The world had already knelt.
Its kings broken.Its armies burned.Its temples gutted.
But Vaelen Cross was not born to rule one world.
His crown was not forged for a single sky.
The hunger inside him — the hunger of the Abyss itself — stretched deeper.Farther.Higher.
Beyond broken thrones.Beyond shattered suns.
Into the hollows where even gods dared not tread.
And so the Hollow War began.
It started with a ripple.
A single crack through the veil of reality —a wound torn open by Vaelen's will alone.
Through it, he gazed upon realms untouched by mortal hands:
The Elysian Fields of the Old Pantheons.The Spiral Towers of the Arcanum Realms.The Endless Choir of the Silent Gods.
Worlds of light.Worlds of order.Worlds that had never known fear.
They would know it now.
The banners of the Black Crown were raised.
Seris, the Fallen Queen, led legions of broken angels — her black wings tearing through the heavens like blades of mourning.
Kaela, the Warblade Queen, marched at the head of a thousand thousand Abyssal knights — their armor gleaming, their silence more terrible than any war cry.
Veyla, the Garden Queen, unleashed forests of living nightmare — vines and thorns consuming cities that had never seen death.
And Aurelia — once the Sun Queen, now the First of Vaelen's priestesses — carried his gospel into realms of light, turning prayers into chains and devotion into weapons.
The Hollow War swept across creation.
The Elysian Fields — once lush and eternal — withered into deserts of ash under Seris' black wings.
The Spiral Towers — bastions of ancient magic — crumbled to dust beneath Kaela's relentless march.
The Endless Choir — whose songs had kept the stars spinning — fell silent as Veyla's vines coiled around their throats, strangling the last notes from their broken mouths.
And always, always, at the heart of it all:
Vaelen Cross.
The King of Nothing.
The Lord of All.
The Mouth of the Abyss.
He moved between the realms like a storm that no wall, no prayer, no hope could halt.
Some gods tried to resist.
Foolish, shimmering things of light and law.
They forged weapons of impossible power.They summoned armies of the faithful.They raised walls of thought, memory, and dream.
It did not matter.
Vaelen crushed them without effort.
He devoured their weapons,shattered their armies,unmade their walls with a glance.
He strode through their heavens and left only silence behind.
In the wreckage of the realms, his Court grew.
New queens — spirits of fallen worlds, dethroned goddesses, betrayed empresses — crawled to his feet, weeping with gratitude as they offered their loyalty, their bodies, their very souls.
Some he took.Some he remade.All he owned.
Their names were burned from the stars, replaced only with one:
Vaelen.
In the black gardens that bloomed across creation, his queens reigned supreme.
Seris ruled the Ruined Skies — the last angels flocking to her banner, their halos blackened with devotion.
Kaela carved her dominion from the bones of fallen champions, her throne built of shattered blades.
Veyla's gardens devoured cities and worlds alike — breathing his will into every root and flower.
Aurelia's temples rose across the conquered heavens — not to the light, but to the eternal, unbreakable darkness of their King.
The Hollow War ended not with a final battle.
There was no battle.
There was only inevitability.
There was only the silent, shuddering surrender of everything that had once dared to defy him.
The stars themselves dimmed, their ancient fires flickering and dying in slow, reverent succession.
And when the last light went out,when the last prayer was whispered not to some distant god, but to him —Vaelen Cross sat upon his throne of black stone, his queens at his feet, and listened to the new silence he had created.
It was beautiful.
It was complete.
It was his.