The Hollow Prism Part 2: The Hollow King’s Game
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The Echo with 1,000 Voices
"You cannot steal from what does not exist."
Then—nothing.
Xander fell through the cracks in the mesh of the world.
One second he was standing in Astralis, the city frozen in time. The next—he was somewhere else.
He landed hard. Not on stone, not on earth, but on something that didn’t feel real.
He blinked. His arcane visor flickered, struggling to render the world around him.
It was Astralis—but not.
The city looked the same, but it was empty—silent. Frozen like a glitching VHS when you pause the VCR, caught mid-motion. The stars overhead burned wrong, jagged and twisted, like neon signs with too many crossed wires.
Xander stood slowly, his reflection lagging a half-second behind him.
Then—the whisper.
"Welcome to the Hollow Realm, Dreamthief."
Xander turned—and Lord Nyxalith stood there, waiting.
The lich was not fully there. His form flickered, shifting between different versions of himself—one moment a regal, robed figure with a burning crown, the next a fractured, prismatic skeleton, his eyes endless voids with whole galaxies burning inside.
The Hollow Prism hovered behind him, a shifting, geometric construct that pulsed with the colors of forgotten time.
Xander swallowed. "You’re Nyxalith."
Nyxalith tilted his head.
"I w4s."
Reality Is a Prison
Lazul’s hand ached.
Her necrocrafted arm burned with a strange, electric pulse—like something inside it was waking up from a too-long sleep.
She had felt it the moment Xander disappeared.
Orrin was already moving, his keytar humming, eyes locked onto the place where Xander had stood.
The High Arcanist of Astralis gritted her teeth. "I warned you. The Godcore was his cage. You shattered it."
Lazul didn’t look at her. She still wasn't sure what she had done, but she didn't remember shattering anything… not intentionally, anyway.
"Can we get him back?"
The Arcanist hesitated. Then: "Maybe. If you know where to look."
Orrin exhaled—"Wait."
"Do you hear that?"
The Arcanist and Lazul looked to him, then shook their heads, no.
"Then it’s a good thing I can hear things most people can’t."
He twisted the dials on his keytar, adjusting the tuning, seeking the resonance of reality itself.
And then—he played.
The first note shattered the silence like a stone through glass. He couldn't fully suppress a grin.
The world around them rippled—and Lazul saw it.
A hollowed-out version of Astralis, flickering over the real one. An echo of the city, trapped in Nyxalith’s prison.
And standing at the center of it—Xander.
Staring right at her.
The Hollow King Holds Court
"r34117Y 15 4 Pr150N, Dr34M7H13F," Nyxalith said, his voice unraveling across time. "7H3 D1FF3r3NC3 837W33N Y0U 4ND M3 15—1 C4N 533 7H3 84r5."
Xander gritted his teeth. "Then why trap me here? Why not just take the Godcore and leave?"
Nyxalith’s many faces flickered.
"83C4U53 Y0U’r3 11K3 M3."
The words hit harder than they should have. Xander felt his own body glitch, his mind twisting, warping—
Then he saw them.
The other Xanders.
Dozens of them—hundreds.
All standing in perfect stillness, scattered through the Hollow Realm.
Each one a slightly different version of him.
One had no visor. Another had a dagger through his chest. One stood atop a throne. One knelt in chains.
None of them moved.
"7H3 MU171V3r53 r3P3475 17531F X4ND3r," Nyxalith said. "3V3rY CH01C3, 3V3rY P47H, P14Y5 0U7 1N a tH0U54ND D1FF3r3N7 W4Y5. Y0U, 0F 411 P30P13, 5H0U1D UND3r574ND 7H47."
Xander’s throat was dry.
"So what? What’s your endgame?"
Nyxalith’s burning eyes turned toward the Hollow Prism behind him.
"1 4M 74K1N6 C0N7r01 0F 7H3 570rY. r3Wr171N6 7H3 N4rr471V3."
And then—he reached toward Xander’s chest.
Lazul Cracks Through
Orrin’s music pulsed harder, forcing the Hollow Realm into sync with the real world.
Lazul didn’t wait. She stepped through.
The world lagged around her... The air felt thick, like wading through water, but she pushed forward.
Nyxalith saw her.
He turned—just as Lazul’s sword slashed across his chest.
The Hollow King staggered, his form stuttering between timelines, his many faces flickering in and out of sync.
Lazul grabbed Xander’s arm. "Time to go."
Xander’s body $n4pp3d back into place.
Nyxalith roared. The Hollow Prism shattered outward, its energy screaming through the false city.
The prison was collapsing.
Fight, Flight, and Freeze
Orrin's sweat ran down his arms, down his fingers, leaving the keys of his enchanted keytar slick and dangerous. He slammed his fingers onto the keys, layering rhythms in ways that wouldn't work in any other context, twisting the frequency of reality.
The city warped. The Hollow Realm folded in on itself.
For a split second, Nyxalith was everywhere—his face burned in the sky, his hand reached from the past and the future, his joyless laughter echoed across every timeline.
And then—
They fell.
Per Aspera Ad Astra
Xander gasped—and hit solid ground.
Lazul and Orrin landed beside him, the air still buzzing with Nyxalith’s presence.
The High Arcanist stepped forward, scanning them with her third eye.
"He let you go..?"
Xander’s visor flickered.
"N()." He looked up, his voice unsteady. "He w4sn’t trying to keep me."
Lazul met his gaze.
"Then what was he doing?"
Xander hesitated.
Then—slowly—he turned his visor’s reflection toward them.
For just a second, they saw it.
Not their own reflections…
But a thousand different versions of themselves, staring back.
And one by one—they blinked out.
"He w4s rewriting th3 st0ry," Xander murmured. "And he’s not d0n3 yet."
