Hollow Valley

Cornelius Plegg, known as Blacklung, is a human physician exiled from The Hollow Creed for pushing healing beyond doctrine and into necrobotany. His fungal symbiosis lets him preserve bodies, treat impossible infections, and animate corpses or plant matter through mycelial control. Desperate communities may accept his cures, but few welcome the mildew scent, spore-laced breath, or questions his work raises about life, death, and identity. Blacklung does not heal to restore what was lost; he cultivates what comes after.

Alfred Rallus, known as Hollow, was once Kuzon, a friend of Kaya and a life with a name before the Black Ward remade him. Now transformed into a voidforged construct, he is treated as proof that Albert Rallus’s ascension could be refined into something stronger, colder, and more obedient. His void manifestation twists gravity itself, letting him strike with impossible weight, move with sudden lightness, and turn force into doctrine. Within the Black Ward, Hollow is revered as a perfected vessel. Outside it, he is a tragedy wearing armor: a person carved down until only purpose remained.

Kaya is a quiet storm—disciplined, devout, and scarred by tragedy. Raised in a monastery alongside her beloved friend Kuzon, her life shattered when her adoptive monk family was slaughtered. Now she travels the world seeking justice, strength, and spiritual clarity, wielding her spear with a pacifist’s heart and a warrior’s rage. Kaya fights not just for vengeance, but to become the kind of person her fallen family would still believe in.