(Dark fantasy)

In the village of Drathmoor, the air was thick with the stench of rot. Once a place of fertile fields and laughter, it now lay in ruins, swallowed by a creeping darkness that no one dared name. The villagers whispered of the Hollow King, a being who had long slumbered beneath the earth, waiting for his return. Legends said he had been sealed away in an ancient tomb deep in the forest, but the seal had weakened. Something had stirred.

Kara, a hunter, was the last brave soul to venture into the woods. Desperate to find food for her starving family, she strayed too close to the tomb, a forgotten ruin covered in moss and jagged roots. She felt an unnatural cold seeping from its cracks, as if the Earth itself was weeping. But hunger dulled her fear, and she pressed on, ignoring the whispers carried by the wind.

Night fell, and with it, the forest came alive with strange sounds—rustling, low moans, and the distant scraping of stone on stone. Kara froze as she realized the sounds were coming from the tomb behind her. Turning slowly, she saw the stone door slide open, revealing a darkness that swallowed the moonlight. From within came a figure, tall and gaunt, its face hidden beneath a crown of bone.

It was the Hollow King, his eyes burning with an ancient malice. His body was not of flesh, but something worse—a writhing mass of shadows, a being whose shape flickered and twisted in ways that defied reality. He stretched out a skeletal hand, and from the ground, the dead began to rise—those who had once defied him, now bound to his will.

Kara tried to run, but the forest itself seemed to close in around her, the trees twisting unnaturally to trap her. She felt a cold hand grasp her shoulder, and when she looked back, the Hollow King’s hollow gaze bore into her soul.

He whispered a single word, a command that filled her with unimaginable dread: “Kneel.”

And so she did, as the shadows consumed her, her screams swallowed by the endless dark. Drathmoor was lost, its people claimed by the Hollow King, their souls twisted into his eternal army.

No one would speak of the village again…