By murugan786 on Skatehive
1: The Mourning After The crows did not leave Seris’s body. They perched on her grave in the Ashen Gardens, a forgotten cemetery where the dead were buried with their faces turned downward—so they wouldn’t climb back out. Elias had never seen crows act this way. They didn’t eat. They didn’t caw. They simply watched. And then, on the third night, one of them spoke. "She is not gone." The voice was Seris’s. Elias stumbled back as the crow tilted its head, ink-black eyes gleaming with something too human. "The Hollow King took my memories, but memory is just another kind of ghost. And ghosts don’t stay buried in Vareth." 2: The Crow Sermon The crow led Elias to the Whispering Cathedral, a crumbling church where the city’s outcasts gathered to trade secrets. Inside, a congregation of hollow-eyed men and women sat in pews, their lips sewn shut with black thread. At the pulpit stood Father Dusk, a priest whose skin was stitched together from different corpses. "You’ve met the Hollow King," h