Prolouge
The Pale King was awake and it puzzled him.
He had drawn his last breath with content, knowing that his perfect kingdom was going to last for eternity, perfectly preserved by his chosen Dreamers and protected from the thrice damned Old Light by his perfectly hollow Vessel.
Yet now he was awake and tended to by his royal servants.
These bugs were among the small amount that had been rooted from reality with the rest of the palace and kept safe in the Dream World. Unlike the Pale King, who was left a mere husk during this stasis, the retainers simply remained to wander the palace halls, completely oblivious to most things happening around them.
It wouldn't even have been wrong to say that most of them never even noticed being removed from the physical world.
However, now that they were once again fully in their right minds, the Pale King's needs required service and any disobedience would be met with a swift death at the claws of the Kingsmoulds.
As he was fitted with the finest of silk robes, the king heard from a servant, that during his great sleep, a strange, small bug had come to the palace.
This mute intruder allegedly defeated any Kingsmould that stood in their way and masterfully survived the obstacle ridden hallways, which had been designed to test the Hollow Vessel's skill.
This surprised the king, since he was certain that entering his palace from the outside world was impossible.
He was also disturbed by the fact, that his own genious and the 'noble' sacrifices of hundreds of workbugs all seemed to be pointless.
Since judging from the slain Kingsmoulds outside the throne room and the fact that, upon awakening, the Pale King had found himself face-first on the floor, it would have been quite accurate to assume that this mysterious bug had reached him.
Not that it mattered, as the only thing missing from the king's person was the half of an old charm that he had created long ago with the White Lady, when his body was still young and easily led astray by such a juvenile distraction as love.
As the hours passed, the Pale King started to feel his consciousness expand from the halls of the White Palace, where it had laid dormant for so long, and sweep across his old domain.
But as the monarch started to connect to all that he ruled over, he noticed that something was missing.
In no corner of the kingdom of Hallownest did he feel the Radiance's presence holding him back.
During all the time of the Pale King's rule over Hallownest, including the later years when even those primitive moths forgot about her, the ruler's presence was opposed and held back by the presence of the Old Light.
Granted, it had never taken its toll on him before the years of the Infection, but there was always a certain amount of focus that had to be given to the dream dweller.
This was a development that the Pale King hadn't expected.
But it was one he welcomed with open claws.
The whole of Hallownest and its surroundings were finally going to be united under one rightful ruler: the Pale Wyrm.
This wasn't all however, since he'd already started to feel his influence expand beyond the Howling cliffs and beyond the wastelands that bordered them.
Almost everyone within the valley that housed Hallownest thought that there was nothing but empty wilderness outside the walls of the kingdom, yet the Pale King knew what the world beyond held.
And he wanted it, for he deserved it.
Unbeknownst to most, the Kingsmoulds weren't just personal guards for the monarch, that would have simply been wasting their potential.
In the lower areas of the White Palace, which would have been called a 'basement' in lesser structures, there stood thousands of the Void constructs, with just as many Wingsmoulds accompanying them.
Before, the king lacked the required focus to control them all at once, but now that he was at his full power for the first time in what had to be centuries.
His time had come.
He would rebuild his dear Hallownest and expand it times a thousand. The sapient beings of the outside world would experience his light and they would be enlightened by it!
Resistance to his Pale brilliance would be futile!
Through the rows of Kingsmoulds and Wingsmoulds, a single command echoed:
"…Conquer…"
