The world always takes notice when something ancient awakens.
But it rarely screams. It whispers.
It bleeds from the corners of normalcy—through forgotten ruins, system glitches, a flock of birds that doesn't return to roost. Through Guild reports that fail to sync. Through the absence of noise in a place that should be full of life.
And now, it was whispering louder.
Because Hollow Mercy had awakened.
And so had the ones who remembered it.
When Ezra and Rei returned from New Terra, the landscape hadn't changed, but the air had.
Thicker.
Like it didn't trust them anymore.
The journey down from the mountains was long, but quiet. Ezra said little. Rei said less.
The bond between them had grown stronger—evident in the way they moved, fought, breathed—but words still felt fragile, like too much weight would shatter the peace they had carved for themselves inside the storm.
Ezra didn't sleep for two nights.
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the scythe. Not in hand, but in mind.
It hummed like a lullaby sung by someone who had never known comfort.
On the third day, they reached the outpost town of Dareholm—a shanty-hub of traders, scavengers, and those running from system tags.
It should have been loud.
Should have had smoke rising from chimneys, the sound of mana batteries charging, voices haggling over scrap in a dozen dialects.
But Dareholm was silent.
Completely.
Ezra stopped just inside the gate, one hand already wrapped around the scythe's hilt.
Rei drew her blade.
"No birds. No children. Nothing," she said.
Ezra scanned the open plaza.
Shops abandoned mid-sale. Half-eaten food on tables. Tools dropped in the dirt. Mana lanterns flickering with residual warmth.
But not a single person.
[Area Scan Initiated – Anomaly Detected]
Status: System Interference Detected
Effect: Echo Veil – Memory Fog ActiveThreat Level: Moderate to High
Affiliation: The Withered Chain
Ezra's jaw clenched.
The name was new.
But the presence wasn't.
He felt it—the same subtle wrongness that had followed them out of Glassend. The sense of something that didn't exist until you stepped inside it.
A ripple in the weave of what should be.
"Stay close," he muttered to Rei.
They moved through the town slowly.
The Bone Rat refused to enter the perimeter and hissed violently when Ezra tried to summon it forward.
Even the undead knew to fear silence like this.
At the center of town stood the well.
And tied to its cranking post was a body.
It was upright.
Breathing.
But… still.
Eyes wide, pupils blown, lips moving ever so faintly.
Rei rushed forward.
Ezra moved slower.
The man was thin, young. Dressed in the dark cloak of a courier—one of the independent runners who navigated the system-locked zones to deliver intelligence or artifacts.
There was a symbol burned into his shoulder.
A chain. Loose. Frayed at one end. Wrapping around his skin as if it were tightening the more they looked.
"Sir?" Rei said, kneeling beside him.
The man blinked.
Then turned his gaze directly to Ezra.
And smiled.
"It wakes. At last."
Ezra froze.
The man's voice was not his own.
It came in layers. As if a choir of broken voices sang the same words through his mouth.
"He carries the Hollow One. The Weeper's Blade. And he brings it near the roots."
Rei backed away.
Ezra stepped forward.
"Who are you?"
The man's neck twisted too far, cracking unnaturally.
"You were meant to die in the cradle. But mercy was given. Now it will be collected."
Ezra reached for Hollow Mercy.
The man spasmed.
And exploded into ash.
Just ash.
No scream. No flame. No decay.
One moment a body.
The next—gone.
Only the chain-brand remained, glowing faintly on the stone.
Back at the plaza's edge, Rei finally broke the silence.
"What was that?"
Ezra didn't answer right away.
He traced the brand with his boot.
"I don't know."
He pulled up the system menu.
[Faction Discovered: The Withered Chain]
Description: UnknownType: Cult / Memory WarpedStatus: Denied by System – Unregistered Entity
Known Affiliations:– Glassend– Obsidian Crown War (Historical)– Nyra Vale (Flagged: Severed Ties)
Notable Traits:– Memory Fog– Host Overwrite– Chain Sigils (Infection Class)
Ezra read each line carefully.
Then again.
Nyra had once been affiliated. Then severed.
His mother had known of them.
Rei stepped closer.
"So what now?"
Ezra looked past the well, toward the mountains on the horizon.
"They were waiting for us."
"For you."
He didn't deny it.
"They know Hollow Mercy is whole," he said. "And they're moving."
Rei folded her arms.
"Then it's time we started asking the right questions."
They spent that night hidden beneath the remains of an old gas station just outside Dareholm. Ezra erected a barrier of summoned bones in the doorway, inscribed with glyphs of warding.
But sleep still refused to come.
Eventually, Rei stirred beside the fire and sat next to him.
"You've been quiet since the scythe changed," she said.
Ezra nodded.
"It speaks."
Rei raised a brow. "As in, metaphorically?"
He shook his head. "As in… literally."
Rei blinked.
"And what does it say?"
He looked into the fire.
"Nothing comforting."
She didn't press.
Instead, she pulled a cloth from her satchel and unfolded it slowly.
Inside was a black ribbon.
Old. Frayed. Tied once, long ago, and carefully untied just once.
Ezra looked at it.
"I thought you lost that."
"I didn't," she said softly. "Just forgot where I hid it."
He recognized it.
It had once belonged to Rei's sister.
A girl who never made it out of the first awakening zone. The day the sky cracked and the system fell like a curtain across the world.
Rei rarely spoke of her.
But tonight, in the wake of ashes and silence, she did.
"She was brave," Rei said. "But she was kind, too. Not the kind of person this world lets survive."
Ezra met her eyes.
"You survived."
"I wasn't kind."
"You were to me."
That quiet hung between them.
Rei didn't look away.
"Then maybe we're both too stubborn to die."
Ezra smiled.
But only slightly.
And in the shadows beyond the flame, something unseen watched.
In the days that followed, the world began to bend.
Guild announcements arrived in strange bursts—corrupted with overlapping messages. Several zones were temporarily locked down. A floating city known as Argentum Spire vanished from the tracking grid entirely.
And in whispers, one name returned again and again.
The Withered Chain.
A cult of shadows.
A network of forgotten people.
Not bound by Guild, by Rank, or by survival.
But by memory.
Or the loss of it.
And in their path, they left no dead.
Only the living, emptied of name, of self, of time.
Ezra felt the chill long before it reached him.
Because he had felt it before.
When Milo died.
When Hollow Mercy first sang in his bones.
And when his mother, Nyra, had whispered goodbye.
It wasn't death that hunted him now.
It was history.
And it was almost here