"You've had quite the hard life, haven't you?'

The hollow king sat in silence before he leaned forward and grabbed the hilt of the sword in the hearth. It was surrounded by flames, but as they licked at his hand, he didn't react at all. Almost as if the fire was nothing more than a warm breeze to him.

"Not very talkative, are you?" the frail man was sitting down on a wooden log that had been laid down in the ruins of The Oasis. He looked sorrowful as he stared at the hollow king. "That's alright. Talking isn't always important. It's what you do that matters."

The hollow king remained silent as he slowly pulled out the blade. Embers spilled out around him as the red-hot sword was drawn from the fireplace. He actually had to stop after a moment, as, impossibly, the sword was too long for him to fully pull out from where he was sitting. So, he placed his right hand onto the ground in a fist and used that as leverage to slowly stand up.

"You know, there are these monks in a remote region of Balsadori," the man said softly as he continued to watch the hollow king, "They believed that until something was broken it could not truly be made whole. This wasn't all that rare of a belief in Balsadori, but they took it to a bit of an extreme. You see, they believed that about people as well."

Skkrrreeeeeee

As he spoke, the hollow king had stood all the way up, and continued to drag out the sword. The scraping of the sword against the stone, interrupted his speech. More embers sprayed across the floor as the sword scraped across the ground, and the hollow king seemed completely indifferent to the newcomer's words and whether he was interrupting him or not. In fact, he didn't seem to acknowledge that there was another presence here at all.

After a moment of waiting for the scraping to end, it looked like he accepted that the desiccated corpse of a man was not going to stop any time soon. So, the man closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. He didn't look upset in the slightest, and he even seemed completely relaxed as he just sat there and waited.

The hollow king dragged the entire sword out at last. It took longer, because somehow the sword seemed to have gotten even longer than it was before it had been shattered. Spitting in the face of the laws of physics, it had sat in the hearth completely concealed, but was now longer than the fireplace, but quite a bit.

As smoke rose off of the blade, the silent warrior suddenly gripped it with both hands. His muscles tensed as the spectral left half of his face and body and his ghostly right arm burst into existence as he struggled to lift the sword. After a moment, the sword started to slowly raise off of the ground. With herculean effort as his shriveled muscles seemed to almost grow in size, he lifted the sword straight up into the sky. The storm clouds above him started to swirl around as lightning continued to streak across the sky.

Carefully, and with his arms starting to shake slightly, he lowered the hilt down to his stomach until his face was reflected in the still red blade. He stared into the sword with his spectral eye and then grit his teeth in anger. His arms shook more and more until the sword came crashing down. It slammed into the ground with a loud crash, and he lost his grip on the hilt as the force of the blade slamming against the ground seemed to send him reeling back. He landed with a thud against the ruins of the outer wall, and his spectral visage faded away.

As the stranger opened his eyes, the hollow king was leaning his back against the rubble and looked like a corpse that had been mummified and left there for centuries. He glanced over to the sword as the air above it wavered from the heat flying off of the blade. "Repairing something broken is an impressive skill. One that those monks took very seriously."

He jumped right back into his speech, as if he hadn't been interrupted at all. "You see, those monks believed that the human body must be broken for someone to attain personhood, specifically the bones. Do you know how many bones there are in an adult human? About two-hundred and six. And the monks believed that every single one needed to be broken before you were truly made whole."

"Early believers used to fling themselves from high places and relied on luck to break as many bones as possible. Eventually a very meticulous and calculating man rose up through their ranks. He thought the constant breaking and recovery was too random. It was hard to control which bones would break after all, so he started to use tools to break the bones of other acolytes. Eventually others caught on to his way of thinking, and over the years they developed an interesting technique."

The man slowly rose to his feet and started to walk over towards the hollow king. "They created a fighting style that could break someone's bones with minimal harm to the rest of their body. Their organs, skin, nerves, and so on. Why, when done by a master, someone wouldn't even realize their bones had been broken at all."

He paused as he passed the sword and glanced down at it. It was just for a moment, and then he turned back to the seemingly disinterested man and approached him again. "The problem was always the spine. It could heal, but it was so slow. Many didn't survive, despite their great progress in both healing and cracking them safely."

He was right in front of the hollow king and looked down at him. He looked like he was almost on the verge of tears. "You remind me of them. Except you seem to have taken their philosophy to the next level." He knelt down and placed his hand onto the hollow king's shoulder. As he did, black smoke began to rise up from where their skin was touching. "I'm sorry. Despite my skills, I can't help you like I helped them. They were so close to the truth but were too afraid. Nature was trying to show them their mistakes, but they ignored the problem of the spine. You seem to have done something similar. In a perpetual state of dead and alive."

The man sighed and removed his hand. He turned around and sat on the top of the crumbled wall the hollow king was lying against. "Forgive me, I realized that I just gave an entire speech without introducing myself. It's hard to remember social norms when you're the only one speaking." He let out a dry chuckle before he turned his gaze down to the completely still man next to him.

"My name is Azrail."