Chapter Text
There had been light. She had shrieked and raged and shaken their world with such force that she had crushed it to the ground. It had trembled in practiced suppliance until she slept, appeased. Then, they had been torn from that world and deposited into another, governed by the strange, binding, and unwelcome intrusion of countless others crowding the dream until it was fit to burst. Its body had been restored, and she had watched helplessly as it failed to slay her would-be executioner.
The Hollow Knight fell to the earth in a thunderous crash. The power that had shackled it in place had subsided, and left it tangled in a mass of chains. Its body was heavy and lethargic, its mask cracked nearly in two. Void leaked slowly from the fissure. Its nail, point buried in the earth beside it, was chipped to match, the once pristine edge dulled and rusted. It lay still for only a moment, before it grasped the hilt and pulled itself upright with tremendous effort. This was a fitting scene, it thought. It had not walked from the temple in quite some time. Though she had come to favour its direction, she would want control for this; she would want to remind it of her totality. It gladly yielded.
Slowly, it dragged itself along the length of the chamber in the scarce light, its shackles rattling as it lumbered across the floor and approached the exit. Its was the only movement, the surroundings perfectly still. What energy had distorted sound within the egg held no longer, and the drag of its chains across the wrought metal seemed cacophonous as it reverberated off the walls. It listened, and wondered when she would appear. Already the strange emptiness and resounding silence beyond unsettled it and prickled beneath its shell. It understood, though, that she intended such an effect, and took from that what little comfort it could.
She wanted it to think it had succeeded, it thought. She had not known that it had failed. Perhaps if it waited for her, obedient, she would come. She would see its intentions, see that it had left it chains upon its body, still bound to her. Or perhaps—this was yet another demonstration. Perhaps it was meant to walk into the world. Perhaps she intended to remind it of her vision, her dream. Would she be angry if it waited? It had never defied her as such before. It deliberated for a lengthy moment, and settled on familiarity.
The egg was dark. The tablet upon which its father had inscribed his final gift was dark. No soul or silk lit the corridor. And, it noticed, with mounting unease, no void saturated the space. It was as though everything had withdrawn to leave it utterly alone. Panic crept in with muffled steps, slinking along the edges of its consciousness. It reached for her, projected its presence outwards, and met silence. Where was she? It reached again and fell to its knees, bowed its head, repentant. It thought of light filling its body. It thought of the unforgiving mercy of her wrath and begged for it. It knew no apology would appease her, knew the punishment would be harsh, beyond its capacity to imagine, and accepted it. It did not desire a lighter sentence, only her presence. This, it knew, would be enough to summon her, its true remorse.
But she did not come. Its mind raced. It dared not think the unthinkable. It reached out towards the dream and met a solid, cold reality, unbending to its will. There was no life behind this resistance—instead, an unfamiliar vacancy that left it feeling smaller than it had ever been before. It offered its mind, its body, its will; it cried out mutely to an empty world and heard nothing in return. The hope it had kept sequestered from her for so long began to surface, transmuted into horror.
It had failed. It had—succeeded, and this was its ultimate punishment for such a betrayal. Had she known? Had she planned this in her final moments? Had she abandoned it as she fell, cast it aside and left it with no hope of absolution?
It pressed its mask against the floor in a ritual gesture incomplete without its other half. It could not weep, could not wail its agony to the heavens. No god would hear it; no god would grant it grace. It asked forgiveness anyway, and knew there was none.
Was it meant to bear this? That must have been the only way to honour her, its only penance for deception: to endure a world without her. She must have known this; she must have seen what it had thought successfully hidden in the deepest recesses of its mind, and devised this torment to match. It could hardly comprehend such a thing, and yet it knew there was no alternative. She had forged it into the purest disciple, and this was its final task. It alone would keep her alive in memory, and know the price paid. If absolution was barred to it, it would weather an eternity of atonement. It must.
It rose unsteadily. The corridor stretched before it, the faint glow of the exit in the distance. It caught the shine with the echo of something bigger and brighter, and felt its resolve waver. It ached for her. What was life without her? It could hardly recall a time before, only the barest impressions of a dim glow, its father’s silhouette, towering white walls, a hand upon its head, and a vast distance between two selves that stood shoulder to shoulder, nearly overlapping. Such things were dwarfed by the enormity of her presence. It had not imagined that something might come after. A hollow chasm carved through its mind, a vacuum that none would fill again. It clung to that emptiness inside, steeled itself around it. Yes—this was life. This was devotion. This was all it had. It would hold. It moved in halting steps toward that pale facsimile of light until it stood before the doorway.
A foreign land laid beyond that threshold, absent of her. It hesitated. There would be no return once it left. To return would be to abandon her, to cling to the false comfort of a life it could not truly reenter. It longed to remain within the egg, which had housed them both for an age, the only space touched by their shared dream. But it could not; it knew that. Its charge was not here, but there, in the world beyond.
With a final backward glance, it lurched through the doorway, and found itself before a spider cloaked in red, turning at the sound of its footsteps. The unexpected sight knocked it off its precarious balance, and it stumbled, driving its nail into the floor for support. She startled at the gesture and drew her blade.
“You,” said the gendered child. There was a beat. She lowered her needle until it rested at her side once more, though she did not relax her grip. It swayed, and dropped to one knee.
“You are hurt,” she observed. There was an odd inflection to her voice it could not quite discern. “The infection must have devastated your body as it fought to break free. It had overtaken the crossroads. Moments ago, it seemingly vanished. Had you a hand in that?”
Yes, it had. The infection was gone. She had vanished, and with her she had taken the world, and tasked it with terminal survival in her wake. It had thought this, too, another dream, another sweet seduction, another frightful promise of freedom edged with the terror of insurmountable loss, a fitting punishment. There had been many before, too many to count, each bearing its own subtle differences, carefully, attentively—cruelly—lovingly—adjusted, an endless fractal of possibility erected around it within their shared dream.
But this was not so. This was real. She was gone. She had left it rent and hollow, broken upon itself, utterly bereft of light. It could not continue. What a foolish thought. How naive it was to think it would endure. How naive it was to think it could succeed in this task when it had failed all else. There was nothing left, save its memory of a lost realm, and even that, it could not hold.
No, that was not quite true. There was a bug standing before it cloaked in red, awaiting an answer it could not give. It wrenched its mind away from its longing, remembered its resolve, and focused its gaze upon her, still uncertain if she was truly there. It had not thought of her for a long while. With slow, laborious movements, it struggled upright. Then, it clumsily pulled its nail free from the floor. Though it staggered, dragging its chains against the stone with a terrible scrape, it remained standing. The gendered child tensed, and raised her needle.
“Perhaps not,” she muttered. It made no move toward her, straining with the effort of keeping its balance. Void now streamed steadily into the air, where it drifted apart into globules and slowly dissipated. They regarded each other in silence. It had no sense of how much time had passed when she spoke again.
“If we have been freed of the infection, it is our sibling’s doing.” Again, that strange inflection. “There were others who escaped the abyss. All but one have fallen.” She paused. It did not move. It considered her words. None had escaped the abyss; it had seen this in that final dream. She had not witnessed that; she would not know.
“It would be remiss of me to leave this place with loose ends after my own role in its perpetuation. Though I intend to depart soon, I would like to find them. If they remain intact, we will likely part ways. Ours is not a shared journey. But if they, too, have fallen, I should like to honour their passing.”
Another pause. It did not know what she intended it to make of this. It did not understand how she meant to honour them; what honour was there, save memory? It thought of its siblings, and felt a strange pull in its shell, caught the distant memory of being split—then, unity. It found the thought unbearable, and so turned away from it.
“You may accompany me, if you wish,” she continued. “If not, there is a settlement just above. Many have sought refuge there from the infection below. I am certain you would be welcome.”
It had no need for refuge. There was no infection. There was no light. And—if light had remained, it would not have sought sanctuary. It had not seen another living soul for a thousand eternities contained within a single dream. It knew nothing more of the world, and had no desire for it. The world was its final, unending burden to bear.
The gendered child considered it. She watched it stand unmoving save for the slight sway of its damaged shell, watched void meet empty air, nothingness melting into nothingness, and seemed to come to a decision.
“We will need to tend to your wounds,” she said. “I imagine you were deprived of soul whilst you were bound, and cannot focus. There is a hot spring below us. The water there is rich with soul. It can heal what I cannot bandage with silk, and replenish your depleted stores. Come.”
It had not been deprived of soul. It had been full to bursting with light. What was soul against such potent brilliance? It was no deprivation, but a gift unfathomable to one who had not been so blessed. She did not understand. She had understood this, and then she had revoked the very thing that had given it meaning in one final act of cruelty, because it had loved her too much to allow her to destroy it. It had thought—they might embrace oblivion together, finally united as one in death.
It had not thought it would survive.
But then, it considered, it had always survived. She had loved it for that. She had adored its resilience, its irreducible, indestructible presence, until even that was not enough. She had desired its submission—and what use was submission without resistance? That was not true devotion. Such was the reverence of flighty creatures who flocked to the brightest light, abandoning their gods to the mercy of their whims. It had known submission in its ultimate form, had withstood her wrath and loved her all the more for it. And, in the end, it had hungered for surrender she would not grant to it and had stayed its blade, only to find itself alone.
Left to a world devoid by its own hand of that singular, rapturous luminance, The Hollow Knight turned, beckoned by an expectant glance, and followed the only other creature who had spoken to it in eons into the dark caverns below.