#ghostchildren

WARNINGS: Brief mention of Ghost’s birth (specifically regarding their siblings that didn’t make it) and all the trauma associated with it. 

I haven’t written anything in months oof

--x--

They hadn’t left the abyss in weeks and they were abnormally tired, beyond exhausted even. Hands were clutched tightly to themselves in what may have been fear or anxiety, or likely a mixture of both. 

What if this didn’t work, they thought to themselves. What if they were weak as their siblings had been. 

The knight still remembered how their siblings trembled as they hatched from their eggs, wiggling and mewling through voidspeak for anyone or anything to help them. They had gone quiet so quickly, shell cracking. In others, their was even less fanfare: void pulsing beneath their barely formed exoskeletons, rejecting the child before it could so much as take a step away from it’s egg. 

These memories had the knight (Ghost - their sister had called them, named them) hovering anxiously over the ten eggs they had painstakingly formed over the past month. 

The brood were as black as the void sea, shells reflective and glowing slightly with the four pair of soul filled eyes hovering over them. They were carefully surrounded by numerous blankets of various shades and material, though they needed little in the ways of comfort. 

The process had been long and tedious, arms that rarely grew tired buckling under the soul and void woven around the unhatched eggs (they were no weaver, no spider, yet some long buried instinct allowed them to move without thought). 

They were so small, smaller than the knight had been before their first molt. It made them hesitate to so much as touch their unhatched children, instead carefully curling around or hovering over their blackened shells. 

None dared to visit the abyss despite the unification of the void underneath the vessel’s fingertips, and as such they had been alone to their own thoughts for too long. 

Yet, despite the anxiety and fear that reflected in the trembling the abyssal sea, the all encompassing love for their unhatched brood still brought them so much hope. For they would love their children, no matter any perceived flaws that came from their birth (though it would not stop them from blaming themselves should it cause the grub pain). Despite Ghost’s fears, they could feel the strength of will that the forming life pressed against their shells, a comforting melody to their only parent in the quiet of the abyss. 

They would not have wanted their children to be born in a graveyard, yet their was no other place that didn’t set their nerves aflame than near the abyssal sea. Here they could protect them should someone deem the eggs a snack. Ghost promised themselves that as soon as the young ones could toddle, it would be right to the city of tears with them (the only part of Hallownest that had been completely cleared of corpses). 

Tilting their mask up (and glorious was it, finally being of size to no longer be mistaken for a child) they projected an echo through voidspeak, causing the caverns to tremble, as they surveyed the surroundings. With the confirmation that the area was clear of threats (not to say that they were alone), Ghost allowed themselves to carefully curl their lanky form around the eggs, hoping that it would bring them some measure of comfort. 

Some hollow knight sketches. 

Some void children + tired parent :))

The trio are past their first molts in the pic. Their horns did not originally look like that.