Chapter 20: The Kiss and the Hollowed
The fire crackled low in the tavern's hearth, shadows dancing across the wooden beams as the night deepened.
The princess — Sarah — yawned delicately, exhaustion finally tugging at her noble frame. She rose from her seat beside Jasper, offering him a soft, apologetic smile.
"I must take my leave, brave stranger," she said, gently patting Flame where the great golden jaguar curled, purring contentedly at her feet. "The day has been long, and slumber calls me. But we shall meet in the morning... and perhaps then," she added with a mischievous glint in her chestnut eyes, "you will gift me your name."
She turned to go, but paused.
With sudden, bold tenderness, she leaned close and pressed a soft kiss to Jasper's cheek — fleeting, warm, and full of meaning.
Before he could respond, before he could find words for the sudden wild beat of his heart, she was gone, her two guards flanking her as she ascended the tavern stairs.
Jasper sat frozen for a moment, Flame lifting his head lazily, sensing the storm of emotions rolling through his companion. Confused and elated, the great stallion-hearted wanderer rose and together they climbed to their room.
The bed stood undisturbed in the small chamber. Jasper, hardened by long roads and cold nights, lowered himself to the floor without a second thought, Flame curling against him. He welcomed the familiar, rough comfort — but sleep did not come easily. His mind replayed the soft touch of her lips against his skin, the promise in her eyes, the dream he hardly dared let himself dream.
But the night had darker plans.
In the silent hours, the princess’s guards roused her from shallow sleep with urgent, hushed voices.
"Princess... you are needed," one whispered, a false urgency thick in his tone. "Your father the King summons you. Immediate, without delay."
Still fogged with sleep, heart pounding at the suddenness, Sarah obeyed. She dressed swiftly, clutching her silver pendant close to her chest — a gift for Jasper, still undelivered.
The guards hurried her through the back of the tavern to a waiting coach, the horses restless under the swinging lantern light.
No time for farewells. No time for second thoughts.
The coach clattered away from the town's edge, deeper into the night.
Sarah dozed lightly, the gentle rocking of the carriage lulling her into uneasy dreams. She kept the pendant clutched tightly in her hand, vowing silently to see Jasper again. To tell him all.
But fate had other designs.
They reached the dense woods when the coach slowed. Sarah stirred.
"Is there trouble?" she asked the coachman through the slats.
He did not answer.
The woods around them were too still, the silence unnatural, pressing.
Then — a jolt. The coach lurched sharply as if striking a rut, but when she peered out, she saw no road, no storm — only figures. Cloaked. Hooded. Standing in silent ranks amid the trees.
The door was wrenched open.
The coachman — no ally — seized her, his face twisted into a hollow grin that sent a bolt of terror through her.
A hand, cold as iron, clamped over her mouth. Another wrenched her arms behind her back.
"The Hollowed have come," a rasping voice breathed against her ear. "Your fate is not yours to write, child of the Tower."
She fought — kicked, bit, struggled — but the Hollowed were too strong, too many.
Even her guards, men who once swore oaths to protect her, stood watching blankly, the burnt-black mark of the Hollowed smoldering faintly under their collars.
And beyond them, watching from the shadows, loomed a darker figure.
A Goblin Chieftain, armored in dark iron and draped in a torn black standard, sat atop a shaggy beast. His eyes gleamed red beneath his helm, his cruel mouth twisted in a silent grin.
The Hollowed had sworn not only to the Black Tower... but to the goblin race that served it.
Sarah was bound and dragged back into the coach, which now rattled onward — not to her father's halls, but deeper into the black woods, toward a fate unwritten and grim.
And far behind, in a quiet tavern room, Jasper slept restlessly, a silver thread of warmth fading from his dream, unaware of how close he had come — and how cruelly the world had stolen her away.
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The Rise of the Black Tower and the Hollowed Men
Far from the lowlands and golden fields, where the wind still carried the memory of hoofbeats and fire, there stretched a broken marsh—a place where the land rotted and the sky wept soot. It was here, by fate or by the unseen hand of the old, cruel powers, that Giblet Carver, once a minor chieftain of the Nightmare Dominion, lost his way.
Banished from Goblintown for his ambitions and cruelty, Giblet and his warband wandered into the forsaken marsh, their boots sinking into the dead waters, their torches sputtering against a rising, oily mist. At the heart of the marsh, beyond the reach of any map, they found it:
The Dark Star.
A black stone the size of a house, half-buried in the mire, its surface bleeding shadow like a living wound. It whispered—not with words, but with hunger. Giblet, driven by rage, ambition, and the instinct of all goblins to seize what is forbidden, touched it.
And the Dark Star touched him back.
In that moment, time unraveled. He saw kingdoms fall like wheat under a scythe. He saw cities crumble into ash. He saw men—proud and strong—hollowed from within, turned into empty, smiling slaves.
The Dark Star whispered its promise:
"Break your blade against the world and it will break for you."
"Call not for armies, but for rot in the heart of men."
"Let their smiles be masks; their hands, daggers; their dreams, chains."
"One by one, they shall hollow out their souls for you, little lord."
"One by one, they shall offer up their blood, their kin, their hope."
"You shall not conquer lands—you shall infect them."
"You shall not rule from thrones—you shall whisper from shadows."
"And when the last true heart beats its final drum, the Black Tower shall rise again."
"And you... shall be king of an empty, bleeding world."
Giblet Carver laughed—or screamed. It made no difference. The marsh trembled as power flooded him, twisting his body into something taller, sharper, crueler. His eyes became bottomless pits of red. His hands thickened into talons that itched to carve, not just flesh, but faith.
The warriors who had followed him tried to flee, but the black roots of the marsh ensnared them, and the Dark Star twisted them too—into the first Overseers, goblins who no longer needed magic to enforce their will, for they had become vessels of it.
They hauled the Dark Star up from the mud, broke it into shards, and from its tainted stone they built the first stones of the Black Tower. Each stone was polished, each rune carved in weeping blood. From the heart of the tower, they raised a single crystal boulder, hauled from the murk, and set it upon a dais of cursed obsidian.
The Crystal of Seeing, born of the Dark Star’s essence, became their eye on the world.
Through it, Giblet—now the Overseer Lord—gazed far and wide, across plains and cities and borders, seeking weakness.
But it was not soldiers he sought. It was men. Women. Children.
Those who could be turned.
The Hollowed Men were his great work. Ordinary humans at first—merchants, farmers, soldiers, nobles—approached with promises of gold, favor, forbidden knowledge. Some turned for greed, others for lust, others for power. Each who betrayed their kin in secret became hollowed, their souls eaten away piece by piece by the Black Tower's curse.
They still wore their faces.
Still spoke their old names.
Still kissed their children goodnight.
But at night, when no one watched, their reflections grew strange.
Their eyes flashed with a sickly red under the moonlight.
Their smiles grew too wide.
Their hands itched for betrayal.
They walked among mankind—but they served only their unseen lord, whispering betrayal, weakening thrones, poisoning fields, guiding assassins, and smuggling secrets across kingdoms.
The Children’s Rhyme
In towns touched by this hidden rot, the children, unknowing, began to sing an old, eerie rhyme:
"When the tower rose from the blackened fen,
And the hollow men crept in again,
With eyes like coals and breath like ash,
They smiled sweet, and slit with flash.So mind your door, and mind your bed,
Lest hollow men come for your head."
The Present Day
Now the Black Tower stands over the marsh like a jagged bone thrust into the heart of the world, hidden yet ever present. The Overseer Lord’s hollowed servants whisper in the courts of kings and drink beside commoners in firelit inns. They wait for the day when the last loyal soul falters—when the Black Tower's second rising will shatter the world.
The Hollowed will outnumber the living.
The Black Tower will blot out the sun.
And Giblet Carver—no, the Lord Overseer—will be king over dust, blood, and ash.
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