The Ninth Bell

I. A City in Plague and a Forbidden Hope
A thick, suffocating fog cloaked Vaelmark, weaving through the ruins like a shroud of despair. The city, a once vibrant maze of life, lay battered beneath the weight of the plague. Streets were littered with bloated rats, black-veined corpses, and children with hollow eyes tracing restless patterns in ash and dust. The air was heavy with the scent of rot and hopelessness.

High above, in the shadowed belfry of the ancient tower, Korin watched it all. A silent sentinel. His hands, stained with soot and iron, trembled slightly as they grasped the cold stone ledge. His red-rimmed eyes, rimmed with fatigue and grief, reflected a city on the brink of surrender.

He hadn’t rung the bells in a week.

The city had fallen silent to time itself. The sun had vanished behind a permanent pall of gray, leaving Vaelmark in perpetual dusk. Every hour blurred into the next, a monotony of misery. Yet, the bells were meant to pierce that gloom: to remind the forsaken that they still mattered, that the world still remembered them.

But now, hope had withered from the throats of Vaelmark’s people, and from Korin’s own heart.

Below, a faint voice drifted upward, carried on the wind, a voice of authority, weary but unwavering. Master Eloen’s voice. “The bells are not your salvation, boy,” he’d say, again and again. “Especially not the Ninth. Ring it, and you invoke a god’s name. And names carry weight...dangerous weight.”

Korin, only seventeen, clung to a fragile belief, a spark in the darkness that refused to die.

He had never intended to breach the forbidden chamber. Never meant to uncover the secrets sealed within the Ninth Bell’s vault. But when Meryn, his sister, whose fevered eyes had whispered, “Will it ever stop hurting?” had looked at him with pleading, it was already too late.

Night after night, he had watched the Ninth, dust-veiled and silent behind its iron grille. Taller than the others, darker, more ominous. Its bronze surface was scarred with corrosion, runes worn smooth by centuries of silence. Sacred. Forbidden. Sealed.

Tonight, driven by desperation and defiance, Korin’s trembling hand reached for the rusted lever. Tonight, he would ring it.



II. The Bell’s Toll and the Awakening
The heavy gate groaned open, hinges screaming in protest after centuries of silence. Korin hesitated at the threshold, feeling the air inside seize like a trap, thick, oppressive, sticky with unspoken history. His breath caught, ragged and shallow.

He gripped the frayed, ancient rope, knuckles white with tension. His heart hammered in his chest, loud enough to drown out the silence. Just once.

With a trembling hand, he pulled.

The toll rolled out like a storm born from the depths of the earth, raw, primal, unstoppable. It was no ordinary sound; it roared, a low, impossible howl that seemed to vibrate through marrow and bone. The tower shuddered beneath it. The silence shattered into chaos, and the fog outside turned black, swirling as if the darkness itself had been unleashed.

Then. Nothing.

Absolute stillness.

Vaelmark froze, time itself halting. The wind ceased, the rats stilled mid scurry, collapsing in their final moments. Somewhere, a dog’s distant howl was swallowed by silence. The city seemed to hold its breath, waiting.

Korin staggered backward, ears ringing with a sound he couldn’t escape, a droning, ancient echo that burrowed into his mind. Something long asleep had been awakened, and the city felt it.

He stumbled down the spiraling stairs, his steps unsteady, voice lost in the chaos of his thoughts. Bursting out into the choking fog, he looked wildly for signs, smoke, screams, anything, but the streets refused to move. Frozen in time.

A woman knelt beside a barrel, eyes fixed ahead, unmoving. A lamplighter perched on his ladder, torch flickering feebly but frozen in place. No breath, no twitch of life, only the slow drip of pitch from somewhere unseen.

“Meryn,” Korin whispered, voice cracking. He ran.

His house was five blocks east, beside the apothecary’s shop. He dodged through the empty streets, passing a girl staring blankly at a wall, her mouth frozen mid laugh, as if caught in perpetual surprise. A horse reared in mid whinny, tears of oily black streaming from its eyes.

He found her.

Meryn stood outside their door, barefoot, as if she had wandered out when the toll struck. Her nightgown was torn at the hem, ragged and trembling. Her eyes, once vibrant green, filled with curiosity, were now black as pitch, glossy and endless. She did not blink. She did not cry. She simply stared through him, as if he wasn’t there.

Korin dropped to his knees, trembling.

“No,” he whispered desperately. “No, I did this for you.”

He reached out, his hand trembling, touching her cold, still hand.

It was warm. Alive. But the life in it was gone.

He broke then. Collapsing to the ground, he pressed his forehead against her stomach, as if wishing to wake her, as he had so many times in childhood, whispering nonsense, tugging her hair.

“Meryn… I’m here,” he breathed softly. “I rang it for you. I did it for you.”

Behind him, footsteps echoed through the fog.

Eloen appeared, an old, pale figure, his face a raw wound in the gray. His voice, usually steady and commanding, was gentle now—haunted.

“You opened it,” the old man said softly, not with anger, but with mourning. “Foolish boy.”

Korin’s voice cracked with desperation. “I thought… I thought it might help. It had to—”

“It did help,” Eloen interrupted, stepping closer, eyes dark with sorrow. “Long ago. That’s why it was sealed.”



III. Descent into the Forgotten
The tower’s descent spiraled into the crypts, decades, perhaps centuries, abandoned by the city they once served. Eloen’s lantern flickered unevenly, casting jagged shadows that danced over crumbling brick and scattered bones. Dust swirled in the air, stirring like ghostly breath, whispering secrets from the dark corners.

Korin followed, stomach twisting with unease. The air was wrong...thick, oppressive, as if the very bones of the dead protested their intrusion. His wounds itched beneath his torn sleeve, black threads crawling like silent wounds upon his skin.

In his mind, he still saw her, Meryn.

Every day, she haunted the street outside their house, her bare feet silent on cold stone, her hands twitching as if reaching for something lost. Her black eyes, unblinking and endless, stared without recognition. She didn’t cry, her face was a mask of hollow longing, caught between worlds.

Sometimes, just before dawn, she would stop in her wandering and turn her face toward the belfry. Her head would tilt, as if remembering something distant, something forgotten.

“Eloen,” Korin whispered as the catacombs yawned open before them, a maw of darkness. “She’s still out there. She’s breathing. Can’t we...can’t we bring her back?”

The old man said nothing at first, his gaze fixed on the shadows. Then, softly:

“She lives. But not in the way you knew her. The toll twisted time and memory. Her soul remains, lost, drifting, caught between worlds.”

Korin clutched the ribbon tied around his wrist, the doll’s token clenched tight in his fist. The ache in his chest grew heavier.

Eloen halted before a massive sealed door, mottled iron, inlaid with nine empty sockets, like hollow eyes staring into eternity.

“This was once a temple,” Eloen said softly, voice tinged with reverence and sorrow. “To Vathir. The Hollow King.”

“I thought he was a myth,” Korin whispered, voice trembling.

“He was a god,” Eloen replied, voice low. “Of balance. Of binding time and memory. He kept decay at bay, preserved the fragile threads of existence. But men betrayed him, tried to wield his power for their own ends.”

Eloen turned, his face etched with bitter regret.

“So he was sealed. Each bell became a lock. The Ninth, the final, bound his voice. And you… you’ve undone it.”

Korin stepped back, trembling. “But he’s not… alive.”

“No,” Eloen answered, voice heavy with dread. “Worse. He’s awake. And hungry.”




IV. The Hollow King’s Offer
It came to him three nights later.

Korin stood in the highest chamber of the tower, his hand wrapped in torn cloth, blood mingling with shadows that seeped from his wounds. Outside, the fog pressed thick against the windows, shrouding the city in an unnatural gloom, an oppressive, suffocating veil.

Then, a whisper, soft yet chilling, “Korin.”

He turned sharply.

At the window, a figure loomed, cloaked in moss, bone, and decay. Its form was fractured, shifting with the shadows, face a hollow void that seemed to swallow light. Yet, beneath the emptiness, there was awareness, intelligence. Its presence filled the room with a silence so complete, Korin felt his heartbeat echo loudly in his ears.

“You called my name,” it said, voice a rasping, echoing whisper. “I remember you now.”

Korin’s knees buckled, trembling as if the weight of the world had suddenly pressed upon him.

“You are… the Hollow King,” he managed, voice faltering.

The figure inclined its head, a whisper curling in his skull:

“I was Vathir. Once. Now I am rot given memory. The seal is broken. You have unleashed what no plague doctor could contain.”

Korin inhaled sharply, choking on the bitter air.

“You’ll end it?” he demanded, voice strained.

“Yes,” the King answered, an echo of something long gone. “The pain, the hunger, the grief. All of it wiped clean. The city will wake to clear skies, full lungs, and unburdened hearts.” Its voice grew colder, more distant. “But I must rewrite everything.”

Korin’s stomach clenched.

“And the cost?”

The Hollow King’s form flickered, its voice a whisper of dread:

“Everything that was. Their names, their dead, their loves. You. All unmade.”

A shiver ran down Korin’s spine as he felt the rough ropes of guilt tighten around his palms. burning, unforgiving.

“And if I refuse?” he asked, voice trembling.

The figure’s hollow gaze seemed to pierce through him.

“Then the rot rises. The bells are broken. I will not sleep again. Not until the darkness consumes everything.”

Korin stepped closer, voice trembling but resolute.

“You did this out of mercy. So choose mercy once more.”

The Hollow King hesitated, then, with a ripple of shadows, it faded into the fog, leaving only silence and a lingering echo of its final words.



V. The Last Toll: Mercy and Sacrifice
The fog grew thicker with each passing day, swallowing the city in an unbroken shroud. Buildings crumbled faster now, stones dissolving into dust, memories slipping away with each gust of wind. Flesh withered; eyes sunken and hollow, as if life itself was draining out. Time unraveled. Moments stretched into eternity, days lost in restless sleep, memories slipping like grains of sand through trembling fingers.

Eloen’s breath grew shallow. His skin was pallid, trembling as if frozen in a perpetual chill. His voice was faint, barely more than a whisper.

“You must run,” the old man rasped, voice strained with desperation. “South. Leave the city before he takes form. Before he wakes fully.”

But Korin stood rooted in place, his feet glued to the cold stone floor. His heart hammered like a dying drum—each beat a fragile hope slipping away.

In the dim chamber, he was bound, chains coiled tightly around his arm, sigils drawn in blood on wax, faintly glowing as their magic flickered and waned. In his pocket, clutched tightly, was the last token: a small, folded piece of paper torn from one of Meryn’s drawings. A tiny house, a bell, and a stick figure labeled ‘KORON’, she never spelled or said it right, but it was all he had left of her.

He cast one last look out the battered tower window.

And there she was.

Meryn.

Still walking, still staring, her figure trembling as if caught in a shuddering breath. She looked skyward, in his direction.

At him.

No flicker of recognition lit her black eyes. Yet, in his chest, a ache bloomed, an unbearable ache. He forced a fragile smile through the tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice trembling. “I’m sorry I won’t be there when you wake. But maybe… maybe he will be.”

He closed his eyes briefly, whispering softly, like a prayer, toward Eloen:

“Promise me,” Korin said, voice thick with emotion. “If this works...if they forget...please… don’t forget her.”

He imagined Eloen’s reassuring voice. Steady, hopeful, “I swear it. I will care for her as if she were my own blood.”

Korin nodded slowly, clutching the token of the doll as if it were her hand.

Then, with trembling resolve, he reached out and rang the bell.



VI: Silence and Legacy.
The Ninth Bell was gone.

Not shattered, nor broken. Erased. Its alcove in the tower stood as a hollow cavity, a void carved into stone, where once a great voice had summoned the dawn. Now, nothing remained but silence, as if the air itself had swallowed every echo, every whisper of its existence. The tower’s shadow stretched long and lonely, a monument to what was lost.

Yet, on certain gray mornings, when the sky hung heavy with unspoken memories. Eloen would make his way up the winding stairs, each step slow and deliberate, as if moving through a fog of remembrance. His footsteps echoed softly in the silence, a gentle rhythm that matched the pounding ache in his chest. When he reached the highest chamber, the place where the bell once hung, he paused, breathing in the weight of absence.

There, in the muted light, stood a stone boy, motionless, silent, with hands at his sides and eyes closed as if listening to a song only he could hear. The figure was carved with care, every detail a testament to longing, an unspoken prayer frozen in time. Eloen would settle onto the cold, uneven floor, pulling from his satchel a worn, leather-bound book. He would sit in silence for a moment, then begin to read aloud.

His voice was soft, trembling, for some reason...carrying memories that refused to fade.

Meryn’s name, he whispered. The lullaby she loved most. The stories 𝘒𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯 used to tell her at bedtime, when the world outside felt too dark.

The words floated upward, intertwining with the stillness, stirring a ghostly symphony of what once was. Outside, the wind seemed to hold its breath, listening.

Down below, in a small, weathered cottage near the apothecary’s shop, a girl moved quietly. Barefoot, with eyes that held quiet worlds. Her hair was dark and tangled, her hands delicate as she sketched. She loved to draw bells and flowers, capturing their fragile beauty with a softness that belied her age. Her sketches bore a gentle strength, edges blurred, details faint, but her intent was clear...to remember.

Her mind was tender, a delicate web of thoughts and dreams, edges soft around the edges, yet resilient. Sometimes, when sleep claimed her, she saw 𝘩𝘪𝘮. The boy carved from stone. In her dreams, he smiled at her, a silent reassurance, whispering "Always..."

He was her silent guardian, a keeper of memories that refused to fade. In his stillness, he gave the city silence, not peace, but a quiet resistance. A reminder that some legacies are not spoken aloud, but inscribed in the spaces between sound and absence.

And in her dreams, he was still alive. An unspoken promise that even in silence, memory endures.