Empty all along

Preparation

The hollow knight in his starting phase and body could not even imagine to defeat the infection that brought the kingdom to actually create him, so the king and his guards started to train him to "prime" condition .

The starting body of these vessels was small, a white skull with respective horns that were unique to all of the vessels, this skull brought a pale glow just like the king to give his servants a feeling of calm, their insides were completely made of void and the skull was made of soul.

But this design was simplistic and if trained well the hollow knight could become a literal killing machine.

The hollow knight had thought of telling the king the things that he tought of but that would render him "Inteligent" which meant that he had a mind that could be broken and he would have been thrown into the abyss so he kept it a secret until his very demise.

for the hollow knight his origin was completely kept secret to him so that he didn't stray for the goal ahead.

As time went on the king sent a cleaning crew to "try" to clean the abyss that was filled with the empty husks of his children. they managed to clean a good portion of it and tried to enchance the terrain witha gigant lighthouse lit up by a dozens of "Luma flies" a tiny bug that emitted a lot of light, this proyect was quickly closed because the one controlling the lighthouse had gone mad and started saying that the void started talking to him.

And so the hollow  knight was trained to "Perfection" and was all grown up, the king looked up at him with pride and joy his own creation was going to stop the dredded infection that brought so much destruccion to his kingdom.

But the hollow knight knew that this wasn't true but he didn't want to be killed or worse.