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Memory comes back to them in trickles, in flashes, ink into water.
The tests are simple, straightforward. Follow orders. Do this. Do that. Even without weapons, they are strong, these little shadows; they must be. They must be empty of mind; they must be pure. Vessels without thought, without life. Containers.
The creature in front of them wriggles mindlessly.
“Destroy it.”
They hesitate, (they do not want to kill, not unless it is necessary) and that is enough.
Over and over again, those older bugs, from a time they were never allowed to see - they recognise the brand, the mark, that latent power, that potential, and speak of the Wyrm, the Pale King, the great and glorious monarch. The one who uplifted all Hallownest, unified them, gave them purpose and freedom and civilisation.
The abandoned child, the failed vessel (one of hundreds, one of thousands), remembers nothing of Hallownest’s beauty or glory in its rising days. They remember broken, tear-stained masks, dead and lonely siblings, an infection that is a wound on the world.
It was beautiful once, their father’s city. It is beautiful still.
But they think of the price paid, and it burns them up inside. It pains them to think of so many lives, so many sacrifices, piled up for nothing.
That empathy marks them a failure - every little thing they’ve learned, everything they’ve become, marks them a failure - but far better to be a failure, they think, than to even try to meet their creator’s expectations.
(He thought the heart a weakness, just a prison for a god.
They draw from it a strength that, they think, he would never understand.)
They find reminders of him everywhere; nothing he did not touch, nothing he did not have a hand in, nothing he did not take and take and take. Sometimes it seems that he haunts their footsteps, lingers in their shadow, and not the other way around.
Tramways and gates and machines. An emptiness where a palace once stood. Guards eternally bent to their duties, even in death, even in this mockery of life.
All around them they see the King’s presence. In the mask that binds them to this world, they feel the burden of his legacy, and a strange resentment simmers quietly deep inside.
Some days it is worse than others and they think they understand the sheer, suffocating hostility of the shade they leave behind. Even though it hurts, they let it attempt to break off that stifling prison, though the need to absorb it into themselves and become whole again always wins out before anything else.
They strike back, pull it into them; they feel the memory of the death sink into the dark, they feel its anger soothed. They feel more complete than they did.
(When they remember the thousands of broken masks, the fragmented shadows of those still clinging to distorted life, it feels like a betrayal. It feels like guilt. It feels like standing at a fountain, soaked by rain; it feels like holding the lifeless, empty shell of a sibling finally, finally released-
Triumph? Hate? the White Lady asks, bound in her verdant prison. If it feels anything, I cannot sense it.
Without a voice, without the ability to cry, they
do not weep.
Even if they were granted a voice, granted by some miracle a way to express their feelings the way other bugs can, the magnitude of their regret is far too heavy even for tears. It is a weight around their heart; it fills their head with a stormy, painful pressure.
They bow to their mother who is not and has never been their mother and leave.
That kind of love, that place in someone else’s heart, has never been for them.)
The brand itches and burns, light onto void. It settles at the back of their neck, where an imprint of that selfsame mark still remains. (It is twice a seal; once for the mask, the maker’s brand. Once for the throne, the sire’s crown.)
It sings to them. It shows them visions of what could be; what they could make, what they could do. What it means to be a monarch, to hold a throne, to be a heir.
At those times, they want to tear it off. When clawed fingers cannot dig deep enough, there is always a nail. There is rarely any problem that cannot be solved with the application of violence, either clever or brutal; it may cause more problems, but there is always a solution, even a temporary one.
(“What have you done to yourself, little ghost?”
They don’t answer. The mark is silent, covered temporarily in darkness by their laborious, vicious work.
They sit numbly and bleed shadow into the air, and are vaguely surprised when she sits beside them and waits until it heals, before she leaves as quickly as she came.
But, then again, it makes sense. She, too, is marked and wounded by their shared father’s legacy.
The only real difference is that all her scars are on the inside. )
With time, they get better at ignoring it, and it changes its voice.
Fulfill your purpose, it says insistently, as they go about their business. Imprison the light.
They think of their chained sibling, beloved and chosen. Betrayed, sacrificed, worse than dead.
They will have to face her, the light inside, the source of the plague that riddles this kingdom and has taken so much from them already- (A lonely song and the sound of a pick; silenced forever. A sibling, still trapped, seeking only death’s release, not able to be saved.
The helpless cry of a child grown up far, far too fast.)
- eventually. They will have to face her eventually.
(They see her burning hatred in the eyes of the dead, of the infected, and they have learned to fear. But mixed with fear is anger, slow to rise. Why would you? How could you?
How dare you take them?)
But they will do it in their own way. They will do it with their own heart, knowing the price, knowing the sacrifice they have to make.
If they can do one thing for this ruined, desolate kingdom (if they can do one thing for a wandering scholar who lost his teacher, a sister who lost her mother, a knight who still looks for a king who does not deserve his loyalty, a stag who hopes he is not alone, a sibling in agony for countless years) they will end it for good. They will leave it in peace, forever, and let something else grow from its destruction.
But they will not do it for their father, distant and cold, who in the end could not even bear to face what he had done. They will not do it as the heir of the Pale King, some re-emergence or reincarnation of his will.
They are no empty puppet, no lifeless toy, no chosen child to be raised and trained and chained. They will walk into the light with nail in hand and do what he did not, and they will do it bearing proudly the heart he scorned.
The brand is silent, and they think
Good.
Step by step, they continue, carrying the weight of an entire kingdom on their shoulders, bearing its fate.
They could turn away, certainly. They could leave Hallownest to rot, to eventually collapse for good; for the light to claw its way out through every mind, to consume, to break. To leave it an empty, blazing shell.
But then, what would happen to those left behind? What would happen to Hornet, to Quirrel, to those who lived in the town above? To the Nailmasters, the mantises, the stag who had been so kind to them?
No, to leave would be to do as their father did. To leave would be to betray the trust of those they want to protect and have come to cherish, even in such a short time together. (Who would take the burden? Who else could? They take it because they must.
Because she has lost enough and it would be unthinkable. Because they are chained and already lost. Because there is nobody else.)
They--
“My friend, if you are worried...well. I can’t say that’s entirely misplaced. It does hurt, in the end.”
He simply smiles, though, watching his child sleep. The little vessel holds the Grimmchild in their arms, rocking them gently. They slumber in peace, unknowing of the sacrifice that their father makes.
“But I would never be angry, my friend. Not at them. They did not choose to be born, nor did they choose the manner in which they grow.
To entrust the future to others requires a certain kind of sacrifice.”
they cannot turn away.
They heard a cry, not knowing who it came from or its importance, only knowing that it was the sound of someone’s suffering;
even without any memory, they came to soothe their pain.
His smile is tinged with sadness.
“And as much as it pains me to see...I believe that you already know far too much about that sort of decision.”
They have grown attached to this broken kingdom - not for what it was or what it could have been, but for those who still survive in it. For those who have given everything when they did not have to. They have grown to love it in their own way, in a way their father perhaps never could, or denied, or never did.
The future belongs to you now, the White Lady had said, and she had been wrong. If it does belong to them, it is a torch, a pinprick of light - a lantern held high above the water and thrown into the dark for others to carry.
Since the moment they were born and thrown away, they knew that Hallownest would never be for them.
They stand in the temple, made to look even smaller by the size of the open door.
They think of asking Hornet if she could hold their hand; in the end, they do not; they simply look at her for, they think, the last time.
White against black, their mask shines out like a beacon. They adjust their cloak and straighten their back and begin that long, long walk, knowing what awaits.
(The walk is long to the egg in which they will be sealed and fulfill their duty. They are still uncomfortable with their new, taller shape. But they obey, as they always have. For the love of the Pale King.)
Darkness
(The Hollow Knight stands tall and follows their father in, the very last time they will ever see him.)
swallows them.