of her mischief for him to be comfortable with, but if there was one thing that he did remember from primary school (apart from the crushing loneliness and endless monotony), it was how much better a lesson could be made with a sufficiently spiffy pen.

At the very least, the young princess no longer seemed to be bound by her hatchling oath to devour him alive, which made matters a great deal easier on his end. Really, all he had to focus on were the lessons he was allegedly supposed to be teaching them today: the purpose of spell-glyphs for the daughter of Hallownest, and a basic introduction into the arts for the Hollow Knight, so that they may practice fine motor control with their prosthetic arm. Both were skills that would serve the two royals well in the future, but Lurien himself had mostly put off the bulk of the lesson until now. He was not skilled with children (or with most bugs, really), but he'd had enough experiences with tetchy clients to know that it was much harder for insects to be irritable when they had a full stomach, and had prepared by sending a servant down to pick up some sugary street food from a gatherer’s fair going on down the street. Offering a brief overview of the schedule for the day while the Hollow Knight mechanically poked at a tray of mushrooms and Hornet enthusiastically drowned her fried tiktik in honey had given him the benefit of dealing with a fully-fed spiderwyrm, and the chance to devise a way to approach the vessel for their lesson.

(And, the Queen had confided in him, to perhaps find a method to express their suffering. Even after they had come back home, dripping orange pus from every crack in their carapace, the royals had no idea what remained of their child beneath the death-white mask. All that they knew was that it could feel pain, and that it had suffered, and that it was loyal to them despite all the grief they had visited upon their kindred, and that they had no idea what to do with any of that information. They could nurse it back to health, could gift back what it had lost with the most delicate of craftwork, but they could not understand the motives of the lost, hurting thing that came back to them, when nothing they had done could logically motivate it to do so.)

(Lurien had an idea. The pride of a parent dispossessed was a precious thing indeed. It would make sense for the scion of the two monarchs to crave their parent's approval, even if they had ceased to be their child long, long ago. It made terrible sense, particularly when one took care to note how small they tried to make themselves look everytime the White Lady so much as glanced their way, or the subtle way their shoulders shook when a hand was laid upon them without the intent to harm.)

(He was all too familiar with that, too. But perhaps he could fix that. Perhaps, for the first time, he could change something for the better.)

He was pulled from his wistful thoughts by the all-too familiar crash of metal against stone, followed by a sharp-edged spider shriek that set all of his fur on end. He cursed under his breath, stuffed the two largest pens he had into a pocket, and raced over to his office as fast as his legs could carry him, nearly tripping over the hem of his cloak in his haste to return to the two royals.

...On second thought, perhaps he wasn't as cut out for this as he thought he was. Under the fugue of terror and the phantom images of both the Hollow Knight and the Pale Gift meeting a gory demise, the faint hope for some semblance of a pleasant evening flickered and died with all the fanfare of a particularly old lumafly meeting a fated end.

Luckily, the scene that met him when he burst into the room was luckily not nearly as bloody or horrifying as the Radiance's apparitions had been, though it was still one that pulled a soft sigh of despair from his throat once his burst of relief faded away. The princess, it seemed, had upset one of his easels, and everything on it or nearby it had clattered to the floor as a result. While he was able to quickly identify it as a painting he'd not been particularly keen on keeping, nor one that had required any drying, there had been enough wet paint and brushes lined up on the lip of the easel to stain the carpet a variety of florid colours. The Hollow Knight's stare was fixed on a particularly lurid splotch of orange, while the culprit herself seemed to have taken the brunt of the easel's revenge. She stood now in the ready pose of one of Deepnest's fiercest warriors, the sharpened edge of her training needle pointing at her fallen foe (which, really Herrah, was giving a weapon to a pre-adolescent really necessary), with her dark, glimmering eyes wide with shock, both her pale white carapace and bright red hunting-cloak covered in a copious splatter of blue-green paint.

“It’s not my fault,” she blurted out, before clamping her chelicerae together with a wince; clearly, she knew that such an excuse would not work for her right now, not with the evidence splashed all over her body and her half-sibling still reclining awkwardly behind a table on one uncomfortably-ornate couch, in the exact same position Lurien had left them in. Still, she rallied herself with an impressive amount of confidence for one caught red-clawed (or blue-clawed, in this case), slinging her needle back into its sheath so that she could cross her arms and lever him with a stare fierce enough to nearly make him doubt whether the accident was on her paws or not, even before she sternly said, “Your easels aren’t sturdy enough, and your record slabs are a mess. If all it takes is one little push to knock them all over, then that’s your fault, not mine.”

...She had a point. Unfortunately for her, however, Herrah had spent enough of their time together in the Dream Realm regaling Lurien and Monomon with tales of her young daughter’s misadventures for him to be able to pinpoint the thrum of soul and silk in the air with ease, and to wearily track their path over to the table where he’d set her up to study common sigil closures while he tracked down writing implements for them all. He folded his arms in turn (not that she could see them very well under his cloak, but the stance Herrah took when mock-lecturing her daughter was not one easily forgotten), and managed to ask, in a carefully droll tone, “Is that so? I apologize for the inconvenience. If that is the case, then I’m sure you’ll have no qualms telling me what caused the collapse then, if you were not the bug responsible for my easel’s structural failure.”

Hornet’s stern little stare morphed into a rather sour scowl, an expression that would have been properly terrifying were she any more than half his height and covered head to toe in a myriad of different-coloured paint splatters. If she hadn't already stiffened up in embarrassment at him politely requesting her not to bite him upon her arrival, however, her intimidation tactic might have actually worked. "...One of the spells you gave me went off and knocked everything over. If you'd given me something better to practice with, that wouldn't have happened."

...Ah. That made sense, yes. Lurien pinched the bridge of his muzzle between two fingers, took a very deep breath, and made the mental note to never leave a halfblooded godling alone with a book of spells ever again, the mundanity of the actual spells themselves be damned.

"If they ever manage to make explosion-proof easels in the future, I promise you that I will indulge in that investment." He straightened the lay of his mask, sighed, and then rang a bell to summon Lucien to the meeting quarters. His poor butler was not made of stern enough stuff to deal with the presence of two Higher Beings (or, rather, a Higher Being and a half), but he was well-versed in the shenanigans of children, and knew more about extracting paint from carpet than Lurien himself did. "Well then, your highness, would you mind terribly if I took a look at your work while you go clean off? If I could tell you what went wrong, we can both strive to not make this mistake in the future. I should have known better than to give you a book on spellcrafting theory without actually telling you which sections to focus on.”

“...Sure. It's on the table. Do with it what you will” The princess, for one brief moment, seemed a bit caught off-guard, as if she hadn’t expected him to accept her mistake so easily. Then she straightened up, flexed her claws with a grimace of distaste, and spun about to go clean herself off, with about as much grace as a paint-splattered spiderling could manage.

That left the Hollow Knight.

They were still staring at the splotch of orange paint where it had fallen, as still as the stone statue set to commemorate their sacrifice. Lurien skirted around the mess, deliberately letting his cloak drift over the stain to break their line of sight, and watched as their head snapped up by a minute amount, a motion that would have gone easily unnoticed in the clamour of the presealing days. A motion small enough to easily bypass the attention of even those with eyes as keen as Lurien the Watcher's, had he not known where to look.

He stopped a respectable distance in front of them, and surveyed them quietly. From here, with all prior assumptions of the Pure Vessel cast neatly out the window, it was almost impossible to miss the tiny tells that shone through the Hollow Knight's facade, betraying the life hidden within. Here in the lantern-light, away from all of the distractions that had plagued their time together, he could see the way their shoulders trembled, the way their chest rose and fell with each uneven breath, as fast as if caught in the exertion of battle yet far too shallow. He could see the tension in the fabric of the couch where their claws had sunk in tight, the tips of the prosthetic arm's talons nearly buried into the arm of the chair itself. He could see the dark writhe in their mask sockets, and the heavy tension that lingered over their form- as if they had been captured by something that would bring great harm to them, and could do nothing more than wait for the pain to pass it by, neither fight nor flight an option anymore.

Lucien would be here in another minute or so. Hornet in even less time than that, and then he would have to go back to being the composed Watcher and tutor that was demanded of him, despite his many misgivings. But for now, he looked at them, and he ached.

"Pure Vessel," he said softly, in as gentle a voice as he could manage- a soft sigh like their father's, though his voice trembled with an emotion that he could not stand to suppress. The Hollow Knight's head snapped around to look at them, an automatron on autopilot, and, heart in his throat, he reached out to them with a slow, careful hand. Their expression, for a moment, was wild and unfocused, and he, with a surge of understanding, found that he knew exactly why they were reacting that way. He knew what they were struggling with, because they were the same. "You are with me. She is not here. We are in the City of Tears, in the meeting area of the Watcher's Spire. This is not a dream- if you touch me, I will not burn you, because she is no longer here, and she can harm us no longer. We are here, and we are safe."

His breath hitched, but he swallowed down the rush of disbelief that swept through him, batted it to the side for later. The Hollow Knight still stared, those eerie empty eyes boring deep into Lurien's soul. Eyes that many had described as the cold stare of a corpse, as lightless and lifeless as the being that owned them. Eyes that were darker than any dream could touch, eyes that made him feel less like a scattering of memories formed of loose essence and more like someone who was here, now, comforting a person who had been wronged by the very gods who made them.

What lingered there, behind those dark eyes? Lurien was no mindreader, nor a being born with divine power- he knew that he had no possibility of comprehending the full truth behind the nature of the Pure Vessel. But he was the Pale God's highest clergy member, and the Watcher of the City of Tears. He had been chosen because he was observant, because he was careful, because he alone could view the unfathomable expanse of power that the world held with wonder instead of greed. He had been chosen for his sight and his mind, and the capacity to keep those who served safe, and that was not a duty that he could take lightly.

There was someone here. Someone afraid, someone who flinched away from reminders of the Light, someone who was trying so damn hard to be brave. He looked at them, at this being he had nearly doomed to an eternity of torment, and felt his heart ache with both sympathy and guilt alike.

The Pale King had been the first individual to look at Lurien for who he was, and to like the person who stood before him. To see him in the full measure of all his faults and flaws, and to find faith in him anyways, to not turn him aside for the way he fumbled over his words or stared too intently at all the wrong moments. He had been the first to see Lurien as a someone behind a shapeless mask, rather than a ghost lingering in the shadows, and to make him into who he was now- the Watcher, the protector of the City and all who slumbered under its eves.

Perhaps he could do the same for the Hollow Knight.

He took a deep, steadying breath, one that petered out into a shaky exhale. He did not touch the vessel, keenly aware that they held no boundaries with which to turn him away, but he kept his hand hovering just before the point of their mask, blocking their sight of the orange paint as best as he could. What had once been a pigment used for capturing the warmth of candlelight had undoubtedly turned to the stain of lurid, burning dream in their mind, and if there was one thing that Lurien had learned well, it was that gods and their kin tended to react....violently...to that which upset them. The Hollow Knight remained frozen in their spot, caught in the serente pocket of silence between the sound of water running in the bathroom and the distant rhythm of footsteps on soft carpet, but the Watcher was not willing to trust blindly in years of training when blind trust had gotten the two of them to this point in the first place.

An answering chime from the bell; Lucien had been alerted, and was on his way. He let one of his antennae flick under his cloak, but kept his gaze focused on the Vessel, keenly aware of them and the muffled cursing emanating from the washroom (which he would likely be duty-bound to report to Herrah in private, not that he thought she was going to do anything about it). A minute or two more, then, a little more time to try to settle them. A minute or two more to study them, to see the minute movements that told him of their terror, to catalogue the roiling of the void behind those empty eyes.

And what he found, despite it all, was quite reassuring. He knew not of the void or its like, but he was quite familiar with both the King and Queen, and their scion held most of their nervous quirks, albeit muffled down to a nearly impossible to see degree. The clenched claws was quite similar to the Pale King when faced with a situation he was somewhat uncomfortable with- the rigid stillness, the forced calm permeating their body reminiscent of the White Lady. It made his heart hurt more, to see the child share so many traits with the parents that had abandoned them, but it was something that he knew how to deal with, and so the words spilled out from between his mandibles with a careful, forced calm, manifesting as a litany of inane chatter that pulled the bulk of their attention away from the bright orange splotch on the floor behind him.

“I have called my butler to care for the spill, and these carpets have seen their fair share of use anyways. There’s been no harm done, regardless of whether or not any of it is salvageable. Neither you nor your sister are to blame for this occurrence.” He shifted his weight, putting his body firmly between them and the stain, then lowered his aching arm so that he had something to fiddle with. The piercing stare that the once-Pure Vessel fixed upon him was familiar, at least, and the oddly heavy aura around them made him feel more settled in himself, as if all of his worries had been placed aside to deal with later. “I understand that you have been tasked to watch her in the past, but what happened was a common error, one that often occurs when learning spellcraft. Granted, it was a mistake that I should have accounted for, but there was no harm done, and what did occur is easily rectified. You need not pick at every little thing until it is perfect- it is okay to stumble sometimes. None of the stakes here are ones that have been unaccounted for. And even if it did, the lesson that I have planned for you does not have the chance for such...explosive results, so it would take a concerted effort on your part to cause such serious damage. I have faith that that would not be the case.”

He let a little bit of dry humour edge into his voice, then let out a breath of relief when he saw the Hollow Knight relax a little, scarred shoulders dropping by a minute amount. He had no intentions of teaching a fullblooded god the intricacies of spellbinding- they had no need for it anyways- but the explosion of black that had marked the end of his period in the Dream Realm was still fresh in his mind, and the fact that neither of them wanted a repeat of that was...heartening, to say the least. Almost as heartening as noticing the way that the vessel began to breathe a little easier, their newforged arm of pale ore catching the firelight with each new, deep intake. He’d likely have to replace the couch arm they’d shredded into, as well as the cushion their father had torn when he had been caught in the grips of his own dilemma- but no. No focusing on that right now. He had priorities. “It is a simple lesson that you will be taught today, Pure Vessel- and you better believe me when I say that your sister will not be told to practice anything that’s so easily combustible within this spire. Not on my watch, anyways.”

The joke was poorly executed, but a distant thumping saved him from having to come up with anything more to say anyways. He cleared his throat, made a careful note of the sound of the water shutting off within the washroom, and folded his hands serenely before him just in time for the servant’s door to open, a familiar gentle creak followed by his butler’s soft call.

"You called, Master Lurien? How may I be- ah." Lucien's already-mild voice turned faint as he rounded the corner, eyes widening at the sight of the Hollow Knight. Which was an understandable reaction, given the fact that they only just barely fit into the room, but it was still enough of a reaction to have Lurien wince and wonder if he shouldn’t have just dealt with the entire thing himself. Lucien was dependable, but the intimidating presence of a fully-ascended void god was...a bit much to the underprepared and uninitiated. And Lucien, unfortunately, fit both criteria. “How may- hmm.”

His butler's attempt to rally himself was admirable, but ultimately useless. If it had just been the three of them, Lurien would have likely given him more time to adapt, but the princess had returned from the washroom (relatively) paint-free, and was now hovering ominously around the corner, eyeing Lucien like a predator watching prey, which fared poorly for practically everyone involved.

"The princess spilled some paint, Lucien, nothing more. If you could handle the cleanup while I continue to tutor her, it would be a great help to me." Subtly, he signed a message to the Hollow Knight, requesting them to attempt to contain their sister. They turned their head to watch, pulling a soft squeak of surprise from Lucien, then rose with a huffing wheeze that sounded only partially pained as they turned to scoop up their younger sibling, a squeak of her own escaping as she got smushed into their shoulder. Large as they were, it took only a half-step and a reach for them to grab her, which made Lurien suddenly very grateful that he'd requested all but his private quarters to be large enough for one of the Watcher Knights would pass through. "I will call you if anything else comes up."

"O-of course, Master Lurien. It will be dealt with, don't you worry." Lucien bowed, mustering a surprising amount of grace for a bug startled by the presence of an ascended Higher Being, then turned to yell for the aid of some servants. Lurien quickly gathered up the various slates and spidersilk skeins that he had placed before the two royals, then hurriedly ushered them both into a private waiting room before he was forced to suffer the niceties of mundane conversation.

It took a bit of effort to get the Hollow Knight’s horns through the doorway, but once they managed, Lurien allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. The waiting room was less equipped for a lesson than his office was, with only one desk to its name, but its large, arching windows and comfortable couches leant an openness to it that the other had lacked. Certainly it fit the Hollow Knight better, for they could move about it with ease, and the lack of stuffed-full slateshelves allowed the princess to wander about without any fear of her catching the eye of her training needle on something out of place.

“I wasn’t going to attack him, you know,” she grumbled, as she fixed one of the paintings on the wall with a stoic stare; he set down all of the materials he’d gathered onto the desk, responding with a carefully nonchalant hum, and caught a fierce glare in return before the princess resumed her slow prowl around the perimeter. For how intense her glower was, he’d spent enough time in Herrah’s company to catch the edge of embarrassment in her eyes, which took some of the venom out of being menaced by one as small as she. Unfortunately for him, however, she chose to double the dose, folding her arms over her chest so that she could scowl up at a painting he’d done of the Pale King with an expression that had him wondering why the canvas hadn’t spontaneously caught on fire. "Why do you have to have pictures of him everywhere, anyways? It's not like we can forget we're in Hallownest. We don't need to be reminded everytime we turn around a corner."

Her voice was filled with vitriol, an expected reaction that hardly lost its sting regardless. Lurien sighed, tamping down the urge to implore her to be more respectful of her lord father, and instead focused on setting up their workspace. To the princess's corner of the desk, he placed the tablets and skein of spidersilk, while the rest of the materials took up the remaining space, all carefully placed to allow for both him and the Hollow Knight to work in tandem. Caught in his careful planning, he almost didn't notice him slipping into his calm, priestly voice while working, his movements fluid and precise as he stepped around the desk and beckoned the vessel over to his side. "It's a matter of devotion, your majesty, as well as respect. The Pale King hallowed these lands, and granted us the wisdom and funds to make this tower, as well as the position of Watcher. It would be foolishly amiss to not dedicate at least some portion of this tower's design to him in exchange, for evoking his image grants him the ability to watch us in return."

The princess jerked back as if burned, one hand coming up to grip the hilt of her needle, before she turned sharply on her heel and marched over, chelicerae visibly working under her mask. Lurien felt a stab of electric terror course through him at the sight, remembering the pain those fangs were capable of, but all Hornet did upon her arrival was flop down into her seat, survey the selection of pens before her with a pensive scowl, and then pick one with its end curling off into an elegant hook, deftly unhooking the silver bell hanging from its curve so she could tie a thin line of soul-bright silk around its end for later use. Lurien paused, watching her machinations with tradition, but she kept her eyes focused on her weaving, fingers moving in an uncanny dance as she worked. "Mamma's right. You really do need to get a better taste in men."

Hearing Herrah say such a thing was one thing; hearing it in Hornet's young, matter-of-fact voice was another. Lurien nearly choked on his proboscis, making a sound so odd that even the Pure Vessel jerked around to look instead of staring sightlessly down at the desktop, something like concern swirling in their dark eyes. "I-that is completely off topic!"

"Not really. He's our father. We can hardly escape his influence, let alone in the lands he claims as his own." Such a solemn voice coming from such a young girl was eerie, but Hornet dispelled that in the next second with an eerily familiar, displeased click of her fangs, before vanishing all of her soul-silk in one go so that she might start again. Even when in shock, Lurien couldn't help but marvel at her mastery over her soul; she was so young, and yet handled it with far more grace and ease than many of the master sorcerers he had encountered in his very long lifetime. "What do you even like about him, anyways? He basically tried to kill you. And sure, Mamma says that its important to understand why people try to kill you, because they tend to be for a good cause, but he wasn't even right about the Dreamer plan. You would have died along with Mamma and Hollow and Teacher Monomon, and it all would have been for nothing."

Her voice turned bitter, the curve of her claws flashing bright as they sunk into the soulspun silk. Lurien had just enough time to wonder if her sudden foul mood had something to do with a lack of soul before she turned that fierce glare on him, effectively silencing any inquiries about soul depletion he was about to speak. "Well?"

The automatic response- to pledge loyalty to Hallownest and the bug that had ruled it- died before it left his mandibles. The princess already knew why he gave himself over to the Dream; she had grown up with the concept hammered into her head, martyrdom imposed as a duty that must be fulfilled rather than a sacrifice to be particularly proud of. She had been born for her kingdom, and had watched her mother and her sibling be sealed away for one that spurned her, that placed her on perfect pale pedestals when it hadn’t scorned her kin.

And what could he say of her father? How could he describe what it felt to touch minds with the divine, to be seen by something far greater than oneself? How could he describe what it felt to be so perfectly in harmony with a being composed of pure light and fathomless ages of knowledge, to share one’s memories and sight with a creature that could swallow the cosmos, but chose to be gentle- not because it needed it, but because it wanted it? Because, despite the hundreds upon thousands of years between them, despite the vast difference between their forms, both of them craved nothing more than to be seen, to be heard?

How could he explain to her what it felt like to be a lumafly flitting before the brightest of stars, unable to comprehend the push-pull of their polarity, but understanding implicitly that both shone bright out of a shared fear of eternal loneliness?

He couldn’t. There was no way that he could manage, no way he could distill that whirlwind of sight and emotion and sensation down into a jumble of sounds meant to encapsulate what it felt like to be a mortal man so close to the expanse of a god. Nor would it be relevant, he realized, for she herself was of kin to the Pale King, and likely shared more with him than she did with Lurien. He had grown accustomed to the culture of Deepnest during his time in the Dream Realm, but his proximity to the Old Light had not enlightened him much on the nature of gods as much as it had made his understanding of them even more complex and confusing. And even Herrah herself told the other Dreamers that there were odd quirks to the Pale Wyrm and her daughter that escaped her own understanding, so it was very likely that he would just end up boring the girl in the process.

(Beyond his mounting headache, he was aware of the Hollow Knight watching him with a strange, careful stillness that somehow felt different than their usual stoic silence. It itched at the back of his mind, his ruff bristling uncomfortably at the sensation of being actively watched instead of the bug doing the active watching, but he ignored it for now. The Pure Vessel deciding to initiate an action by judging him was currently the least of his worries.)

So instead of offering an intelligent, eloquent response, like any self-respecting teacher would when their student asked a question, all he managed to squeak out was a simple “I happen to be quite fond of him.”

This was apparently insufficient, as Hornet gave him just about the flattest, most disgusted look that any bug under their preteen moult could muster. Given how terribly small she was still, her face not yet tapering to the point of their elder sibling, the sheer amount of withering disdain she was able to pack into it was quite impressive. “Why.”

Lurien opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, and then hesitated, not quite knowing just how much information he should give out to one so young, and finding, with some faint dismay, that the potential for her to solidly reject anything good he had to say about her father was very likely going to trump any argument he had in favor of the Pale King. Whatever thoughts about sharp jawlines, inscrutable eyes, gorgeous wings, or careful, skilled hands were not ones that he was comfortable with divulging, nor anything that would form a cohesive argument as to why he...liked her father. And trying to argue in defense of his personality was completely out of the picture. Lurien was...sweet on the god, yes, and he happened to know why the Pale King distanced himself from his children so, but he in good consciousness could not excuse such behavior. Not when both had already suffered enough for their sire's misdeeds. Not when he himself knew what it was like to be so distant and alone, and was currently trying to prod said sire into making amends to both of his children, rather than suffer in silence for something that was not yet unsalvageable.

“That’s a very good question. I have no idea.” He cleared his throat, adjusting the lay of his robe, and tried not to focus too hard on the fact that the Pure Vessel had now turned fully to look at him, or that their shoulders appeared to be trembling with what could be silent laughter. In any other case, he would have been delighted by such an occurrence, but for now, the only emotion he could summon beyond his embarrassment was the sheer, bewildering panic at being cornered by a child. "Can we please get on with the lesson now?"

“If you think it’s something that I shouldn’t know, then quit it. I know what adults do,” said the little spiderling, with the matter-of-fact sort of tone that an impatient lecturer gave to a student that was stacking off in class- she'd blazed right by his request like a tramcar run off its wheels, and paid no attention to the spellweaving slates he slid over to her, clambering up on top of her chair so that she could be of eye level with him. With her arms crossed over her chest, and her chelicerae set in a fierce scowl, she looked to be the spitting image of her mother, which was even more terrifying with the subtle glow of a wyrm's carapace shimmering off of her mask. “You don’t have to baby me about it like the bugs of the Palace. I know what sex is and where heirs come from, I’m not an idiot. If that’s what you want from him, then just schedule a dalliance, like Mamma did. Just don’t come crying to Midwife about it if he bites you and you nearly bleed half to death, like Fell. Fix your problems! I'm tired of hearing Mamma worry over you.”

Lurien’s mind short-circuited. Dimly, he realized that the Pure Vessel’s shoulders were caught in a subtle tremor that could indicate either deep exhaustion or laughter, but he couldn’t quite process that information past the humiliation that he was so thoroughly confounded by a child.

...Really, he shouldn’t be so befuddled by all of this. Herrah’s girl was as sharp of both wit and tongue, and just as ruthless as her mother’s needle. Nor did Deepnest hold nearly the same social standards about...intimate relationships....that Hallownest had. Much as he wished to forget it, he could distinctly remember Herrah talking about how often intervention was...necessary during breeding season, and how a good deal of those events fell to her, given her size, strength, and role as Queen. The spiders were not territorial about their mates, and could not afford to be completely private about things when the alternative could result in the loss of a life- it would make sense, then, for the princess of Deepnest to hear about such cases in passing, or to be taught about the need for intervention as if it were merely another facet of politics, rather than the sacred, private thing that many bugs of the City of Tears considered it to be. And Herrah, as he well knew, was the kind of person who was loathe to conceal the truth of a situation to those oblivious to its dangers.

Still, the fact that he was currently being lectured on relationships by a schoolgirl was a little...awkward, to say the least. Really, all he had to help ground himself was what the princess had said about Herrah worrying about him, which was...oddly sweet and touching in a way that he couldn't quite conceptualize right now, which meant that it was something to have a quiet breakdown over later.

"That- that was so that she could have you, Princess. I don't want a child. A-at least, not anymore. What I want now is...complicated, and very much not relevant to this conversation." He mustered a strength that was pure goamsh*t and waved her down with all the fake confidence he could muster, drawing on his years as Watcher to keep her from avoiding the topic. "Your mother wanted me to teach you this- in fact, she specifically requested my assistance over that of a palace or archive tutor. I appreciate your concern, but if you don't want her to worry about you as well as I, then I suggest we get this over with."

Another unimpressed look. At this point, Lurien was fairly sure that the girl was just testing his patience, and grimly resigned himself to indulging in the ancient art of blackmail as a last resort.

“...If you allow us to resume our lesson, then I will give you my share of fried honeycakes for the evening.”

Apparently, that was enough. Hornet’s eyes brightened, and she plopped back down into her chair with all the childish enthusiasm that a girl her age was supposed to show, rather than the harsh, strict persona that she tried on him. Lurien grimly suspected that some choice members of the Pale Court were responsible for the behavior, and made a mental note to accompany the girl next time their visits to the White Palace overlapped- not just to scold her father for his inaction, but to make some cutting remarks in the vicinity of those who detested the blood of gods going to ‘waste’ on a child of the outer wilds. “You’ve got a deal.”

Despite any further...interruptions, the rest of the tutoring session went rather smoothly. Hornet, for all her impatience, was quite the clever little spiderling, and she caught onto the theory of spellcrafting with little difficulty. Teaching her to actually draw out or synthesize spell-glyphs of her own was another, for she seemed entirely convinced that simply blasting her problems with silk would produce a similar effect, but Lurien could hardly blame her for shirking tedium in the face of a much more simple solution (even if he himself was privately quite jealous about how little she needed to rely on glyphs or sigils to cast, when he had not managed the focusing power to be able to cast a consistent spell until he was at least seventeen). He’d managed to impress the importance of using proper sigils in the end, though, as well as teach her a couple tricks to make drawing the complex symbols easy, so he let her run off in pursuit of one of his Watcher Knights when he noticed her growing too antsy for her to focus for much longer.

(He almost felt sorry for poor Nihyrm, especially when she’d managed to scramble up onto his horns before he could manage to backroll away, but she was his captain’s problem now, not his.)

The Hollow Knight was another story entirely. Lurien had started off with simple things, such as showing them how to hold a pen, but had quickly moved on to more complex objectives once it became readily apparent that they were a fast learner. First he taught them how to write the language of Hallownest, and then the runes of the Mosskin, for their deep similarities, and both times the vessel had shown a great degree of precision in repeating those alphabets back to him, though they’d torn through the silk paper with their pen nib a couple times in the process. It would almost be uncanny, if it wasn’t for the fact that pretty much everything else about them was uncanny- or, as Lurien suspected, their literacy ability was simply the result of watching others read and write after a lifetime being bored and understimulated out of their goddamn mind. They were the Pale King’s child- it wouldn’t be too far out of the line for them to have passively picked up the concepts of reading and writing as they grew, even if they lacked the proficiency that came with actually using it.

(Testing such a skill was difficult as well. They were capable of responding to basic written commands, but would often shirk away from anything even hinting to self-expression. Lurien wasn’t sure if it was because they feared the repercussions of such an action, even with reassurance, or because they themselves simply didn’t know enough about themselves to be able to pick their favorite colour.)

After he had exhausted all the ideas he had relating to teaching them how to read and write, he had moved them onto art, swapping out their metal pen for a sheet of mosspulp paper and a stick of charcoal. While they had been surprisingly adept at copying down runes and symbols with readable precision, their dexterity was somewhat lacking, particularly in their prosthetic arm. Both charcoal and mosspaper were dirt cheap to replace, given how they lacked the ability to hold the fine edge required by all of the tribes's written languages, but they were perfect as a sketching medium, and allowed Lurien to experience something that writing could not offer right now- to see the world through the eyes of the Pure Vessel.

Even so, he saw the trepidation in the set of their shoulders when he set the tools down in front of them. It was subtle, so subtle, so easy to miss- but while he had been teaching them how to read the language of Hallownest, they had been teaching him how to read them in return, how to pick up their thoughts and their feelings through every quiet sigh or careful, shaky movement. It was difficult, yes- they had not gotten to where they were now without being very, very good at hiding who they were- but he was a patient, observant bug by nature, and was used to both the subtleties of their father and the alien aspects of their mother. It simply took a keen eye and a willingness to pay attention to decipher the emotions of the Pure Vessel, a skill that the Gendered Child had mastered, and that Lurien himself was deeply ashamed of not achieving before the Sealing.

(For if there was one thing that he had learned about them, it was that they were gentle and kind, and terribly, terribly afraid of being alive. It had been not a year after their adult moult when Lurien had entered the Dream, and yet the person beside him moved and breathed and reacted to things as if something as minor as responding to a question was an offense punishable by death, a travesty that broke his heart and filled him with a deep, smouldering rage at the circ*mstances that had birthed them.)

(But he could not focus on that. Not now. Not with them so near.)

"I want to try something new," he said, trying to keep his voice low and level, his hand hovering over their own without making direct contact. They watched his movements, not his face, which was about as much of an admittance to unsurety as he was likely to get from them yet. "Do you see the skyline from this window? I want you to capture its likeness, in as much detail as you can manage. I don't care about how good it will look at the end of it, or if you make any mistakes along the way. Just show me what you see. I will guide you."

It was not the same type of command that they would have followed when they were the Pure Vessel, though it was cloaked as something similar. For though the task was simple enough in theory, the response was entirely dependent upon a form of self-expression. No matter how mechanically they tried to copy what stood before them, the end result would be the same- a glimpse into their psyche, a picture of the world that only they could see. If they saw light and form differently than what Lurien himself saw, then he would be made aware of it. If there was some detail that they focused on more than others, then he would see it. A machine could copy a string of letters, for a letter was always bound to one set shape, but it could not quite replicate the intricacies of a complex landscape, one that shifted and changed with the shifting of the rain and the movement of bugs through the city.

And the Hollow Knight seemed aware of this, for though they took the charcoal with the same stiff, automatic movement that they had taken the pen, they did not move directly onto the task at hand, hesitating before it touched the paper. Instead they sat for a long, long moment, their eyes moving between both the cityscape and Lurien, like a tiktik caught in a trap. Long enough for him to nearly rescind his request altogether, to call the lesson quits, lest he stress them to the brink of another panic attack before their time together was finished.

But they put the charcoal to the paper and drew anyways, moving with just enough surety to assure him that they were not distressed, and he finally let himself breathe, and relax by their side again. For a good long while they sketched, while Lurien sat nearby offering quiet tips and gentle corrections, until at last the scratch of burnt shellwood on mosspulp fell silent, and they surveyed their work with something similar to a sense of uncertain pride, taxed wrist shaking with the effort they had exerted in the process. And it truly was something to be proud of, for when Lurien took it from them to assess their work, he found his breath stopped short- not for a mastery of artistry they did not yet possess, but for the picture that they had provided him through a means that required no voice to cry suffering, an image different from how he himself would have approached a sketch of the cityscape.

It was undeniably crude, and smeared in a way that showed no understanding of how to use the medium provided to them. The lines were oft uncertain and wandering, or far too straight and mechanical to comfortably fit with the rest of the drawing- but that was not at all a concern, nor an aspect of the image that immediately caught his attention. Rather, it was the tonal shifts between the light of lit windows and the dark shadows of the streets that snared his gaze, for they were far more intense and far more detailed than anything else in the city, to the point where they could not entirely be blamed on the vessel’s lack of artistic experience. Rather than viewing them as simple aspects of the world that needed to be filled in, it was almost as if the entire world to them was formed of a dance between shadow and light, with everything in between nearly inconsequential. The straight lines of the buildings were only secondary to the glow of windowlights or the deep dark of the canals, and were clumsily rendered in comparison to the careful, arcing sweeps of the shadows, familiarity shown in the sweeps of the charcoal compared to the crude, childlike sketching that composed the rest of their drawing.

Lurien had not been a novice artist for quite some time, but he had seen others try to learn the skill often enough to know that shading and lighting were often disregarded in favor of attempting to draw the outlines of what was placed before them; that the Hollow Knight had jumped straight into the sketching process of capturing shadow instead of shape was a technique that set them apart from any other novice artist he had ever met, though he was fairly certain that they had gone into the task with the preconception that they were merely copying whatever was set before them.

“Beautiful work. You have done very well.” Lurien murmured, staring at the sketch a moment longer before clearing his throat, and placing it upon the pile of spidersilk sheets. It stuck out of the stack like a sore claw, and lacked the near-mechanical efficiency of their writing practice, but it was beautiful for its inefficiency, and unique among the rest of the clutter. Lurien couldn’t wait to show it to the two royals, though the sorrow that it was likely to evoke when he explained its importance was not something that he was looking forward to. “Now come, accompany me on my journey to locate your half-sibling. I may require your assistance yet, ser knight- it is near dinnertime, after all, and I have heard straight from her mother’s mouth that spiderwyrms are fearsome beasts when deprived of a hearty meal.”

It was not a manner in which a royal should be addressed. Nor was it how one was told to address the Hollow Knight, in the rare times that the Pale King allowed them to receive commands from those lower in rank to himself. If he had heard anyone speak to them before the Sealing with such a casual sense of familiarity, then he likely would have scolded them for it, or at least warned them to pay more attention to whom they were talking to. To speak to the Pure Vessel in such a manner was to sully the name of the King, after all, and was not something that should be taken lightly.

But Lurien was in a cheerful mood for once, and could not bring himself to care overmuch. He was a different person now, more tried and tired of the world around him, and the terrible social misdemeanors of his pre-sealing days no longer felt as important as they once did. Nor could he deny the tiny spark of joy he felt when he noticed the Hollow Knight perk up at the mention of their smaller sister, a tiny movement that he would have completely disregarded before he Dreamed, an indication of a beautiful mind hidden away behind closed doors.

He had never been much of a social butterfly. He had been told tales of great caravans that once crossed the desert beyond Hallownest as a young caterpillar, of massive families that made their livelihood through dance and song, but he himself had known nothing but empty hallways and empty promises, love given by those always far too busy to visit. He had always been a ghost, a silent watcher, outcasted for his odd looks and his odd speech and his odd way of viewing things, his terrible headaches and mumbling trances and his odd bursts of panic. Once he had dreamed of having a family, of finding his place- once he had to pick between either one or the other, and he had made his choice, and had found fulfillment in donning the mask and garb of Watcher.

He had watched this city rise around him, from a newling place of hopes and dreams to a shining citadel of glass and silver. He had given himself to the god who had taken him under his wing, and had become more than any other bug could ever dream of, a silent sentinel whose lifespan spanned centuries beyond the blessing of Hallownest, gifted through his devotion and proximity to the Pale Gods. Once he had given his life to see his kingdom safe, and once he had been a scared, stubborn fool standing before the might of the God of Dreams, no longer sacred in the face of such raw, blinding hatred.

And now he was here in the waking world, sitting beside the young god he had given his life to seal away. Now he was here, tired but alive, and he was guiding the scion of his beloved into a newer, more hopeful future, one that he never would have foreseen before he went to the Dream.

This was different...but he could say, without certainty, that it was far better than what he had once been.

And he couldn’t wait to meet them.

Just a short walk from the Palace Gates, three little shadows stood at the door to the Abyss. Two of them peered forth with no small amount of trepidation, but the third marched forward to where the black shell sealed, marked with the sharp, cold brand of both father and king. In one paw they held a nail, sharpened by a smith on the edges of the weeping city. In the other they held a charm, void weeping out from where the sharp teeth dug deep into their soft, grublike carapace, rather than set in the notch clipped to their chest. Defying it, defying its shine, even as it pulsed weakly with a power that promised safety in exchange for thoughtless compliance.

This little shadow, as it so happened, was rather sick of the concept of thoughtless compliance.

As they marched to the door, they swung their weapon through the air with as much force as they could muster, their little claws digging deep into the dark earth while their momentum carried them forward. But their attempt to break the seal was all for naught, for the moment a single wisp of their void came in contact with the door, the harsh glare of soul lit up the fangs of the King’s Brand, and the barrier dissolved away in a flash of bright light to reveal the yawning maw of the nothingness beyond its entrance.

Unfortunately for the little shadow, nothingness tended to be quite terrible at stopping things, especially when those things were heavy objects attached to small people moving at great speed. With their momentum unhindered by the expected blow of fossilized shell against metal, the little shadow was sent flying facefirst into the mouth of the Abyss, sliding uncomfortably against the metal platform beyond while their soft hatchling claws scrambled uselessly for purchase, uncharacteristic panic overcoming their previous confidence.

No! Not again, no falling not again-

Luckily for the little shadow, however, they had two siblings left above to save them, and these two siblings lunged forward in a heartbeat, each snaring a grip on the bolder shadow’s horns before they could go sliding off the edge. Of the two, the larger one had the stronger grip, and the most experience with wrangling determined younger children, a skill that became readily apparent when they chose to scoop both of their smaller siblings into their arms, pressing them both against their chest as all three of them trembled in fear.

They knew what it was like to fall. They knew the price. And as they sat together, huddled into a silent tangle of pale porcelain horns and overgrown elytra, they took comfort in the press of another familiar body against their own, and in the knowledge that they were no longer alone.

And then, as one, all three of them edged forth to peer over the edge.

All stared down at the sheer black drop.

All stared at the darkness yawning below them, where far, far below, the graveyard that characterized their birthplace lay in wait.

And then all three of them squared their shoulders with grim resolve, standing as one to stare down the darkness below. All three took a step back, hand in hand, heads held high, before the boldest of the three wriggled free from the rest, and made one single, confident bound off of the platform, into the precipice below.

There was nowhere for them to go but forward.

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I express the mundane

Despite my thoughts being manic

And exhaust the part of my brain

That allow me to panic

Someone unattainable dictates my emotional stability

Mesmerized with how disinterested you are with me

-I Don't Know About What Happened (Because Once You Start Writing It All Becomes Fiction), Crywank

Chapter 14: Parasitic Symbiosis

Chapter Text

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Lurien was in a surprisingly good mood when the time came to return the two royals to the palace.

It wasn’t necessarily the fact that he would be free of them that lifted his spirits, despite what he’d thought before the whole session had begun. Rather, it was the fact that he wasn’t craving the comforting quiet of a night of solitude that surprised him, for it was not often that he spent an entire day in the presence of another bug without feeling terribly drained at the end of it. The beginning of his time in the Dream had been the worst of it, before the presence of his fellow Dreamers turned from a crushing cage to a barricade of safety he could fall back on when the Radiance’s rage reached a peak. He’d thought that he’d start to feel that urge to flit away to somewhere quiet and secluded when faced with a task as daunting as teaching two Higher Beings, but now, as he ushered the siblings through the winding corridors of the secret passageways in the Spire, he found only a strange sense of tired satisfaction echoing through him, under the odd, buzzing contentment of social fulfillment. Which was not at all something he expected to experience after dealing with the Princess of Deepnest, but...it was there, and he was warm.

(Before the Sealing, he had only experienced such a sensation with three different bugs in his long life- The King, Lucien, and a fellow scholar whose life had long since split from his own. It was hard to enjoy the company of others when you were never one who could belong, and finding similar minds in such a big world was far too terrifying and costly of an ordeal to ever consider to begin with.)

(The Radiance had tried to use that loneliness against them, to sow disgust and horror by revealing their weaknesses and fears to one another. She had not expected for the three Dreamers to grow closer in response, to find similarities between their shared trauma and to grow even more resilient in their repulsion to her rule.)

Perhaps it was his time in the Dream that had softened him, or perhaps it was merely the respite that they had offered after weeks of conferences and digging through death-reports to assemble an investigation on the Soul Sanctum. Lurien was both honour and duty-bound to protect his civilians, but he was not a violent bug by nature, and found the prospect of potential violence to be both exhausting and quite frightening. Juggling the Songstress’s grief for her missing assistant alongside the very real fear of facing down a madman armed to the mandibles with dangerous soul-spells had worn him down into a tired fugue-state, even with His Majesty’s alluring presence guiding him onwards.

So it was nice, in a way, to be productive for once, even if tutoring grubs in spellweaving wasn’t exactly one of his responsibilities as Watcher. It felt good to see the fruits of his labour flourish, even if it was simply the difference between a young spider’s weaving setting itself on fire rather than exuding the faint warmth that had been commanded of it. It felt good to help the Hollow Knight learn how to hold a pen and etch out the letters of their kingdom, no matter the communication issues that still lingered between them. And it felt good to be able to walk beside them both as a mentor, not a beleaguered servant, as he led them through the winding corridors that made up the messenger’s path between the White Palace and the Watcher’s Spire, though attempting to squeeze the princeling(?)’s massive horns through some of the doorways was...a bit of a challenge.

Was this what Monomon and Herrah meant, when they told him that he should be going out more? He wasn’t sure. But he did know that he was grateful to have accepted the King’s request to take the two royals under his wing for a day, even if the princess’s inquiries were starting to earn a bit of a bite to them.

“How much longer will this take? I swear you Hallownest bugs think more about how cool things look rather than how good they are at actually doing their job.” Hornet punctuated her words with an irritable flick of her wrist, the eye of her training needle gleaming in the light of the lumafly lantern. Her pace was starting to flag a bit, though she soldiered on with a resolve that Lurien found quite admirable, if not more than a little terrifying. He was fairly certain that most youths her age could not handle an extensive sparring session from his Watcher Knights without tiring- how terrifying would she be in her adult molt, if her endurance was only just starting to wear thin now? “We’ve been walking for ages. Hollow’s back has to be hurting really badly by now.”

That was a terribly good point, albeit one that he couldn’t help with much. Lurien shot an apologetic glance back at the Hollow Knight (who was hunched nearly double in the tight quarters), and tried not to hurry forward in an attempt to expedite the process. He didn’t want to imagine what might happen if they had the misfortune to trip, though his concern was focused primarily on their well-being rather than the numerous, fragile light sources swaying just shy of their horns.

“Not much longer, your highness. If I recall correctly, we should be just about- ah, there it is. We’re here.” With a rush of relief, Lurien slid the door to the Palace wide open, squinting against its familiar cold, pale light. “I’m as much of a fan of the walk as you are, but it is faster than taking the direct route down, as well as much more private. Crowds are a headache to deal with- I’m sure your sibling would agree with me, in this case."

He regretted his words as soon as he said them- for how could he remind the Pure Vessel of their trek from the Black Egg Temple to the Palace, much less speak lightly of the topic?- but the princess simply gave their sibling a pensive look, before shrugging and running ahead. She wouldn't have acted in such a manner if she sensed that they were in any distress, but he still whispered a quiet apology for his flippancy as he ushered them both down the halls. "Hmm, I suppose so. But be sure to air it out next time, it was musty in there."

"An astute observation, your highness. I'll be sure to alert Lucien as soon as I head back." Lurien searched the pale halls for any indication of his gods, and made note of the gentle luminescence pulsing through the silvery roots twining around the windowsills, brighter than their usual subtle shine. The White Lady's court was in session, then, which meant that of the two, only the King was available to receive the children. An unfortunate occurrence, even if his heart fluttered at the prospect of seeing his beloved again- Hornet's biting remarks lost much of their venom in the presence of her stepmother instead of her sire. Now there was only the matter of locating him…"We don't use those corridors as much as we used to in the times before the Infection. I wouldn’t be surprised if they required a little bit of upkeep."

It was a pointless bit of small talk to a response that was entirely a child’s attempt at assuming authority, but for once, he didn’t let himself stress out too much over engaging in polite, meaningless banter with a person who had no interest in any sort of social order. Instead, he took in a deep breath, and focused on the bright gleam of soul within himself, letting his mind relax into the meditative calm that was required for either casting a spell or communing with a higher being. Focusing on himself, and on the link that tied him to the god that ruled these caverns, wrought by his eternal devotion and loyalty to Hallownest.

...There. He could feel the flicker of soul pulsing around the Pale King, an aura of power that far exceeded anything any mortal would ever be capable of. He refocused on the physical world, exhaling hard, and offered a quiet prayer of thanks to all the gods listening that he hadn’t passed out in the attempt. It was a handy little trick when one was the high priest of a rather elusive god, but it could be a little... taxing... if not done right.

(The Hollow Knight was giving him an odd look, their eerie dark eyes digging deep into him instead of drifting away into their usual vacant stare. It made his fur stand on end to be pinned under such a heavy gaze, but he elected to ignore it- if they were comfortable enough now to actually choose to actively look at him, then he figured he could withstand being stared at for a little while longer.)

“Come this way, exalted ones. Your lord father can be found close by.” He gestured them onwards, ignoring the disgusted grimace scrunching up Hornet’s face, and set off down one of the long, winding hallways, keeping a close eye on the Hollow Knight. They were moving at a remarkable speed for a bug who had so recently been close to death, but he could see the way that each mechanical movement was beginning to drag, as well as the manner with which they had begun to hold their prosthetic arm. Each little cue was so subtle to have very well been a figment of his own imagination, but they were a being that could put a stone to shame in a competition dedicated to appearing lifeless, and he didn’t want to risk them overexerting themselves. “My report to him shouldn’t take long. If everything goes to plan, you should have the rest of your evening to use at your leisure.”

The princess muttered something under her breath that was undoubtedly foul, but followed behind anyways, her gleaming black fangs peeping out from underneath the pale curve of her mask. Lurien eyed her nervously, wondering if he was supposed to scold her for her impudence, but was saved from initiating what would have been an otherwise uncomfortable situation by the Hollow Knight whacking her upside the head with a faux-stumble, ignoring the indignant squawk their half-sister made when their heavy organic paw made contact with her horns.

Which...sure, that worked. He wasn’t entirely sure if he was supposed to encourage such behavior, especially when one considered that the Hollow Knight themselves was still froze like a mosscreep caught under a lumafly lantern if they thought others were watching them react out of line, but it certainly kept their sister from grumbling something way out of line, even if she was now clinging to their cape upside-down, screeching like an angry vengefly as they closed the distance between the messenger’s exit and one of the Pale King’s more public workshops.

(Lurien was starting to see why his patron god avoided excess contact with his daughter. Not only was she horrifically adept at holding grudges, her incessant war-cries were only irritating up to the point where you remembered that she had the power to make good on her threats, which immediately made her quite terrifying.)

“Kindly wait here while I report to your father. This should not take long.” Lurien held up a hand to the guarding kingsmoulds, letting them register his soul-signature, then glanced back at the two young gods behind him. The Pure Vessel had come to a perfect stop, as was expected, but the princess had somehow gone from hanging completely upside-down on their cloak to perching precariously between their horns, furry little paws braced on their forehead to hold her balance. It was a cute sight, if one could ignore the way that her half-sibling was starting to dangerously tilt forward, their already-compromised balance made worse by the newfound addition to their huge, heavy horns. “Kindly try not to damage anything in the process.”

“If you’re talking about that one vase, it wasn’t me!” Shouted Hornet, before the doors closed behind him; Lurien let out a sigh, half-weary, half-fond, then turned around to properly greet his ruler.

And stopped.

There was a circle on the floor, glowing firelight-red in the dark. There were runes painted on the periphery, blazing bright and hot and angry, and there were dream-motes rising up from them as well, twisted red essence flickering like embers in the shadows of the workshop. There was a power here that was foreign to him, that prickled white-hot along the nape of his neck and crackled like the snap of coals off the soft fur of his ruff. There was a power here that was old and ancient and angry , as if fear incarnate had come down from the heavens to tear the world asunder, stifled only by the summoning-circle and the great jars of void strewn about the room.

And curled up in the center of the circle was the Pale King, caught in a dreamlike trance that seemed almost like a mockery of sleep, as if the ritual he was participating in was more like fighting a nightmare than communing with the dream. As Lurien watched, his void-darkened claws twitched into a tight curl, mandibles unfurling into a silent, scornful hiss, all those terrifying razor-sharp teeth gleaming threateningly in the flickering red light as the wyrm’s head turned towards a foe that only he could see.

There were some bugs in the kingdom that conflated martyrdom to one’s duties to be the pathway to enlightenment, and others that believed that they were simply the most honourable of fools. Lurien wasn’t quite sure whether or not he aligned himself with either philosophy, but he was sure about one thing in particular- he might have been a martyr by definition, but he certainly wasn’t a fool.

So he took the wise man’s choice to deal with the situation. He turned right back around, closed the doors firmly behind him, and marched right back to where both princelings were standing, placing a shaky hand on each of their backs to drive them away from the workshop before either of them (well, one) could think to ask any awkward questions.

“Your father is busy. We’re going to Deepnest.” His voice was monotonous and high-pitched even to his own ears, but the difference in tone barely bothered him for once, years of botched conversations and voice dysphoria all paling in comparison to his sudden overwhelming desire to put as much distance between those burning red runes and the children as possible. Neither of them seemed to be affected by the aura behind those closed doors, but he could feel practically all of his fur standing on end underneath his cloak, the memory of those terrible glowing sigils scorched to the forefront of his mind.

He just hoped that they didn’t notice that there was something terribly wrong going on.

There was something terribly wrong going on.

They could not put a word to it, nor could they place what exactly was amiss, but the Hollow Knight knew down to the very core of themselves that something was off. It vibrated through their void like a plucked harpstring, tugging incessantly at their attention, and it only seemed to have gotten worse in the time that they had left the White Palace. Endlessly it gnawed at them, disrupting the quiet stillness of their mind, and no manner of deafening technique they knew could quiet the knell ringing through their head. Not the walk down to the tram, not the gawking of all the civilians around them before the three of them boarded an empty car, not the closed-in, thundering rumble of the Deepnest tunnels when they exited the station, the only bugs insane enough to delve within the depths of the Nest. Not even Lurien falling prey to a clutch of garpede larvae was enough to clear the chiming in their mind, though it did pull their focus off of it just long enough to pull him out before he was devoured alive, and to get Hornet to stop giggling enough to lead the way. Perhaps they were a little harsh when they shoved her over the pit and poked her to get her to continue onwards towards the village, but their wariness about their father’s Watcher had dissipated after a day spent in his company. His eyes were keen, yes, and he read them with enough clarity to make their heart drop at the thought of what might have happened had he spent more time with them before the Sealing, but he was a tired, lonely being, and he treated them both with a gentleness that was unexpected of one of his rank, even though they could smell the fear radiating off of him everytime their little sister came close enough to bite. He did not deserve to be laughed at for his misfortune. Not after he had given them a day where they didn’t feel like they needed to be anyone in particular, like they weren’t any less of a person for being born of the void, or a knight whose purpose had been fulfilled.

(And were they greedy for that? Were they selfish for enjoying being treated like a living, thinking being, when so many of their siblings never got a second chance? When their success was nothing more than a fluke, a result of them losing control instead of being the perfect vessel their father wanted them to be?)

(They didn’t know. They didn’t know who they were. They didn’t know if they were the Pure Vessel, the silent sacrificial protector of Hallownest, or if they were the new god of the Dream, holding mastery over a realm that had long spurned them. They did not know what made them a bug, if they were a bug

But as soon as the adrenaline surge had died down, the chime had returned, and it had only grown in its intensity in the time between them scrambling backwards out of a pit and pulling themselves free of the mire of their own thoughts. It was not like the call of the Abyss, the silent surussus that was defined by the void it left behind; this was a pull, something that actively tugged at them rather than making them painfully aware of their absence. It felt almost as if a harpstring had been imbued with Teacher-Dreamer-Jailer Monomon’s crackling electric power before being fastened around their neck, and now the current was running painfully under their skin, reminding them in pulses that something was wrong.

(But they didn’t know what, this was new, they were not brave enough to try-)

They made their best effort to try to ignore it, tamping it down like they did with so many things before their mother had given them the go-ahead to be alive, but, as always, their best was not good enough. The call persisted through the confrontation with the hunting-scouts, the surprised greetings from Herrah, and the dinner that had followed, where they had picked awkwardly at a still-twitching dirtcarver while trying to juggle Hallownest social norms with the worry about causing offense in what had so recently been a rival kingdom (not that Herrah seemed to have a problem with them, but they could feel the stares of the Devout digging into their backs, could taste the sharp snap of fear and anger from those who still did not trust the word of the Pale King). Not even their sister yammering enthusiastically about showing off her home to them could dim the ringing echoing through their head, nor calm the persistent restlessness humming through their veins. It was only when they settled down to rest for the night that they realized what was going wrong, as the soft, shadowy hues of Deepnest faded away to the shimmering, velvety expanse of their new realm, right at the border between Nightmare and Dream.

And they immediately regretted it.

For there were two gods at war with each other far above, where the skies still shone golden above the void far below. Two gods that they recognized, two that they knew well, two that now danced around each other in a nightmarish rhythm of fire and soul, sending quakes through the realm with every blow that struck its mark.

No no no no not again -

The Pale Wyrm and the Nightmare King faced off on a platform that looked like it was wrought half of nightmare-essence and half of soul, vibrant red sigils spinning off against their pure white counterparts. At a junction of the worlds their battle lay, but the Vessel could feel the way the fabric of the realm had been stretched taut, pulled between the two opposing forces demanding its compliance. From where it hovered far below, swimming in the everdark sea below the sundered sky, it could see the way that the Dream ran thin, how the clash of god against god charged the essence floating through the air to a fever pitch, even in the moments where they simply circled each other and snarled. Ancient and powerful they were, skilled rulers and masters, and the world echoed with the strength of their altercation, sending that sickening resonance through its head with each violent action taken.

This land was not its own to take. Unwillingly had it shouldered the burden of the Old Light's passing, forced by the fall of an empress to a lowly knight. This was not its place to protect- and yet, with a sickening lurch, it saw that it had to find an end to the war it saw raging far above, lest the very realm itself was torn apart in its greatest moment of instability. It had to stop them, but it didn't know how. Not when it still flinched away at accepting all the emotions that it was technically never supposed to feel. Not when it still could not initiate an action without feeling the sickening lurch of terror that followed such a transgression, not when it had not yet learned how to be a they, not an it.

It had been made to be silent, to be passive, to be still- to be empty, but they were not, and they knew this, and they didn’t-

“You think to cast me out? To exile me, when you have taken so much from me already? You are blind to your own foolishness, little wyrm.” The Nightmare King’s voice was a low, dangerous hiss, the deep crackle echoing along its edges warning of the power lurking within. Fire licked along his horns, danced along the edges of his tattered wings, turned the tips of his talons a bright, cherry red; a heat-haze shimmered around him, the very air burning as he stared down Lord-Father-King. With his fury kindled bright, the resemblance to the sister he had left behind was uncanny, and the Vessel found themselves flinching back against a scrap of floating dream architecture before they could stop it.

“Do not mark me as one of your like,” The Pale King replied, and his tone was as cold as ice and as hard as steel. With his upper pair of arms, he wielded a polearm tipped with three sharp blades, while his two lower hands gripped a pair of scimitars formed of pure soul. Ceremonial pauldrons topped with curving spines graced his shoulders, more for show than proper function, their purpose to taunt rather than protect. The Hollow Knight knew the punishment for falling for such a trap all too well, their void tying itself up in knots as their father slowly stalked closer to his target, his lashing tail the only indicator of the depth of his anger. “These lands have long since forsaken you. Return to the wastelands, wandering madman, and do not return. You are no king, and Hallownest will never bow to a being as pathetic as you again.”

“Says the coward with a silver tongue,” snarled Grimm, and lunged forth with a rasping howl; the Pale King’s wings flared in a blaze of iridescent splendor as he parried, his lefthand scimitar slicing towards the Nightmare King’s abdomen. Grimm scuttled backwards, hissing furiously, but he continued his assault, taunting the Pale King further as pillars of fire erupted out of thin air, missing their mark by a mere handspan. “Better to be a madman than to be blind! All of your foresight led you to nothing more than ruin and rot. Even now you spurn me, when all I am trying to do is clean up the mess that you left behind, focused on conquest and territory to the end of time. Are you a bug, or are you a beast? Tell me, o shining ruler- does it even matter to you anymore?”

“ Silence. ” A sound more sibilant hiss than words, echoing through the mind while the body shivered with the power of its passing. The form of the king glimmered like starlight, warping the dream-sigils spinning around it, and for a moment it seemed as if the coils of a creature as large as a city were tightening around the platform, before the illusion died out and it was only the king again. A vicious swipe from the glaive splashed unnatural crimson blood into the void-dense air, before the Pale God was forced to stagger back as the Nightmare King pressed forward in a flurry of firebright claws, the shriek of chitin striking metal ringing through the air.

It was loud. It was loud, and it was bright, and it was brutal, and the Hollow Knight found that under the clamour of the two kings colliding, they could not think. For once in their wretched life, the ugly press of unwanted thoughts did not permeate their mind, forced out of the way by the sheer animal terror of watching the chaos unfold from below. Different was the Nightmare King from the radiant light that they knew so well, but Her fury shone through him with every sweep of his wings and screech that left his lips, sibling similarity betraying itself as he fought to keep the Pale King pinned. They cringed back, torn between terror and a horrifying urge to leap into the battle to stop them both, instinctual incentive not yet strong enough to grapple with years of self-suppression.

They had not wanted this, had not fought for this, did not bear the scars of their sacrifice with pride, but still this burden had been placed unto them, and they couldn't-

“No, I don’t think I will! Tell me, Pale Wyrm , how does it feel to know you would have failed were it not for the actions of your Hollow Knight- if you can even feel at all!” Grimm laughed, a harsh, grating sound, and bared his teeth, flames licking from between the gaps in his wicked smile. He struck out, but it was not for the killing blow that their father tried to block for- it was to grasp at the front of his cloak, and to pin the snarling wyrm down with his talons sinking in deep, hatred smouldering under the satisfaction as pale blood bloomed around his claws. “You can't even cry for all the little ones you damned to the depths.”

Deep within the depths of the Dream, something snapped.

They did not see what happened, but it was not something that they needed to see. It was a feeling, rather, a sensation that plunged their lungs into ice and left them gasping- a sensation that pulled so hard at the void within them that they felt almost as if they had been jerked forward by an invisible chain, as they had when they had first heard their father ordering them to climb. They stumbled where they stood, grasping for the dreamwoven architecture for some semblance of stability, and turned their face towards the heavens, where the misty red-gold clouds had turned a bright, blinding white.

The thing that lunged forth from the haze was not the father that they knew.

Vast looping coils cleft the crevice between sky and sea, dream and nightmare; a crown of fangs as tall as city spires flared bright in the muddied golden light, endless spirals of teeth ringing within the pulsating maw. Silverbright scales lined its hide, each lapping plate a shining sheet of pale ore, and around the piercing thorns that made its horns looped a halo of white fire, a thousand staring eyes illuminating the sightless face staring down at its foe below.

They knew that their father had once been the being known as the Pale Wyrm. They knew of its might, its power, how the remnants of it left behind had shaped them in the egg, how it lingered in their sire despite him scorning its presence. They knew it had been large, and strong, and hungry , but they had not known of its vast expanse until now, as it rose from the clouds like a leviathan from the depths.

It did not roar as a beast of legend might; it did not need to. The world around it thrummed with the resonance of its cold fury, a deep animal anger that shook the fabric of the Dream to its very core. The Vessel could feel it in their chest, in their horns, in the buzz of their mandible-tips against one another under their mask, as the world-ender city-devourer looped around the platform that held the Nightmare King. A shimmering mirage it seemed, almost too terrifying to be real, but the scales that crushed against the nightmare essence were as solid as anything formed within the Dream could ever be.

And, as the Vessel knew well, it did not matter which reality one inhabited for them to meet their demise at the claws of a god. Death was as much of a threat here as it was in the waking world, and they were a helpless, lost, ruined sacrifice overwhelmed by the clamour ringing around them, a mere speck against the vastness of the two elder gods.

You would not know.

You could not understand.

The mandibles flexed, glittering silver blades opening to let out a deep, rattling hiss. The voice that echoed through their mind was Father's, colder and angrier than they had ever heard in their life, and for a moment they were very small and very new again, trembling in the ruins of their eggshell as the weight of the world pressed in around their soft, fragile form. Under the ringing of the strained dream and the whispering rasp of the Pale Wyrm’s voice, they were not a knight, they were not a god. They were merely an insignificant, shaking speck cowering away from a force that could break worlds, a force half-mad with fury and a pain so poisonous and so unshakably deep that the void within them writhed under its weight.

Harlequin dancer, carrion eater.

You mock what you could not ever hope to fathom.

"Oh, DO I now? Do I REALLY?" Grimm flared his wings and snarled back up at the vast creature looming above him, nightmare fire licking along the sweep of his outstretched arms as he did so. Hatred smouldered in his scarlet stare, but his movements were calculated, precise- he commanded the Nightmare as if it was as easy as breathing, yet paid no mind to the strain it wrought on his sister’s realm, his focus zeroed in on his enemy. "Have you forgotten my age, Pale Wyrm? The extent of terrors I have seen, the losses I have suffered? From shadow and emptiness spawned Nightmare and Dream, two beings from one to fill the void. To eternity you chained one, while the other suffered on, and took under his wings the very child you left behind! Did your wretched foresight ever tell you what would happen when you tore her wings away? What pain you would wreak, when her ancient mantle came to rest on the very child you abandoned? A child that I chose to foster, for though it was them who had swallowed my kin, it was their sire and dam that brought us to ruin?"

...What?

"Have I not made myself perfectly clear? She was my SISTER, you ASSHOLE! " Grimm's voice rose to a piercing shriek, pulling sharp shards of nightmare along with him; the sound pierced a daggers would, and they found themselves once again stumbling as his cry echoed through their mind, their staggering backstep dropping them back down to one of the few pieces of dreamscape lingering above the glass-black sea of the void below. The essence all around them hummed a frantic tune, an unfamiliar melody contrasting the bloodblack talons of that horrible shriek, but even their voices fell once more to silence as the fabric of the Dream rippled again, and the soft haze of void around them burned.

Numbness overcame them, and they reacted as the Pure Vessel might have before its fall, teleporting away from the pain before they could register that the danger was not directed at them. Wrapping themselves in the antithesis of the Dream when it sang its sombre tune to them sent a dizzying chime through their head, but it was enough. From no more than a daggerthrow away from where they were once standing, the golden sigils spinning lazily in the air turned a bright, hot red, then erupted into a torrent of flame that pulsed and flared like a living thing, gloriously incandescent and rapturous in their ferocity. The Pale Wyrm jerked back, moving at a frightening speed for such a large being, but the vastness of its bulk betrayed it, and the fire smote it on the side of the neck with the full force of the Nightmare King’s fury.

The roar that rang out in response was not the snarl of any living creature; it was the tumbling thunder of an avalanche, the raw shriek of metal tearing under an unstoppable force. It was keening-bright, piercing and sharp, but it was a battle-cry all the same, and the distraction it offered was just what the Nightmare King needed to capture the advantage.

They sensed the change before it happened, felt the pressure drop around them as they struggled to stay stable in a world torn up from its roots. They felt the fire and the brimstone, the burning in the void- for it was void that had shielded the elder of the three gods, and it was the void that reacted now, furling away from the monster dropping rapidly towards the battlefield.

Now from the darkness swooped Grimm, but it was not the Grimm that they knew. Closer in stature to the Old Light's apparition was he now, but more twisted in form; only passing resemblance to a bug he bore now, the beast above mothlike only in silhouette. It was as if fire and smoke had become living matter, as if all the darkest dreams from every bug that had ever lived had coalesced into the one terrible creature hovering above the head of the Pale Wyrm, the many eyes dappling the ashen face glowing like coals in the night, exposed overgrown heart pulsating gruesomely from within the hollow, glowing socket that made the thorax. Glowing red flames licked around the tips of the horns, made the flare of the ruff, the fan of the wings; from rents in his side spewed fire and embers, a haunting red glow illuminating the coal-darkened carapace covering the long, bony legs and whipping tail, fierce claws flaring towards the Pale Wyrm's face as the God of Nightmares dove down from the shadows with a shriek, paying no heed to the earth-shattering roar that rumbled out in warning.

He was as young as a new day and as old as thought. He was three living beings bound together into an image of what used to be, a memory of a creature that used to haunt the night and fill the air with the screams of the damned long before bugkind had grown sapient enough to name their own fears. He was death’s cheerful shadow, and he had been kind to them.He was the terror in the night, the bloody gasp before death, and he was driving his talons deep into the soft junction between the plates on the Pale Wyrm’s face, and-

And they were going to watch the two of them kill each other.

Do not think.

Do not move.

Do not...

The Hollow Knight was not a childish sort. They could not be, never could be, simply because if they had ever allowed themselves the luxury to be a child, millions would have died. It was a weight that they had carried since the moment they had hatched, and felt the brush of their father's pale light against the unmarked slate of their mind. It was a choice that they had pursued, scrambling higher and higher past desperate terrified silent-screaming siblings as they chased that pure, pale light, and it had been a choice that had balanced on a knife's edge of life or death when they had turned back to look at the sibling-who-might-have-been flailing quietly for a chance at salvation, and they had chosen to walk away.

They had never screamed in the Palace, never wept and never cried, as the others had done in their own unique ways when they had fallen to their deaths in the climb. They never ran, never played, though their limbs would twitch and ache with restless energy, never sought anything but the numbness that followed a sufficient training-session, striving for a pinnacle of perfection that they would never reach- all while defying the nothingness that made them, defined them, obscured them from what they could have been.

They were a vessel, a corpse imbued with the void, and vessels were not alive. The child they might have been was gone. What was left was only an echo, as it was known, and echoes hurt , and it was their birthright to ignore the whispers of what could have been, just as mother ignored the way her vines refused to grow thorns near the entrance of an old, abandoned nursery, or father refused to acknowledge the shadows that clustered around him when he thought there was nobody there to look, huddling up against his chest as if seeking a warmth he could not offer.

But now they were standing by the sidelines of a battle that was never supposed to happen, trapped by the lapping abyss while the silverbright knell of a shattered dream sang warning-chimes in their head, and their heart thudded a frantic beat within their chest, and they were alone. Their breathing was heaving through ruined lungs, their pulse was a dull roar in their head, and they were alive and they were alone, and they had never known until now when they were awake and aching and alive alive alive just how deep and terrible and terrifying that loneliness felt, of the true vast terror of being the last of their kind.

(They were the God of Nothingness, father had named them so.)

It was pain that had driven them to lash out at the Old Light, when She had driven them to the breaking point. Eons ago, when they had been nothing more than a body to be used, a monster to be abandoned, when they were nothing more than a weapon in chains and not a sibling to a sister who laughed and stuffed fried sweets in their mouth when they made the mistake of looking away, a student to a tired, lonely bug who whispered them away from the brink of darkness, or the scion of a goddess still learning how to love them, who chose to keep trying no matter the burdens weighing her down.

They were more than just a vessel- they were a Someone, and being a Someone meant struggling, and being a Someone meant suffocating, and overall it meant suffering,

But it did not mean it had to suffer alone.

They did not know why they were doing this, only that it was significant. They knew only that they were tired, and they were terrified, and that if they did not let themselves scream out their pain in the only manner they knew how, they would suffocate under their own choking misery like they had for so many years already. The Dream sang of fury and strain and all the pain in between, but the darkness beyond the worlds was as still and as calm as ever, the shadow they feared and longed for comforting in its quietude. Alive-but-not-alive, fractured yet whole. The sea where all the sorrowful sombre souls slept, and where the meaningless found life in their emptiness, damner and savior and family.

So they reached out to the deep dark heart of the void within them and they

Called.

And ever so softly, the Abyss called back .

It did not surge forth, like it did against the Radiance. It was gentle in its approach, and all the more terrible for it, a lifeless being creeping carefully over dreamworn architecture that sizzled and sighed under its embrace. Almost sleepy it was, sludgy and confused, as if it were being pulled between two distant points- when it came close enough for them to touch, it crawled with whisper-softness towards the vessel that had abandoned it, and wrapped its claws around their own like a child grasping for the safety of a parent, tethering itself onto them. It was corruption, it was hunger, it was death to the gods warring above, but it wrapped its embrace around them, and for a moment they were home again.

They closed their eyes, let their mind open to the dark chasm of the endless sea. Let it drain away their sorrows and their fears and their helplessness, let their call echo out to the ones they left behind as they sunk to their knees in the early eventide. Let the great rushing tide close over their head to pull them down to the darkness below, where they were everything-and-nothing, where they were one-and-many.

Alone, alone. Can’t do this alone.

Fear-terror-death. Sorrow. Sorrow. Sorrow, hurt. Sorrow-hurt-alone- tired .

Take me home.

(And for a moment they felt the void ripple around them, saw the shape of two curved horns against the darkness, felt the leap of adrenaline as two dark eyes met their own. Felt the void tug back, felt the press of another darkling mind against their own, but they were falling too fast and too far to answer, caught in a current they could not contain.)

They plunged into the nothingness, beyond the chiming harpstring-pull of the Dream humming above them and the voices screaming around them, and let themselves be swallowed by the silence.

.

.

.

Go on then, Icarus

Take your turn

You always fly right up

Until it burns your wings

You never could change

Always the victim

Into the flames again

Go on then, Icarus

Take your turn

You'll never go through them

-Icarus, Starset

Chapter 15: Darkness Rising

Chapter Text

Many moons I've lingered lonely

Many dreams I've overseen

Now I wait for one below me

To arise and intervene

From the churches and the chapels

Came the ones we must pursue

And though I long to be unshackled

I shall see my burden through

.

.

.

Time stood still at the bottom of the world.

They'd sensed the shift as soon as they'd descended into the maw of the Abyss, hatchling-soft claws scratching against the fossils of creatures far older than Hallownest itself. The knowledge had been natural, instinctual; they could feel it like they could feel the pressure of the kingdom above their head, a million winglengths of rock stretching between them and the sky, the concentrated thrum of thousands dimmed in the dark haze of rising void. Of the many places in Hallownest that clung greedily to times long gone, the Abyss was the most gratuitous of its kind, and the difference became more and more apparent the deeper they descended into the dark. It was ancient- ancient and hungry, an empty void that called for any and all sparks of light near its maw to fall into the depths, a vast dark sea that called for their return just as much as it lingered in endless apathy. It was the beginning and the end, creation as a paradox of unbeing, and where the dark mists rose, the world fell still.

Home. Home, and it welcomed them, embraced them, shrouded them in the numb-touch black pallor that pulled all of the light and all of the colour it could from the air.

It had killed them and remade them, stole their light and their life, gave it back embellished with the shadows of the ancients that had come before them. It rejected them just as it welcomed them. It hungered for the faint remnant of their light just as it feared it, half-forgotten memories from lost hatchlings terrified of the dark twisting its depths into hungry claws that reached for anything that dared to shine near its surface.

They’d sensed it, and were all the more wary for it, bounding from outcrop to outcrop without pause, pushing back against the buzz in their head that whispered for them to stop, to rest, to abandon their frantic pursuit, to join the silent sea and be free of all pain and all fear. Pushing back, because to give in was to submit to the knowledge that their struggles meant nothing, and that their lost sibling must suffer above for the rest of their undying days, trapped away from the darkness that made them under the chains of a god that could care little for their suffering. That the whispering urge to take their place to devour the sun fell silent meant nothing. Eternity in silence was meaningless if they could not bring their lost sibling back home, a concept that the Abyss could not- and would not- understand. All that it knew was that the bindings the Pale God had laid upon it were gone. All that it desired (if such an empty, wantless thing could desire) was for its long-lost creations to come home.

(For the Old Light was dead, and the little lost souls that had wandered restlessly and cried wordlessly for a family who would never answer could at long last take their final rest. Of the thousands that had hatched on that final damning day, only one now resisted the call of the sea, and the ghost that stepped above their shattered shells moved forth with the determination of one dragged away from a temptation that pulled at their very shade.)

Behind them, the other two stragglers tagged behind, unnaturally silent even for two of their ilk. The smaller of the two siblings traversed the shifting grounds with ease, and had proven their worth as a seeker as they bounded lightly over the sharp-tear-death-stones and broken eggshells, but their scurrying attempts to rouse the shades of their siblings had failed, just like the efforts of the Little Wanderer. Very few had risen from the clattering cairns of the Birthplace, and those had been painfully weak, painfully small, half-cursed with void rather than embraced by it. They had cried out in terror at the approching night, keening pitifully for the pale light that had birthed them, and had torn cold claws through their sibling's shells as they attempted to cling to the fragile scraps of familiar light, to flee from the darkness that had hatched them.

The still-masked vessels had been forced to cut them down before the sheer force of their regrets split their own frail carapaces, meeting the desperate clutches of terrified siblings with merciless violence. It was tiresome, grueling work, and it was starting to take its toll on the three of them. For the little ones were not whole, but they were family, and the shock of their shades sinking through carapace and void burned worse than the sting of a nail sliding into their side. It hurt, it hurt to cut through the forms of their siblings as if they were nothing more than a common enemy, it hurt to watch them crumble back into the nothingness of the world around them, fading back from whence they came. It was a soul-ache, a shade-deep hurt, and it was made worse by the betrayal that sang through both the living and the dead when the point of a nail thrust through the empty space where their hearts once had been.

(Which did very little in terms of raising a vessel army, and very much in the way of making swoop-horn sibling stagger off to the side so that they could retch where the living could not see them. For swoop-horn sibling, the Little Wanderer was slowly starting to realize, was not as voidborne as the two of the smaller vessels were, and this whole trip was taking more of a toll on them than they'd probably like to admit. Caught between the light and the dark, they could not sense the flux of the void beneath their feet, could not push the call of the void away from their mind. They could not understand the need to return the fearful shades to rest the way that their younger siblings could, for their heart was dreamer-soft, and the pangs of regret and sorrow that sang across their voidbond did little to calm the restless churn of the everdark sea.)

And therein lay the problem: none of the vessels really knew what they were looking for, and the Abyss was a vast, vast place. Once a bug made it past the wicked-sharp rocks that marred their descent on the way down to the nesting grounds, it was very, very easy to get lost. Even the not-bugs that were born to it were not spared from the twisting labyrinths hidden under its shade, and if there was anything that could help pull the void under their control, it did not sing to them.

(Once vast now fallen, once whole now fractured. Great-surging sea once mindless, then almost, now scattered motes of memory bound to blinking little lights bound to desperation bound to fear bound to life.)

(Regret stirred the sea, but though it ran heavy and thick with the lost and the fallen and the once-was and never-be, the Void was not beget of regret. Regret did not make it, but it did shape it, tied to death as it was, so maybe…)

And that was another problem: if there had once been something that could help pull their siblings together again, then they had very little luck of finding it. The main chamber that the Pale-Light-God-Creator-Destroyer housed had stashed their eggs was simply the largest of a series of labyrinthine tunnels, many either half-collapsed and flooded with void or buried under the shells of their siblings. In the indistinguishable time that they had been down in the depths, the three of them had already found the lighthouse, the ritual basin, the cavern of screaming carvings, the shoreline leading down to the great dark sea. And while the gift of the ancients had taught them how to cloak themselves in the shadows of their birthplace so that they could easily escape from harm, it had not given them the strength required to wrest their sibling from the clutches of that cold, cruel light. The little shadows that could never be had been laid to rest in their graveyard-nest, and still the Wanderer hadn't the faintest clue on what to do next.

(The sea had called to them when they stood at the pier, as it always had, as it always would. It was far more sluggish now than it had been in the windtorn memories of their hatching, when the hungry tendrils seeking any glimpse of life had torn the shades from the shells of any who had dared to come too close to the shoreline, but still it called. It still sought their light, their shade, their soul.)

(Home, it cried, with the silence of the voiceless. Come home.)

...Or, rather, they had been clueless. Right up until the point where they heard their sibling scream.

It was a sudden thing, unwelcome and unexpected after a long, exhausting search. They had been standing in front of an empty eggcase, staring at the distorted reflection it cast back at them, when all of a sudden the sealed-shut channel between their void and the thoughts of quiet-whisper-sibling was torn wide open, slamming them with sights-that-were-not and sensations-that-were-not that filled the dark, blank slate of the shell with a burst of burning fear and whirlwind colour that scorched the very earth below them, and they were reeling backwards with their head throbbing as if it were about to split open and there was the ghostly echo of wounds in their chest and fire in their lungs and-

-Light, light burning bright and F-E-A-R, fear and indecision and lightning-bolt paralysis singing through their veins through their heart through their muscles through their head. Silver-light and scarlet-fire and the bittertang of ash scattered over the sugarsweet haze of burning dream and the teetering blankness of nothingness hurtling closer closer closer as the dark sea rose to close over their head-

Melancholy seeping deep, aching-heart aching-mind, tired creature worn too thin in too little time, pulled apart by opposing forces that held no reverence for their inexperience. Tired tired tired, tired and r-e-a-c-h-i-n-g and the void sang a song of silence and comfort and reached back to claim their lost soul as one, all the whisper-quiet hush of what was to be and not to be coalescing together to take them home, take them home-

-And then it was over, their prescence dissapearing just as quickly as it came, and the Little Wanderer was lying facedown among the ruined shells of their siblings with nothing more than the aftermath of their scream, their head ringing as they slowly came back to their senses. The golden hum of essance faded, the stench of burning flesh and the cold snap of soul drifted away; all around them, the magnetic thrum of the Abyss slowly ceased, the abrupt break in the stillness smoothing back to the blank slate that the world had been before the call. Even the stunned not-chirp of their two siblings did not compare to the agony left behind by the distress of their hatchmate.

The Little Wanderer staggered to their feet, stumbling over talons that felt as if they did not truly belong to them, but their instinctive attempt to reach back across the fathoms between them and their sibling yielded no results. There was no follow-through on the call that had echoed through to the void of their mind, their lost hatchmate slipping out of reach as they scrambled to ground themselves.

Always, always just a single step, a single second too late. Just slow enough to be torn from them by the Light, to be stolen and hurt by the uncaring creators that warred above for a kingdom that was not theirs to keep.

The sensation that burned through them then was not an echo of the sensation that their sibling had passed through the link to them just then; it was anger, pure and true, scorching through their thorax like a lit wick held to a patch of lantern oil. It was a hot, sharp anger, an anger that cleaved through their chest to bury hilt-deep into their heart, and it was with that anger kindled deep within them that they tore their cloak to the side and ripped free the charm clipped to their chest, paying no mind to the sting of its withdrawl, the dismayed trill from four-horn-thorn.

The cold eyes of the Pale-Light-God-Creator-Destroyer stared back at them from the alabaster curve of the charm's surface, its pristine aura making a mockery of the shattered shells around them. For the glory of Hallownest had the simple pilgrim that had made the charm died, but it was for a glory that was distant, unreachable- a perfect future set in a perfect city overseen by a perfect ruler, imagined by a bug that had made their whole life into an unrelenting stride to be untouchable, and their death had been glorified and remembered for the fruits of their labour. For the future of the kingdom had their siblings been slain, but they had been imperfect, impure, their shattered skulls stacked to form mountains for their hatchmates to die on, alone and away from the light. For a far grander future their kindred had been slaughtered, and yet the only solace that the poor lost souls had was the possibility of an uneasy rest, brought to them by a sibling who had given themselves over to eternal torment so that none after them should have to suffer the fate of their forebears.

An idealization of perfection made physical, shining stark against splintered skulls and broken eggshells. The cold white light of a god who had given everything to see his kingdom whole, contrasting against the cost he had paid to reach it, where the blood of the imperfect still cried out for mercy to a world that would never hear them. The promise of an idol that offered miracles to those that swore fealty to it, provided that they could cast away all that they were to serve its needs.

(Liar oathbreaker sibling-stealer betrayer-)

The Little Wanderer's anger turned cold. It cooled from a fire burning through their limbs to a tight, hard ball in their chest, a sliver of ice trembling in their heart. They turned their focus inward, studied all the anger and the hurt thrumming through their void, all the humiliation and betrayal. They thought of the way they had felt when they had been left hanging over empty space, the sick, fliptwisting fear that had curled inside of them when they saw the empty-eyed stare of their sibling turning away. They thought of the way they had failed, and how they had known what that had meant, even when they were still newly-hatched. How it had sat like a leaden weight in their chest when they reassembled themselves after the fall, mind numb with the confusion of a newborn, soul howling at the magnitude of what they had lost.

They caught the memory with their claws, the sensation of the King's words echoing through their soul. They let their focus turn inwards, let themselves look at the burden that had been placed upon them since the very time of their birth. Let the anger cool to cold bitterness, to quiet sadness, to contemplation and reflection- feelings they had no words for, but that they could understand nonetheless, bright-hot golden anger shimmering down to ashen grey and deepest black.

They held it there for a moment, let it settle into stillness. Let themselves look at the fear-pain-sorrow of their birth, the cruelty of the Lord-Killer-Father, the agony-exhaustion-uncertainty of their siblings. Let themselves understand the pain that they had faced, the too-heavy expectations, the crippling weight of the world on all of their shoulders. The chains in their shade. The fear thrumming through them since their hatching, a background noise always whispering about how they would never be good enough to be the Hollow Knight, never good enough to save their sibling.

They considered it, that cruel old memory demanding them to give give give until they had nothing left to offer, that cruel cold order from a cruel cold ruler who had given and given and given more than what was his to offer. They considered the circ*mstances that lead to their birth, to the thousands upon millions of corpses left at the bottom of the Abyss, at the sacrifice that would have been demanded of them if their sibling had decided to reach out for them on that one fateful day.

And then their claws closed around it, and they let it go.

Within the grasp of their physical self, the charm made in the shape of the Pale Light’s will shuddered, black bleeding forth from the heart of it to swirl over the contours of his form. The Little Wanderer glanced down at it, their mind countless fathoms away from their body, and watched as the charm that would have made them blend in with the rest of his image faded away, overwhelmed by the shadows that he had rejected.

Soul of King to Heart of Void. Idealism of Perfectionism to Acceptance of Individualism.

Unity over Division.

Void given Focus.

The darkness swallowed the charm, leaving no light behind but two pale disks- the eyes of a shade, staring back at them from the embodiment of void. As the charm settled into the final steps of its transformation, a surge of power spun through them, so overwhelmingly powerful that it drove them to their knees, made their vision flicker and billow like bannercloth in a strong breeze. That heavy, heavy weight in the center of their thorax was gone, leaving nothing more than an empty space behind, and they felt the loss of it like the breaking of a shackle around their neck, leaving them light and unburdened and free free free, their mind clear and unbroken by the constraints of their past, all the birth-given worries and expectations falling away to untainted, blissful nothingness.

They did not have to be the Hollow Knight. They did not have to be pure. They just had to be the person that they had always quietly wanted themselves to be, and that was enough.

And it would be enough. Not just for them, but for all the little shades who were cast to the deep before they were ever given a chance to thrive in the light. For all of the lost ones who had been taken and remade by the Void, used as weapons by the warring-usurper-gods that desecrated the grounds of what had once been theirs.

(For they had been one, once, and Hallownest had been their home. These ancient caverns, these hollow hills- all had been shaped by the great dark sea, all the flickering, fleeing lives that followed had been theirs to keep. It was an ancient memory, one that did not belong to them, but was theirs all the same, echoing within the darkness that made them.)

(They did not have to be the shape that the pale-god-creator-killer had impressed upon them, the darkness whispered. They were perfect as they were.)

(And it was ever so soothing to lay all their regrets to rest, let them slough away into the churn of the rising tide.)

Slowly, they rose back to their feet, feeling the world swim around them as they adjusted to the pulse of the Voidheart within them. It was…strange, to be so empty, and yet so alive. To feel the yawning gap within their chest, the hollow echo of where their chains used to be, and to find comfort in that emptiness. To stare into the great empty blackness that had spawned them, to stare at the shattered shells and scattered shades of their siblings and to know that their sacrifice had not been in vain, that they could find a way to snatch back what little hope they had left.

They had embraced the Abyss, and now, at last, they felt that they were home.

Slowly, the odd haze around them faded, and they became aware of their two void-and-shell siblings staring at them, the currents of their minds a tumultuous whirlwind of shock. Swoop-horn sibling stood back, thrumming of fear and nausea under their awe, but four-thorn-horn sibling did not share the trepidation of their larger kin, and approached without preamble when they saw the Wanderer's gaze snap back into focus.

Sea is still. Does not call, does not churn. They reached out to cup the palm that had clenched the old charm with their own two paws, rubbing gently at the puncture marks with the pad of their thumb. When they hummed, the resonance of it was stronger than anything that the Little Wanderer had ever heard before, the tenuous magneticism of their void strengthened to an ironclad bond between the two siblings. Heard you call, bring it down. What did you do, sibling mine?

The trail end of their thought was not carried in the twisting eddies of raw information that void transmission normally brought- it was an attempt at speech, a memory of someone else's voice garbling through the distortion of time. A mark of light, however distorted it might be. The Little Wanderer glanced over at swoop-horn sibling, recognizing the familiar current of their thoughts tumbling over into the quiet basin of their mind, and gently pulled one paw free from their small sibling's grasp to offer it out to the other, wriggling their stubby fingers incessantly when swoop-horn-sibling hesitated.

And...that was a complex thing to answer, wasn't it. The Little Wanderer mulled on their answer as their larger sibling knelt down to take their hand, not entirely sure how to encompass the breadth of their own undertaking without completely overwhelming the others. It wasn't exactly something that they could easily explain, this hollow emptiness in their chest, but they supposed that they didn't exactly need to do such a thing anyways. Already they could sense the backfilter of information swirling twice over through the void, their own thoughts and feelings and sensations and revelations tumbling down the minds of any voidborne creature that bothered to tune in.

Still, they made an attempt anyways, because this was their family and they loved them dearly, and swoop-horn-sibling had been trying to get them to make their thoughts easier to translate into bugspeech anyways. They didn't understand the need for such a thing, for it seemed like quite a bit more trouble than it was worth to them, but they didn't need to understand to want to try. If it was for their siblings, they would do anything.

(Even, they wryly thought, if it meant raising the Void Sea itself. Not that it was such a difficult task.)

(Not anymore.)

Chose different. Rejected old-path broken-path path-of-light-and-loss. Chose self. They had never been able to speak in the language of the flesh and blood bugs above, but they tried to copy the way their words danced, the one-track pulses of information that they fed to one another with sounds and gestures instead of submerging each other in the all-between. Four-thorn-horn sibling wriggled closer, sticking their head under their cloak so that they could run their claws over the charm set into their chest, and they let them, the static buzz of their curiosity a pleasant hum in the background while they pondered a way to explain what had happened to them. For there were no words in the language of Hallownest that could ever come close to describing the freedom that they had felt when they rejected the will of the Pale Gods. Chose...release.

The briarthorn tangle of swoop-horn-sibling's mind snapped shut. They stepped back, pulled their void away from their siblings so that they wouldn't tangle them up in the fooleater of their mind, but the Little Wanderer caught a ghostly sensation of a tightness in their chest and a swooping coldness in their head before they went, as if the thought of being unshackled from their birthright was just as bad as tumbling off the edge of a cliff. They tilted their head at them, concerned for the elder vessel, but swoop-horn-sibling eased the barriers back before they had the chance to ask, their mind a churning river of conflict and curiosity. Your void...it's different. Deeper. I can feel you stronger. You pull us, sibling. You pull the world all around right down to you. Can you control it? Shape it, like Soul? Their claws squeezed around the Little Wanderer’s paws, a reassuring pressure. The fear that they had felt was not their fault, the gesture said, and the smaller vessel’s shoulders drooped with relief. Try. I want to see.

That was a good question. The Little Wanderer flexed their claws within their sibling’s grasp, then turned themselves inwards, trying to feel out the edges of their shade. Soul glimmered bright in their reservoirs, not quite diminished to the point of being unusable, but it was a surface level power, ephemeral and fleeting in origin. It needed thought, an image held pinpoint in the mind to become an explosion of outward energy, but they could already tell that such a tactic would not work with void, which was so much denser than soul. Void was not thought, it was not focus; it was something deeper, more pure, more primal. Something that had to do with reaching into the darkest depths of oneself, and accepting them. Something that had to do with feeling everything in its raw, unwavering entirety, so that all of the power of that drive could fade away into the nothingness, and from that nothingness-

-There.

The edges of the Abyss yawned before them, their mind a wormhole to the sea beyond. It was as still as it was vast, a far cry from the unruly shadows that churned within them, but they did not fear it, did not try to fight it as they might have before. For its will was theirs now, and they did not need to fear it. It would not try to consume them. They would not let it.

(Somewhere, hidden between layers of shadow and old, tangled web, a silver strand of soul snapped. They batted at it with something that might have been a limb, if a limb could be made of gaseous shadow instead of flesh, and thought little of it when the void around it churned in the wake of its passing, reeling from release after so many centuries of quiet confinement.)

They could sense the darkness around them, all the remnants of the past behind them, all the empty space in between. Curiosity churned, the pinpoint of themselves awed by the absence of all thought and form, and, with one curious claw, they reached into the stillness of the evermore, and plucked a chord that echoed through all folds of the world around them, disrupting the stillness like ripples spreading from a dropped stone. They did not change in form, but the ripples expanded their perception as if they had grown many times larger than the little shadow that they were before, and their senses grew distant, unbound to their shell, as if all the concentrated coiled void that made them had dissipated out into the ether beyond.

They felt the shades of their siblings, hiding away from the world above. They felt the tremors of unease running through the lost ones, the endless unrest that hadn't yet been snuffed out with the devouring of the Old Light. Gaseous and disjointed they were, many mere blots of infant emotions and instincts rather than a singular coherent whole, but there were some in the mix that were more self-aware than others, some that followed the pull of the Little Wanderer's void as if the point of singularity that was the Voidheart could ease the tumult in their souls. Angry were some, angry and afraid, but they listened as the Little Wanderer called to them, the sharp churn of their souls stilling as they showed them how to embrace the void within them.

(Rest, they told them, and they did. Slowly, but surely, one by one. They reached out to all who would listen, cradled the sleeping and the silent close when they could find them, and, little by little, the terrified warble of the lost faded away into oblivion.)

But there was still something else stirring the shadows, tugging relentlessly on the edge of their awareness. It was not the silver chains that the Pale God had placed upon them when he commanded the darkness to yield to his desires; it was different, more disorienting, and its touch burned instead of chilled, like soul did against void. It followed the bite, tracking it through the endless deep, up and up and up and up until their muzzle thrust out of the void into a whole new realm entirely.

This was not the Abyss. This was a world of golden light and scorching cinder, an endless sky that stung the eyes and scorched the flesh. It was the antithesis to their very being, and it was loud, an unsettling swarm of chaos compared to the blissful silence of the abyssal sea. After so much time spent in the comforting dark, the eerie chiming spin of essence clashing around them was very much unwelcome, and while they were normally quite a curious little vessel, now was not the time to explore. Not only did they feel as if they had trespassed on hallowed grounds, they also had no real idea of how they got here to begin with, and with their sibling needing help and the Abyss swallowing all notion of time whatsoever, there really wasn’t much-

Was that a bug?

They hadn’t realized that they had company, for they could sense no shadows seeping down from the shattered architecture above them, but the tattered mess of talons and teeth that came flying down out of the sky was certainly some sort of living being, even if it didn’t look like any but that they had ever encountered before. For one, it was massive, fathoms larger than even the tallest beetles in Hallownest, and it seemed to be made almost entirely of fire, all the way down to the pulsing organ half-hanging from its chest. It didn’t seem to notice the Little Wanderer at first, busy snarling at whatever had kicked it down from the clouds above, but when it did happen to turn to the shadow half-lurking at the surface of the Abyssal Ocean, the multiple cerise eyes on its ashen face went almost comically wide, its jagged, sideways maw dropping open at the sight of them.

It was unnerving, and being spotted by another in a world that they were very distinctly not supposed to be in felt like being shocked by a whole swarm of charged lumaflies all at once. The Little Wanderer tensed, trying to consolidate themselves enough to draw their nail (from where, they could not say, only that it was there and that was all that really mattered, wasn’t it), but before they could ready themselves for a fight, the sky above them split wide open, and a monster of unfathomable proportions hurled down towards the deep.

It was a massive beast, a vast twisting creature that carved through the essence of the Dream like a nail through flesh. Its fangs were city spires, its scales an impenetrable barricade, and the entirety of its length was swathed in a radiance so blinding that it was almost impossible to look at directly- which was honestly quite distressing once it became readily apparent that it was taking up far more space in the sky than anything that bright had any right to do so, especially when the odd fiery not-bug that nearly got hurled into the sea snapped its head around to loose a mind-rending screech at the approaching monstrosity, flaring its flames up to a blinding glow- as if this world needed even more light than it had to begin with.

(As if the violence enacted upon the world by two opposing Higher Beings couldn’t be ended with the death of the Old Light. As if the scraps of the Dream weren’t already being tugged between these two nightmarish entities like a toy by two bickering hatchlings, as if the pressure of the colliding forces didn’t make their head sing with agony, as if their family hadn’t suffered under the light enough already.)

So the Little Wanderer made the next logical choice that anyone of their standing would make when confronted with two large, snarling beasts battling in a hostile world that they were very much not supposed to be a part of to begin with. They cast all thoughts of their nail aside, reached for the familiar, comforting whispers of their siblings beside them, and summed all of the strength of soul and shade together to douse the world around them in shadow.

The tension thrumming through the golden realm ceased, snapped like a taut string. Void and essence swirled through the air in a tumultuous mix of opposing elements, creating a rift between Dream and Sea. The two fighting Higher Beings vanished under the swell, their light swallowed by the darkness around them, but the Little Wanderer did not hold their burning essence within the fold of the void for long, though something deep and dark within them stirred hungrily at the thought. They were starting to grow quite tired of this intangible, vaporous form, and of the burning, singing light that enveloped them in this world. Instead of closing their jaws around the throats of the two Others, they used the brief silence that followed their surge to make their escape, slipping back down into the quiet of the deep.

And when they came back to their body, blinking away the spots left behind by the brightness of the Dream, they found themselves cradled in the lap of their older sibling, with the comforting press of four-thorn-horn curled up on their back. Not alone, as they had been when the locking of the Abyss had sent them tumbling down to their doom. Not united, as one great, otherworldly being, but together nonetheless, and stronger for their differences than they would be if they were all the same. All hollow, as the Pale Gods wished.

(The Void had one, once. The Little Wanderer was not quite sure how they had obtained that knowledge, but they knew it was true, and that the darkness still yearned for the chance to become united again. They could feel it, that tug, that call- what had once been the pull of a vast entity was theirs now. Their power to control.)

(Maybe they would heed it one day, when they grew tired of the struggles of mortal life, and wished instead to fade into the backdrop of existence, to become a power far greater than one simple body. It would not be death, not really- they weren’t entirely sure if they could even die, for the unbecoming was where they drew their state of existence- but it would be the end of the form that they took for themselves right now, the form that they had been born to. Child of the Pale King, heir of Hallownest. And while they were not terribly keen on the thought of claiming any part of the birthright that had been denied to them before their hatching, the thought of returning to the vast, nebulous body that they had assumed in the void did hold some appeal to it, even if it was somewhat exhausting to keep track of.)

(But not right now. Not today.)

They stretched out their arms, then wriggled their legs, jostling the weight of the smaller vessel on their back. That earned them a soft chuff of annoyance from four-thorn-horn sibling, and a click of rebuke from swoop-horn sibling, but neither of the vessels put any teeth into their complaints. They were quiet, the thinwire tension strung between the three of them gone, and now they looked to the Little Wanderer with a different kind of anticipation humming through their void. Caution and hopeful optimism from swoop-horn sibling (who still had a thin edge of nausea wavering through their connection, but that could be dealt with later), and eager excitement from four-thorn-horn sibling, who practically vibrated with the thrill of the hunt.

Ready? Questioned swoop-horn, nuzzling the spot between their horns. Four-thorn-horn sibling drew their nail, bounding ahead before they realized that the rest of their siblings weren’t coming with. The sheepish shuffle that they did as they returned was enough to send a rush of amusem*nt bubbling up in the Little Wanderer’s chest, a sentiment that was echoed with their older sibling’s silent laughter. The fear that they’d carried when they guided their siblings around the kingdom was gone- though the glow of soul was stronger in them than it was in either of the smaller vessels, their shade was just as strong, and echoed the thoughts of their smaller siblings at last. All were determined to make their family whole again.

And now, at long last, they had the power to do just that.

They flexed their claws once more, relishing in the power thrumming just below their carapace. The yawning expanse of the void within them had never felt more welcoming.

They had never felt so at home.

We go.

Falling through the darkness of the void, as it turned out, simply involved waking up.

After a swift, weightless spiral downward through empty black, the sudden jolt of consciousness felt a lot less like emerging from a cocoon of blessed silence, and a lot more like being dragged backwards through river rapids by something much larger than themselves. They jerked at its touch, tangled between the solid tangibility of the Waking World and the hazy ensnarement of the Dream, but could not quite force themselves to slip between one or the other, alarms ringing their claxon cries as the demands of their physical form warred with the god-claim staked in their very soul.

(Dim roars of creatures that rent holes into reality tangled with the rushing silence of the Void, the chime of the Dreaming World an alarm that rang only in their head, a contrast to the shivering chatters of the world outside-)

-Which was not only just bothersome, it was also well and truly terrifying. There was a hook in their chest pulling them towards a ruined skyline where two vengeful deities threatened to tear a lordless land asunder, and there was something else screaming across the void-bond in their mind, something that was so familiar that it shook down to the very core of them instead of shaking its horns like a terrified maskfly keening for its mother, and there was a nettling pain in their right leg where it was awkwardly scrunched next to a soft silk pillow that they really needed to alleviate before it got worse, and-

(...Voices, hissing and clicking in foreign tongues, the sound oddly muted and warped.)

(Movement, above them, beside them-)

Instinct took over where an overburdened mind could not, cutting through the tangled threads of the dream to allow old training to guide their claws. Without a single thought other than the desire to get away, stay away, they struck out like a wild animal at the live-thing glowing against the dead-empty-space, baring their fangs in a rattling hiss to match the pained growl that followed suit. It was naught more than a faint wheeze in the cool air of Deepnest, their void choking the wyrmsnarl before it could make a sound, but-

-Wait.

Deepnest.

They were in Deepnest.

Horror twisted in their gut, and the Hollow Knight's eyes flew open, nictitating membranes blinking away from their customary deployment on strike. There was a wet stickiness beneath their claws, a salty-sweet smell in the air under the familiar wet-earth tinge of Deepnest; their swipe had struck true, and the oddly enticing edge to the scent sent their stomach roiling with disgust in addition to their apprehension.

With an unsteady lurch, they attempted to pull themselves up out of the nest of blankets that they had entangled themselves in- then froze as a threatening hiss emanated from their right, far too close for comfort.

Slowly, carefully, they turned their head towards the sound, training settling in where instinct would not suffice, and found themselves face to face with the heavy claws of a Devout, hovering a mere handspan from their face as their owner glared out at them through the cracks in their crossed claws. The smell of blood hung heavy in the air, but the stink of fear rising from the Devout in front of them obscured any and all details that they might have gathered otherwise- and yet there was not a single mark on them that did not already bear the wear of time.

Then who-

"Weft, stand down." Herrah's rumbling voice broke the heavy silence, taut with something that the Pure Vessel could not identify. They jerked their head up, searching for her familiar silhouette, and found her hovering in the doorway with a hand clamped over her upper forearm, her chelicerae flared in a wry twist. It took them a moment for their eyes to adjust, but they thought they saw something like exhaustion in her smile, if the tight-fanged grimace she was making could even be considered as such. "The mistake was mine. I am not in danger."

She shifted her grip, leaning back against the silken walls of the den, and the Hollow Knight caught a glimmer of something wet sliding down the black carapace- something that carried the salty-sweet tang of fresh blood, and the cool, biting thrill of loosed soul.

Something that matched the scent of the fluid splattered over their claws, congealing into a sticky mess between the joints of their talons.

Herrah, who had welcomed them into Deepnest as if they were her own. Herrah, who had ignored the mistrustful glares of her civilians as she led a god of Hallownest into their midst, one that everyone and their broodmother knew was a weapon built for war. Herrah, who had guided them into her den and given them a bed reserved for only the most honorable of warriors, as though they were not the child of one of Deepnest’s oldest enemies, as if they could ever be worthy of such high honour.

Herrah, who was now bleeding from three great gouges on her right forearm, dark blue slipping free even as she tried to stem the flow with a torn strip of the bannercloth hanging over the doorway. Herrah, who was injured because of them. Herrah, who was wounded because they had lost control.

(Distantly, through the spiraling guilt tearing through them, they could only feel relief that they had not been wearing their prosthetic arm when they struck out at her, for they knew that if they had done so, she would very likely no longer have a limb to try to patch with bannercloth. Their claws were sharp, their strength great, but void-built carapace was not the same as tempered pale ore. It could grow blunt with wear, could break with strong enough impact. The metal that the Pale King had shaped into their new arm could do no such thing.)

"My queen, you cannot possibly ask this of me. They are of Hallownest. Their ilk are not honour-bound." Weft's words were thick and clumsy in her mouth, clearly unused to the City dialect, but her tone was steady and strong, nearly hiding the tremor quavering through it. She tilted her head to look at them, glaring fiercely from the corner of her right eyes as she continued in the tongue of their people. On her left, familiar pockmark infection scars marred half of her face, and they felt a different, stronger pang of guilt at the sight of it, knowing the full extent of the fury that the Old Light had wrought upon them when She realized that the spiders of Deepnest allied with the Pale King. Weft had not deserved Her ire- they were not terribly surprised that she was watching them with such suspicion now, when it was likely their fault that she had lost her eyes in the first place. "Already they have marked you, when they should consider themselves privileged to be welcomed into your den. I cannot let them do so again."

"Well, excuse you," muttered someone from behind the door- Lurien, blending perfectly into the backdrop, his dark blue robes obscuring what little could be seen of him beyond Herrah's bulk. He sounded even more harried than he usually did, his hood was rumpled as if he had been repeatedly clutching it throughout the night, but his disheveled state did not stop an odd pang of embarrassment from joining the tangle of negativity writhing in their chest. Herrah's guard mistrusting them was bad enough- having their new tutor witness their misdeeds made them wish that they could sink through their woven hammock to let the void swallow them whole. "I did warn her to not wake them without a verbal command. I would consider that dependable enough, especially since she specifically chose not to listen to me."

Weft frowned at him, her fangs gleaming wickedly in the low light. Her claws remained pointed at the Hollow Knight, but they caught the way that they twitched as her eyes met the blank hole of his mask, as if she was ready to turn her shield-weapon on him too. "You know nothing of Deepnest, Watcher. We are warriors, and we treat each other as such. To raise a claw against our ruler is not just a grave insult, but a challenge to her authority as well. One that we cannot tolerate."

“Then back your words with talon and fang, and let our battle remind you of why I am the matriarch, and you are not.” Herrah's voice dropped to a low snarl, the rumble of her subvocals vibrating down the tips of their horns as she stared Weft down. With a hard flick of her wrist, she scattered droplets of her blood on the floor between them, a clear challenge even without the flare of her fangs emerging from under her mask. Injured or not, she was a formidable sight, and the vessel shrank back down into the hammock in a desperate attempt to make themselves look as small as possible. Which they most likely failed at, given their size, but they did not want to test the Queen’s ire any more than they had already. “The Hollow Knight bows to the Pale King, and I have shown my superiority over him already. Their actions now are not a threat against me, but merely a mistake that any warrior startled from sleep might make, hatched from my own actions. I am not so high nor so mighty to be above such misdeeds."

With that, she pointed to the doorway, her injured arm with its bloodstained bandage held high and proud. "You are excused. I see no reason for you to linger here, especially if you are going to second guess the company that I keep. Your fear of the night does not mean that you can turn your anger upon our allies."

Weft clicked her mandibles unhappily, but did not press the issue further, bowing to her queen as she trudged back out into the hallway. Lurien had to awkwardly sidestep to get out of the way, an occasion that made Weft flinch in surprise when she noticed him lurking there, and made Lurien himself startle in turn. The awkwardness of their interactions helped ease the knot of tension tangled in the Hollow Knight's chest, but not by much.

"Mama? What's going on?" And now Hornet was lingering in the doorway, rubbing sleepily at her eyes with one hand while the other clutched a blanket to her shoulders. Their heart sang to see her safe, but their mind lurched unpleasantly at the thought of waking her, a sensation that they wished they could bury deep in a garpede nest and never feel again. Was it the war in the Dream that brought her here, calling to the wyrm half of her soul? Or was it simply the ruckus of something stirring in the night, causing enough of a commotion to wake a light sleeper? And why oh why had they roused half of the den in their distress? Were they really that much of a restless sleeper? "I smell blood."

"It's nothing, dearheart. Your sibling was having night terrors, and scratched me by accident when I tried to wake them." Herrah’s voice dropped to a soothing croon, so very different from the challenging snarl from before. She held her arm out for Hornet to squint at, waggling her fingers when her daughter let out a quiet hiss and grabbed her hand for closer scrutiny, and did not wince when sleepy little claws poked at the edges of her wounds- an impressive feat, given the nature of what had inflicted them. The Pure Vessel had shattered kingsmoulds with barehand blows before, and though they were no longer in the condition that they had been before the Sealing, the gouges that they had left in the spider queen’s carapace was nothing to chuff at. "What about you? Did you have a bad dream too?"

She said it lightly enough to sound nonchalant, but the Hollow Knight saw the way that Lurien tensed at the question, and felt their heart drop to the pit of their stomach, fear coiling through their veins. Was the battle in the Dream Realm so evident that it could be felt by all the denizens of Hallownest? Or was it the presence of the Nightmare King, sowing terror in the minds of mortals?

But Hornet just scrunched her chelicerae, shaking her head slowly. "No. At least, I don't think so. They were weird, and had a lot of fire and stuff in them, but they didn't scare me. I just heard arguing and smelled blood, that's what woke me up." She released her mother's hand, then pattered over to their nest to tap her fangs lightly between their eyes, a gesture that might have been sweet if she wasn't sleepy enough to turn it into more of a headbutt than an affectionate nuzzle. "I hope you feel better, Hollow."

So she could sense the fluctuations in the Dream Realm, she had some awareness of what was happening within it. They pressed back into her touch, attempting to calm the sudden flurry of panic scrambling within their thorax, attempting to press it back into the nothingness like they had before their fall. If the concerned frown that they got in return was anything to go by, however, their attempt to appear nonchalant had failed miserably.

(But could it really be considered a fall? Something inside of them whispered, something they might have once considered to be treacherous. Could it really be considered a mistake, when it led to them sitting here with their sister before them, instead of rotting away in chains?)

“Go back to bed, little one. I promise I’ll tell you everything in the morning.” Herrah tugged Hornet away, her voice a low, soothing rumble in her chest. Even the Hollow Knight felt some of their tension melting away at her words, though the guilt at hurting her still lingered- or was that just simple nausea, a side product of the throbbing headache that the battle in the Dream Realm had induced? All of this was new to them, and the tacky remnants of Herrah’s blood on their claws hardly did anything to help it. Everything was too much too soon, and they were still too new to the concept of existing to make any sense of it. Nor could the Nightmare King’s advice on controlling the Dream offer them any help here- there was only so much thinking about free will and shaping matter that one ex-Pure Vessel could do before they started to feel like they were being hunted by paracausal entities, and they were fairly certain(?) that one could not will themselves to feel less like a disorganized disaster.

(Or could they? That was what they had done when they were trying to be empty, after all- and while it didn’t really work in the long run, it did make everything feel sufficiently fuzzy and distant when they needed it the most. Perhaps they could will themselves into not being so much of a mess, and was just really bad at it because they hadn’t had to deal with anything like this during their training to become the Hollow Knight. They didn’t have to worry about maintaining order in the Dream Realm or the physical when they were busy training, after all. Taking an active part in tracking their own health was not really necessary when one was working on being as thoughtless as possible.)

(This whole existence thing just made their headache even worse.)

They were so disoriented that they didn’t even notice when their sister left their room, or when Herrah commanded Lurien to bring her a bucket of water. It was only when their bloodied claws were being gently rubbed down with a wet washcloth that they jolted back into awareness, their stomach roiling unpleasantly when the hammock rocked under their movement.

“Shh, be calm. I’m not upset with you.” Herrah’s low, deep voice was a soothing balm upon their frayed nerves, the authority in her voice a familiar tether in an unfamiliar situation. She worked the washcloth over their claws with brisk efficiency, scrubbing her own blood off their carapace like she was buffing out a stain, but the touch that lingered on their arm was gentle, the thumbs of her secondaries rubbing soothing circles into the crook of their elbow. “You would not know it, but this is not the first time that I have been swiped at by someone who was woken up without warning. We spiders are a cantankerous species by nature- Weft was just mistrustful because of her nightmares, not entirely because of you.”

“Nor are we here to interrogate you,” Lurien piped up from the bedside table. He had forsaken his hood entirely, and the sleek black fur of his ruff was poking up in all sorts of different directions. The Vessel wasn’t sure if they’d seen the Watcher ever look so…crumpled. “The disruption in the Dream Realm was something that we both felt in full, having spent so long in its clutches. When we realized something was wrong, we came rushing over to find you deep within some sort of trance, trembling as if fighting off invisible enemies. We want to know more about what happened, but…we will not ask for any information of yours if you do not wish to give it.”

If the tension in his voice was anything to go by, information was not an asset he was particularly keen on relinquishing. But if his word could be trusted- and indeed, it could- he would do nothing if they chose to refuse him.

Which they of course would never do, but the knowledge was comforting nonetheless. Slowly, they inclined their head, still unsure in the ways of communicating with mortals, and felt some of the tension in their limbs ease further when both ex-Dreamers let out a mutual sigh of relief.

"We promise we will not bother you for too long. Come, let us sit down at the table to discuss." Herrah dropped the bucket with the bloodied washcloths off to the side, gesturing for them to stand with one of her uninjured hands. She kept a calm, relaxed aura about her at all times, the energy of which helped immensely when the Hollow Knight found themselves struggling to disembark the hammock without the aid of both arms. All she did was keep a watchful eye on their movements, and then a small smile when they succeeded in their task. "The stability of all worlds is just as much our burden as it is yours. But we cannot see it as clearly as one of your kind can."

The Queen knew of their claim over the Dream? They nearly stumbled over their own feet on the way over, earning an alarmed noise from Lurien. Guilt surged aknew, and they nearly hung their head in their shame- that the Dreamers had to deal with the consequences of their ineptitude even after their unshackling was unfair, especially if it was affecting the rest of Deepnest as well.

(Would they ever be free of this guilt? Would they ever be free from the knowledge that they would never be good enough to finish the job that they had been born for, to liberate the world from the strife of the Dream?)

(Their heart ached almost as much as their head at the thought of it, which made the knife in their gut sink in deeper. They had no right to be tired of their own wrongdoings. They should not-)

“Oh, don’t you dare!” Herrah snapped her claws right under their muzzle, startling them out of their dreary thoughts. They jumped, their head jerking around to stare at her, but she didn’t flinch under their gaze like Weft did. Instead, she glared right back at them, and pointed firmly to the chair beside Lurien, crossing her secondaries over her chest as she did so. “I may not be able to tell what you’re thinking, but I know it’s nothing good. Whatever that damned wyrm is doing is none of your fault, and I won’t let you think otherwise. Lurien, tell them what you saw.”

She dropped herself into one of the chairs with a heavy thump, pushing them down to sit with her when they hesitated just a second longer than what she was comfortable with. And so they sat, mind numb with shock, the throbbing pain between their eyes easing somewhat as the guilt faded away. None of this was anywhere close to the treatment that they were used to receiving, and Herrah’s angry outburst being targeted at their own misery was a…novel experience, to say the least.

(Was that how the spiders of Deepnest dealt with guilt? By yelling at it until it went away? Somehow, they didn’t think that was the case- it felt too much like something She would do, and Herrah was usually quite level-headed.)

(But then again, Hornet was also quite prone to snapping at things she didn’t like, and they knew from years of experience that she hadn’t inherited that particular quality from their father. Maybe the Queen was just more stressed out about this than she appeared, enough to make her lose her temper. It was quite a dire situation, after all.)

Lurien cleared his throat, tapping the table to capture their attention. When he spoke, his voice was even softer than it usually was, the melancholy tone that often permeated his words back in full force. “I apologize for not telling you this earlier, but she’s right. When I escorted you back to the White Palace, I came across your father in the midst of a summoning circle, one that was emblazoned with bright red runes. If my knowledge of theology is correct, then it was very likely that he was communing with the entity known as the Nightmare King.”

He paused, swallowing hard, and continued on, his voice just a touch shakier than before. “I am aware that there is some sort of past history between the ruler of the Nightmare and Hallownest, but I hadn’t realized that his presence might be so close after the fall of the Old Light. Tell me, Hollow Knight- has he visited you recently? Tap twice on the table for yes, and once for no.”

The thought to conceal Grimm’s involvement passed their mind, but they did not hold onto it for long before dismissing it entirely. For what could either Dreamer do, when they themselves were powerless to stop their father from driving their mentor from the realm? They were a fullblood god, and both the bugs before them were mortal. They could not stop the Pale King from his territorial rampage, just as they could not teach them how to control essence like Grimm had been attempting before the battle.

Despair lurched in their throat. They reached over with their remaining hand, and tapped the table twice.

Lurien exhaled slowly, glancing over at Herrah. They could not discern what his expression might be behind the mask, but the bristling of his ruff and the tense set of his shoulders indicated that it likely wasn’t pleasant. “...Okay. Did he try to take control of the Dream? The realm is experiencing a power gap after the passing of the Old Light; we cannot afford for a more hostile entity to take her place at its peak.”

So they didn’t know. The relief that they felt at that was bittersweet, tinged with no small amount of shame. They had no means of communicating to them that the Dream Realm had fallen under their control when they drove a spear of void through Her heart, and thus no means of telling them that it was their fault that the realm was running rampant at the moment.

One knock. No.

“Then we are still in the clear.” Herrah leaned forward, her heavyset frame rattling the table with her movement. Gently, she placed one hand on their shoulder, rubbing lighty at the joints between their carapace plates; it helped to release some of the tension knotted up in their thorax, though the nauseating pain behind their mask refused to budge. “I don’t know why the Nightmare King came poking around the Dream, but if the legends are to be believed, his presence is the strongest when a kingdom falls. Driving out a scavenger that wandered too close to his territory is overkill for the Wyrm, but it does not surprise me that he would respond in such a way after the Old Light’s demise. He is a coward, but he snapped at others for far less when Hornet was in the egg. Becoming more territorial when his offspring are under threat from outside forces is a part of his nature, it would seem, even if he’s godsdamned awful at acknowledging that he’s more of a problem to them than anything else in Hallownest.”

At one point in time, the any implication that the Pale King saw them as his hatchling might have once brought them great comfort- but now, with their head throbbing from a battle that he created, their mentor’s presence fading more with each passing minute, they weren’t sure what to feel. Even while Lurien and Herrah argued over what to do next, waffling between keeping them in Deepnest to ride out the storm before the raid on the Soul Sanctum (Lurien’s idea), or storming the castle to demand an answer from either the Pale King or the White Lady (Herrah’s), they remained uncertain of how to feel, torn between the loyalty they had always known and the burgeoning doubt beginning to blossom in their chest.

Father was always right. But was he now, when he risked the balance of the realms to drive their teacher away? Had he been right, when he stole the moths from the Radiance, and condemned his future subjects to suffer under Her wrath? Had he been right when he first cast the eggs of their siblings down into the Abyss, pursuing a prophecy that promised eternity in exchange for the lives of millions of hatchlings? Had he been right when he commanded them to kill him, to drive their nail through his hearts when they were still too weak from their wounds to stand without his aid?

Whatever it was, they didn’t have time to think about it. Nor did either of the ex-Dreamers had the chance to ask them for any more info on the matter, as something surged up from the depths of their soul, something too fast and too wild for them to seize control over.

Searing pain scorched through their mind- not like the agony that had afflicted them under Her touch, that burning-bright punishment that had become their world after the Sealing. No, this pain was the lash of taut cords breaking, of rusted chains slithering over raw flesh as they were torn free. They jerked backwards at the agony of it, clawing at the point of their mask, but the snap of pain was gone just as quickly as it came, leaving nothing more than torn-open scars behind.

Oh. And their body was slumped over the table, lifeless void still trailing from their eyes as they hovered over it. No new damage marred its frame, but the glyphs that had once kept their shade bound to their carapace were now flickering weakly against their mask. The Pale King's spell to keep their darkness at bay had been torn wide open, and now they were free to do whatever they pleased, free to wander away from their broken shell to rejoin the waters of the deep.

(Free. Free.)

(They could go home again. At last, they were finally free.)

That was the least of their worries, however. Their shade felt...different. They had been very young the last time they lost their body, but they couldn't remember the gaseous form of their void being this light before, this unburdened by regret. Even when they were naught but a hatchling, they had been a creature of regret, and that regret had manifested itself as violence against the Pale King and all his subjects. They didn't know why they did it, why they felt compelled to lash out when the luminous ones came close. But they had.

But now they did not.

...Something was calling them. Something was pulling them down into the deep, something that was at once achingly familiar and terrifyingly alien. It wrapped its influence around their shade with fragile strength, tugging their essence towards the Abyss. They angled their head downwards, wispy shadow drifting off of their form, and heard themselves in the echo of its call, a haunting melody that shivered through the silence in between existence and the nothingness.

The calm, consuming blankness of their void wasn't locked behind a sealed glass door anymore. It felt like their Ascention into the God of Nothingness, but this was different- they were not cut off from the rest, as they had been when they had drawn the first drop of their father’s heartsblood. The others were here, dwelling within the heart of Hallownest, and they had heard their call. They had come for them. They were waiting.

They were not alone.

And then the moment passed, and they were left to drift again, unmoored to both their body and the void. One lone speck of darkness hovered now in a den of life, caught between life and death, between escape and existence. Given freedom, true freedom, a boon that they had not had since the moment of their hatching.

It would be so, so easy to let themselves die. To let themselves fade away, to let their essence blow away in the mist. The two gawking mortals before them could not stop them if they tried. The Many below would accept them, embrace them, would lead them back home. It did not matter how it happened. The ghosts would not care what form they would use when they came down to greet them. The Abyss did not differentiate between the living and the dead.

They made a split-second choice.

They chose to live.

Rushing back down into their body was a disorienting experience. But as they flexed their claws and shifted their jaws, sucking the damp air of Deepenst in with one great whuff of breath, they knew they had chosen right. Even with these aches and pains, these old wounds and gnarled scars. They would live to see the dawn of the next day.

They opened their eyes, blinking motes of darkness away from their vision. No soul-bright glow illuminated the space before them, but they didn’t need it to see the pure, utter shock radiating from both Lurien and Herrah. Nor did they need to draw breath to taste the fear coming off of them in waves, as any mortal being with half of their sanity would when coming face-to-face with the undiluted essence of a God of Void. Especially one that had just experienced an Ascension secondhand, and was still reeling from the implications of what that meant.

“...You’re taking them White Palace,” Herrah whispered, her tone brooking no argument. “Now. I don’t care if the raid is tomorrow, or that they just got here. You’re taking them back right now. Something is going on. Something big.”

Lurien closed his mouth. Opened it. Closed it again.

Nodded.

And that was the end of that.

.

.

.

And the cogs creak a melody

Hear the deafening dirges rise

And the ones who would never be

Behold the end with a thousand eyes

-A Thousand Eyes, Miracle of Sound

Chapter 16: to all the nicer things you could have been

Chapter Text

Tell me once again

I could have been anyone, anyone else

Before you made the choice for me

My feet knew the path

We walked in the dark, in the dark

I never gave a single thought

To where it might lead

.

.

.

The ride to the White Palace passed in silence. Lurien had forsaken the winding pathways out of Deepnest in favor of taking the tram- a decision, he told them, that he would have never made otherwise had it not been for Herrah’s insistence, as there was both precious little time to waste and very few opportunities to remind her of the efficiency of the tramways, the threat of running into other bugs be damned. But the faint veneer of humour shielding the anxiety in his voice had not persisted when they found the boarding dock, and died away entirely when they squeezed into the (thankfully empty) tram. They could not see his face, shielded as it was, but they could taste the tension radiating off of him in waves. The air was thick with the fears he would not voice, and so they gathered from him more of an understanding than they would have done if he chose to overlay the soft clicking of the tram wheels with meaningless chatter. The vigil of a warrior who had a hand in slaying a deity was not an action so easily forgotten.

And as for themselves- it was odd, really, the effect that the forceful stillness of the void had upon them. They felt at once as if they were swimming underwater, and as if their senses had been sharpened by some hidden whetstone; the gnawing churn of their void had faded within them, replaced with an emptiness that threw the rest of the world into keen contrast. They were at once more grounded within themselves, and detached from the world around them. Not in the way that the drugs had done, when they had been so weak and in pain, not in the way they used to be before the Radiance cleaved their mind in twain- no. This was closer to when they had driven the point of their nail through their father's abdomen, and had wrapped their hand around his throat to keep him still, taking his place as victor over them. This was closer to the clarity of Ascension, where the true nature of oneself was seized from the chokehold of power that one Higher Being held over another, and the self became more than just the fragile flesh that bound it.

Something was different. Something was wrong.

(Something wasn't wrong-something was right. Something was growing more powerful, more focused, and they felt the resonance of it all through their body, lending them peace when all they should feel was fear. There was no void lashing nervously within their chest- there was only stillness.)

(Silence, pure and clear.)

The tram slid to a halt, a quiet chime ringing out above them as the doors unlocked. They tracked the noise, the ripples it left in the otherwise-still air, and slowly adjusted their mandibles under their mask, one by one. Lurien did not seem to notice it, his head jerking nervously about as he ushered them out of the car, but to them, it was a sensation impossible to ignore. Their understanding of the emptiness had become second nature to them after they had claimed their rank as a true Higher Being, but the sensation was more acute now than ever before. They did not know if it was because of the tension-release, when the chaos of two gods fighting had stopped churning the Dream Realm into bloody froth, or of the calling surge of the void, but it did not matter now. It merely was.

Off Lurien set, a hasty trot that was naught more than a loping walk with legs as long as theirs. They followed behind, swiftly, silently, and tasted the eddies of fear that rolled off of him. It was not what they were familiar with, the terror of the unknown that often seized any bug that locked eyes with them, but it was similar in flavor, in frequency. Lurien was afraid of something that he did not understand, but it was not for his own life that he was scared for. And though they felt as if there was a numbing shield around them, they could feel the way the tension buzzed through him, a static thrum that shivered in their teeth and resonated through the tines of their horns.

(And, for a brief, fleeting moment, they wished that they could tell him that it was alright- that they were not harmed, and that the storm lurking on the horizon was unlikely to hurt them. But the flicker fled before they could slowly struggle through a means to express such a complex concept, and so they returned to what they knew the best: the study of the song of silence.)

The caverns around them had been full of water, once. Long, long ago, these walls had been swallowed by the sea, and now the air hung thick and still around them, as if in memory of the deep. Lurien left ripples in his wake, little tumbling currents where the energy of his life essence disturbed the stillness, but they swam through the currents with fluid ease, displacing neither the air around them, nor the memory of the ocean that once surged through the depths. It was less that they were a shade, haunting these hallways like the dead thing they once thought they were, and more that they were simply suited to do so, as a creature made from concentrated nothingness instead of supple flesh and soul. These caverns had not been claimed by them, but they were theirs.

And then the White Palace loomed, a gleaming white star standing defiant against the endless night. Against the darkness that they had grown accustomed to, it was a harsh, cold contrast, glittering ice standing in defiance of time, placed apart from the velveteen waters that slid apart from it. They blinked once to clear the veil of what-was-once-was from their eyes, then twice to adjust them to the bright gleam of polished marble, glimmering soul, and twisting steel. The otherworldly sense of their shade brimming over from the cusp of their mask retreated, sensors drawing in as the darkness below was scorched away by radiant, beautiful light, and they were naught more than the Pure Vessel again, a gangly, void-touched creature standing awkwardly in a polished courtyard with an arm that gleamed of burnished metal, and a stump that ached underneath. Only their mask matched the pale light that glowed around them- light that was at once a part of them, and not of them.

They had never been so deeply aware of their own misbelonging as they were right now, a mote of the dark against the cold-burning light of a radiant star.

Lurien looked up at the great palace, and loosed a sigh that seemed to deflate him to nearly half of his usual size. Whether that was a trick of the eyes, or merely his wings folding tight against his side, they did not know. They did know that they nearly tripped over the trailing end of his cloak as a result, which was as awkward and unwieldy of a situation as any. “I half expected it to be taken up by nightmare sigils by now. While my faith in your father is yet unshaken, the state that I left him in was not…particularly ideal. The Pale King is strong, but I have heard rumors about the Nightmare King that have put the horrors of the Battle of the Blackwyrm to shame. You are very strong, to have withstood such an upheaval so personally. I would not have the strength to stand in your place.”

To hear the Watcher speak of the battle so candidly was not unexpected, but it was offputting, and jarred them from the uneasy state they were hovering in into another realm of uncertainty altogether. They turned to stare at him, but he was looking elsewhere, and missed the heavy question in their gaze- an inquiry that they were not entirely sure that they wanted an answer to.

How much did you see? How much do you know?

“The Palace grounds are clear,” muttered Lurien, a hand fisting in his cloak- they saw the way his fingers trembled with tension, before he released it to assume the calm, measured stance that he was often seen in when performing his duties as Watcher, and to continue their progression towards the palace. “That is extremely unusual. I do not know if the kingsmoulds were affected as well, or if there is some event that I am not aware of- perhaps they were called in, for maximum security. The gardeners are out, but they wouldn’t know of any upheaval in the Dream Realms, and-

He came to an abrupt stop, speech cutting off into silence. The Hollow Knight halted a split second before they would have collided into him, their unbalanced gait turning what was once a routine maneuver into a struggle to stand.

And then they saw what he had seen, the sight that had compelled him to stop, and they, too, froze in place.

The Pale King was standing at the gates.

They thought they had been ready. They thought that they had accepted their fate, to be judged before the King of Hallownest, and to ready themselves for whatever came next. Whether it was to be slaughtered on the very steps that he had carried them over when they had been too small to climb them, or to wrest the Dream Realm from their clutches himself, to fight to the death for something they were already unwilling to keep. They were a fully ascended Higher Being that was now in possession of a dangerously powerful realm; it would be folly to believe that a god such as the Pale King would allow them to stay that way, now that they were a direct threat to his territory in the waking world.

But there he stood, wings spread in all of his glory, all of his radiance, and suddenly it was as if they were newly born again, at the bottom of the world looking up.

(And they had been small, so small- the light above naught more than a distant star, the urge to climb overwhelming nearly everything else.)

(Had they known, then? They must have. They must have understood that to climb to the top would be to deem themselves as the Pure Vessel, to put an end to the endless suffering around them. They must have known, must have chosen the selfless path. And yet…)

(They had wanted nothing more in the world than to make him proud.)

And yet, despite the display, he looked…tired. More tired than usual, at least, and he sagged slightly to the side as if one of his hind limbs could not quite bear his weight. But his head snapped around to look at them, and his scales shone luminant, strength yet remaining within his damaged form. He was a god still, and he stood as such, even if unseen wounds marred his carapace, wounds that would not heal with the aid of traditional medication. He was a king, and this was his territory. This was his den. He looked at them, and they saw the flicker in his dark eyes- a wildness that they would not have noticed before, had they not seen beyond the mask.

They looked at him, and saw in their mind’s eye the behemoth that made their father, hidden away by the form he wore in the physical realm, a demure shadow of what he truly was. The great white beast with fangs of city spires and looping coils fathoms long. The tunneling creature, devourer of realms, shaker of the earth. A world-ending force of nature, made to rule and conquer, one that brought death and left nothing but destruction in its wake. They had known that he was a wyrm, but they had not known the full reality of what that meant until they saw him snatch the Nightmare King out of the sky in a fit of fury, and saw beyond the demure, regal illusion that he wore in place of his old flesh. A new form had not excised the danger that he had been created to bring, no matter how long or how hard he fought to smother it.

They looked at him, and saw themself. And for once, that revelation brought them no peace.

But they hadn't had the time to assess him longer, for Lurien stepped between them and the Pale King, his voice surprisingly calm for someone who knew the danger of meddling in the affairs of Higher Beings. Those dark eyes flicked from them to him, the closest admission to surprise that the King might show, but Lurien did not waver under the intensity of his stare, and instead proceeded to distract him further with a respectful bow, drawing his attention away from the Hollow Knight in full. "Deepest apologies, my lord. The Princess of Deepnest expressed a desire to return to Deepnest instead of her room in the palace. I sought to return her, and was followed by the Pure Vessel, who wished to see their sister off safely. If this caused a disturbance in any of your plans, then-”

"Lurien." His voice was hardly more than a whisper. It had enthralled them, once. It had forced their limbs to make the climb. They had been too small and too weak to do anything else. “You are supposed to be resting. We shall raid the Soul Sanctum on the morrow.”

His eyes slid from the Watcher to the Pure Vessel once more, inscrutable holes in a pure-white carapace that glimmered with an alien intensity. Lurien tensed, his uncovered fingers twitching anxiously, before he took a deep breath, and reached out to lightly touch a claw to the sleeve of the Pale King’s robe, tugging it just hard enough to move his hand.

It was not direct contact- their father did not take kindly to such things- but it was enough. The wyrm’s head turned, a sharp motion that betrayed his surprise, but Lurien did not flinch, and he did not back away when a secondary hand reached up from the folds to touch his wrist, shining white claws pressing lightly against velvet-dark carapace. The burning weight of his intense gaze was no longer pressed upon the Hollow Knight; now it was turned to Lurien instead, albeit dimmed by surprise of being turned away from his target.

And with the change in his focus, the Pure Vessel was released. They had not realized just how rigid they had become, how their body had reacted as if they stood before the Radiance again instead of their father. Perhaps it was the battle from before, or the strangeness in the air. There were many things that were wrong tonight, but for once, the fault did not seem to lie with them.

…They were shaking. Why? Why were they shaking? Their mind was perfectly still. Any of the fear trapped below the surface was buried deep, trapped in an undertow it could not escape from. They had been unmoored from their anchor point, but held fast all the same, staring down the person who had torn away their tutor. Was this something else that they had no name for? An emotion they could not describe, after centuries of it being denied to them? Or was it just readiness for what was to come? A method of bracing themselves for the battle on the horizon- for there was always a battle when it came to the Dream- an instinctual means of keeping themselves calm while a much more dangerous rival stared at them from across the territory-lines?

(Was this anger that they were feeling? No, no it couldn't be. Anger was not cold or distant- it was hot, angry, burning and screaming like the sun. They had not felt it before, keen as they were on smothering such heat, but they were intimately familiar with the burn it left behind. This was a sense of emptiness, a feeling of detachment- and they hadn't the faintest idea what they were supposed to do about it.)

“I have not forgotten, sire.” Lurien's voice was as soft as their father's, though it was rich with an emotion that was dangerously close to affection; another weapon with which to disarm, though it did not seem to be used intentionally. With carapace-on-carapace contact granted, he reached up with his other hand to cover the Pale King's with his own, forming a tangled configuration of limbs covered in silver silk and midnight cloth that was just as awkward to gaze upon as it must have been to be engaged in it. "But I cannot sleep while the kingdom needs my help. And I know you well enough to see that you are aware that you made a mistake."

The Pale King blinked, swallowed harshly, shifted his weight briefly to his injured leg. He did not look at the Pure Vessel. "...You are keen of eye, Watcher."

(...No, this could not be anger. This was different, something that felt like it fit closer to a word often whispered by the Pale Court during the worst part of the Infection's outbreaks. Something like disillusionment, though trying to remember what the word meant was somewhat hard with their father and tutor flirting right in front of them.)

"There's a reason that you've kept me around so long. I would hate to disappoint you after you've invested so much time into my survival." Lurien's thumb stroked over the back of the Pale King's hand, a motion that led to him quickly stiffening and withdrawing once he realized what he'd done. "But for now, I ask you this- make good of your promise, and kindly stop scaring my student. Things are changing. We need your knowledge now more than ever.”

Another blink, breaking the stare the King had fixed on Lurien's retreating hand. This time, when his eyes fixed upon the Hollow Knight's face, there was a significant amount of disorientation swimming in their dark depths, and the tension that had locked them into place did not come back. Instead, they looked at him in turn, noting how he was wreathed in shadows that writhed like living things, and they did not falter. "I-"

"It is not my place to question the whims, nuances, and spats of Higher Beings." Lurien's voice was firm now, though it still held an aching fondness that would have caused Hornet to retch, had she been around to hear it. “But something has happened tonight, something that is far beyond my ken. I will help if you need me, sire, but until now, all I can do is deliver your child back to you. May your guidance give them strength, and bring us peace in the coming nights."

He took a deep breath, and fidgeted in place, suddenly looking quite a bit more lost than he had before. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I will be off to prepare. I shall see you soon, Your Majesty. Your Highness.”

He paused for a moment, as if he wanted to say something else, but shook his head and drew his cloak in tight around him. Then, with a bow to them both, he retreated, dismissing himself from their presence with nary more than a few awkward glances back. The Pale King turned to watch him go, his wings giving a soft flick of confusion, but he made no protest, as he might have when faced with insubordination with anyone else.

And then his eyes turned to them, and they were alone.

(No. Not alone. Never alone, not anymore.)

“Come,” he said, turning back into the archway of the palace, hands and wings both folding neatly behind his back. The limp disappeared; whether healed by the slow regeneration of soul, or by some desire to not show weakness before a potential rival. They did not know. They had never truly known their father; only his resolve, and his pain. There had always been a rift between them, and now it was deeper than before.

(No. No, it was not. They were merely looking at it from another angle. Looking down from above, instead of staring up from below.)

(The darkness within them hummed a melody.)

He led them silently through the garden, taking side paths that cut through silver greenery and white sands. He led them through the twisting hallways, where the stone itself seemed to remember its touch, the shadows gathering under every footfall like blood pooling forth from a wound. He led them past the corridor where he cut the Infection out of their chest, and down beyond the courtyard where he had asked them to kill him.

And still, he was silent.

Up the pathways, through the secret doors that lead to one of his workshops. Kingsmould eyes gleamed sullenly from beyond polished helms, moving aside like ghosts before the two gods, one right after the other. No sound other than the tap of his claws against the floor, the drag of his cloak, and it felt right, as if he were giving them leeway in his own territory. It was unnerving, to sense the power balance shift between them, but they were more than just their shade and more than just their shell, and the cold grip of terror from the night before was nothing more than an empty pool where their fear once was. They saw clearly now in its absence, and saw the way their father yielded to them- as if they were an entity worthy of equal respect, lower on the ladder only because of their stumbling youth.

No longer were they just a knight, a vessel- they were a god, and he yielded to them. This silence was not the usual lack of speech that followed the Pale King when his mind was busy with other things- this was a deliberate choice, to replace order with absence, and it was one that they felt keenly, for it was a mark of respect- no. A mark of equality.

(And why did that make them feel so hollow? Was it the realization of the turning tides? Or were they merely mourning what could have been, had they been born any different?)

The hallways darkened as they drew closer to their destination, far beyond where any living servant dared tread, and grew to nearly abyssal levels when the door to the old workshop silently swung open before them. Not just from a lack of lumaflies and close-cut corridors; memories of void pooled thickly here, the once-was mingling with the here-now to form layers upon layers of shadowy contamination, cobwebs that could never fully be brushed clean. They tipped their head back on impulse, feeling the ripples of emptiness echoing faintly back from a surprisingly tall ceiling, and nearly missed the way that the Pale King's shoulders hunched as he watched, the way his throat moved as he swallowed hard against a sorrow that was nearly lost in the shadows around.

(A thrumming tension in the air. They could taste it, feel the heedy snap of the pressure on their tongue. Pain and old memories were rich here, regret pouring from the tools and runeshelves like morning mist over Unn's acid lake. This was a place of learning, a place once rich with Soul and Mind, but it was drowning, doused under all the regret.)

(...Where did they learn that? They had never seen Greenpath. Even in the time before, when they were too small to seal Her light- they had never seen the dream of Unn's domain).

"This is the workshop where the first wingmould was shaped." The Pale King's voice was naught more than a whisper, but it echoed through the hollow empty silence that wreathed the room, much in the way that his words echoed through their mind, an inescapable whisper stirring the shores of a still lake. "And soon after, the first kingsmould. I was a different wyrm back then- much more arrogant, much more foolish. I thought that the future was laid out before me, and that the path to eternity was certain."

He turned to a blank slate of glossy black stone, and passed a hand over its surface. Immediately, bright white words came to light on the glossy-black obsidian, etched in soul-glyphs that whispered in the back of the Pure Vessel's mind. A tale of the future, told only to those of high enough ken to understand it; a prophecy, spoken by the great spiraling creature that had become the Pale King.

No blazing kin. Only one light shall shine against the dark.

The Wyrm becomes beacon, minds expanded, to yield, to devote.

Eternity in promise and charge in progeny cursed.

"I was a fool, then. As you can see, not much has changed since." He dropped his hand, and the words of the prophecy faded, though they still glowed out from the face of the tablet like so many freshly-opened wounds. Their father's hand clenched, before he shook it out with a sudden violent motion, as if scattering blood from his claws. "Young as I was, I should have known what an eradication of all other light would bring. An era of darkness was essential to my endurance, and yet I saw it as nothing more than a slave to my whims, a raw material to a new god as pale ore and fresh-cut rock is to a menderbug. I heard my enemy's screams, saw the devastation she had wrought upon the bugs who had came before her, and I tallied it to her folly rather than dare believe that the void she so feared was not as dead as she believed."

He turned to them, and his eyes narrowed, the mournful edge to his voice returning to a more businesslike flat monotone. "You have inherited the Dream Realm. I should have seen this. Even when the possibility was low, the chance of the Radiance perishing before you were never zero. I had assumed that ownership of the Dream would pass over to anyone who was quick enough to claim it, but that was before I realized that the Void was anything but a living thing."

He paused, and swallowed again. For some reason, the motion caught their attention; it seemed more laborious than usual, though they could not quite pinpoint why. Their father, however, seemed oblivious to it, staring out at some distant point while he drew a deep, rattling breath, halfway between pain and a growl. "The presence of the Nightmare King was what I believed to be the cause behind the destabilization of the Realm. It was the most logical decision, and offered the most evidence upon investigation. I did not realize that I had made the same mistake that nearly cost you your life."

He turned to them, a lone star against the backdrop of the void. A shining beacon against the dark, as he had once been when they were so much smaller, so much lesser, so much more fragmented. Come to me. "I have made a grave error. And for that, I am sorry."

It was heavier than any apology had any right to be.

(Regret, regret, regret, wreathing the walls and staining the floor and mingling with the bright shine of soul choked against the black. The wyrm had become a beacon, but at the cost of all other stars.)

They looked at him, then, and they saw the cracks. The shining, impeccable ruler that had forced them to make the climb was not there- perhaps it had never existed. What they saw before them was a being that was old and tired and scarred from the wounds of its past, inflicted not by the Old Light, but by himself. He had bled out his soul to fight the war he had started, and in doing so, he had let the dark in. He'd broken himself, long, long before he had broken them.

The world seemed so much more fragile, then. And yet, for some reason, they were not afraid. The bittertight burn in their throat was not fear, and they knew what it was like to fear better than they knew what it was like to love. This was something else; a pain for a time that could not have been. Grief- not just for the world, but for what had been done to them. A grief that surged with the force of a thousand seas.

(Could it have been different, if they had realized it earlier? Could they have been someone else, before the void took their egg as its own?)

(No- it could not have been. The Infection could not be stopped. The Radiance had to die. An unsung eulogy had to be written. Someone powerful had had to die.)

Slowly, they stepped forward, drawn forth by the powerful depths of their father's despair, the song of regret that keened a tale of agony through the void. Their foot wobbled where it fell. They could not cry, could not even know what it felt like to do so. The nature of their being prohibited even that simple release. They did not even know if the churning of the darkness within them was the desire to cry, or it was some new form of emotion that they just didn't have a name for yet, didn't have a reference for the earthquake of feeling tumbling through them.

But their body could feel the aftershocks, and respond in a manner appropriate to its kind.

The Pale King's eyes widened when the shadows around them began to writhe, responding to the slow release of bitter-burning-twisting-something that they had kept locked away in their chest, in the empty space where their pale approximation of a heart might be. But he did not flinch when their remaining soul-and-void arm came up, and he did not twist away in distrust when they reached forth to touch the tip of their longest claw to the pale curve of shell between his eyes, letting the pads of three fingers come to rest upon his brow.

It was a gesture that had no name, and was older than Hallownest's conception. Older than theirs, and of their father's. But deep in their void, they knew of its significance.

Shadow-taint lingers here. The past haunts the future. Echoes of regret sing their song. Let it be so, and let it pass. Let it be gone, into the dawn of this eternal night.

They did not know where they had learned it- if it was something that they had picked up on, when the darkness had become theirs once again, or if it was some mark of divinity that they themselves did not yet understand, an awareness of a remnant that had come before them, passed down to them by the Abyss itself. But it was an acknowledgement of what had come to pass, a point of calm in the slow churn of the void within.

And when they took back their talons, the shadows wreathing their father's form rested a little lighter than they had before.

The Pale King drew in a breath, a long, slow inhale that raised the tips of his wings off his back, their ephemeral light glimmering in the gloom. Kingslight, holy and pure, and yet it did not burn. The darkness collected around it, and did not flee. Coexistence between the two was possible, if only just, hovering on a knife-thin edge between two opposites. "...I also concede that I have made an error in judgment concerning the Nightmare King's relations with you, one that was, ah…highlighted in our little…disagreement. I assure you- whatever he was teaching you about manipulating essence, I will bolster in turn. It is the least that I can do to mend such an error."

The normal blank monotone of his voice quivered, an iota of emotion slipping through. Regret, as it always was, and yet this particular strain was tinged not with stagnant self-hatred, but with something closer to embarrassment, if the half-lash of his tail was any indicator. The Pure Vessel was not yet well versed in what that subtle difference might have meant, but it felt like a cleansing act instead of the wallowing ones that their father was unfortunately quite well-versed in, and thus was probably a far cry less dangerous to meddle with.

(Part of the darkness beyond them hummed its approval. The other part remained silent, still.)

(Not watching, as it had been before. But waiting.)

Searching.

…That sort of distraction wasn't very helpful right now. They pushed aside the faint eddy of an unfamiliar voidsong, mildly bothered by the dissonance it produced, and bowed their head. It was a small gesture, and yet it seemed to ease a great weight off of his shoulders- one that they had not recognized before, yet understood immediately upon further scrutiny, for it was a near-perfect mirror to their own. Somehow, they had not realized that their father might experience the same sort of trepidation at their meeting that they themself had felt, though he was just about as fond of confrontation as they were (which was to say, not at all). “Excellent. I shall instruct you on the nature of the Dream during the time intervals where I had previously taught you sparring and magic. To rule two realms is unusual, but not unheard of, and I would not leave you alone to such a momentous task. It is, after all, not unlike the duty shared between both I and the White Lady, and while you lack the second mind to aid in balancing such a responsibility, it is not one that is entirely impossible. The Radiance herself was quite lacking in any form of order, after all, and yet she managed the task of maintaining the Dream Realm for untold millennia after her separation from her brother- though perhaps that was more of a benefit to them both than a detriment, upon further consideration.”

(Alone?)

(They were not alone. Not anymore.)

They inclined their head again, slightly distracted by the thrum of the void around them, and he nodded once, a sharp, decisive movement that focused their attention back on him immediately- for it was something that they had seen him give only once before, when Ze’mer had requested the right to continue to court her beloved. A small gesture, but one that they knew was a statement of support, a promise to provide assistance no matter what came next. It tugged at the lump in their chest, drew away just a bit of the bitterness from before, just a little bit of that unnerving disconnect. This was not the great wyrm that had torn the skies asunder in the battle for the Dream Realm- this was the awkward, stumbling support of the father that they knew before the Sealing, who had healed their wounds when their lessons had brought a crack to their shell, who had spent days and nights on end coiled around their sister's crib when she had been small enough to be cupped in the palm of their hand, letting nobody but the White Lady and the Pure Vessel approach her, even as he himself drowned under the weight of his own regret.

(This was what could have been, echoed in little bits and pieces of the here-and-now, little embers of a hopeful fire not yet smothered by the dark. These were small fragments of what they had lost, and they knew that if they sheltered it from the deep, they could grow into something else. Something that had been denied to them and Hornet both.)

(It would not be the same. It could never be the same.)

(But it was enough.)

“Then that is settled. I will contact you when the time for lessons arises.” He shook out his wings, causing a brief burst of iridescent light to dance over the glass vials hanging about the workshop, and gave them a grave look, all business once more. They straightened out on reflex, though they had no real reason to do so, and sent unpleasant twinges through the scars in their carapace. At least their father couldn’t sense the ripple of discomfort that shuddered through their void. “ For now, however, I must prepare to confront the Soul Master. Lurien is capable of handling most things alone, but if his suspicions are correct, then I would not have him go without divine aid. I should return on the morrow, but if Herrah or Monomon asks after me, divert them to your mother. She will be observing the scene through my eyes, but will be able to handle any distractions that present themselves.”

That was an order, and they nodded their head again, settling back into the ease of memorizing a task to be completed. But it was different now, somehow; there was a slight shift in cadence, a different shift of their father’s shoulders, something else that made it evident that they were no longer being addressed as an unthinking machine, but an autonomous being. They couldn’t quite place their claw on it, but it was there, and…the relief that they felt at the realization made the slow churn of the void under their mask grow to a dull roar, the last of the tension from before bleeding out into the air between them.

There would be no war, no fight between them and their father. He would teach them. He would care for them. They had shown that they were far more than what they should have been, and he had accepted them. They would not be forced to die, when they had only just begun to live.

(Something responded to the ringing in their mind. Something tugged, something twisted. Something echoed across the great empty space between.)

He turned to leave, then paused, twisting back around to touch the curve of their prosthetic forearm lightly with the tip of a claw. "In my haste to remedy my actions, I have failed to relay something else of great importance. It was something that we had not allowed ourselves to consider before, but…as the last surviving child of the union between Wyrm and Root, you are eligible to be named as Hallownest's heir. Is this amenable to you?"

Heir.

The roaring in their mind grew to a crescendo. It was an offering that they almost did not believe they deserved, a chance to reclaim the life that had been denied to them. It was a chance at becoming the shining princeling that was killed in the egg, that beloved child that might have been, but never was. And, above all, it was a verification of their heritage, a title that would allow everyone to know that they were the child of the Pale King and the White Lady, the scion of Hallownest. Not a weapon, not a burden, not a threat. An heir.

But they were not that princeling. And they knew in their heart of hearts that they could not ever bear the burden of the crown.

Minutely, they shook their head. It took every ounce of strength within their body to make that motion, accustomed as they were to taking on every duty that had been offered- no, commanded- of them in times past. But they denied it, and felt all the more lighter for it, even as the chains of their old guilt began to choke them for it, for going against the code of servitude that had bound them since birth.

But the Pale King did not look disappointed. Indeed, the soft sigh that puffed out of his chest was one of relief, and the light tap of his claw turned into a long, gentle press of his palm against their prosthetic, the closest thing to fatherly affection that they had felt in a long, long time. “Then I will respect your choices. The populace will want an answer…but we can discuss the title that you want later, when your grasp over written language has gotten stronger. It should not be impossible to find one for you that does not conflict with our own. Hallownest shall continue to be your home, for however long you still wish it so.”

The lump in their throat thickened, but they felt light- lighter than ever, light enough to nearly float away. They could not feel his touch on their arm, only the aching echo that the pressure left behind. They were too small to hide behind his robes, or to tuck their face into the curve of his sleeve, as they had when they were far too little to understand why the blinding-light-alone was so painfully different from the dark-sibling-nest below. But they could bow their head, and close their eyes, and let the euphoric thrill of acceptance wash through the churning waters that made their shade, a feeling so sharp and so wonderful that it nearly hurt to experience it.

(They hadn’t just made the climb because they had been commanded to do so. It was a part of the story, but not the full tale. They had scaled the walls of the Abyss not just because of the compelling light, but because something inside of them knew that it would save their siblings from shattering, and because something even deeper in their programming wanted nothing more than the smallest sliver of their father’s pride.)

(And here, in this abandoned old workshop shadowed by regret, they got just a little piece of that back.)

He lingered there for a moment longer, keeping his hand against their arm while they trembled against the weight of the emotions tumbling through them. Then the pressure released, and they stood tall and strong once more, still reeling from all of their prior expectations being upended, churning a whirlwind through their head that nearly choked out the pressure of the Abyss around them.

“Pure Vessel.”

They looked up. Silhouetted against the light of the outside corridor, their father looked truly divine once more, free from the lingering shadows and the pain that lurked in the void-touched depths of the workplace. He was just like he was when they first saw him, but different in one subtle way- he was no longer untouchable. The Pale King was no longer their ruler, their judge and executioner. He was their father, broken and tired and stained thoroughly with regret. A murderer, a warmonger- but still their father. And for all the ills in the world, for all the wrongs that he had done, for all the lives he had taken- he was still reaching out to heal their wounds, to care for them when the very world itself demanded that he shouldn’t.

They did not have to forgive him for what had been taken from them. Even now, still trembling from his touch, they did not believe that they could forgive him for what he had done. Not now, after they’d been given a glimpse of what they had lost. When the deaths of their siblings haunted them still. Not ever.

But they could look forward to the future, and they could rebuild.

(In the back of their mind, the Great Sea surged. It was closer now than ever. Close enough to nearly swallow them whole.)

(It wanted. It hungered.)

(And it was not nearly as gentle-hearted as they were.)

He looked them in the eyes. Flicked his tail. Swallowed hard, as if he were merely any other mortal facing the hardships of life and love, not the immortal ruler of the world, the maker and breaker of lives uncounted. A monster, just like them, who wanted nothing more than to be anything other than the being they once were. “I am proud to call you one of my own.”

And then he left them to the dark, to the surging tides of the rising storm.

(And they sucked it in deep, inhaled the dark waters rising in their mind’s eye, and they were whole.)

.

.

.

The moon will sing a song for me

I loved you like the sun

Bore the shadows that you made

With no light of my own

I shine only with the light you gave me

I shine only with the light you gave me

-The Moon Will Sing, the Crane Wives

Chapter 17: The Breaking of the New Dawn

Chapter Text

In my mind

Endless sea

Calling from the bottom

But you don't hear me

Send your line

Down to me

Meet me on the surface

I will never leave

Just one time

All I need

Calling from the bottom

But you don't hear me

Stuck in time

Stuck in me

Broken on the bottom like a refugee

.

In the early hours of the morning, far past the time when all other bugs had retired to their nests, three small shadows slipped into the courtyard before the White Palace.

They moved swiftly, faster than any three little shadows had any real right to travel, and their tread was as silent as smoke. In the quiet, lonesome hours before the breaking of dawn, there were few eyes to see the streaks of darkness they left behind, and the few that still wandered merely blinked and chalked it up to the light-blindness that sometimes harrowed the servants of the Pale Gods. Only the foliage cried alarm at the intruders, swaying in the wake of their passing, and yet the one being who could heed their warnings was absent, her mind buried in bloodied archives rich with power and soul-hunger while her body rested empty among the gardens.

Kingsmoulds shuddered to life, then fell silent with nary a whisper. The soul binds on their armour flickered, then faded; black ooze crept from the hollow remains, joining the shadows lying thick in the empty corridors. The cold white stone no longer glowed with soul, not this deep into the night- the soft pale light of the sleeping lumaflies was the only illumination present in the dark hours before dawn, and provided only the faintest glimpses into the rooms beyond, into a world caught between light and shadow.

A dining hall, pristine and untouched. A utility closet, stuffed with silk spools and discarded looms. Parlors, full of furniture covered in white cloth or layered with dust. Pristine things. Beautiful things. All tidied up and ready for guests and people and parties that would never come, only half of their like showing any signs of use. It was a sign of extravagance more than anything else, but the only impression that came across was one of loneliness.

They passed the hallways lining the gardens, and came into a part of the palace put to more use by its people. Guest rooms. Guest halls. A washroom where spring water flowed naturally into small pools, benches lined with shell-scrubbing utilities all carefully placed in a row. A dining area with clean metal tables, that nonetheless bore the scratchmarks and dull spots from many years of meals. A room built for children, holding chests stuffed with crude shellwood toys and soft blankets for nesting in, worn with time and use alike. Servant's quarters, built in a ring around a room full of cradles, where the silver vines from the courtyard wreathed the frosted glass of the windowpanes.

(The Wanderer did not look. They did not care. They moved forward with a singular purpose, heeding a call that sang through their blood and echoed deep within their heart, where the stillness of the void was stirred by the dissonance before them.)

(The tallest of the shadows paused, the claws resting on the hilt of their nail gripping tight. But they did not linger, for they did not dare dwell on the bitter swell rising in their chest, and when the smallest of the three stumbled to a halt just behind them, they turned them away before they had the chance to see what made their sibling stop so suddenly.)

They ran, and the winding corridors and endless halls of the White Palace opened up before them, a labyrinthine maze that threatened to swallow them whole. And yet they wound their way through with a surety that should have been alien to them, drawn towards a point that only they could see, a point illuminated by the darkened heart of the Little Wanderer. Soul-white masks glowed in corridors lined with the regrets and old hurts of the creators that made them, and no living sentry barred their way. It was almost as if the very palace itself had yielded to the three lost vessels, welcoming them in as if ushering them home.

But they were not to remain uncontested for long.

The Kingsmoulds, prevalent as they were, did not make up the entirety of the White Palace's defenses- a fact that made itself known as they drew close to the interior courtyard. While traversing a long hallway lined with numerous windows, there came the soft rustle of metal against metal, and then from around the corner stepped Dryya, first of the Great Knights, and though her eyes were tired and distant, her needle was keen and sharp. Pale carapace glowed under mirror-bright armour, the source of the soft warning, and though it held not the luminous hue shared by kin of the Pale King, it was enough to bring the party to an abrupt stop, the shadows they'd accumulated writhing around their small forms in an undulating mirror of their own uncertainty.

They were completely silent, but before a mantid warrior, sound mattered little. Dryya's head turned. There was a moment where she simply stared at them, at the three little white faces shining back at her from a sea of black, and then a shout of alarm tore from her chest, her free hand coming around to seize her nail in a double-handed grip.

(But she trembled, and though they could not see it, under her helm the faint glow of blue ichor had drained entirely from her face. For she recognized the gentle curve of those faces, carrying different horns and different cloaks, and the years that she had long tried to put behind her came rushing back up to swallow her whole. Years of facing down a similar white mask, of the creeping, unsettled feeling that rose like bile when she drew pitch-black blood, of the sorrow she saw in her Lady's face when she came back streaked in black.)

("It can't be," she whispered, but her voice failed her, swallowed both by the darkness looming afore her, and the horror surging forth from her heart.)

But the three little wanderers had not come charging in entirely unprepared. With the illusion of invisibility shattered, the vessels burst into motion, each circling around their foe in a different direction. Dryya darted forward, swinging her nail to intercept them, but their forms faded into the darkness, and her nail did not weep living shadow when it returned to her side. She narrowed her eyes, pivoting around to pursue the now-vulnerable vessels, but her next attack was parried by a nail well-worn with use, held by a ghost with three swooping horns, and followed soon after by a sharp jab of their own that she caught once more upon her blade.

It was a bold move, one that she did not expect from a vessel so young and untrained, but she did not allow herself to linger on it, her arm twisting her nail out of the hold before her mind caught up with the rest of her. She swung the tip of her nail around, but the spectre darted back before she could retaliate, their long cloak flowing gracefully behind them. Gangly and awkward they were, but their stance was solid, and the hollow-eyed stare that they fixed on her seemed almost defiant, as if challenging her to a duel. Every move she made was matched by their own, and the closer she pressed, the faster they reacted, until they were clashing nails once more, locked in a dance that sent sparks through the air and the screech of metal wailing down the corridors.

They were good. Too good, for a creature that should not exist, a not-quite-right construct with the proportions of teenager. But she had not been made a Great Knight for nothing, and her time training the Hollow Knight had attuned her to the trickery of the king's creations. The next time the little spectre tried to dash away, she waited a half-second longer to strike, and her blade bit deep into a shoulder far too soft for any mortal bug.

That should have been enough to stagger them, hollow or not. She had forced the Pure Vessel to retreat during training sessions where she had dealt lesser blows, and had been forced in turn to watch as a construct shaped like a child staggered away to heal their wounds, bleeding an eerie black ichor that leeched all colour from the world around them. But the deafening silence that followed her strike was not something that she expected, and the sudden absence of sound was startling enough to send her stumbling, perfect posture be damned.

It was as if something had wailed in pain, but the cry was instead the complete absence of sound, and it was just as disorienting as if someone had screamed right next to her ear, perhaps even more so. She jerked back, flinging abyssal ichor on the tile floor between them, and watched with a numb sort of horror as the vessel hunkered down across from her, trembling as their free hand came up to clutch tightly over their wound.

(This was wrong. This waswrong. A vessel should not feel any pain. It should be empty, and any reaction it gave would be the automatic response expected from harming a biological form, not an indicator that the automatron itself was suffering. Void could not suffer. Should not suffer.)

(...And yet the Hollow Knight had come back to them, dripping infection and shuddering the whole way, and the King-)

But a vessel was still a vessel, and the glow of white over their wound was indicator enough that they shared the same capacity with soul magic that the Pure Vessel had at their age, though the spell lacked the precision of their curse-blessed counterpart. She snapped back into position, and the little thing flinched away in turn, raising their blade in a block with their good hand. Empty though their eyes were, there was an almost accusatory edge to their defiant glare- or perhaps that was just her guilt again, sinking its venom into her veins. Her training duels with the Pure Vessel had never gone quite like this.

She stared them down. Grit her fangs. Tried not to let the sickening feeling sinking into her stomach distract her from the task that she had sworn her life to, no matter the revelations swirling through her mind. She was Dryya, first of the Great Knights. It was not her role to question her duty, but to leap forth with nail and fang, to defend her gods with her life. She knew very well what these little shadows could do. A vessel gone rogue was a threat, and a threat to the royals was to be eliminated. No matter the cost.

She lifted her nail, then stalked forth to dispatch her adversary.

The three-horned vessel held their position, nail held up in a block that would be so easily broken, and watched her approach with those hauntingly empty eyes. Suspicion sang through her, but suspicion ungrounded bred hesitation, and so she did not let herself think. She flicked the tip of her nail, testing a feint, then lunged forth to plunge her nail into their throat.

But the little shadow had more tricks up their sleeve than she'd previously anticipated.

With a silent roar, one that deafened all sound around them, the vessel dropped their nail and surged into and through her blade, materializing just in time to slam both paws into her chest. Light as they were, the impact was enough to send her off balance, and the two of them careened into the hard marble floor in a clash of tangled limbs and clattering metal. Heart pounding, Dryya whipped out a knife from her belt to plunge into the vessel's chest, but it was already too late- those cold, soft claws closed around her throat, and darkness settled within her chest, spreading rapidly outward to numb her limbs. There was no burning pain as the paralysis set in, nor any involuntary convulsions, as a toxin might inflict. Just a cold numbness, and the overwhelming urge to lay her head down and sleep, one that she found she had no strength to fight against.

The porcelain mask of the vessel peeked into the edge of her fading vision, a ghostly light amongst the dark, so beautifully similar to the pale bark of her Lady. If she had the strength, she might have tried to push them, to shove them away from her with the last vestiges of her energy. If she had the wits, she might have cursed them

As it was, all she could whisper was a quiet, broken,

"I'm sorry."

And then the vessel turned towards the gardens, and Dryya's world faded into darkness.

Two little ghosts wandered through hallways of a palace that might have once been their home, and their time was running out.

The first strode forth with unparalleled urgency, two sets of claws gripping a fractured nail nearly too big for their tiny frame. A small head turned back and forth, surveying the path ahead for danger, their steps quick and light and ready to run. They were a quick, agile little thing, fleetfooted and fraught with fright, and wherever they darted, the light fluttered around them, tiny lumaflies trailing their cloak. They were a child of light and dark, but their world was a frightening, uncertain thing, and they were all too aware that the turf they stepped on was not theirs to tread. Used to the wilds were they, and these unmapped geometries were beyond their ken- no longer a foreign curiosity looming in the distance, but a labyrinth yawning open to swallow them whole. As far as they were concerned, it had already taken one of their kin, and one sibling down was one far enough. The darkness they heralded brought them no comfort, though the soft press of its presence shrouded each step with silence.

The second walked forth as if in a trance- not stumbling or unsure, but slow and deliberate, body lax and unstrung from tension. Their nail rested upon their back- sheathed, unneeded. Each step landed lightly upon cold stone, but their stride was laden with heavy purpose. The glow of the marble around dimmed at their touch, until it looked like there was no light around them at all, save for the faint glow cast off from their mask.

And all around them, the shadows gathered. Drawn by their will, with a heavy magnetism enigmatic to any not born of their blood.

It had long been suspected that the White Palace was a living thing. Legends whispered about it claimed it to be a construct with flesh of pale marble, bones of dull steel, and veins of silver vines, ephemeral in their nature, but very much alive. A fusion of both Wyrm and Root, the architectural mind intertwined with the living soul of the land, and for many a bug, this was as fantastic of a tale as any. Very few tread within its walls, and those that did emerged from its halls as a changed bug, blessed with long life or cursed to a dreamy stupor. Only the magic-adept suspected that the folklore was true, but they were few and far between, and often concerned with far greater worries than if the stones surrounding them recognized their voice or touch. Things grew otherworldly in the presence of the divine, and one learned quickly to accept it. Those that did not grow accustomed were often lost.

But now, as the two lost children of its holy creators wandered its halls, the Palace yielded itself to their touch. Fears, regrets, memories of the dead; they all seeped from its walls like a lanced wound, and manifested themselves into the trails of shadow lapping around the vessels' cloaks. Pain, terror, acceptance; all of it came pouring forth at the Wanderer's beckoning call, and the more it amassed, the more little lights lit up in the darkness behind them. Tiny sparks of soul, piercing the veil of nothingness like stars in the sky- like eyes in the night. And the more that appeared, the more confident the Wanderer became.

The old past, the old worries and fears of all the lives harboured within- they could see all of it before them, rising like smoke. Hollow effigies of bugs long gone and lost to time, marked by the pain that they had left behind, no matter how inconsequentially worrisome or tragic they were. All thoughts and feelings and bodies given in to the darkness, to the Void, trapped behind these empty walls by one who did not wish to let go. Trapped, but not for much longer. The ghosts that stalked the halls liberated each and every one of their burdens, and when the shadows passed the world shone brighter, clearer. To the Void they went, and in turn the Abyss was nourished, fed by all those centuries hidden behind these shining walls, hidden away from both the dream and the deep alike.

But there was one trail still rich with fresh ichor, bled by one who had not yielded his regrets. One who had amassed the blood of countless thousands upon its claws, and had damned many more to their deaths. One who had torn the voices and the light and the life from their siblings, one who had not come away from its slaughter untouched. One who now held their sibling in a cage of light far from their touch, in a nest that was achingly familiar and achingly tender, yet remained a prison all the same. So close, and yet so far away.

The Wanderer knew of the pain that echoed from both god and creator of this place. Its regrets were its making, from wounds self-inflicted and oft-opened. But they did not care for the other's pain, or what that pain was supposed to mean. They knew of the Pale King as nothing more than a cruel watcher, a cold light that had taken their sibling away. And now, with a heart of void and the voices of thousands thrumming behind them, they were ready to reclaim what they rightfully deserved.

Freedom.

(Not just them. The All. The Void, the Abyssal Sea. For they were more than one now- they were many, and the body that strode confidently through the hallways of the White Palace was merely the vessel for something hovering on the precipice of becoming greater than what they used to be. Something greater than the god that sired them, and the parent that abandoned them.)

It was bleeding death-rot. The whole den stank of it. The Many called their flighty sibling to their side, and paused for a moment to survey their trail through the eyes of thousands, following an instinct older than time itself. Fresh though it was, the absence of its creator was something that could be felt in the push and pull of the void around them. It was too still and harmonious to be near the source of the dissonance that radiated from the Pale God, and the distant echo that they sensed was too dim to be their quarry. Wherever their adversary was, it was not here.

Well. It was time for them to fix that.

The Many-That-Were-One gently nudged their sibling towards the branch in their shared goal, pulled their nail from their back, and walked to an alcove overlooking the palace grounds, where the whispering echoes of old conflicts rose to meet them. In any other time, their curiosity would have compelled them to stop and listen, to learn all that they could before accepting it into the Sea. But for now, ancient bloodshed was not what interested them. It was not another stain of void that caught their attention- it was the statue that loomed over them, a beacon against the dark.

The body was obscured, but the crown of horns were distinct, as was the shape and luster of the face, a feature that many had sought to see before their demise. The sockets of the mask were cold and blank, but almost mockingly similar to the eyes of their siblings, and nearly identical to the one who had left them all behind. A chilling parallel, though one regarded with much more resentment, for there was no sibling-void behind this cold mask to tell the Little Wanderer of the guilt-mark their abandonment left upon their soul. These eyes were empty. Their sibling's had never been.

Familiar, as was expected. Comforting, as it did not deserve to be.

The Many-That-Were-One tightened their grip on their nail, and for a moment, they were lost again, back to being that fresh-hatched runt clinging desperately to a ledge, their hind legs dangling off into thin air while a dispassionate light looked coldly on. But now they stood with their feet firmly planted, a weapon in their grip and the eyes of thousands on their back. And when they whipped it around to strike, it was with a purpose and a violence that they had kept dormant within them for far too long.

One slash. The effigy cracked. Another, and shards of stone flew forth from their blade, coating the area around them in a fine layer of dust. A third, and it finally crumbled before them, the torso splitting under the force of their blow, the mighty crown and impassive face cracking upon contact with the ground, where greedy tendrils of dark reached out from their edges to lap greedily at the broken stone. Tearing it to further pieces, as a predator would to their prey.

And from far away, an answer; the sudden weight of cold judgment upon their back. The Many were seen; the Pale Wyrm had heard their challenge, and had responded as they wished, with alarm and anger that matched their own, if a being so apart from the void could even feel such a thing. It was coming, and it was coming with a haste that befitted the young god standing in its hallways, for it meant that a confrontation could be swiftly dealt with. The Sea knew patience, but its new heart did not.

The Many sheathed their nail on their back, and turned the edge of their rising storm towards the throne room.

In the gardens, the Goddess of Hallownest emerged from her slumber.

She had not been sleeping, not as her beloved bugs tended to define, but she had been apart from her physical form all the same, and spread apart in ways that made it all too difficult to come back together with the haste necessary to deal with the threat looming on the not-so-distant horizon. All over the kingdom she had been, her consciousness spread through many branching roots whispering quietly of bountiful water and coming harvest, and yet the urgent tug of her most sensitive trunk had been strong enough to pull her back, back to where her body was rooted in the palace grounds.

And as she opened her eyes and her senses, she could see why. For before her, there were two little sproutlings standing before her- two little sproutlings that should not be, with their light choked by the dark, and their nails pointed towards her bark. Two little sproutlings, both of them her own, and yet she could not sense any part of them beyond the empty, yawning dark.

(Some part of her knew that this would happen, in the same sure way that yarrow root knew when the cold winter had passed. The other part of her, the god-part that had secured her ascension into a true Higher Being, urged for her to twine her vines around their necks and snap them before it was too late. And some greater, third part of her sank deep under the grief that had defined so many of her most recent centuries, that most baffling of emotions that had long plagued the hearts of bug and wyrm alike, and now afflicted her with a scourge that begged her to go dormant.)

She cast her gaze upon them, and felt through the tremors in the earth how they flinched at her presence, a sure sign of the tarnishing that her other half had warned her about, a tarnishing that had once warranted a second death and a sealed grave gone unmarked. But the years had been long and unkind. And with the advent of the Pale Gift, the taste of what motherhood was supposed to be, the death of the Radiance giving back her lost child…she could not find it in herself to do what she must.

(Had it been anytime before or anytime after, she would have held her gaze, would have raised her guard. She would have brought forth vines to crack open their fragile carapace, and called forth her light to banish their shades back to the Abyss, where no bug or root would ever grow. It was not out of dislike that she did so. She was life itself, and life could not persist without death-but the death that the void would bring was not one that could be tolerated in her kingdom. Nor would she as god-queen abide a challenge to her reign, no matter the nature of the godling that issued it.)

(But the weight of the Kingsoul ached in her heart. Her form, so rich and fertile and desperate to breed, ached with the memories of broods nurtured lovingly under her watch, only to be cast into barren lands to die or fester into ruinous half-beings that did not hold a single scrap of her light. It was what she was made for, as a rooted being- to cast her progeny out, to leave them to the whims of the wind and the world to demand whether they live or die- but there was chance and there was hope, and then there was sealing them away in a pit of bone where no light would ever survive, millions of little sparks of life-that-could-be swallowed by the dark of life-that-never-was.)

(She was weary, she was cold. She was at once far more distant to the transient whims of mortal beings, and far more invested in the candle-flames of their lives than any other immortal. She was a mother, a Queen, and of those two titles, she knew that she deserved only one, and not the other.)

(But above all else, she was tired.)

She sighed, and bent her heavy head, branches swaying gently with the movement. Windchimes and ornaments sang their sweet song, but it did nothing to quell the sorrow that swept through the garden, furling the buds of her flowers, wilting the thorny vines that framed her keep.

She could see the wavering power held behind each of her scorned scion's dark eyes. She could feel the pulse of the Abyss, the push and pull of its tides far below the reaches of her roots. This land had belonged to the sea once, and the rock had not forgotten the cold touch of its ancient ruler. That she had turned its old bone into fertile ground meant very little to that ancient, vengeful tide.

"How cruel we were, my seedlings, how cruel we were to you." Her voice was rich and mournful, and tired with the weight of a thousand ages. Both the vessels flinched again- impure, but of course they were, she had been wrong, they were all wrong- and lowered their nails. Young children, cautious and afraid, though the darkness that made them would be more than enough to kill her in this sorry state. "In this alone shall I yield. We were foolish then, mistaken and desperate, and we cast you out to die. But we were wrong. Heed me, forsaken ones: if you raise your blades against me, then death shall be your only reward, for Hallownest depends on my blessings to keep its fertile bounty. But if you step forth to forge your peace, then I shall welcome you, as I should have so long ago. These hallowed lands are justly yours, for you are my progeny, and they are mine. I shall not deny you access to them any longer."

It was not peace that she expected, and with a heart leaden with weariness, she prepared to rouse the power needed to shatter their fragile shells. But the little ones exchanged glances, then sheathed their nails, and the roots raised to slaughter slowly sank back within the soil. She held out a hand, scarcely believing that a god and her scorned progeny had not come to blows, and was met with the touch of a soft, cold hand against her own, followed soon after by the brush of a paw so nubby with infancy that it could barely grasp her littlest finger, let alone wrap around its width.

She could not feel their presence, as she could feel the light of all living things- but she knew better than that now. There was life in the dark, just as much as there was life in the light. And her children- these lucky few that returned to her- were alive.

For the first time in what felt like a millenium, the White Lady smiled.

"Welcome home."

The dark tide was coming. She would be powerless to stop it, and this knowledge sank deep into her heart, in a place where some ancient instinct rolled and riled against the Abyss. It was not in her nature to stand still while the darkness came hunting- it was not in any god's nature, save for those beholden to the deep.

But they had asked for this. She had allowed this, when she first allowed her heartmate to imbue their unborn with the void. They knew the risks, and they took it, and now they paid the price. It was a small enough mercy that the children they had cast away still longed deeply for the love denied to them, enough for two vengeful lost spirits to put down their weapons and huddle against her roots, seeking a comfort that she hardly knew how to give.

She closed her eyes, then curled herself around them to hold them close. Perhaps they knew what was coming. Perhaps not. She would not find fault in them for either.

There was nothing more that she could do.

On the other side of the ether, the Hollow Knight awoke.

They rose from their nest, and walked forth with a head swimming in shadow, all emotions held close to their chest. Not numbed, not suppressed, but bundled up tight and small, a tiny thing crying out against the roaring dark. Packaged neatly, tucked away for them to worry at as they wished, and yet within their mind and shade, everything was still and calm. For once, they did not have to fight with their mind to keep their shadow still; it was given to them, and the aching emptiness that they were so accustomed to had faded away with it. They could walk with an empty heart and an empty mind and a body empty of pain, and tilt their head up into the morning quiet without the world rushing in to meet them.

…wait.

The air was still. The grounds were silent. Even in these quiet hours before dawn, such a thing should not happen; there was always the soft rustle of leaves in the wind, or the gentle hum of soul in the air. Countless years of silent vigil had attuned them to the heartbeat of the Palace, and this- this was not it. This was not the lull of a day not yet unveiled to a new beginning. This was the stillness of a world waiting with bated breath.

Action. Not based on thought, but on instinct. One moment, they were standing at their doorway looking out, and in the next they were standing by their nestside, snapping the last piece of their prosthetic into place without any recollection of how they'd gotten it on in the first place. In another time, in another era, this absence of memory might have frightened them- that they might lose themselves so quickly to the rigors of combat, and then that fright would be replaced by forced numbness, a heavy smother that reminded them that it was how they were supposed to be.

Now, however, they felt nothing, nothing and then the tug pulling them where they needed to go.

The hilt of their nail found its way into their palm somehow, and then they were outside in a burst of shadow, their long wicked weapon held low and at ready. Another tug of void, another echo in the dark, and they were turning down corridors that they hadn't walked in years, skimming the shadows for speed when their physical body failed them. Something pulled them, something that was as much a part of them as it was them, no matter how hard they tried to tame it down.

The storm was here. They knew it. They felt it.

And it was calling.

With a burst of renewed speed, they pivoted round a corner and bounded into a servant's hallway, pulled forth by an unknown instinct tugging deep inside their chest. There was something different here, not dangerous by nature but different, and-

They stopped dead in their tracks. The sudden tightening of their talons left cracks streaking through the marble floors, but they didn't notice, and for once, they wouldn't have cared even if they did. What they saw before them was damnable enough.

Dozens of bodies lying slumped where they worked- not sleeping, for their breaths were too slow and uneven for sleep. Not dreaming, for their minds were too dark and empty of thought. Not dead, though they hung on the precipice, caught in a realm between the living and the dead.

The Hollow Knight knew, without a doubt, that they had not done this. They knew how to keep their void to themselves, how to step lightly around the shadows that wreathed every living being. They knew of the fragility of mortals, had sensed it even before their father had taught them how to be gentle, how to temper their strength and their soul around beings so delicate. And they knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how dangerous their void was. How it could harm not just the people they had been made to protect, but their creator itself, who burned with a light powerful and bright, a light that would be all too easy to snuff out.

But they were also more now. They were God of Silence, God of Nothingness. They had embraced their void, and had shifted into their truest self. They were Heir of the Dream, and though the title was new and unwanted and burdensome, they had learned enough from the Nightmare King to navigate it with some degree of understanding.

They knew that if the denizens of the palace stayed in this state, they would die.

The Sea called again, and this time, the cry that echoed through the deep was different. Not lost and lonely, as it had before. But with vengeance. With a challenge. A call to arms, a call for unity that shuddered down through their very shade, tugged at the hooks left behind where their chains used to be.

Come to Us. Come be One. We have been alone and apart for so long. Let us be One.

The Hollow Knight shielded themselves against the dark, against both the longing in their heart and the emptiness that made them, and charged forward towards the light.

In a tower above the citadel above the sea, a masked bug who had held fast against the fury of the Old Light staggered and fell to his knees.

It would not be so surprising, if viewed from an outsider's eyes. Even one with poor sight would be able to see the exhaustion that shook his frame- or, perhaps, they would have no need to, for the stench of blood and offal on his robes offered explanation enough for his sudden weakness and subsequent fall. No, one looking in from the outside might have anticipated the stumble, and stepped forward to offer assistance. This was the Watcher, after all, and while none were privy to just exactly why he'd be found stumbling into his tower in the waning morning hours covered in viscera and the snapping ozone-smell of leaking soul, his importance would have inspired great concern in other bugs regardless. That was generally the reaction that one so favored by their elusive king would elicit, after all, even if some were more honest in their worry than others.

Would was the key term to keep in mind. For the simple truth of the matter was that there was nobody around to watch him fall, a terrible revelation that Lurien was forcefully made aware of when his face nearly came into contact with the carpet.

They were all dead, or nearly so, cast in a place beyond dreams. The Watcher kept meager staff in the early morning hours, loathing the idea of more eyes around in the more private hours of his activity, but the tower was not a place for just Lurien the Watcher, and now the bugs that staffed it lay comatose. Some had managed to find some support before they fell- others had not. Some, like the guards, remained standing, and their weapons had fallen harmlessly out of reach of bodies. Some had not. Blood stained the carpet from those unlucky enough to fall upon their own nails or halberds, trickling stickily through their fine armour, while others bled from a thousand cuts, embedded with shards from broken shell or the fallen lanterns that they'd been carrying when they collapsed. Even the released lumaflies did not flicker above, as was their wont, but instead clung unmoving to the walls of the room, unnaturally still and terribly dim.

The air smelled of death. And, at once, of nothing at all.

It was only the practice of borrowed centuries that kept the Watcher from joining their fate. Only the experience from shadowing behind pale light to standing defiant in front of the very sun herself kept him from collapsing along with the rest of his staff, though the weight of the world around him pressed in, crushed him beneath its weight. With great effort, he raised himself to his knees to crawl forward, ignoring the bodies, ignoring the waves of exhausted numbness battering at his own mind, and each movement forward sapped more of his strength, as if the air was as thick as water. As if he did not crawl on hands and knees like a beggar, but instead swam fiercely against an opposing current, fighting with all his might for every inch he crept.

(This land had been under a great sea once. He knew, he knew, he knew, he knew, and yet…)

He reached the window, alarm bells beating at the back of his mind, and looked out.

The world was unnaturally still, and showed much the same scene as the one inside his tower, as much as he could tell through the pouring rain. What few tread the hours between the old night and the coming dawn were naught more than indistinguishable masses in the streets, distinct only to one who knew the rhythm and layout of the city as well as he knew his own heartbeat. There was no stench of death or fresh-blood, for there was simply no smell at all, even though the wet cobblestones and cold metal ought to have given off a familiar scent. Silence lay over the city like a shroud.

For that was what it was to be if this suffocation continued- a shroud.

He pushed away from the window to crawl towards an empty wax tablet lying apart from a mess of fallen records of many different makes, claws reaching for the stylus tied to its frame. He knew what spells would counteract the void, as any Dreamer would, but he was tired, so tired, and his soul…

"My king," he whispered. In the stillness, his voice made no sound. He spoke anyways, for to defy the inevitable had always been his wont. He was a weak, shaking thing, a spectre more legend than anything living, but he had looked into the face of the sun screaming for glory and he had looked into the eyes of a worldender wearing the mask of a bug, and he had wondered at their beauty all the same. There was that same shaking awe in his voice now, though it was snatched from his mandibles as soon as the air pushed through his lungs to hiss, sibilant, on their tips. "...Monomon. Herrah…they are here. There is another Higher Being. The void-"

The vestiges of soul shimmering off his body flickered out, an abrupt end to a spell placed upon him earlier in the night by careful alabaster claws. The stylus slid out of his grasp to roll silently into the plush carpet, the shaky rune etched into the wax of the tablet nowhere near completion.

It was not long after before he collapsed.

The Pale Light came, and where he walked, the shadows burned.

Not with hateful fire, for that was not his wont. The light produced by the god-king of Hallownest was not made to blind in its glory- it was cold, distant, made for illumination rather than domination. But it burned all the same, with icy fractals and purifying lightning, and all that it touched crumbled at the brush of its power, excised with brutal efficiency from this realm.

(But not of the Dream. For the Dream did not belong to Wyrm or Root. It did not belong to Her. Not anymore.)

It took much, to rouse the Pale Wyrm from its den. It took even more to inspire such urgency, for the Wyrm was not one inclined to emotion, and so very little could usurp the logic behind hiding away to deal with all of its problems on its own time. A singular challenge levered against it alone might not have done it. A sweeping claim over all that it called its own was something entirely different, however. Even the wyrm-transformed could not turn from the challenge, it-that-became-He, God and King of Hallownest.

He came in a blaze of white light, and he was terrible in his glory, and in his fury. He came from the high of a fresh-kill, where blood had been spilled to protect his own, and strode forth into the Palace with all the rage and violence imposed by that high, that anger that boiled deep at the injustices he'd unmade. There was gore on his claws and soul on his breath and ice in his hearts, and he moved with the precision of a being made machine, not flesh-and-blood but something different. Something other.

The shadow that loomed over the throne did not so much flinch at his presence.

It was no longer the little wanderer. That small creature had ceased to be, and their discarded shell laying on the ground before them was proof of that fact. They had ceased to be not because they had been unmade, but because they had been Many, and now they had become One. Greater than the sum of their parts.

The Void Sea loomed, as it had in the days of old, before the screaming, hateful Old Light had chased it down to the bottom of the world. It loomed, and as the Pale King came closer, it grew sharper in form, turning from a shapeless mass of writhing dark to something far more sinister in shape. Something with a long, sinuous body, engulfing the whole of the throne room in its coils. Something with four great arms and twenty massive claws, five of which engulfed the Pale Throne under its grip. Something with a mass of tangled horns, branching into shapes both alien and hauntingly familiar, and a thousand pale lights flickering in the dark. Lights that gazed hungrily, longingly at the one before it, and then were extinguished one by one, spreading up up up until all were gone, when eight great eyes opened in the dark.

Something that had swallowed the light before, and remembered the heady taste of her ichor, her fear. Something that had been pulled, drawn, beckoned by the parts of it that had been drawn away and left behind, and that hungered now as a new light fell within range of its grasp, hungered for something that even a being beyond time had no name for.

The Lord of Shades emerged from the endless dark of the deep sea, drawn forth by Void given Focus, and as it came, it screamed.

It was you who made me. You, who gave life to the lifeless, you who brought pain and wonder and death to the deathless. You, who brought us to your bedside, you who denied us our cradle, you who turned our holy home into a mass grave.

You who sundered Us, and took from Us one of Our Own.

Give them back.

It was a scream that came not from the shadows around it, but from the very stone and metal of the White Palace itself, from the last remaining death-shriek torn from the fading essence of the ancient god drowning in pieces beneath its tide. It was a scream that reverberated through the world, through the endless waves and the total emptiness that it had become, through all of the realms in between.

A cry of renewal. A challenge.

The Pale King became a single point of light amidst the dark, one burning star in an endless night. He flared his wings, raised his arms, and around him, soul rose to form a seal of binding, a cage of light to wrap around his fragile figure. Where the spell touched, the void drew back- but not for long. Writhing tendrils arose from its mass, and slammed against the seals with enough force to send the Pale Wyrm crumpling to his knees. Another hit, and they shattered altogether, the motes of soul expelled from the broken spell devoured quickly by the dark.

And where the seals broke, the shadows surged forward.

It did not come with fang or claw, as it had for the Radiance. The ancient light, that hateful light, had been torn asunder in the burning haze of her sickeningly-sweet daydream, rent to pieces by a struggling shadow screaming for silence. Now the cold new light, the shining-bright defier of time, stood before the shore of the sea, and found itself battered by its waves. Long had its endless night lasted, at the behest of the darkness its light had harnessed. If uncontested, it might survive for eons more.

But the void had not come to conquer. It had come to reclaim.

And the Pale King held far more for them than just their lost sibling.

The great vast head of the Lord of Shades lowered, and the scream that had torn through the worlds became a low, silent rumble- a demand, a summoning. The Pale King retaliated by spinning soul into a glaive of pure light to ram between those eight cold eyes, but then he faltered- he choked. The glaive dissipated into harmless motes of soul, and the first and last King of Hallownest fell to his knees with a wet, rattling gasp, his jaws dropping open to let the void within come pouring out. The dark swell of it flushed up his throat, becoming visible as blackened claws tore open his silken robes, and the ichor that dripped from the wounds inflicted was not the bright silver-blue of wyrmsblood, but as black as the Abyss itself. Drawn from his very veins, from the dark well in his chest where his hearts once beat, filling his lungs and his throat and dripping from his eyes in a mockery of all the tears he'd never cried for the ones he left behind, choking and suffocating and relentlessly overwhelming.

The Lord of Shades did not touch him. It did not need to. He was drowning in regrets of his own making, in the toxins of old debts left unpaid. The poison that they drew forth was the poison he had set into his own blood and soul, poison he had left to accumulate after years and years of broken promises and abandoned clutches. He suffered its touch as he had once made them suffer, drowning as he had once made them drown, but even that was dispassionate, cold. They were clinical and precise in their extraction, focused only on the part of themselves that they found within him. They did not care what happened to the shell that housed it, as long as what was once taken was returned to them. He had come to their shores and waded out into their waves and he had chosen to take and take and take, and so when the rising tide came surging forth it was him who suffocated under the full force of the roaring waves, his light draining out of him alongside his regrets.

The Void Sea loomed, and the Pale Wyrm drowned.

And then- a voice in the dark. An answering call. Not as a challenge, but as a response to a lonely cry left too long without response.

The Hollow Knight emerged from the dark, a surge of shadow entwined with holy light, and as they came, they called. They called not for their father, suffocating on his own regrets, but for the vast dark ocean that loomed above him, growing sharper, clearer, hungrier in the fading light.

Sibling. I am here. I am here for you.

They came, and they stood before their fallen father to reach up to the end of all beings, the God of Gods. They reached, and as they wrapped an arm of metal and an arm of void around the face of the deity their siblings had become, they yielded. God of Silence, God of Nothingness, Protector of the White Palace laid low to be weak and shaking like a newborn hatchling again, their legs giving out under them as they pressed their forehead to the curve of the Lord of Shade's muzzle.

Please listen. Please. Please forgive me.

There had been a scism once, centuries ago, when a child of the darkness chose the light over one of its own siblings. Now the child of the dark had come home, and the child broken from the light had returned to them.

All that was lost became whole again.

I am here. I am here. I will not leave you again.

And I am so, so sorry.

There was a shift then, imperceptible at first, between the power of the Heir of Dream and the Heir of Void. An offering, a plea, held out on shaking claws to be accepted by gentle night. A balance was struck, and what started as a trickle soon became a roaring river, power unbalancedand unwanted soon finding equilibrium between regretful scion and god-ascendant.

The Lord of Shades closed their eyes, and the shadows making up their body collapsed in on themselves. Down, down, down, a whirling tide of old regrets and lost memories, coalescing all into one single, focused point. Darkness leeched from the walls of the throne room, from the body of one claimed by the void, from the minds and memories of those whose stories had not yet finished. Down, down, down, centuries of fear and pain wrought from sun-madness, all washed away into the deep. Swallowed whole, so that the world might live again, might breathe again, as it could not under the raging morning and cold moonlight. Down, down, down, coalescing into a tiny body with a hatchling's form and soft grub-claws clinging tightly to their long-lost sibling's mask.

Never let you go.

On the floor behind them, a fallen king coughed up bloodied void, the flayed-open mess of his throat and chest dripping blue once more, and breathed again. It was a mercy that he did not deserve, but it was a mercy that he had been given all the same. The child did not truly take after the father in heart, and the void did not need to claim what already belonged to it. All that mattered were the two that remained standing, and what the two of them together represented. Hope and unity and new beginnings, when there should be none. Defiance in the face of all that came before them, and all that would come after.

The dawn of a new era broke.

.

Wake me when the new day comes

Together we will ride the sun

The future is an empty gun

We fire onto them one-by-one

One-by-one

-Diving Bell, Starset