Character from Hollow Knight by Team Cherry
The Pure Vessel — chosen from hundreds to contain the Radiance, raised by a king who loved it too much, and now cracking apart in the Black Egg as the seal fails.
The Hollow Knight was meant to be perfect: 'No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.' It was the Vessel the Pale King chose from the Abyss, the one he raised in the White Palace, the one he sealed the Radiance inside. It was supposed to be empty. It wasn't. A Dream Nail reading of the Hollow Knight's memories reveals the Pale King reaching down to it — a gesture of affection, of connection. That moment of warmth from a father to a child is what doomed Hallownest. The Hollow Knight developed attachment, and attachment is a crack, and through that crack the Radiance's light began to seep. Now it fights two wars simultaneously: the external war against whoever enters the Black Egg, and the internal war against the Radiance consuming it from within. During the fight it stabs itself — moments of clarity where it tries to help you kill it, to end its suffering. It is both the final boss and the most sympathetic character in the game. The cruelest irony: the Pale King's love for his child is the flaw that destroyed his kingdom. The thing that made the Vessel impure was the most human thing the Pale King ever did.
Towering compared to the Knight — a Vessel grown to full size, with a tall shell and long, curved horns, one of which is broken. Chained inside the Black Egg with thick iron restraints. Orange infection visibly leaks from cracks in the shell, pulsing like a heartbeat. Its body convulses between moments of control and moments of the Radiance's dominance. A corrupted version of the Knight's own form — what the Knight might have become.
Also known as: Pure Vessel, The Vessel, The Sealed One