Chapter 32 – Thieves of Endings
The wind in Tomb Hollow howled, but it was no natural breeze. The sound twisted with an eerie, hollow resonance, as if the very atmosphere itself was mourning the forgotten deaths buried beneath its streets. Tomb Hollow, a city forsaken by time and memory, lay atop a ruin of uncountable graves—graves of sects whose names had been erased from history, whose deaths had gone unclaimed. Their spirits were lost to the void, their deaths consumed by an insidious force that gnawed at the fabric of existence itself.
Rin Xie stood at the edge of the city's crumbling gate, his senses tingling with the sharp edge of danger. His Death Core hummed in response to the oppressive atmosphere, but something was off. The air was thick with the scent of decay, yet there was no sign of the usual death qi. Instead, there was an unsettling stillness—like the world itself had forgotten how to die.
"Who disturbs the End?" a voice rasped, breaking the silence. Rin's gaze snapped to the figure emerging from the shadows of a nearby alley. It was human—or at least, it had once been. The figure was gaunt, its skin drawn tight over its bones, its eyes wide and empty, like the hollow sockets of a skull. But the most disturbing feature was the mouth—split wide like a gaping wound, dripping with something black and viscous.
Before Rin could react, the creature lunged, its hands reaching for him with unnatural speed. He barely dodged, but the creature's fingers grazed his arm, sending a jolt of cold through his veins.
"They feed on death," Rin murmured under his breath, his thoughts racing. He had encountered many twisted forms of life in his travels, but these creatures were different. Their flesh seemed to pulse with the echoes of forgotten souls, as if they were parasites, feeding on death itself to sustain their existence.
He stepped back, raising his hand, ready to unleash Void Eulogy—a technique he had refined over countless battles. But as his fingers curled into a fist, something strange happened. The very air around him thickened, constricting his movements. A strange pressure settled over his chest, as if the city itself was holding him captive.
The city. Tomb Hollow.
Rin's gaze darted across the landscape, taking in the decaying spires, the crumbling stone walls, and the broken bridges that spanned dried-up rivers. Every inch of the city seemed to be constructed atop the graves of forgotten beings—those who had lived and died in obscurity, whose names had been swallowed by the void. The city itself was built on unclaimed deaths.
His gaze flickered back to the creature, which was now circling him, its lips curling into a grotesque grin. "We are the Thieves of Endings," it hissed. "We take what was never named."