Five years had passed since the Hollow King's slumber.
Lee Zaou stood on the balcony of the Dawn Tower the tallest building in Last Light, built around the spot where he had faced the Hollow King. He was twenty two now. His face had lost the last traces of boyhood, replaced by sharp angles and a jaw that could have been carved from stone. His gold and silver eyes still held that ancient weight, but there was something new in them now. Peace. Or as close to peace as someone like Lee could ever come.
The city below had transformed. What had once been a desperate fortress was now a gleaming metropolis white stone buildings with blue tile roofs, streets paved with soul forged cobblestones that glowed faintly at night, gardens bursting with flowers that had been extinct before the Shattering. The Rust Sea had been renamed the Sea of Renewal, and its waters were so clear you could see the fish swimming fifty feet down.
But not everything had healed.
Lee touched the spiral on his chest. It had grown again, spreading across his torso like a living vine, its black and white patterns more intricate than ever. The light and the darkness inside him had reached an uneasy truce not balance, exactly, but coexistence. He had learned to use both, to channel whichever was needed, to keep them from destroying each other.
And him along with them.
"Brooding again?"
Inyocha's voice came from behind him. Lee didn't turn. He didn't need to. He could feel his brother's presence as clearly as his own heartbeat.
"Thinking," Lee said.
"You're always thinking. It's exhausting to watch."
Inyocha joined him on the balcony. He had changed too his white hair now streaked with black, his brown eyes flecked with gold. The reversed spiral on his chest had faded to a faint scar, barely visible unless you knew where to look. He wore simple clothes now, the uniform of a healer rather than a warrior.
"How's the clinic?" Lee asked.
"Busy. A plague swept through the eastern quarter last week. Nothing serious, but..." Inyocha shrugged. "People are still afraid. Still hurting. Still remembering."
"The Hollow King's shadow," Lee said. "It lingers."
"It always will. But we're learning to live with it."
They stood in silence, watching the sun rise over the Sea of Renewal.
"The council wants to see you," Inyocha said finally. "Something's happened. Something bad."
Lee's heart clenched. "The Sleeper?"
"No. Worse." Inyocha's voice dropped. "The Sunken City has gone dark. The lights that have been burning for three hundred years they've gone out. And the Pilgrim... the Pilgrim is dead."
Lee turned to face his brother. "How?"
"They found him this morning. In his room. His body was... empty. No soul. No shadow. Nothing. Just a shell."
Lee felt the spiral on his chest begin to burn not with light, but with a cold, familiar darkness.
"The Sleeper is awake," Lee said. "And it's hungry."