When the shadows rose from the abyss, creeping through the dream of the White Palace, staining marble with shifting void, he’d accepted his fate with as much dignity and grace as someone in his position could be expected to.

He’d screamed, cried, and tried to beg, and it was all for naught.

The void claimed what it was owed: his heart, his mind, his life.

And demanded so much more.

What should have been still, should have been a vast reservoir of empty nothing, was instead full of souls and they cried out for retribution.

The void did not offer him death, for death would have been a mercy.

The void did not offer him peace, for he had not yet earned it.

And within that maelstrom of power, of hunger and rage, of glowing white eyes filled with disappointment and betrayal, with pain that he’d put there, he learned the cost of regret. The anchor of his mistakes pulled him down, crushed him beneath their fury. Words echoed, cacophonous, everyone and no one at once, and he could say and do nothing to stop it.

Nothing within the swirling tempest was dead. Nor was it alive. They existed instead in a state somewhere between, locked in the moment of a memory that replayed itself over and over again, whispers of ‘Father?...’ like a mantra between screams. Horrible, resonant screams and the void made sure that he heard every single one.

In that place of darkness, what need had anyone for a light? He was without worth.

As he’d always been, really.

A king whose resolution had been to sacrifice everything on a hope and a dream – against hope and against dreams. What folly.

He saw their eyes. Hundreds of white, burning eyes that stared through him with a luminescence that rivaled his own, starlight winking in the shadows and full, so full, of promise, of demands.

What good to scream?

What good to plead, to beg?

Had it ever done anyone any good?

Hallownest would live on and so would he.

Nothing the void claimed had ever truly died. It might have changed hands. It might have changed forms. But memory was an eternal thing, and the void would never forget that which it touched, that which it birthed, that which it had claimed before any other false idols had wandered into its lands.

And compared to that primordial force, he was a false idol. So was she. They both were.

He fell and the distance was endless. There was no ground to break himself upon, no surface for his wings to catch. There was only the expanse, fathomless.

If a black hole existed, it was surely this: memories replaying around him, his voice and others, scenes like a vision most terrible, and the screams. Always the screams.

Those haunting starlight eyes were a beacon by which to guide himself, but he controlled not where he went. He could turn. He could flip himself upside down, as if he might see where he was destined to land – except that there was nothing to see. There would never be anything to see again.

Until there was.

Another glint of white, the flash of steel, and an uneasy bleeding of red. Disoriented, the Pale King turned over and held one claw out toward the difference, the color amidst the monochrome that had painted his world.

He reached out and he was met with claws that seized around his wrist. They moored him, snatched him from where he was drifting, and then a face leaned terribly close to his, breath licking his shell like flames. His heart raced while ice flowed through him, freezing the air in his lungs like needlepoints, icicles forming inside of him in an attempt to jut outward. He’d been afraid before. Recognition of the figure that caught him did little to assist with that.

“My, my.”

Scarlet horns and a cheshire smile that knew too much. Confusion settled at the back of the wyrm’s throat, stole away his words, and he gazed up at the floating figure that had caught him on his descent.

The counterpart to the blazing light of morning. The ruler of the other half of the realm of dreams.

The Nightmare King.

“What a sorry, pathetic state I find you in.”

All around him, those glowing white eyes turned, and the voices joined in unison to repeat one word: Grimm. The confusion of the Pale King intensified as the shadows laid over one another in a discordant melody. Grimm. Grimm. Grimm.

How did they know his name, the wyrm would have asked, but when he tried to speak, he found himself with no words.

That was a fitting punishment, perhaps.

He’d denied his children the ability to cry out their agony, to prevent himself from ever having to hear them weep – and they’d still found a way to scream. The Hollow Knight had screamed in agony before their death, and it was only a matter of time before their successor – for there would always be a successor; he’d ensured that any of the vessels who escaped would find their way back to take their place in the chain, each a link in the bonds that held Her at bay – followed suit.

That he should find himself without the ability to wail his despair –

“Nevertheless, I have found you. At last.” Razor-sharp claws plunged deeper, nesting through his chitin to break it, to hold onto the tissue beneath, and he was surprised to find that whatever the void had done to him, he could yet bleed.

Or could he? Was it in his head?

Scarlet eyes left his face and Grimm’s strangely knowing smile settled on the shimmering orbs above them. They flickered and phantom touches settled on the Pale King’s sides. He felt scratching and petting in the same motion. Grimm did not let go of his wrist and did not acknowledge the fact that shadows were winding up to choke the wyrm, cloaking him in ribbons of darkness, blotting out his light.

Some of the void snaked down the Pale King’s wrist, settled at the back of his hand, moved as though to touch Grimm’s, and then drew back with a shiver.

It was not fear. The shadows did not find frightening a force far less remarkable than they. And yet there was a reverence to the way they devoured him, leaving Grimm untouched; there was an almost affectionate way that they surrounded black claws, never touching him.

Fondness, the Pale King realized. There was something in the void that was fond of the god of fear.

“A provisional lease, if you please,” the Nightmare King murmured, and if the darkness answered, the Pale King did not hear it.

He woke instead.

o

The sharp incline of his body told him that he was crashing into consciousness. The waking world was a violent thing, seizing muscles, stiff fingers, broken wings. Blurring white, blue, violet, and crimson filled his vision, obscuring all but the hard dirt ground beneath his body.

The Pale King turned over and choked. His throat was a raw thing, dry and burning, and his claws – what he could make out – were stained with void.

The terrible realization that he was alive tore his confidence asunder.

He was alive. But he hadn’t survived. He was a living thing that hadn’t been allowed to die and he’d been brought back, dragged from the eternal sea with intent and purpose.

He retched and what came out was black.

It took him a moment to realize that it was more of a murky red when the light hit it. Chunks of discarded flesh and fragmented bone mingled within coagulated blood, peppering the darkness with discolored sludges of gray, of white, of sickly green. The smell seized his stomach, threatened to pull it taut once more, vile putrefaction turning his insides into something more liquid than any organ ought to have been.

Something moved. It had wings. And beneath it, wriggling, were slightly translucent white forms.

Larvae.

He was decaying, and smaller insects were laying their larvae within what had once been his corpse.

And that ghastly, grinning specter had put him back inside of it.

Waking horror made his claws shake and he brought one up to scratch the side of his face. Trembling, the wyrm took in the shadow that loomed over him, stretching far taller than he was, and he longed to curse.

When he opened his mouth, though, no sound came out, and the chuckle that Grimm offered was an awful thing: smug, condescending, and very self-satisfied.

“It will be some time before you are allowed the privilege of words,” he said, circling the Pale King’s half-doubled over form.

Just as in the void, just as in his prison of shadow, he had no voice with which to beg and plead for salvation.

Not that Grimm represented it. No, that harbinger of the end offered nothing that the Pale King wanted, and yet…

They were in the Basin, he realized.

His vision cleared enough for him to recognize the void-stained earth on which he was sitting. The smells carried heavily – roses, magnolias, and chrysanthemums, the flowers that his Root had planted so long ago – and he could taste them on the back of a half-decomposed tongue.

He lifted his head, secondary arms wrapping around himself for comfort, his expression impassive as outrage worked its way through him. The great caverns he’d once carved with his own claws lay in ruins around him, stained and ruined by the gaping maw of darkness on which he’d built his kingdom. Vegetation rested lifeless, the abyss draining all semblance of color away until the rocky gray earth was peppered with black veining in place of roots. Amidst it all, the decrepit arched entrance of his Palace stood, guarded by a lifeless kingsmould, but the structure itself was long gone.

Sent away. He’d sent it away, and himself with it. He remembered that, if little else was clear in the haze of pain and the awful stench of darkness that felt like damp salt in his throat.

Grimm hadn’t simply retrieved him from the void. He’d put him into his old body, which meant he’d found it somewhere in the Dream World. And he hadn’t bothered to heal any of it. Would he continue to rot and decompose? Die properly, then, as all things did when their organs shut down?

“You will have to settle for mine instead,” Grimm continued. He crouched in front of the wyrm, wings pooling at his feet, claws coming up to settle on his mask, though it did little to disguise the self-satisfied smile that he wore. “More’s the pity for you, I expect.”

A foot settled under his chin and then, violently, it smashed into the bottom of his chin and knocked him onto his back.

Any delusions that he might have held that this was an act of mercy were immediately dispelled. Pain shot through his face, settling as a searing ache in his throat, and he scraped his claws along the ground to brace himself. He felt Soul thrum beneath them, the living pulse of the world, but – where he could have called it, made it sing for him, before, it was distant now, far away, as if at some great height.

“Get up,” Grimm pressed. There was no malice in his tone, despite the violent outburst, but there was also no mercy: it was a command and he expected to be obeyed. “We have places to be.”

A far easier demand to make than to execute. He struggled, claws scrambling over cracked and disheveled rocks, to pull himself upright. Flecks of chitin broke away from his carapace where he’d been kicked and he choked again, gagging. The reflexive urge to vomit rose anew, blurring his vision, but this time – this time it was accompanied by the fleeting chill of fear and the worry that if he let himself become distracted by excising the tiny parasites using his body as host, he would be kicked again for his trouble.

They’d met before, he and the Nightmare King, and he had not found Grimm impressive then. His main feelings toward the butterfly had been that he was a flickering light where his counterpart had been brilliant, and that whatever had birthed nightmare had been something that the blazing light of morning had found repulsive, shameful, a thing to be hidden away in the dark. He’d looked down upon him and was met with coy, mocking terms of endearment, ‘How fascinating, the view from your tower made of glass. May it not come crumbling down upon you bathed in flame, dear wyrm – whatever would you do then?’

It was one meeting. The Pale King had believed they’d never again see one another.

Foolish. Foolish. Foolish.

One could not outrun death.

His stomach lurched and he vomited again. The sensation was a distant one, writhing maggots in his mouth, and each little spit had more and more of them, along with the fractured chunks of his internal mechanisms.

He should not have been alive. No creature deserved to live on in such a state, undead and wrong.

Hadn’t he wanted to spare his kingdom’s people such atrocities? Was that not the point?

Grimm gazed down at him with that unearthly scarlet stare and fury settled in his claws as they dug into the ground for purchase. His mouth curled back in a snarl, bearing needle-like fangs, and when he met the Nightmare’s eyes, a growl rattled in his chest.

He was met with laughter.

“Be careful,” Grimm said, rocking on the ends of his feet, wicked smile lingering on his mask. “Wouldn’t want to disrupt any more parts of your internal organs.” He turned and nudged the mess between them, splattered gelatinous blood solidifying on lifeless dirt, with the end of his paw. “I believe that might be a chunk of your liver.”

The growling subsided. The Pale King dropped his gaze to the chunk of tissue, of flesh, of organ meat within the oozing puddle of bile-filled blood, and then straightened his jaw. It realigned, hinging back on itself, teeth slowly folding downward within his mouth.

It was, indeed, a chunk of his liver.

He should have been dead. He should have wished for such peace. Fear held him in a vice grip, though, and despite the itching sensation that resembled thousands of little feet skittering across his shell, the wyrm made it to his feet. His vision blurred and disoriented him, but he dared not reach out to brace himself, dared not show further that he was struggling in the catastrophic state that he was in.

Grimm needed no further ammunition for the unvoiced laughter and his pride struggled beneath the weight of the blows.

That he should sink so low as to be at the mercy of a creature barely qualifying as a god himself –

That he should be obedient, subservient, to a mere fragment of his enemy’s power that dared to think and breathe on its own –

The thought chafed.

“We have quite the walk ahead of us,” Grimm purred. To hear such a tone from so deep, so damaged a voice, was unsettling. The unadulterated joy in Grimm’s eyes felt like nails slamming through the wyrm to his core and he looked at the ground rather than meet laughing scarlet. “Dirtmouth. You do remember the way, do you not? To your little hub town, your connection to the outside world? When all else of your kingdom lay in ruins, they yet live on. The further from your grace they are, the more stable they remain.”

Dirtmouth…?

The name brought to mind images of small, dilapidated buildings and a failed tram project that he’d meant to connect Hallownest with; it brought to mind great cliffs and the moth tribe’s altar to the morning in the distance; it brought to mind the howling cliffs and transients who knew little about his kingdom and even less about its monarch. He’d largely left Dirtmouth as it was, with it serving as a waypoint for those coming from the wastes who would have sought greater prospects in the underground kingdom.

It did not surprise him to hear it was largely untouched by the plague of dreams. Why attack those who meant nothing to him, when there were so many that she could hurt him with?

She’d left them to the tender care of her counterpart, ambassador of death that he was, it would seem. Whether or not his wings were merciful would remain to be seen.

The Pale King wanted to ask Grimm if he would be gentle when he swept Hallownest into oblivion. That was what the Nightmare Troupe did, was it not? They came to the ruins of a dying land and feasted on its corpse, carrion creatures that they were, and then they left it barebones and forgotten. He’d encountered many in the wilds, before he’d become… this. He knew how they operated. Not with malice, but with purpose. Was it so for the butterfly and his people?

Words failed. He had no way to ask.

He had no right to, either.

He’d failed Hallownest and all hope that he had for a better future hinged on a plan that required sacrifice after sacrifice, death after death, links in a chain, congruent suffering until their lives all ran out.

Time frozen. The last eternal kingdom.

What a fool he’d been. What a fool he still was.

He let Grimm lead the way and fell into shambling steps behind him, each movement its own new agony, muscles and shell pulling on parts of his body that should have dissolved long ago. The void was taking its time reminding him of his failure over and over again, and as much as he longed to argue, he could not.

Hallownest was dying and there was nothing that he could do about it. Grimm’s presence there was proof.

But why was he alive?

The question was answered by an all-too-familiar mantra within his mind, made up of thousands of voices overlaying over top of one another. A chill made him tremble anew as he recognized his own words recited back to him in empty, callous answer:  

No cost too great.

No mind to think.

No will to break.

No voice to cry suffering.

Born of God and Void.

You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams.

You are the vessel.

But the last line –

He looks strange like this, expression wiped smooth, no trace of his usual scowl. He looks young, vulnerable, as close to fragile as she’s ever seen him. Without consciousness to keep it at bay, the illness is free to taint his features, circling his eyes in charcoal and turning the rest of his skin ashy pale. Only his sharp cheekbones burn, high color painted over them from the fever. His lips, oddly parted, are chapped. 

She hates it. 

Another minute sees her scooping him up, all one-hundred-eighty-something pounds of him like nothing in her arms. One around his shoulders, the other tucked under his knees, her exactitude of force never more precisely calculated than this moment.

His head lolls, and she shifts him so that it rests against her shoulder, his hot slow breath on her collarbone.

A memory washes over her as she takes a step, and for a moment it stalls her, locking her muscles in place as the images bleed through her vision unbidden.

A surveillance video, coercively shown her by the Director, of a scene she has no memory of herself: 22, age twelve, marching down the street with her in his arms like he is in hers now, bleak determination in every line of his posture. The Director trailing beside him in her personal car, snail’s pace.

He’d been sick then, too—only much, much worse, all of his organs in perfectly cascading failure as they rejected four years of treatment in a matter of hours, systemically, cell by cell; and though she’d had no way of knowing this at the time, she’d nonetheless been absolutely useless, falling for the Director’s trap like a fucking idiot.

She sets her jaw, shakes the memory out of her head. Dispels the Director’s commentary—You see, Catherine? 22 exhibits model obedience no matter the circumstances, you’d do well to follow his lead—and grits her teeth, fighting the sting of shame echoing out of that memory. Nothing about that poor sick 22 from the video says obedience to 06; no, she understands him far better than that. Desperation, sure. Necessity, probably. Loyalty, absolutely. He brought her back that day to save them both, nothing more.

Today, she will do the same.

(Obedience, the Director will say, a grudging acknowledgment in passing that would once have earned her a cookie and now simply falls hollow on uncaring ears. But 06 will think of that video shown in secret, of small 22 clinging to his dignity then and the 22 she carries unconscious through the black glass doors who fought her for the same, and she will look that bitch in her cold, soulless eyes and say, loyalty.)

“Sofia? Can we talk, please?”

Sofia looked up and gave that bright fake smile that Sam hated so much. “Of course, boo bear!”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes – boo bear? He hated that nickname. “There’s no need to pretend, Sofia. The boys and Kara are in bed.”

Sofia’s smiled turned sharp, “And how exactly would you know that your Nanny is in bed, Sam?”

“For God’s sake, Sofia, I saw her go back into her room after she helped put the boys to bed. At their request,” he added hoping to forestall any more conversation down that path. Although it did beg the question, how did Sofia even guess anything…unless… Sam’s mouth tightened. Robin. He would deal with his brother later, right now he had to deal with the problem in front of him.

Sofia gave a put-upon sigh and set her paperwork to the side, “What did you want, Sam?”

“To put it bluntly, I want to end our engagement. Effective immediately.”

Sofia stared at him for an instant before laughing, “If you want the Nanny that bad, my dear Samuel, I’ll allow you your little indiscretion until we’re married. Can’t have you running around with the hired help after can we?”

“No, Sofia,” Sam replied his voice hard. A part of him wanted to throttle her for the way she talked about Kara and to an extension his relationship with Kara, the other part knew though that he had brought his on himself. “I’m ending our engagement. With or without your agreement, although it will go much smoother if you agree.”

Sofia stood, furious, “And what will you tell your precious parents? Your father? You’re willing to let Robin be CEO? To not secure a future for your precious children?” her voice almost sneered at that part. “And what about the merger?”

Of course, her thoughts were only for herself, Sam thought as he moved further into the den closing the door behind him. He didn’t want to wake the boys and knowing Sofia this might get loud. Sam held Sofia’s eyes as he held up a hand ticked off his fingers to each point, “My parents already know, my father has given his blessing. Given that I highly doubt that Robin will get the position and even if I don’t get the CEO position that doesn’t mean I can’t make sure my children's future is secure in one way or another. As for the merger,” he remembered Kara’s words, her scoffing at the idea of an arranged marriage, “We don’t need a marriage to complete the merger.”

If anything that suggestion seemed to heighten her anger, “You owe me this, Sam Dalton!”

He shook his head reigning in his rising temper, “I don’t owe you anything, Sofia. Let’s be honest here, you don’t love me and you can’t even be bothered to learn which twin is which. You don’t care about them. All you care about are appearances and don’t lay it on me if your father refuses to hand you the reigns of Russo Industries.” Sam took a deep breath to try and clear his head a little, “Sofia, we don’t make sense. We never have.”

Sofia seemed to soften and strutted up to Sam running a finger down his chest and toying with the waistband of his jeans. “Come now, Sam,” she practically purred. “You know that’s not true. We match quite perfectly in both the bedroom and the boardroom.” Sofia’s hands went to the snap of his pants as if she were to undo it. “Let me remind you of the first part of that equation. I’m your equal in everything and you know it.” Her lips brushed his ear as she moved closer to him pressing her body to his while she continued to caress him.

Sam gripped Sofia’s wrist and removed her hand from the waistband of his jeans. He felt nauseous at feeling his body react to her, “No, Goddammit. No, Sofia!”

She frowned – Sofia had been sure that would work. She and Sam didn’t sleep together all the time, she found him to be a bit boring in bed, to be honest, but they’d had sex enough times that she did know what he liked, how to make his body ache for release. Sofia switched tactics, if seduction didn’t work perhaps threats to his precious Nanny would.

“If you leave me for her, Sam, I will go to the papers and everyone else and tell them that I’m a spurned woman, of how you cheated on me, left me utterly distraught for the hired help. You and your little whore won’t be able to have a moment of peace. And once you think everything has calmed down, that you finally have peace from everything, my little tell-all book will come out and it will start all over again,” she threatened.

“And what exactly are you going to say, Sofia? That your fiance found an amazing woman that his sons love? That after five years he found love the likes of which he never thought he would find again? That our engagement was more of a business transaction than anything else? That we never loved each other? To be honest, I’m not even sure if you truly consider me a friend, Sofia. Are you going to tell them that despite the factor that you may be a perfect match for me on the surface that even my parents have given me their blessing of being with, as you put it, ‘the hired help’.” Sam watched with no little amount of satisfaction as Sofia seemed to hesitate. “Furthermore,” his voice lowered dangerously, “If you ever call Kara a whore again you will be the one to regret it.”

Sam paused for a moment watching Sofia try to regain her bearings, almost always in their relationship Sofia had been the more dominant one and he had just let her run everything and never put his foot down. He was showing a side of himself to her that she’d not had to deal with before and it gave him a great amount of satisfaction to watch her try and come up with a response that would provoke a response from him that she wanted.

Now it was time to drop the bombshell that he’d been holding back, “I’ve looked past your little indiscretions. I don’t know who you’ve been sleeping with, nor do I care.” He watched with mild amusement as the color drained from Sofia’s face. “I’d had my suspicions for a while, I never cared though. Not until Kara came into my life and I started to imagine that maybe, just maybe, there could be a way for her and me to be together. I ended up hiring a private investigator from Brooklyn, Damien Nazario, to follow you and see if my suspicions were correct.”

Sofia looked shaken for a moment before she composed herself, “If you truly had any proof, Sam, you would’ve sown it to your parents to get out of this engagement if that’s what you truly wanted.”

“Don’t doubt that I have proof, Sofia, because I do. However, you know my parents and you know damned well that if I showed them the pictures they would brush it off, my father would say it’s a simple indiscretion. My mother would tell me that I would have to forgive you and that surely after the wedding the affair would cease.” Sam shook his head. “So we have two choices, Sofia. We can do this your way and we can both have field days with the press or we can do this my way and end our engagement civilly. The choice is yours.”

“And what exactly do I get out of this, by doing this ‘your way’? You know my father will never agree to make me CEO without securing the merger – which was what our marriage was supposed to be about!” Sofia hissed.

The mocking smile Sam had been wearing when he told Sofia he knew she was having an affair slid away and the normally warm brown eyes grew cold, “I told you, don’t put it on me about your father. That’s between you and him.” He held out his hand for the ring he had given her. It had no sentimental value it was brand new, but he wasn’t giving her the satisfaction of keeping the bauble. “The ring, Sofia, because either way we are finished. If you like I can have Robin prep a statement for release.”

“And what will this statement say?” Sofia demanded. “How can I be sure Robin won’t malign me? After all, my dear boo bear,” the nickname was said with heavy sarcasm, “we know he feels about me.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at that statement. Robin and Sofia had always gotten along, better than himself and Sofia at any rate. A stray thought made his blood ice over and then boil. Could Sofia’s lover be Robin? Making a mental note to follow through with Nazario he returned his attention to Sofia. “Then I won’t have Robin do it, I’ll do it myself. I give you my word that it will not malign you or place any blame on you.”

“As for our companies merging, the ball is in your and your father’s court. Dalton Enterprises is willing to go through with it if that’s what’s desired. For tonight though, all I need from you is the ring. Please.” He held his hand out again, palm up.

Bristling with fury Sofia tore the ring off her finger and shoved it into his hand. “You will regret this, Sam Dalton,” she fumed.

“Maybe, but I doubt it,” he replied. In truth, he doubted he would regret anything that happened tonight. Not so long as he had Kara and the boys...his family.

Sam saw Sofia to the elevator and called down to the doorman to inform him that Ms. Sofia Russo was no longer to be allowed up whenever she wished, to always check with himself or Kara first. He wondered how both women would handle that little piece of information.

Now that dealing with Sofia was done he felt drained and energized at the same time. As much as she wanted to take time to process Sam knew if he did that there was a possibility of losing Kara. That was something he refused to contemplate so he knew he had to speak to her tonight.

Taking a deep fortifying breath he walked down the hall to Kara’s door and knocked. As he did it brought back memories of the first time Kara and Sofia had met, at his birthday dinner. How he had come to her even back then and of how she had massaged him, her hands on his bare skin. It had been so tempting to kiss her, to go back to get after turning on Mason’s night light. He had resisted, but how things had changed from that night to now.

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Kara’s head snapped to the door at the knock. She had been dreading and yet looking forward to it all night. If Sam was coming to tell her that he’d changed his mind and was still marrying Sofia...well she didn’t know if she would be able to stop herself from doing at least one thing, possibly more. Her current choices were to slap him or cry….and if she was honest she had spent enough tears on Sam Dalton so slapping him if he was still being a coward sounded like the better option.

The knock came again, still a little more quiet than usual. A necessity so as to not wake the boys sleeping down the hall. Kara could be a coward herself, which would be stupid of her when she was the one who forced this confrontation, or she could allow herself to feel hope and face her fears and put her trust in Sam one last time.

Steeling herself Kara rose from her bed and opened the door to reveal the man behind it. As always Sam took her breath away. A part of her couldn’t believe that he felt anything for her and that this wasn’t all just some kind of dream.

“Kara, can I come in, please?”

She bit her lip, “That depends, Sam, on whether or not you have proven my trust in you hasn’t been misplaced again.”

“It hasn’t, I promise.”

Forcing her nerves down Kara stepped back and opened the door wider to allow him into the room. It brought back memories of the night of his birthday party. When Sofia had surprised them and Sam had come to her room after sending the other woman home. As Sam stepped into the room Kara lifted her own dark eyes to his and found her breath catching. The look in his eyes said he was thinking the same thing and that he was also so very done with waiting for the perfect time, done hiding what he felt for her.

“Kara, I’ve been unfair to you from day one. We both felt that attraction when you came to my office for the interview and then that night you came home with the boys from your first outing I knew I was in trouble with that first kiss. It wasn’t just the attraction and lust I felt for you though. You had also proven from the very first time you met my children that would care for them and challenge them in so many ways. I knew you were a perfect fit for our family, I just didn’t know how perfect until later.” Sam paused as if gathering his thoughts, “I don’t know what twist of fate brought you into my life, into my sons’ lives, but I will forever be grateful for it.” He reached out and caressed her cheek, “What I’m trying to say and failing at is that I ended my engagement with Sofia. I also spoke to my parents before coming back to the penthouse and received their blessing for ending the engagement and being with you.”

Oh, how Kara wanted to accept this without question, her brief time with Sam, though, taught her to be cautious and guard her heart as much as possible. And maybe….maybe that wasn’t a good basis for the start of a relationship but...if her questions were answered then perhaps Sam had realized that she wasn’t going to stay and be the other woman. Perhaps, and her heart ached with hope, perhaps her dreams would be realized and not left in ashes. “So if your parents hadn’t given you their blessing would we even be having this conversation right now? Or would I be leaving in the morning because once again you can’t do what makes you happy?”

Sam’s eyes widened in consternation. Kara’s questions showed him just how badly things had started to go for them – not that her trying to quit wasn’t a big red flag. His reply came swift on the heels of her questions, despite his own heart aching at how bad he had been mistreating the amazing woman in front of him, “Yes. I swear.” How could he have been so blind to what he had been doing? “Kara, the last time I felt like this was with my first wife. I’m not comparing you to Marianne, that wouldn’t be fair to either of you. What I’m trying to say is that Kara, you make me feel alive – you remind me to be a better father, a better man. You never back down when it comes to the twins. You support me in all things but kick my ass when I need it. I love you, Kara. I was so broke when Marianne died, I never thought I would fall in love again. It’s why I said yes to Sofia. I kept telling myself that marrying Sofia would be the right thing. It would secure a future for my boys.”

Kara barely dared to draw breath as Sam continued, “I realized when I thought I was going to lose you that the future I was imagining with Sofia was cold and voice of all the warmth and love you have brought into our lives. You are my future, Kara, and my boys love you just as much I do. You would never make them feel like they were interchangeable, that they’re a nuisance because you love them right back.”

He paused and look at the woman before him, “Say something, Kara, please.”

“You love me?” her voice came out in a whisper.

Sam smiled, “Yes. With all that I am. I know that it might be a bit difficult to navigate everything at first, there are still unanswered questions regarding the business now that I’ve ended things with Sofia.” He reached out and pulled Kara into his arms. “Right now, though? I don’t care. All I care is hearing you love me too, and you’ll stay with me and my boys.”

A beautiful smile appeared on Kara’s lips. “I love you, Sam, and yes I will stay with you and your sons. Always, no matter the consequences.”

He brought his upper set of hands up to his face and raked his claws down further, until shell tore beneath them. Something oozed. Cloying sweetness knotted at the back of his throat, strangling breath, but when he looked at the curving chitin, there was no tell-tale orange of infection, no lingering warmth staining ivory with sunlight. Just faintly amber-tinged, clear fluid – hemolymph, then.

Shadows cast on the fabric before him. They stretched and tangled, unnatural forms; one was Grimm’s silhouette until it was not anymore, or perhaps it still was – something formless, something large, something with wings and then total, complete darkness, the scarlet flame extinguished for the night… or for his benefit. A showman that one would always be, after all.

“Do you” —the voice caught the Pale King so off-guard that he nearly lost his balance on the spin to locate the speaker— “intend to wait for him all night? Our Troupe Master rises with the morning sun, but we see little of him once night envelops Dirtmouth.”

She was a tall bug, the one who approached, her antennae twisted back behind her head and twitching at the very tips in interest. She reminded him, strikingly, of one of the Five –

— white armor, stained in infectious orange hemolymph as she was slain upholding her charge to protect his Root; they shared in common a fierce, unwavering love for her, and he knew beyond all shadow of doubt that if nothing else, she would lay down her life not out of duty but out of devotion —

– but she could not have been. Far too much time had passed. Hallownest may yet have stood eternal, but those who would remember Dryya could be counted on one hand, and the thought tore at his heart. She would have killed him, too, if she thought that he meant their Root a threat, and for that, he’d trusted her the most of his knights. The others were loyal to him beyond a shadow of doubt, would follow his instructions unto ruin if need be, but not she. No, Dryya’s loyalty was to Hallownest’s Queen and so was his own.

She was not Dryya. Dryya was long dead, and she’d died to do what she’d always promised.

He was silent for too long. Those antennae curled around and angled toward him in interest. “You’ve scratches on your face, stranger.” She held one hand out toward him. “I run a shop nearby with my husband. Come. I’ll help you get cleaned up.”

Scratches on his face were all that she commented on. Civility was not dead, it seemed. The Pale King followed her, a ghost drawn to the living, each step withering the tiny wisps of grass. She peeked at him periodically as she led the way through the ailing village, disturbingly quiet. His memories of Dirtmouth were poor, having only visited once or twice, but he seemed to recall it being more lively than this, even in the evening hours. Time had stolen the travelers who would come to the town to visit the kingdom below; all that visited now were grave robbers, come to ogle the decaying corpse.

There were so few bugs left standing about. There were so few candles burning in the glass panes, in windows barred shut as though to keep out burglars – or something more sinister.

The stag station was illuminated. The second vessel had done that, he knew. It’d been an avid user of the stags.

There was another building lit, and an elderly bug sitting on a bench beneath a particularly large streetlight. He was looking at one of Grimm’s posters, expression unreadable, and the sight sent a pang of concern through him that he could not suppress.

“Do not trust the Troupe Master,” the Pale King blurted out. His voice was wrong, off, so it did not surprise him when his companion stopped to regard him. She lifted her eyes toward the tents, as though considering. “What he offers is not what he grants. No matter what he may tell you. His is a web of lies, and by the time you recognize that, you are ensnared, tangled, and woven so tightly as to never escape. He is like those of Deepnest, who feast upon you once captive, but without their kindness; peace does not come for those granted his tender mercies. Do not trust him.”  

The female bug chuckled, her head bowing. “They were interesting, at first—but there is something…off about their leader. The little traveler was a frequent visitor and seemed to be friends with them, but they have not returned in some time.” She crossed her arms. “My husband was going to go look for them—they were a frequent patron of his; we are cartographers and I suspect they were an explorer—but that strange bug went down first. And came back with you.” She looked down at him. “I would have thought you friends.”

The traveler. She meant the second vessel and he had not the heart to tell her that it was little more than a reanimated corpse acting on the impulse of the spells that had helped to create it. All vessels were compelled to seek the light, to fulfill their purpose: that was why he’d created them. The vessel did not possess the capacity for friendship.

Did it?

There was something wrong about Grimm’s behavior. He’d seemed very determined to make the wyrm climb, to drag the Pale King through the monuments to his every failure, in a show that had felt malicious.

“No. We are far from friends. As he will be happy to confirm, if you would like to ask him.”

He could not have been friends with the vessel, either. The vessel was following the spells that created it. The vessel was doing as it was told. The vessel—

  —“You could do it, if you had the will. But could you raise your nail once knowing its tragic conception? And knowing yourself?”… —

—was incapable of friendships; it had strict magics holding it in place, binding it to the reasons for its creation. Something was missing; something was off. They could not have been friends. The vessel was not capable of being friends with anyone and yet his own daughter had seen in it something that he himself did not. She’d seen fit to help it, to guide it to the corpse of who he’d once been, to lead it into the Abyss, and it had come out changed, but nothing about its fate had, except for her.

“Hmm,” the female bug said. She’d fallen back into stride, and he instinctively followed her, as had become his new role: led by veritable strangers.

The void had responded to Grimm. The void recognized him with a familiar affection that it did not acknowledge anyone else with. He’d watched the butterfly bargain with it, listened to it repeat his name, a mantra in the thousands of voices that made up that shadow sea, and he’d been unnerved.

The vessels could not have friends.

But the void, that nothingness where everything began and everything ended, that traversed everything in between – life, death, joy, sorrow – recognized and spoke to nightmare.

Fear and death are old friends, his mind supplied. He’d heard that before, but he could not place the location. And yet… it felt… strangely apt.

A building of carved shell and stone loomed in front of him, windows lit by candlelight rather than lumafly, though it did little to reduce the blue cast that the long-stained fossils added to the village. His companion stopped at the door and then turned toward him. “I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Iselda, and my husband is Cornifer. He’ll be eager to meet you,” she explained. “What is your name, stranger?”

His name. He had no name. He hadn’t ever bothered to use one. What need had a god for something so mundane? In the ages past, he’d been called so many things. Hallownest’s Godking. The Pale King. The Wyrm. The Pale Wyrm, by those being specific, who knew of the Battle of the Blackwyrm and had survived to speak of the tale.

Another had called him usurper.

And many others, a cacophony of sound discordant, called him ‘father.’

How he wished that they wouldn’t. They’d learned that word from the eldest among them, and they’d all borrowed it, clinging desperately to the term. It was and wasn’t accurate. He was not their father. He was not its father, either, because it was not alive.

But if it had been truly hollow, truly empty, truly not a living thing, it would never have thought to call him that.

He thought to lie. He’d already lost his composure in front of her, and she no doubt thought him weak for the display of emotion, but in the end… what care had he? He would be returned to the void, to that descending hell, to relive the final moments of those that he’d condemned to agony over and over again – so making a bad impression on a mortal meant little, in the grand scheme of that.

“…I do not have one.”

“Ah.” Iselda looked at him for a long moment, then opened the door. “Well, it is nice to meet you, stranger. We will put something on your jaw, on those scratches, avoid them getting infected. It must hurt.”

His whole body hurt. Not just his jaw, not just the scratches. Where the shell peeled away to expose tissue and blood, arteries tangled over tendons, it ached, and she did not acknowledge it; she did not acknowledge any of the wounds, and he found himself unable to ask why. Fear paralyzed him. He followed Iselda into the shop and was greeted by a weevil peering down from a bunk above their merchandise, watching him with too-wide eyes.

“Ah, you’ve brought a guest! Hello. Oh—you look. You look startlingly familiar,” the other bug—Cornifer, she’d said his name was—offered. The Pale King cast his gaze downward. “I am certain—have we met?”

“No,” the wyrm answered. Iselda motioned with one hand, bidding him sit, and he looked down to avoid meeting the weevil’s gaze. “We have not.”

“He’s injured, Corny. Can you get some antiseptics for us? I’d like to clean the scratches, put some creams over the ones that remain.” She looked him over. “Will you molt out of this?”

“I do not think that a molt would correct this,” the wyrm answered, aloof.

His gaze snared on a compass charm on the shelf behind the counter, and on the numerous scrolls that collected dust on the one beneath it. There were quills and pins, an ink well shiny-black from being freshly filled, and atop the counter, he could make out a crudely drawn map of what appeared to be the Kingdom’s Edge. Cartographers, she’d said. The parchments certainly suggested that was so.

Iselda scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic. This will heal just fine,” she scolded.

“She does so disdain the theatrics over injuries,” Cornifer offered, climbing down from the bunk. “She is right though, my beautiful Iselda. Those are surface level nicks. It might not even take a molt to get rid of them.”

Surface level nicks.

“…might I trouble you for a mirror?” the Pale King asked. Cornifer stopped, then picked up a small charm from on top of the counter and handed it to him. The weevil distracted himself with looking for further supplies, while the wyrm opened the charm and was presented with –

With his face.

Unharmed. Unmarred.

He moved the mirror back and forth, nausea rising as a storm within his chest, tightening the muscles beneath until every single part of him felt as though it was made of lead. He was sinking beneath the feeling of being crushed. His jaw was darkening with hemolymph pooling under the shell from where he’d been kicked and there were little angry lines from the work of his own claws, but the rest of him was –

His wings were intact. His shell was intact. There was no sign of infection, nor any of decay. He looked as he ever had, the pristine picture of ivory light, pulsing with faint luminescence, and as he stared, he heard it –

Whispers from around him, the thoughts of the villages. Iselda, wondering if he was okay, and what had been done to him. Cornifer attempting to identify who he was, and why he looked so very familiar—the weevil was perilously close to landing on that explanation; his mind returned, time and again, to what he thought of as the Ancient Basin, but he could not summon up the image of the fountain to fill in the gaps. Further still, he heard thoughts like a melody that burned to listen to: how prettily shadows and flames danced together, and closer, a familiar wrongness drowning in fear.

One of Grimm’s Troupe had figured out that what he’d bargained for was a higher price than what he’d received.

But he hadn’t been able to hear thoughts. He’d lost that power.

Hadn’t he?

He’d been rotting.

Hadn’t he?

“Hold still now,” Iselda offered, jarring his thoughts. Cornifer had returned and given her some supplies and was looking at him with the same silent intensity.

The second Iselda touched him, the overwhelming sense of worry that washed over him chased his own anxieties away. Pride had him wanting to recoil, to growl, to bite: I need not your aid, want not your help. Your pity is wasted on one such as me, he would argue. He did not. He held very still, focusing to keep the soul that illuminated him in perpetual glow in check. But he loathed physical contact and her worry drowned out all of his own emotions, left him adrift in a sea of the unfamiliar and unwelcome.

And Iselda noticed none of it. She dabbed his face with little cloths, cleaning the scratches with next to no delicacy. Hers were a warrior’s hands. He envisioned her caring for her own wounds on travels through the treacherous wastes, with no need to be kind, no need to be gentle, and certainly no need to keep in mind that the very blood she was handling might be dangerous. But his… might have been.

He could not bring himself to ask her to stop.

The last person to touch him with such kindness was his Root. The retainers were not allowed and at the end, he hadn’t let them into his throne room. He’d died alone.

He’d died alone.

He’d died –

Nothing in the void ever really died, though. Not him. Not his children, ever. He’d underestimated that terrible force and what it gotten him? What had playing at creation earned him in the end? Pain for himself. Pain for his loved ones. And a Hallownest that was dead but could not die.

“You must be more careful,” Iselda scolded. Her mind bubbled with wondering what Grimm had done to him, to cause him to inflict harm on himself. Immediately she held the nightmare butterfly accountable and his worries that she might have been one to fall into the trap of despair dissipated; this bug was strong enough to resist the song of the Nightmare Troupe. Her husband was, too, though she worried that he was too friendly, and the Pale King could hear that, too. But Cornifer, while intrigued about their guests, had an iron will and sense of adventure. He did not long to escape death. He longed to understand the world around him.

There was beauty, wonder, in that feeling.

Was it Grimm’s doing, the rotting he’d felt, had seen? Was he the reason that whenever the wyrm stretched his wings, there were still phantom aches? Had he thought to punish him somehow, with images of what he thought was worthy of his crimes?

He could not hear Grimm.

He could hear his Troupe members. He could hear a familiar mind, in the nearby shops, a voice long ago that should have been dead and yet somehow lived—the nailsage, Sly. He could hear the stag below, waiting for the wanderer’s return. He could hear Iselda, he could hear Cornifer. He could hear another voice, loud and incoherent, full of anguish and sorrow—there was a female bug in one of the houses, distressed at her missing knight—but not Grimm.

The astringent fluid on the end of Iselda’s rag burned, though. His shell ached, recoiling from the tenderness. She finished wiping off and then swiped on some kind of thicker cream that was vibrantly green.

“There. We will get you something cool to rest on your jaw,” she finished.

“Do you have somewhere to stay, stranger?” Cornifer did not wait for a response. “You can sleep on our floor. It’s not the most comfortable of beds, but it’s better than being out in the elements. It’s safe. Iselda’s just about the most dangerous person left in town.”

The weevil cast his wife a pleasant smile that she did not respond to.

He was wrong, but the Pale King did not feel as though arguing further about the nature of the nightmare god in the tents was conducive.

He settled instead for saying, “Your hospitality is kind. We appreciate your generosity.” The ‘we’ drew lingering stares from the couple, the wyrm realized, so he quickly amended, “Thank you. I do not… have other accommodations.”

Cornifer nodded at him, then went to retrieve blankets. Iselda was staring at him and he could hear her discomfort, her disapproval: she was fine with tending to his wounds, but letting him sleep in their home was another matter entirely. He wanted to tell her that he posed little threat in his current state, but natural bugs would not have known the source of her worry.

“I would rather not intrude,” the Pale King settled on. “But if you would be willing, I would find a blanket most amenable for using the bench outside.”

The relief that washed over Iselda was near palpable. Cornifer offered him a woven silk thing, tattered from age and obviously well-loved. The weevil turned his head, adjusting his glasses. “Oh? Well, the little wanderer always found that bench particularly comfortable, so you probably will too. Good luck then, stranger.”

“Thank you…again.” He took the blankets and handed back the mirror. “Sleep will do me worlds of good. It is… heartening. To know that Hallownest yet has good people.”

Iselda folded her hands and leaned on the counter, watching him depart. He could feel her apprehension as he left, and though he couldn’t hear her words out loud, her thoughts echoed them clearly enough: “Cornifer, you are half-mad. He is a stranger. You would invite him to sleep in our home? You do not know what kind of danger he might pose to us – to you!”  

Cornifer lapsed into apologies that drowned out the further that the Pale King drifted from their shop, and when he approached the bench, the elderly bug had abandoned it; he was left by himself. He climbed onto it and wrapped the old blanket around his wings, slowly lying down onto his side, and exhaled.

Sleep might help. Sleep might also make it worse. He knew not what to expect.

But as he lay drifting into unconsciousness, he could make out clear scarlet in the distance and long, tapering white horns. He could make out shambling, could hear the sound of a needle dragging across the ground, and the smell of infection was heavy in his throat and his mouth. Each step the figure took was shuddering, cracking chitin and shell, sickly pus dripping from shell down to the ground with wet little plip-plop-plips.

It couldn’t be her. She was sealed within the Temple of the Black Egg. It could not be her.

But he pulled the blanket up over his face to drown out the sight of it nevertheless, and he was certain that he felt claws ghost over his shoulder. His heart thudded in his chest, the rapid beating of a prey animal faced with a hungry predator. He hissed, deafeningly loud in the quiet of the town.

“It was not supposed to be you,” he told his daughter’s ghost. “It was never supposed to be you. Why did you go inside?”

She did not answer, because she was not there, but he knew the reason without hearing it given voice.

She’d gone inside because she wanted a better future. She’d gone inside because she needed to believe that an alternative path was possible, a path that saved her kingdom and the siblings that she’d been told not to love, but could not fully convince herself weren’t alive.

She’d been right and it cost her everything.

The lift drew him ever closer to that tomb and –

He did not want it. He did not want to go to the Crossroads, he did not want to go to that tomb, and he most assuredly did not want to be trapped in icy silence on an elevator with someone who was not looking his way. Desperately, he wished that Grimm would. That the butterfly would turn back, scold him for his decisions, tell him that all of this was his fault. Deliver unto him judgment with words like razors that could cut, as he had, and yet nothing that Grimm said at all compared to the weight that he felt within. Guilt was the heaviest burden of all.

Who would bury the bodies, when Hallownest was gone?

Who had buried him?

No one. He’d buried himself, trapped in his dream. He hadn’t even had the courage to face his people before he died.

The chains jerked. The elevator rumbled and the Pale King lifted his gaze. The cliff of the landing platform was speckled with tangled infectious vines, still luminously pulsing with life. They threw mocking shadows across the ground, slithered up the walls, and connected to pustules larger than his entire body, the membrane covering their outside grown thin from how swollen they were. He could see his reflection in them, a caricature most comical, for the face that stared back was one he knew all too well, in place of the monstrosity that he’d become.

That was fitting, though, wasn’t it? Fitting and correct. He, too, was bloated and full of something festering within.

The door swung open. He followed Grimm through it, all of his arms woven tightly around himself, as if to resolve some of the anxiety bubbling within his gut, as if the pressure could somehow calm the writhing that he felt within. Maggots, maggots, little festering youngsters using his rotting flesh as breeding ground, he was a corpse, he was dead, he was –

He was standing inside of his own corpse… in every way that mattered.

“Why?”

That question was belated. Fear shackled him to the elevator, dread keeping him safe inside of its walls, and he did not step out onto the landing, did not follow the butterfly’s easy steps, his own so weakened that he felt starved. His eyes remained on that one pustule, on his reflection showing within, and the sickly-sweet fluid that roiled on the inside, bubbling as though made of acid.

How thin the skin of it had become.

How thin his own had become, too.

His claws bit into his shell. Those departing footsteps, so soft, as though not actually touching the ground, stopped. He heard wings shuffle and then felt, rather than saw, Grimm standing over him.

“Why?” the Pale King repeated. “Why did you pull me from the sea of shadows that enveloped me? Is this punishment of yours somehow more adequate, in your mind? Do you think this is what I deserve?”

Grimm’s claws came over to his face and turned him, forcibly, to look away from the proof of his failures. The shell was bruised where he’d been kicked and it shot little pains up through his jaw, scarlet eyes boring down on him, and he could make nothing out. That was, of course, the purpose of masks – to hide expressions – but the fact that he could not tell even the barest of emotions was unusual to him.

He’d always been able to tell. He could read minds, thoughts, hearts. He could tell when someone was lying and when someone was true. He could tell intentions, and yet the scarlet specter before him was an enigma. That power and all others had been stripped from him, left him bare, and he longed for them back.

Grimm clicked his tongue, pressing down upon his thumb claw hard enough to swell the ache within the wyrm’s shell, to add all new bolts of lightning that settled where it hinged.

“It is not for me to decide what you do and do not deserve.” He jerked his claws away to let go. “Nor is it my place to deliver unto you judgment or absolution. The ropes that bind your limbs are not my doing; the chains that you hear sing, I did not put there. As I said… you attribute much to me, when I have done little.” He turned and started away again. “I tire, wyrm. Is it your intention to cower in this lift?”

‘Cower,’ Grimm said, knowing exactly how the wyrm would take it, and though he knew that he was being manipulated, the Pale King exited the elevator regardless. He took slow, uneasy steps, though – because he knew what awaited him.

The Crossroads were the epicenter of the Hollow Knight’s ailing state. From the Temple of the Black Egg, the infection bloomed outward, an ever-spreading bruise in tinges of orange and gold in place of black and blue. As they grew closer, the evidence of its deteriorating state would become more and more obvious. The second vessel had assumed the role of jailor for the Old Light, but that role could not undo the damage that she’d inflicted upon Hallownest in the time between succession.

And she was still alive. She was still alive – the evidence of that was in her will, pulsing through those arteries that spread out, stretched, stained.

Rhythmic thudding. Thump, thump, thump. It syncopated to the throbbing of the pustules growing on the walls and he recognized, with the detached clinical interest of a mortician, that what he was hearing was his own heartbeat.

He’d walked these halls once, a funeral procession for one who hadn’t understood its own fate – whose denial had been so thick that it had deluded itself into believing a lie. Banners, streamers, the Five and the retainers – they’d all walked together, but in the Temple it had been just the two of them – himself and it, staring at fathomless black eyes as if they held the universe.

They did hold the universe.

And he’d sentenced it to death.

Had he any other option? Could he have done anything better? Would it have been worth it to try arguing with her, debating, bargaining? Would she have heard any of his pleas, given him a chance to perhaps meet her in compromise? Did it have to come to this, the kingdom in ruins? Did others have to die?

Did Grimm know?

“Is it absolute?” the Pale King asked, climbing up the side of a cliff edge. The nesting piles of orange globules, like eggs stuck together and beating, grew more numerous, covered the cavern edges, illuminated everything in the same sunrise hues. They did not flatter the butterfly, who was more suited to darkness, the wyrm thought. “The fate of the kingdoms you come to. How do you know? How do you… sense what is to come?”

Grimm did not answer him. He instead climbed over a particularly large root of sickness, leaping atop it like it was nothing. The infection posed no threat to him, though, did it? He was blazing kin in his own right – a fragmented, unwanted piece, but a piece nevertheless.

They entered a particularly large canyon where once there were stairs that spiraled from the top downward, connecting the different parts of the region. Time had shorn away many of the steps, leaving some jutting out, many with particularly large gaps between them. The ones that opened to Greenpath’s entry were still covered in tangled foliage, the leaves of vines vibrant, full of life and promise. Those lands, too, had been claimed by the dream goddess’s vengeance, though – and was that not proof enough that she could not be reasoned with, that she would hear nothing? For she’d taken her rage out on Unn, who hadn’t so much as joined him as she had tolerated his presence for the sake of peace? What, then, had the mosskin done to merit such treatment? Nothing. Nothing.

To the wyrm’s surprise, Grimm did not simply fly up the passage. He traversed the stones, jutting out like discarded grave markers, with ease. His limbs were not damaged, and he was a more spritely creature, built for little jumps and darting, all grace and languid limbs. There was something whimsical in watching a reaper leap about, weightless; it felt like something out of a dream, which was absolutely fitting, considering Grimm’s nature.

He was something out of a dream, lost in reality.

How had he come to be physical, when his counterpart never had?

Grimm stopped ahead of him on one of the upper stairs and held his hands out to a tiktik crawling across the floor and –

It was not infected.

It was alive.

Some things survived.

“Yes,” Grimm said, while the diminutive creature crawled up into his arms. He rose, holding it close to his chest, black claws a stark contrast to the white grooves of its shell. “You may run. You may even delude yourself into believing that you have escaped. In these acts, you perhaps buy yourself time, ill-gained though it be. But make no mistake: a cowardly flight it remains. Running, running, until eventually, it does come for you. It always comes. There is nowhere that you can hide. There is no force that you can conjure with which to fight. Death is always – always – absolute.”

His claws moved, fast, jutting outward until white shell splintered. The sickening crack nauseated the wyrm, who jerked backwards, nearly stumbling off his platform. Clear, sticky hemolymph pooled over long claws, Grimm looking down at his hands. Fragments of shell fell discarded, entrails tangling downward, and the Pale King could make out the barest traces of lichen where the creature had been feasting, harmless, minding its own business.

He stammered in shock.

It – it hadn’t –

It hadn’t done anything at all –

“W-why?”

Grimm turned his head to the side, scarlet eyes glinting in the darkness. He cursed his inability to read the emotions within, to detect what the butterfly was actually feeling, for Grimm’s face was accursedly impassive – calm, when he should not have been, after something so vicious, so mindlessly cruel.

And then a little chittering sound came from the tiktik, and it wriggled, delighted, at claws peeling away molt stuck to its back.

It…

It was alive.

It was alive.

The hemolymph was gone, the creature still writhing in Grimm’s hands, unharmed. As if he hadn’t –

Had he? Had he? He’d – he’d killed it – but it was alive – but he’d killed it –

The butterfly held the tiktik up in front of his face, a disorienting and pleasant squint to his cherry-red eyes. “We find meaning in the moment, do we not, my friend? In each day?” Grimm placed the tiktik back down. “Go on, then. Be careful not to end up under foot. This world has a habit of crushing those who do not look where they crawl.”

The tiktik crawled away – vanishing out of sight somewhere beneath the platform – and the wyrm stared after it. His heart thudded in his chest, bile rising up like acid, burning his throat, stilling words. He felt, rather than saw, Grimm’s eyes lingering on him. Judging, harsh, expectant.

The Pale King was no stranger to death. He’d killed prey in his life, before shedding his shell to become a form more reminiscent of mortal bugs. He’d hunted, he’d feasted – and even after he took on the role of Hallownest’s Godking, he’d seen death. He’d seen the infected fall to that plague of dreams. He’d –

He’d seen those small souls, leaping in the night, trying to climb their way out of a pit of dark without end –

He’d watched them crash, the sound of bones breaking in the distance haunting his every nightmare, and so it was fitting to be reminded of those days, in the eyes of the god of fear.

A loss of life – pointless, lives had purpose and they were snuffed out by – by –

By him.

It was almost trance-like, the way that he followed Grimm through the weaving caverns. It occurred to him to wonder how the butterfly knew Hallownest so well, where he’d learned – but he’d traveled, in a fashion, at the company of one of the vessels, had he not? He’d been the companion of one of them. Was that why he took it upon himself to drive home, nails into a burial coffin, the mistakes that the wyrm had made? Did he take pleasure from it?

Light streamed in from above, colder than it ought to have, and his gaze lifted slowly to see the interlocking stones that formed into the well. The way the blue suffused the butterfly cast a halo of light around his shoulders and threw his shadow out, stretching too far, too long, a thing alive.

“What is it that you want from me, Nightmare?” he repeated. “Before I follow you out – you, my would-be rescuer –”

“Is that what you think that I am? Your savior, pulling you from the void sea?” Grimm asked, lifting from the ground.

The way that he dangled there, defying gravity, reminded the Pale King of puppets on a string and that was fitting, it was – for Grimm was a puppeteer himself, the body he currently inhabited little more than a shell. That scarlet fire danced through the eyes of his audience, his ‘Troupe’ of pretty lies. Few knew the truth of the Troupe, but the wyrm did – he knew what it was.

People joined willingly, their hearts wounded from the loss of their kingdoms. On hands and knees, they groveled to forget, and forget they did. The loss of their lands. The people they put in the ground when their kingdom was reaped by the butterfly and his ghostly entourage. Their memories. Their names. And eventually, their individuality.

Those who joined the Troupe were erased under the force of his power, with little difference from the infection that his counterpart used to animate the corpses of her victims. The only thing separating Grimm from her was that his people came to him and begged for absolution and what he promised was not that. It was nothingness, one and all.

The Nightmare Troupe had thousands of people.

But the Nightmare Troupe was one person, playing with dolls and pretending that there was more to his lonely heart – that he would not spend his every day a visage of what would come to all eventually.

Alone, in the company of death, but never succumbing to it himself. His power hollowed out those who joined him, burnt away all that they were, until all that remained was what he saw of them – what he wanted them to be.

Yes, he was a puppet master, and his ‘troupe’ were marionettes dancing on strings for him, to fill the empty void of his heart – he who could create nothing, only take what was given to him, because he was not truly a god himself; he was the shattered pieces of one who hadn’t seen fit to share that part of herself.

How terrible, how lonely.

“I am not here to help you,” Grimm interrupted his thoughts. “My benefactions come at a cost, and you will pay it, wyrm.”

And with that, the scarlet ghost disappeared up the well. The Pale King’s eyes went to the walls, and he let out an exhausted sigh.

Another climb.

– up the walls, scaling them with claws stolen from the Mantis Tribe, because its own paws hadn’t hardened enough to puncture the stone, void changing it to be more pliable, but time and age and light would change that, temper it into something stronger, something more reminiscent of its sibling –

He leapt. He climbed. He dragged himself with the screaming, scratchy notes of claws on stone, ripping them backwards with each upward scramble. This one, at least, did not have spikes jutting out threateningly, but it made for little difference – for he was still having to climb when his body was not fit for it.

– little fingers, nebulous and more like a cross between fluid and air, clinging to the edge of a cliff as it dangled, as it looked back at the pair of them departing

it, who would change destiny, who would succeed its sibling, who would try and try and try, carrying with it a piece of his soul, his heart –

A blue sky. The smell of fresh air. The thick knot in his throat ebbed, swallowed away, as the heavy infection cleared. He heard music in the distance, some kind of accordion playing an unfamiliar tune, and speaking however far apart.

– “I’ll not risk my own life in your attempt,” his daughter whispered, but it was a lie. Sentiment possessed her, sentiment that she’d gained from her mother, that warred with the dutiful nature that she’d gained from him, and the love that she’d denied herself, that she’d pretended that she did not feel, that she wanted so badly to banish from herself for her own sake drove her.

She entered the Temple.

She did not come back out. –

He rolled over the edge of the well and lay on his back on the ground next to it, each breath a strangled gasp.

Why had she gone in? She knew better. She knew what lay within better than most. He’d explained the process of the seals to her. He’d taught her everything that he could, to protect her from the risks of Hallownest, and to help her obey his instruction to prevent the Black Egg from being opened prematurely. She knew the void that pooled inside of that chamber, and she knew that to enter was death. Why had she gone in?

He opened his eyes, turned his head back, and Grimm was little more than blurred scarlet and faded gray. He held one hand out in the butterfly’s direction and saw those scarlet eyes glower back toward him.

“You are not a member of my Troupe.” The words cut like a knife, merciless. “Find your own place to rest and recover. I will have need of you tomorrow.”

The fabric shifted and fell closed behind him.

He’d favored telepathy in life, and that, too, was denied to him. Not that he’d tried with Grimm, but he knew just the same that he was no longer allowed such methods of communication. The instruction of the void was clear:

Live as we lived.

Suffer as we suffered.

Die as we died.

Over and over again, until you understand.

And then let it continue, until you plead for absolution and have it be denied to you.

Then and only then will you understand the meaning of your mantra: No voice to cry suffering.

The Pale King fell lax, collapsing into himself, his head bowing. He felt scarlet eyes boring into him, staring him down with an intensity of recognition, and he wondered how much Grimm truly understood about what was happening to him. His claws drew up to his face, scraping at decaying flesh, and he heard a dark chuckle. Satisfaction. Whether he knew in advance or not, he was certainly pleased with the development. The growl that settled in the wyrm’s throat was low.

“How it must chafe, that you speak with her tongue. That your promises of an idyllic future, of a kingdom untouched by death, find themselves graced by her honeyed words.” Claws settled on his jaw, Grimm forcing him to look up again, and the butterfly smiled. Teeth stretched too far, in a maw that did not fit on his face, jagged and interlocking. “Forever and ever, until death do you part.”

He rose to his feet, that awful visage of scarlet-and-black, of wings too long and eyes too bright, and then he turned to regard the rest of the climb.

“Still, I must amend my earlier assessment. You have words after all. It is your voice that has been taken from you.” Grimm put one claw on his mask and chuckled. For a moment, the Pale King thought that he saw a flicker of something behind that white fabrication of bone – something sinuous and undulating, not entirely different from the burrowing little pests that he still felt within his shell. “Are you quite done with your tantrum?”

Tantrum.

He called it a tantrum.

The Pale King raked his lower claws against the stone to a screech, gouging jagged and unpleasant lines under their edges. He uncurled himself, shifting, his tail slamming the ground behind him in his disdain, and his head inclined toward Grimm.

He did not want to speak. It would be her voice, and to speak with that felt more like an insult even than the scream had been.

And Grimm knew it.

His words, his countenance, his candor – he was fully aware that though the Pale King did possess a voice, it was not one he would use willingly. It would continue to be a one-sided conversation, with him having to endure barbed commentary from the pest, unable to properly address the judgment that he saw in those scarlet eyes, and the impotence of his position was infuriating.

A punishment to fit his crimes – but they were crimes that he’d had no choice in committing, the wyrm would have argued to that faceless darkness, and his pleas would continue to go ignored.

It cared not for his defenses. He’d learned that very early on.

Grimm, ignoring his obvious tension in favor of his own agenda, reiterated, “Climb. I will see you at the top.”

The butterfly made to leave, and he held out one claw in desperation.

He could not physically make it.

He could not make the climb.

And the Nightmare King knew it.

Grimm knew that he could not make the climb and was forcing him to try. He knew, then, the symbolism of what he’d demanded, and he’d done it regardless. No. He’d done it because of that symbolism. There were tram stations (that led to the archaic cemetery of the moths – would that somehow have been better?), there were stags – there were innumerable other, better options than this, and yet…

Did he think himself clever, the butterfly?

Begrudgingly, the Pale King could admit that it was. What he did not understand was the motivation. Grimm held no love for Hallownest and had known nothing of the vessel plan. It was not his counterpart’s interests that he was acting upon, for if it was, it would not have been climbing that he chose.

And yet it was an insurmountable wall laden with spikes and jutting out, broken woods that splintered. It was a cliff face and the distant sound of dripping water from Isma’s Grove. If he screamed, would Ogrim hear him, his champion that yet lived? Could he bear the weight of being seen in his current state?

He could not make the climb, his mind reiterated. He kept his hand outstretched toward Grimm, who looked back at him with an uncomfortable silence. The butterfly knew that he was ill-equipped for this demand, knew that he could not meet this task, and he was…

…making him ask.

Making him beg for help.

Help that he was not even sure would be given, with a voice that was forced upon him against his will.

His hand fell away. He looked back at the wall, considering. If he could make it higher… if he could just reach where it was wood, he could use his claws to drag himself upward by force. He’d scaled trees that way when he was still small enough to be as prey to larger wyrms and other predatory creatures in the wastes. Always had he been small, always had he been perceived as weak, and always had he persevered. If he could survive in such circumstances, a mere wall posed no obstacle to him.

Far worse was the thought of being rebuffed for his troubles, being cast aside, being laughed at again by a creature whose entire existence was dependent upon devouring the creations of others.

Determination settled within, twisting a knife in his guts, and though it burned, though it seared, though he ached – he tucked his claws into the surface of the rockface and he pulled himself up. His tail twisted underneath him and, with spite-fueled rejuvenation, he hauled himself upward. Chitin cracked, the sound loud in the darkness. He did not hear the tell-tale shuffle of fabric-like wings, of Grimm following him, but he dared not look down lest he lose his purchase. His shell splintered downward, discolored hemolymph sliding warm, wet trails down each arm.

Up.

He felt plating roll back, twisting unnaturally as if it were leaves. He felt the remnants of his wings twist, break, and tumble downward. Fluid, like trying to molt, the pieces of his body peeled away, and the pain seeped deep enough to become a numb, tingling sensation with interwoven searing sensations.

The wooden planks loomed above, promising rest.

He reached one hand out toward them and the stone beneath his claws fractured. Fear like a vice seized his heart as it dropped down through his chest, into his stomach, and he froze.

Assess. Analyze. Determine. He could make it. If he managed to reach the hardwood, he would be rid of the unsteady surfaces.

Grimm still had not moved. Or, if he had, he hadn’t made a sound in his ascent – but the Pale King was quite certain that, mocking specter that he was, the butterfly was still right where he’d been when the wyrm began to climb, watching the spectacle with all the fascination of the carrion creature he so mimicked – waiting, hoping, for him to fail.

Another tentative, shaky movement, and the rocks he’d been clinging to only moments before went tumbling down. He heard them clatter on the ledge he’d stopped on and in the back of his throat, he felt dusty wings all over again. Had he any shell left? He would check when – when –

He reached the wooden divider. Atop it was a mouth of spikes, glistening silver, and more still jutted out like sawblades. For the moment, he ignored them, using the lip to settle himself, and there he stopped to look his injuries over.

He found none.

Despite the symphonic snapping of shell as he’d gone upward, there were no new signs of necrosis, nor was there any of the blood that he’d felt certain was covering each limb. As he stared at his claws, though, he heard the phantom sound of small wings attempting to glide; he heard the singing of nails colliding into one another; he heard weeping and his daughter’s voice, words obscured by distance.

“Not her,” the Pale King hissed. The words came out scratchier for his damaged throat, the voice alien enough to make him want to rip his own neck apart, and yet the fierce intensity of their meaning lingered. “Not her. You may use all you wish as weapon in your goals, Grimm – all else, save her.”

Then it came: the laughter he’d expected from the onset, raucous from below. Essence strings danced around him as Grimm shot through the air, to float as though weightless directly beside him. The Nightmare King settled his hands at the small of his back, macabre smile on his face, leaning forward to crane his back at an angle no natural bug ought to have been able to accomplish, before purring.

“Whatever you think that I have done, wyrm, I assure you… it is not I who haunts you.”

“Liar,” the wyrm countered, crawling forward. His hands hooked on the edge of the platform, and he pulled himself up onto the top. Once, that narrow passage would have worked as a pulley system to allow the exchange of waste from different regions into the Royal Waterways and later into the junkpit. That plan had been scrapped when one too many worker had mysteriously disappeared, likely at the maw of the flukes.

Someone had added the extra… teeth to the equation. He would have attributed it to the Beast if it were lower in the chasm. Such things were not out of the realm of possibility for her.

She was dead now.

They were all dead now.

“Am I? Of the two of us, who has told more? I, who usher in the sweet end of days with merriment and festivity… or you, who promise things that you cannot hope to ever truly deliver?”

Grimm edged backwards, allowing him more room, and he responded by shoving his claws deep into the wood to scramble his way upward. As predicted, as soon as he’d gotten through the widest part of the cavern, the climb became easier, and he ignored the butterfly to make his way higher still.

There was no point arguing. To do so was to admit that Grimm was right, and though he was loathe to acknowledge it, he could find little fault in the argument. The best defense he had was that the Nightmare King’s counterpart built her entire empire on lies, too, and was he not made of the same fabric that had birthed her? Had he not been born of fragmented pieces of what she once was? Her scraps, discarded, that hadn’t thought to die, but instead chose to rise like a lich?

They were more alike than ever, it seemed.

They were going to be let out at the capital, Grimm had said.

They were going to be let out near the Watcher’s Spire.

Lurien.

Thinking of the moth made his chest tighten, breathing sparse. His maw parted to give himself more air as he forced himself higher. Each gulp tightened in his throat, rotted the tissue, reminded him of his disheveled state, and in the back of his mind, he remembered.

Remembered Lurien’s voice.

Remembered his trepidation about the vessel plan altogether.

Remembered the open way that he’d mourned when he’d first met the Pure Vessel, whispering, ‘It is but a child, sire,’ as if the proclamation could change his fate.

Love for Hallownest sent him into the dream as a seal. Love for Hallownest and blind, unwavering faith in his king, to see it through.

Lurien was dead and his spire, his final resting place, was his tomb. Visiting it at all, even in passing, felt like a desecration. The Pale King longed to apologize to him – to find him, to whisper that it was not all for naught, even though it was a lie. Would he have changed anything if he had the ability to turn back the hands of time? What would he have done differently? …nothing. Nothing at all.

Helplessness was bitter.

From one ledge to another, he had to leap, the strain physical and demanding. He bled. He ached. He climbed through it all, interlocked fangs grinding into one another to keep from grunting his frustration.

Eventually, he reached the top.

Grimm had flown up ahead of him and was leaning against pillars that acted as foundation for the city. Stone wrought and carved with deft claws, they helped maintain the structural integrity of the winding corridors even through the impressive weight of structures high above.

What good did they serve now, when all were dead?

He collapsed on the landing platform and ignored the lingering stare on his fallen form. His claws raked down his face as if that would somehow rectify the shooting pains that twisted through his shell, pulled on the muscles below; as if it would somehow correct the nausea welling in his belly, despite there being nothing left inside of him to come out. Except for tiny little parasites that his mind insisted were there – that he did not know the truth of, one way or another.

His heart beat a steady melody within his chest that he felt certain fell in perfect harmony with the screams that he heard, over and over. He’d – he’d hoped they would stop, once freed from the prison of void. He’d hoped it would be –

Be what?

Better?

Did he deserve better?

He’d done the best that he could, the wyrm wanted to argue. He’d done his best, when he had no other options. She would never have stopped. She was winning. She would have killed everyone in her bloody rage; she would have wiped out the entire population of Hallownest, shameless, in her aim to punish him for her perceived slight. Accusations of being a false idol, of theft, of playing at divinity without being a god in truth – she looked at him and she saw an enemy, and all was fair if it accomplished her goals. Ruthless creatures could be relentless. ‘No cost too great.’

“Breathe,” Grimm instructed, and he realized that he hadn’t been.

Instead, he’d been staring at the stone beneath his claws in a desperate bid to make sense of his thoughts, a fragrantly sweet, floral note snaring his throat. Honey. No. Infection. Where they were going was thick with it and dread worked chains around him, snapped all of his limbs to his chest.

The butterfly closed the distance and crouched in front of him. The Pale King did not look up at him, eyes locked downward, but he felt claws ghost the sides of his horns. Tension rolled through him, and it was soon rewarded as his head was jerked back sharply so that he was forced to meet the scarlet phantom’s gaze.

“Is this truly the best that you have for me? The wyrm who conquered my counterpart’s lands, reduced to little more than a weeping mess, sobbing uncontrollably on the ground?”

He wasn’t sobbing, he wanted to argue, but as soon as the thought rose, he felt moisture on his face. He was leaking.

Humiliating.

“And to think, your queen was very quick to tell me your kingdom would never accept me,” Grimm continued, relentless. His claws left the Pale King’s horns and settled between his own knees. “They could do far worse. I expected… more. Far more. Your progeny surpass you in every arena. Perhaps it is her influence, that imprisoned light deep within the tangled growth.”

His Root yet lived.

The wyrm laughed harshly, though it came out as little more than a croak. The dust in his throat rubbed it raw, made the sound worse, and it was her laugh – though he’d never heard it before in his life. He’d never heard anything but her angry screams. Not even words, really. They’d never tried to parlay. One did not negotiate with someone who was willing to result to mass murder to accomplish her goals.

“She exceeds you in all ways,” the Pale King spat. It heartened him to know that she lived. Part of him immediately wanted to go to her, to beg her for aid. The other, louder part, knew what she’d see: a shambling corpse, worm-rotted and perverse. She would never accept him as he was, nor should she. He should not have existed.

Grimm smiled. “Is that what it takes to energize you, wyrm? Reminding you of what you have loved and lost?” The beat that he waited was not long enough to formulate a cohesive response. Grimm rose to his feet and turned to the trailing ledges that led upward. “If that is so, then I relish at last having a conversation partner in our next destination. Can you smell it? The infection, thick in the air? It will only grow stronger.” He moved, leaping up a ledge, and without turning back, he added, “Your queen was quick to tell me that Hallownest would never accept me and mine… but Hallownest is dead. Those who would protest us have long lost their capacity to do so. All that remains are corpses – as far as the eye can see.”

The wyrm slowly, shakily, rose to his feet.

He did not want to enter the capital. Grimm was right.

But it would not have been known by anything so macabre a definition as ‘tears’ back then, and the rain would not have been so dramatic. Though Blue Lake did leak through the cavern’s roof at all times, the menderbugs were constantly on call to repair the damage as fast as they could. Time had stolen that efficiency, and the collapse was imminent. The glorious civilization would be underwater before too long, its history lost to time, and anyone who yet lived within would find themselves little more than a memory as well.

Memories.

It had had a name once. He could not remember what it was called, and that was a distressing thought. He’d created it, this city. He was the architect behind its invention, the layout and design borne of his creativity. He’d always loved creating, far more than he ever had his people, and yet standing before a marvel of his invention, he was left with the distinct reminder of what he’d lost. What he stood to lose still.

Nostalgia seized his heart in a vice grip, choking.

He would not weep for the loss of his creations.

“You should have visited more when it was alive,” Grimm observed, unfazed by the falling rain. He should have been at least a little uncomfortable with the chilled water; he should have been at least mildly perturbed by the sensation of being wet. He was impassive, calmer than he ought to have been, and had the Pale King not hated him before, he might have in that moment.

How dare you stand at the precipice of my brilliance as it falls into the sea and care not at all for the loss.

How dare you be right.

There were corpses around them, desiccated and festering, bloated with infection yet dripping from their eyes, from their maws, from the breaks in their shell. The husks that lined the city ground were broken things, limbs torn asunder. Some of them had injuries clearly inflicted by nail, while others appeared to have just collapsed. The number was not small, though. No, it spread on, and on. Though the streets were not completely covered in the bodies, there were enough to leave no delusion as to how badly the capital had fared in the wake of the infection.

Grimm stepped over one of the fallen carcasses and kept walking, his eyes never even casting downward, and that infuriated the wyrm.

“Little more than obstacles to you, are they, nightmare?” he hissed. As empty as the city now was, the words carried far on the wind, resonating off the buildings that he’d find empty. Or would they, too, be tombs, forever encompassing those lost, until time decayed their lifeless shells into dust? “Inconvenient and in the way, the bodies of my people?”

Grimm did not look back at him, but he did stop.

“Always there will be bodies. Death gifts mementos to those left behind.” The butterfly carefully stepped around the corpse of one of the sentries, then looked left and right. “Memorials to remember those we loved and lost. We tell ourselves it is to honor their memory, but in the end, it is not. Graves, you see, are for the living.” Grimm made a decision, then, and he started down a different path.

Realization dawned as a guillotine on the Pale King’s neck.

Memorials. The direction they were going. It was not a coincidence; it could not have been.

“Grimm.” His voice shook. “There are other pathways to Dirtmouth.”

They would be going past the Watcher’s Spire, true, but that was not the most horrifying thing down that road. That was not what made his stomach drop, crashing like lightning, scorched in its wake.

“There are,” Grimm agreed. “But this is the one that I wish to take. Would you rather we separate?”

The wyrm froze. His stomach lurched violently at the thought, the feeling of something under his skin writhing and cold. Tingling spread through him, numbness that settled somewhere behind his eyes, and the vertigo that stole his vision made the world blur. He did not succumb to the uncomfortable sensation; he bowed his head instead, shaking at the shoulders.

He would not make it to Dirtmouth, and that smug creature knew it. He’d barely made it here. If Grimm left him, what would become of him? Would he—would he simply stop being animated? Would the void rise up from the bottom of the world to devour him once more?

Over the husks, he stepped, but the tattered remnants of his wings snagged on the end of one of their spears and he tumbled forward. His instinct was to reach out, to grab the edge of Grimm’s cloak to catch himself, and the butterfly instantly pulled away. He hit the floor face-down instead, shell crunching beneath the weight of his own rotting corpse. His mouth filled with something sweet, viscous, and he gagged.

Grimm did not acknowledge the sound, rattling though it was. “I will thank you to not touch me,” he said instead, impassive.

The Pale King rubbed his maw on the back of his hand, and it came away thick with honeyed gold saliva. He trembled, staring openly at the spread of his claws, willing away the viscosity, that the rain might wash him clean.

Footsteps told him that Grimm was departing again.

Slowly, he scrambled back to his feet, shell clattering beneath him as he attempted to rise. The rain obscured his companion’s departure, the dusty grays of Grimm’s cloak more like shadows than the flames that represented him most – shadows that crept, tangled, wove up and whispered. Fitting, the Pale King thought, for the path the reaper cut felt like the executioner’s axe, and he did not want to take it.

That was precisely why Grimm had chosen it, though – of that, he was still without doubt.

Did the nightmare god intend to act as jury, to pass judgment on the wyrm’s crimes? Was that the intention?

But surely he understood necessity? Surely he understood how dire the situation had been, for was he not privy most of all to the frenzy that was his counterpart’s rage?

The Pale King thought the Dream must have been a loud place, prior to her sealing. He envisioned it full of her screams, impotent but furious, and then the dawning realization of the monstrosity of her creation. He thought that her realm must have been full of rivers that flowed thick with infection – and Grimm was a part of that world, wasn’t he? Severed though he was from her, did he not see, did he not know?

“Please,” he said, legs uneasy, pain shooting through them. The sensation was burning and it seared down his throat, curling back shell that felt as though it were pressed beneath a branding iron. If he looked at himself in a mirror, would he find marks in the shape of feathers, woven tight around his neck?

Or would it be claws too long for a body that should have resembled his own?

He heard cracking and it took him a moment to register that the sound was his own footsteps over water-soaked bricks. His shell held up beneath his weight and yet the cracking continued. He half-expected to see splits in each brick under the burden of each step, but no – none came. The phantom sounds played in the back of his mind regardless, his path falling in sync behind Grimm’s own, and his plea – however pathetic it sounded even to himself – went ignored.

There was to be no mercy, but he had done nothing to merit so harsh a judgment from Grimm.

“You do not have a right to look down on me so,” he hissed out. Grimm did not turn back to him, did not slow down, and did not acknowledge the words in any way. They rounded a corner, great awnings rippling under the weight of the rainfall pooling on the fabric, and a faint breeze tore free a poster from one of the walls. He watched it splatter onto the ground, the silk parchment long faded, the edges ripped and jagged; it advertised the performance of a butterfly clad in fanciful pink silks, her name emblazoned over the bottom.

The magnificent Marissa.

The singing butterfly at the Pleasure House.

He'd never seen her perform.

He’d never been to the Pleasure House. Many an invitation was sent to the White Palace, with assurances of discretion if he wanted to enjoy their festivities without the bother of the general public. More than once, his retainers had suggested he go to a performance for a break from the business of running the kingdom, and every time – every single time – he’d refused them.

When he should have been a part of the kingdom he’d labored to build, he’d withdrawn instead, to the secrecy of his palace and his laboratories, to the dark recesses of his guilt and shame, to the burden that held him fast in chains.

Because he’d known what was coming. Because he knew what had to be done, and how could he ever hope to look in the faces of those he would sentence to death in a bid at immortality?

…he’d looked in their eyes –

“You who care nothing for the living, only the dead,” the Pale King continued weakly. “Have you ever loved anything in your life, save yourself? The macabre ghosts you call a Troupe, that you would have others believe exist as anything other than figments of your imagination? Extensions of your power? I know what you are—”

“Do you.” It was not a question. Grimm did not stop, but he did lift one hand, and the sound of his claws raking over the corner of the building they passed was jarringly high-pitched and sharp; it brought to mind a razor’s edge scraping over stone and left grooves in its wake. The building in question was a little nestled thing, with old, rotting food on display, long forgotten. It’d been beautiful once, though. The Pale King could faintly remember the smell of the breads baking.

Had he stopped there, on the day the monument was unveiled?

Had he wanted to? Yes. But he hadn’t. He’d been in a hurry to be free of the eyes boring through his very soul.

“I know much of you,” the wyrm insisted. “I made it a point to study you and your counterpart both.”

“And yet still you see so little. Still you are so blind.”

Grimm rounded the corner and he followed – only to be stopped sharply in his tracks. Slowly, he lifted his gaze, his head turning back to look at the memorial fountain, rain falling like tears streaking down a mask that would never have possessed any – that never could have. It was larger than life and stylized to remove some of the accents of the armor, to hide the embellishments that his own magic left like stains. Time had worn the polished black stone away to a mottled grey and the fine chiseling that had once added details was long lost to the erosion the water brought, and yet –

Yet he could hear the shifting of fabric with each turn. He could hear the click of metal as they turned toward him. He could see their mask, perfectly expressionless, and –

How desperately he’d needed to believe that the thing within was nothing at all. Like his kingsmoulds, but in a god’s shell. How he’d needed it to be – but it wasn’t.

In retrospect, he should have known. How they’d loved him. How they’d wanted his approval, how they’d sought it – there were so many signs, so many hints, and he’d ignored them all –

Little eyes staring up at him as he explained the names of the flowers that grew along the balcony.

Too long horns for a body that hadn’t yet grown into them, toppling over and then stubbornly rising again in stubborn determination.

Perfect stillness through the pain of having spells woven like strings into a shell that he now knew could bear pain and not once did it flinch, not once did it react, despite the agony the light tearing through its void must have presented.

The anguished desire for approval. The need to be what he’d asked for – it spelled its undoing, hadn’t it? By wanting so badly to please him, it broke itself – no longer empty, not hollow at all, but overflowing for him.

Nausea settled in his stomach with no where to go. He could have vomited, but the pain that twisted his guts felt like an apt punishment.

“Did you bring me here to gloat, wraith?”

Grimm was staring up at the statue. His mask prevented his expression from showing whatever emotions played through his mind, but the perfect stillness was reminiscent of the posture that his Pure Vessel had once taken, and the Pale King found it very unsettling. Grimm crossed his arms beneath his wings, the long waves of them covering his torso, and he shifted so that all the wyrm could see was his back.

“We are gods, but who is a god to one of us? We, who would rule over others… to whom do we offer our prayers?” the butterfly mused. “We place our faith and hearts in things unseen, in beliefs that we choose for ourselves. And, in some cases… in those we find worthy. I wonder, would I have been the same, had I parents?”

There was an almost whimsical way that Grimm spoke. If the Pale King hadn’t known any better, he might well have thought that it was melancholia that gripped the nightmare’s heart – a longing for what he did not, could never, have.

But that was not accurate, was it?

“I am given to understand that you have at least one parent,” the wyrm interjected. He was looking at Grimm because looking at the butterfly meant that he need not look at the statue and all that it symbolized. His stomach felt weighted enough without the reminder looming down at him, expressionless and yet saying so much – speaking without words – ‘How could you?’ –to drive home understanding.

And moreover, there lingered a question: what did Grimm know of what his children thought of him? Of what it meant to be a parent? He, who masqueraded as one, but was not – no, the Pale King knew very well what that creature that Grimm called his child actually was. He could fool the world, draw them into the illusion of his game, and it would change nothing for eyes that could see beyond the surface. Grimmchild was another facet of Grimm and so, in essence, he was not a parent in truth.

The butterfly inclined his head to the side. “Is it parentage, to be born of fragments of oneself? Is that what you would consider childhood? Birth, existence? Excised to hide away in shame, to banish to the darkest recesses of one’s realm, to pretend it does not exist?” His voice was calm, even, but the words that followed were anything but. “I should not find myself surprised so. You did the same, after all.”

The comparison wrenched deep within him, clawed at his heart, and pulled it tight, blood bursting beneath wicked claws. As it was intended to, no doubt. Grimm punctuated the statement with an easily observed, “She calls me her blood moon, rising scarlet on the horizon, and you call me her counterpart – but it is you, not I, who have the most in common with her.”

…and there it was. The implication given words. It chilled him to his core, and he was suddenly distinctly aware of the heavy drops of water leaking from cracks high above. His gaze shifted upward, to where fractures splintered like spiderwebs across cavern’s ceiling, weeping onto his beautiful city. He was distinctly aware of Grimm’s departure, footfalls light, cloak soundless. Mourning seized his lungs, holding him fast.

His kingdom was dead. He was not the one who killed it, but it was dead nonetheless, and in the war that he’d waged – conqueror to be – had anyone actually been victorious?

Was he really no different?

The Pale King turned and followed Grimm at a languid pace. Unlike the butterfly, his own steps were heavy things, the water splattering around him as he went. He could be faster. He could be more graceful, if he surrendered to his nature and moved on all limbs rather than the mimicry of a bipedal creature that he’d begun to favor. He did none of the above.

“The bodies,” he choked out, claws clinging to the remnants of wings that acted like clothing around himself. They were shattered in pieces and shorn; his reflection stared back at him, a disheveled mess, not at all the graceful figure that he’d once been. Hallownest’s Godking, reduced to a muddy, rotting figure, aghast and suspended in agony. How fitting.

He thought he heard the clank of chains.

He thought he heard the ethereal bells of seals going up.

He thought he saw, in his shadow, a figure behind him with blazing golden eyes.

There were none of those things and yet, part of him wished that there were.

“Will no one tend to them?” the Pale King asked.

Grimm stopped in front of a great, ornamental cage, folded metal and still in immaculate care for its age and lack of use. The butterfly adjusted the lever, calling the elevator back, then turned to look down at him.

“Who is left to do so? To mourn the dead? Would you have the relic seeker in the City do it? The survivors in Dirtmouth? Perhaps the scavengers of Deepnest have use for your carcasses?” He bent over, too far, his body curling in a way that no natural creature should have. “Or will it be you, wyrm? Will you bury your dead, lay them to rest? Bid farewell at last?” The wyrm looked away, and Grimm chuckled, vicious. “No. I thought not.”

Like the death omen that he was, Grimm intended to show him the ruins of his making. He was not obtuse. He knew what he was being subjected to and it welled in his stomach, a pit of dread that fell downward through black, weightless, endlessly plummeting – just like before, just like at its mercy.

Screaming, “Father?...” and then pain.

So very much pain.

Heartbeats thumped rhythmically, in time with each pulse of the infection blooms, and it took him a moment to realize that it was his own that he was hearing; it had synced up perfectly with the throbbing.

This is not my doing, he would have told Grimm, had he words. This is your counterpart’s. These trailing webs of sickness eating away the stone like acid are not my fault.

Did he believe that?

He’d tried his best.

His companion lifted one hand, long fingers spindly and tipped in vicious, sharp claws. Grimm danced the tips of those razors along the edges of one pocket as they passed, touching it with an almost reverent fondness, and disgust rose in the Pale King’s stomach.

This is your counterpart’s doing, and you are relishing it, he wanted to snarl. People have died horribly. Suffered horribly. Does any part of you care? Does your heart not beat in that forsaken scarlet realm of yours?

The thought was interrupted when something warm, sticky, and sweet poured over him and he realized that the pus bubble burst.

The accursed butterfly had split it to make it rain down on top of him.

He froze, claws curling up toward his face, and he hissed. The shrill sound earned him a chuckle in response, and Grimm turned back to face him. He knew what he must have looked like, half-rotted corpse that he was, covered in infectious matter, and the butterfly’s laughter grew louder at his expense.

“Worry not, worm,” Grimm offered, entirely too pleasant for someone who had made it clear that they were not at all friends – not that he’d been delusional enough to think otherwise. “You will not become infected. Not even in your… state. For no part of us wants you.”

What cold comfort that was amidst the rising smell of decay mingling with old, aged honey that had begun to crystallize sugar over time. He could feel it oozing down his carapace, peeling back tattered fragments of shell, and he hated every second of it. Yet, he knew not what was worse: that the combination of smells was so repugnant, or the fear that perhaps it improved his countenance, considering the state that he was in.

Nothing about her could improve anything. All that she was wrought destruction.

All that her counterpart before him was wrought smug defiance and delight in his pain. In the pain of his kingdom, too, he thought bitterly.

The Hollow Knight had failed.

He’d known that it would. He’d known that it was a fool’s errand, the task he’d set it upon. He’d known that its destiny was to die and he’d played it, a gambit, to buy himself time – time that he’d inevitably failed to utilize, for in every vision, every sight, that he saw, he lost. There was no outcome where Hallownest survived and, bereft of hope, he’d succumbed to the melancholia of regret and pain. Perhaps if he’d chosen differently, he would have had time to make his last years alive count. Perhaps if he’d accepted his own defeat sooner, he might have been able to buy a kinder fate for his kingdom, for its people, for his progeny.

Or perhaps he’d simply have brought about the inevitable even faster. She was not reasonable. There were no terms on which they could barter for understanding. She would not be happy unless her victory was absolute. Did he not understand, did he not see? Surely he knew, as her counterpart, how impossible she’d become? Why, then, did Grimm regard him as if he were the monster, as if he were no better than she?

Why did he look upon him with thinly veiled contempt?

With hatred?

As if he could hear thoughts (and perhaps he could; the Pale King was not at all familiar with the scope of Grimm’s powers), the Nightmare King interjected, “There is always a choice, and the one that we make defines us. You chose death and in doing so, you invited me in. Death is here. Do you enjoy what you have sown?”

Defiance rose within the wyrm, and he growled. Grimm did not look back at him. They both knew that he could not make words with which to respond. The question was rhetorical, no doubt meant to make him assess, and assess he did.

He found himself fraying. The sensation of the larvae beneath his shell, wiggling about, feasting on his decaying flesh, was enough to make him spiral further. Though Grimm was undeniably some kind of caricature of butterfly, there were many instances where he wondered if his fellow god was not also a beacon to the spiders of Deepnest, for his words, his flippant air, and his casual cruelty in remarks that were no more barbed than any political opponents had thrown at the wyrm over the year, were sticky webs that tangled the Pale King within, wrapped him tight, kept him fastened safely for consumption later on.

And he felt like a meal. He felt like he was being devoured bit by meticulous bit, savored, and he hated it.

The elevator was broken. It lay in a crumpled ruin at the base of the shaft, where dust began to collect on it, debris crushing its formidable metal cage. He regarded it as Grimm circled toward the center of the shaft, and only at a snap was his gaze drawn away.

Grimm raised one finger and pointed up.

“We will go to the relic of what was once your capital,” the butterfly explained. “And to do that, as you have doubtlessly observed… you must climb.”

‘You.’ Emphasis on him specifically, the Pale King noticed. Grimm lifted off the ground, weightless, floating unnaturally not by use of his wings but by the twisting of essence that pooled around him like marionette strings. He pulled his legs up to his chest, those scarlet strings floating intangibly behind him, his eyes on the wyrm’s form, and the Pale King tentatively moved his wings.

The pain was immediate. It ripped through him, doubled him over in agony, and he felt the membranes shear from that one motion. He felt diaphanous tissue give, tearing, fragile as a newly unfurled leaf, and then, one by one, his wings wilted away to land in tattered pieces at his sides. Rot rose up them, colored them necrotic black instead of their nearly blue, shimmering silver hue, and bile settled within him.

“Are you going to vomit again?” Grimm mused with a clinically detached interest. “That will slow us down, but by all means, if you must excise all fluid from within your guts, do not let me stop you.”

The Pale King’s stomach writhed, churned, and he surrendered to another violent upheaval with regret that he could not aim it more precisely, that he shower that blight above him with the product of his disgust.

One clawed hand rose. It slid down his face, smearing dead tissue with infection, and he flicked away the combination of fluids as best he could. Orange and black dripped down the elongated fingers, from the ends of his clawtips, and he coughed several times.

For a mercy, the least that Grimm could have done would be to remove the travelers from within his body before putting him back in it. Need he be so cruel? Must he derive pleasure from the suffering that he caused?

He was the god of fear.

And, bitterly, the Pale King had to admit that he was frightened. The itching was a constant thing. He longed to scratch his shell until it all came off, until the tissue was exposed, and then cauterize the flesh beneath to rid himself of the burrowing little pests –

Laughter jolted him from his thoughts. Grimm descended enough to float directly in front of him. The butterfly turned his head to the side, unnaturally far, before whispering, “Is it terrible? To imagine being eaten alive?”

He needn’t imagine it. It was happening to him.

Or so he thought, but the way that Grimm turned to look at his discarded wings, at the blood-and-muck that he’d loosed from his stomach, gave him pause. The Pale King turned very slowly to regard the fallen wings.

And there was nothing but blood. Nothing but stomach acid. Nothing but broken bits of tissue. No little twisting masses, no sprinkling of white maggots within, and his lungs burned with shame.

Had there ever been? Had he imagined them from the onset? Were the feelings phantoms?

Distantly, he heard screaming.

‘Father?...’

It grew louder and his vision blurred unpleasantly. He clenched his claws to ground himself.

It was dead. He did not know how he knew that for fact, but he did know it: the Hollow Knight had died in the Temple of the Black Egg and one of its siblings had succeeded it as the new host for the Old Light.

“Really, wyrm, what do you take me for?” Grimm mused. “I am hardly so uncivilized.”

He knew what the Pale King had seen, surely.

There were parasites the first time. There must have been. It could not have been all in his head. It could not have been. He’d felt them, squirming, crawling, biting – he’d felt them eating him – he’d felt, he knew what he’d felt, and he was resolute in that belief.

Grimm knew, and Grimm was playing at innocence in a mocking game. Did it delight him so, to break a god whose power dwelled over mind?

Was he even a god anymore?

The butterfly ascended again, higher, higher still, and the wyrm watched him rise through the shaft before delicately landing on the end of a broken wood fragment that jutted out sharply and was tipped in barbed spikes. Try as he might, the Pale King could not recall an occasion where such things had been added; they must have been placed there after his disappearance, but he knew not by who.

He… was not an adept climber.

Wyrms were subterranean by nature. It was no coincidence that Hallownest had been built underground. He’d carved the paths with his maw before he’d shed his older form for the smaller, more appropriate one. He’d tunneled and made each pathway by hand with meticulous care, and eventually his people had added to it one-by-one, until the labyrinthine corridors were more maze than not. And it ran deep, deep, deep.

Scaling walls was not what his body was built for, and he did not know if his claws would even find purchase on the aged stone.

Battered as his body was (and that, he knew, was no hallucination – doubtful that he found the idea that the maggots had been), he did not know if he could make the climb. The expectant, scarlet-eyed stare that lingered on him said much of his companion’s expectation, and he found himself crushed under the mantle of the demand.

To refuse was to admit weakness.

To ask for help was completely out of the question.

And yet he did not know if he could do the thing that was asked of him. He did not know if his body was solid enough to manage it. If he slipped, if he tumbled, he would fall endlessly and be crushed on the ground.

Fall.

And be crushed.

The sound of masks breaking on the floor of the abyss and hundreds of white eyes glowing in the dark, staring at him from below with the unasked question, ‘Why?’

He exhaled and put one claw forward. Those eyes never left him. He did not dare turn around to face them but he knew – beyond all shadow of doubt – that the stare Grimm was giving him was critical.

The Pale King curled one claw over an exposed surface of the rock and then used it to haul himself upward –

– a flash of light. Brilliant blue wings, so like his own, and asymmetrical horns turned expectantly as it climbed –

– until he was forced to use his extra limbs. He had six arms, though only two were functional as arms while the lower ones acted more as claws for when he needed to crawl quickly. Primitive, that movement; he rejected it on grounds of being far less barbaric in this form and yet there he was, using them to drag himself up the uneven surface, keratin splintering painfully with each uneven movement.

He exhaled. Muscles pulled tight and scorched from the force of his weight. His tail thumped underneath him, stronger than much the rest of his limbs, and he used it to pull himself higher, until he reached a ledge that he could at last rest on.

He stopped, breathless, head askance so that he was not forced to stare at the dreadful psychopomp’s gaze.

That smug cursed messenger who could have been kind, but offered only claws, only teeth.

Distantly, he knew that was because he did not deserve any better. Grimm and he were not friends, not even uneasy allies, before the fall of Hallownest. That they were not enemies was more testament to the butterfly’s patience than his own; he’d offered grave insult, and he was paying for it in spades.

If this was justice, the Pale King loathed the flavor.

He coughed and unhinged his jaw in a wide yawn, a desperate bid to get more oxygen to his ailing lungs. His internal organs were coming apart in pieces and he was not dead. When he could next speak, he would demand an explanation. Others would be granted the mercy of peace in such a state. Death would sweep them away, so why did it not him?

…he did not want to die.

He’d never wanted to die. He’d feared death most of all.

There were no infectious pustules around him, he realized. The tangled veins that connected through the basin were absent, replaced instead by an absence of light that felt oppressive.

He gave off none.

There was symmetry there, in the absence of his light and him chasing the only source of it nearby: the flickering scarlet flame of nightmare that rested behind Grimm’s mask. How many of his progeny had fallen chasing his? How many had been crushed beneath the magnitude of their failure to reach it?

A vessel small enough that he could hold it within his hands, with horns that tapered into three prongs and wide eyes full of nothing, for had it had anything within, he would never have gone through with so catastrophically selfish a plan –

Lying to himself –

Filmy tissue spreading over a fathomless black vortex and then inflating with sickly rot, little different from that which ate at his tissue, save for the smell. It was not putrid; it was sweet.

It was always sweet.

It’d eaten away its arm.

It’d eaten away a portion of its carapace to expose the inky black void within and that drew thinner, thinner, until there was little left. She took his not-at-all hollow child, and she hollowed it out to make room for herself, carving away bits and pieces until what was left was more like a shambling carcass reanimated by parasites –

Parasites like the ones he felt burrowing into his flesh –

His vision spun and he shambled backwards, collapsing against the wall of the canyon. He heard movement, the shuffling of wings, and then feet alighting on the stone beneath him. He expected laughter, braced for the humiliation, and it did not come.

Grimm crouched in front of him instead. There was an unusual quality to the way that he tilted his head, his collar flaring around his throat like the petals of a flower, shifting unnaturally as though alive on their own.

He smiled, all teeth.

This was not the comfortable companionship of a friend, the Pale King knew, but when Grimm held his hand out in invitation, he took it just the same. He took it because he could not make the journey.

He could not do what he’d demanded of the newly hatched. He could not do what he’d expected from thousands of his progeny, what some of them had even succeeded at, and the knowledge that he’d failed pulled his scales backwards sharply, jabbed into him in pain.

The Nightmare King need not make any comment on the subject. His mind would do the chastising for Grimm.

Croakily, the Pale King gripped onto long arms, tangled into wings that spread out into a cape, and he looked up in desperation. He opened his mouth, expecting nothing to come out, certainly no words, but sound escaped him.

He screamed and it was identical to that of the Radiance’s cries as she’d been sealed.

He screamed and from his maw escaped a flood of tiny mimic-moths, smaller than her people had ever been, than that fallen kingdom could ever have offered, dusty and diminutive.

He screamed and the empty shaft screamed back for him, while Grimm looked on with the same bored expression.