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If you have found this, then the blood has accepted you.
And the seal is breaking—
My hands trembled.
The second I touched the scroll, the entire vault groaned. No earthquake. Just this deep, bone-chilling rumble like sothing had woken up.
I blinked.
And suddenly...I wasn't alone.
In front of , an old man stood. Well, not a man.
Not exactly.
He looked human, yeah. Long silver hair, dark crimson robes, skin almost translucent. But then there were the horns.
Two of them, smooth and sharp like polished obsidian, curling backward from his head like a crown.
The Hollow King, I realised.
But more than fear I felt a sense of familiarity with the man.
But this wasn't him in person. This was a mory—no, a ssage.
Sothing sealed inside the scroll.
He raised his hand and began to speak in a language I didn't recognize…until I suddenly did.
As if sothing inside rembered.
I staggered back, but the vision held still, like I was locked inside the echo of a dying man's last words.
"I saw the end. And I saw you. You were our beginning. Our last hope. That is why I did what I did. That is why I left you there. In the vault of our enemies."
Suddenly, the mory flickered. His eyes, black like ink with silver pupils, looked directly at .
"They will fear you. As they feared us. Even those who claim to love you. Even those who raised you. When everyone knows the truth...no human could possibly love you."
And then the final line, like a nail hamred into my chest:
"When the horns return…so will war."
The image faded and I collapsed to my knees, clutching the scroll that crumbled to ash in my hands the mont it ended.
The silence that followed was louder than any scream.
I heard footsteps pacing the outsides of the treasure vault as my face paled.
Grandpa Venus stood a few ters away, his hand clenched on the door fra, his gaze locked on the ashes in my hand.
"You opened that?" His voice was low. Serious.
Very un-Venus-like.
"I didn't know what it was," I said, trying to steady my breathing. "It just…called to ."
He walked over slowly, usually, he was calm in the face of the worst things but today sothing seed amiss.
I rember he had an auction to attend today.
In fact, the old man had invited to go along with him but I was too scared to go anywhere alone with him after he tried to kill the last ti .
Grandpa Venus's robes looked tatters from the corners and his breathing seed almost dishevelled.
There was this seriousness in his face that scared the hell out of .
His eyes scanned my face like he was seeing for the first ti. "Pixie…do you know what that scroll was?" He asked.
"I know what I saw," I whispered. "The Hollow King. My…my—"
He stopped with a single raised hand.
"I need you to listen carefully." His tone was colder now, as if all emotion had been stripped off his very being.
"The Hollows were not from this world. They arrived through a rupture in space, an alien race. They were always more intelligent, strong and dangerous than humans."
"I know—" I tried to pacify the situation but the old man cut in between.
"You don't," he said sharply. "They wiped out half the human population before we even knew what hit us.
Cities turned to ash.
Oceans boiled.
Whatever you read or saw in the scroll is simply a lie and manipulative."
Although grandpa said it seriously, there was just sothing about his tone that made feel amiss.
"The only reason Earth wasn't glassed was because the Hollow King surrendered. And disappeared." Grandpa Venus continued.
I stayed silent.
"Pixie, there are books. Records. Forbidden texts about the Hollows. And nowhere, nowhere, was it ever written that he had a child."
I looked at my hands.
Trembling, no matter what he said, I couldn't forget the raw emotions I felt through the scroll. And just the fact that I could understand that strange language further proved my guesses right.
"I'm not him," I said weakly.
"I'm not like them!!" I scread, scared by the look Grandpa Venus seed to be giving right now.
He didn't respond for a while. Then, for just a mont, I saw sothing pass through his eyes, hesitation.
"…Did you feel the blood take you over? Your body? Your mind?"
I shook my head violently. "No. I was still . It was like…like I unlocked a part of myself I never knew was missing. That's all."
He looked at the ash in my hands, his mouth tightening.
"…Pixie."
I turned slowly, not sure what expression I was even making. My skin felt cold. My head light.
He studied carefully. "Did you trigger this? Or did the blood?"
"I… I don't know," I whispered. "It just pulled here."
His eyes narrowed, observing the place I found it from. "That scroll was hidden behind three layers of divine concealnt magic. Not even I could've sensed it."
He took a step forward.
"You were never ant to be part of the war," the final ssage echoed one last ti."But if war cos again, rember who you are."
Venus didn't speak for a long ti.
When he finally did, his voice was lower. Tighter. "Do you understand what this ans?"
"I think so," I said softly. "I think I'm not just integrating so alien blood. I think I am the blood."
His jaw clenched. "No Hollow has ever left behind such a scroll. Not even the generals. This…this wasn't a beast's mory. This was planned."
I looked down at my palms. They looked the sa. But they weren't.
"I saw her," I said suddenly. "The child. In the dreams. She was . She had horns. And the Hollow King…he cut sothing out of her."
"Her potential," Venus muttered. "He ripped out her inheritance and buried it in blood. Smart. Cowardly. But smart."
I looked up.
"You were going to kill , weren't you? "
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