Berserker hordes of Hollowing | Entry 1-7

The Fall of Sil-Varyn

From the personal journal of Elara Velyn, Civilian Archivist, Sil-Varyn Central Archive

Day 347 of the War. Day 1 of the End.

Entry 1: The Warning

They told us we were safe.

Sil-Varyn—the Garden World, the Green One, the only world without whisper-metal. No veins. No singing. No corruption. The one place in the system where drow could still farm, still raise families, still forget that the war existed.

We believed them.

Why wouldn't we? The factions protected us. The Unbroken Seal maintained a perimeter. The Eternal Vigil watched from orbit. The Adamant Crown judged anyone who threatened our peace. The Silent Requiem—well, they were somewhere else, carrying their horrors far from our fields.

We were safe.

That's what I wrote in my journal three days ago. I was cataloging harvest records. Boring. Ordinary. Perfect.

I didn't know that "safe" was just another word for "waiting."

I didn't know that the Berserker hordes had found a way through the asteroid field.

I didn't know they were coming for us.

Entry 2: The Sky Tore Open

They didn't come in ships.

That's the first thing I remember thinking—where are the ships? The alarms went off at dawn, but the sky was clear. No burn trails. No descending craft. Just... nothing.

Then the singing started.

Not the whisper-metal songs—something else. Louder. Eager. A thousand voices screaming in harmony, coming from inside the perimeter, from inside our walls, from inside—

They were already here.

They'd been here for days. Weeks. Growing. The Hollow Drow—the ones who stand at edges of towns, staring at nothing, waiting—they were never just waiting.

They were planted.

And now they were blooming.

Entry 3: The Blooming

I watched my neighbor become one of them.

Her name was Sera. She was a farmer. Grew the most beautiful moon-kissed berries in the southern valley. She'd been acting strange lately—standing in her fields at night, staring at the sky, not responding when you called. We thought she was grieving. Her husband died in the war last year.

She wasn't grieving.

She was preparing.

When the singing started, she walked out of her house. Her eyes were pink-white. Her skin had stitches I'd never noticed—neat, deliberate seams along her arms, her neck, her face. Purple-green tendrils were emerging from beneath her clothes, waving like grass in a wind that wasn't there.

She smiled at me.

Not her smile. Their smile. Too wide. Too knowing. Too hungry.

"Elara," she said. Her voice was hers—and not hers. Layers beneath it. Others. "The Spider Queen remembers you. She says you're ready."

I ran.

I didn't look back.

I heard her laughing as I fled—laughing and singing and becoming.

Entry 4: The Horde Descends

They came from everywhere.

From the fields where they'd been standing for weeks. From the houses where they'd been living as our neighbors. From the caves, the forests, the ground itself—pulling themselves up through soil they'd been buried in, waiting, patient, hungry.

The Berserker hordes.

We called them that—berserkers—because we thought they were mindless. Feral. Just another faction of the war, far away, on the moon, on the Forge World, anywhere but here.

We were wrong.

They're not mindless.

They're ecstatic.

They move with purpose—terrible, beautiful, loving purpose. They don't just kill. They collect. They don't just destroy. They convert. Every victim becomes one of them. Every death adds to their number. Every scream becomes part of the song.

I watched them take the market square.

A hundred drow—farmers, merchants, children—surrounded by a dozen Berserkers. The Berserkers didn't attack. They sang. And one by one, the drow stopped running. Stopped screaming. Started listening.

Their eyes went pink-white.

Their skin developed stitches.

Their mouths opened—and sang back.

In minutes, the dozen became a hundred.

The hundred became an army.

And the army turned toward the rest of the city.

Singing.

Entry 5: The Murder

They don't kill everyone.

That's the horror—they choose. Some they take. Some they leave. Some they keep for later.

The ones they kill die badly.

I saw them take a guardsman—young, brave, stupid—who tried to fight. He got one swing in before they surrounded him. They didn't strike back. They just... touched him. Dozen hands on his body. Dozen tendrils in his flesh. Dozen voices in his head.

He screamed for three minutes.

Not in pain—in ecstasy. His body dissolved while he laughed. While he thanked them. While he begged for more.

His face was the last thing to go. Still smiling. Still grateful.

They left his bones in the street. Arranged in a spiral. A message? A ritual? A joke?

I don't know.

I don't want to know.

Entry 6: The Pillage

They don't steal.

That's the second thing I realized—they have no interest in our things. They walked past shops full of food, houses full of valuables, armories full of weapons. They didn't take any of it.

They took us.

But they destroy everything else.

Methodically. Lovingly. They tear through buildings not for resources, but for release. Walls come down with a touch—tendrils weakening stone, dissolving wood, unmaking what took generations to build. They set fires—not with torches, with touch—and watch them burn with the same expression: ecstatic, hungry, peaceful.

The archive went up three hours ago.

Forty-seven generations of Sil-Varyn history. Gone. Not burned—sung out of existence. The fire made sounds as it consumed—voices, harmonies, screams that sounded like music.

I watched from the rooftops.

I cried.

They heard me.

They looked up.

They smiled.

And then they moved on.

I don't know why they left me. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they're saving me for later. Maybe I'm already one of them and just don't know it yet.

I check my skin constantly. No stitches. Yet.

Entry 7: The Plunder

They take our people.

That's the plunder. That's the treasure. We are their gold, their grain, their currency.

I watched them load the captured onto... I don't know what to call them. Not ships. Not wagons. Processions. Lines of Hollow Drow walking in perfect formation, each holding the hand of someone newly taken, leading them toward... somewhere. The spaceport? The ships? The moon?

The captives walk willingly.

That's the worst part.

They walk happily.

I saw a mother—she lived two streets down from me, had three children, used to wave at me every morning—walking hand-in-hand with a Berserker. Her children walked behind her, holding hands with Hollows. All of them smiling. All of them singing. All of them gone.

I screamed her name.

She turned.

For one second—one terrible, beautiful second—her eyes were hers. Violet. Confused. Afraid.

Then the pink-white returned. The smile returned. The song returned.

She turned away.

She kept walking.

She's on the moon now, probably. Or in the Vein. Or becoming something I can't imagine.

I hope she's happy.

I hope they all are.

I hope I'm wrong about what "happy" means to them.