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After my breakdown in the shower, I had decided to tell Grandpa Venus the truth.
Maybe he will help ...or kill , maybe.
I didn't know, but whatever it was, I wanted to get it over with.
Getting ready and calling him out of the training session he was taking with the other heirs, I decided to rendezvous with him in the underground cellar where the treasure vault was placed.
Upon eting him outside his house, I followed Venus without speaking.
The place looked extrely empty without Grandma Sylvie here, but in one way or another, it felt like a good thing nonetheless.
I couldn't handle dealing with her so called righteousness, then again, if she were here, maybe things would be different right now.
I guessed it would take her more than a month to return back from her mission.
After the dream, or vision, or whatever you want to call it, I had a knot in my chest that wouldn't go away. Everything felt too loud. Even my footsteps on the floor echoed like hamr strikes.
Venus didn't say a word either.
Just kept walking, slow and deliberate, deeper into the vault.
We passed the main treasure hall again.
Golden statues, floating weapons, mory crystals...all untouched.
Everything seed irrelevant to now.
At the far back, behind a rusted silver wall with carvings I hadn't noticed before, was a door.
Not an ordinary one. It wasn't even tal.
It looked like so kind of petrified skin, greyish, wrinkled, alive in a way my very being seed to repulse.
There were twelve glowing runes on it. One for each mber of the Roro family line, or so Grandpa Venus said to .
I saw him raise his hand, and the top rune lit up with a violent crimson light.
The rest stayed dead.
"Hollow relics," he muttered. "Classified. This section isn't open. Not unless there's a war coming."
The way he said that made my stomach twist.
The skin-door shuddered.
Then it opened...not like a door, but like a mouth splitting in the middle, peeling back to reveal darkness and dust inside.
A hallway stretched ahead, lit by blue fire torches. I caught glimpses of walls etched with Hollow language, curved, flowing glyphs that made my head ache just looking at them.
"Pixie," Venus said suddenly, turning to . "If I sense anything taking control of you, even for a second...I'll kill you."
I didn't flinch, after all, I expected that already.
"I know," I whispered, already feeling numb to everything around .
"I trust you to."
And so...we stepped in.
Inside, the room was vast but nothing like the grand vault. It wasn't made to impress. It was made to contain.
Stone coffins lined the right side, each with black glass lids, and strange, horned bones locked inside.
So were cracked, as if sothing once tried to escape.
The left wall held rows of items, each caged in mana barriers and chained with shimring obsidian locks. Weapons. Orbs. Crystals. So floated. So twitched.
A massive slab lay at the very centre.
There was no dust on it. Like ti itself didn't dare settle here.
"This entire wing," Venus said, walking carefully, "was sealed after the Hollow War ended. Most of the world thinks the Hollows were wiped out completely. But…so things didn't die."
He pointed to one orb.
It was small. Just a clear, hovering globe. Inside floated a pair of earrings, long and black as they glowed faintly.
"That," he said, "belonged to the Hollow Queen. No one's dared touch it.
It still emits mana after so many years."
I stared at it. I didn't know what to feel.
After all, if the hollow king was my real dad, then this earring that Venus talked about must be my mother's...
On one hand, this was all history, dangerous, beautiful and lost. On the other hand, this was my history.
"Why keep them all locked?" I asked.
Venus paused. Then looked at .
"Because Hollow relics don't behave like artefacts. They don't care about ownership. They choose you. And if you're not compatible, they'll rot your soul."
He wasn't kidding.
Just being near this place made the air feel heavier, like soone had laid grief itself across my shoulders.
We walked farther in.
One particular case caught my eye.
It was a mirror, black, tall, with cracks that shimred like lightning frozen in glass. Sothing about it called to . Not like the blood had. This was subtler.
A whisper in the dark.
I moved closer.
But Venus grabbed my wrist.
"Don't." He whispered.
"That's the Hollow King's 'Abyss Mirror.' It doesn't reflect you. It reflects what you'd beco if your bloodline fully awakened." He looked at with tired eyes. "People have gone mad just looking at it."
I backed away quickly.
He let go. "You're changing. Fast. That blood didn't just wake you, it's speeding up everything that was sealed in you. The dreams will keep getting more intense. You'll start seeing what he saw. Maybe even what you once saw before your mory was erased."
My throat dried at his direct ntion of calling a Kalki.
"I wasn't supposed to be human," I said out loud.
Venus didn't correct .
He just nodded.
"You were planted here, hidden. Your entire life, your adoptive parents, your weaknesses, your lack of power, it was all a side effect of suppression. But now? It's all gonna co back to you."
I looked around the room again.
The relics pulsed faintly, one by one. Like they sensed .
Like they were watching.
As we walked out, sothing inside changed.
A pressure.
A sense that, sowhere out there, sothing was coming for . Or maybe I was being called back.
'But to what?' My thoughts raced as the feeling of sothing familiar ca at only increased.
A throne?
A grave?
Or sothing worse?
I didn't know.
But I was starting to understand sothing very, very clearly.
I wasn't just so powerless girl trying to belong.
I was the daughter of a king.
And kings never die quietly.
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