"There are places even the Dracus fear.This is where silence grows teeth."
The first step into The Black Hollow felt like crossing a threshold between existence and something beneath it.
The air changed immediately—thicker, colder, and heavy with a scent that wasn't rot or smoke but something far worse. Like the smell of memory decaying. Miasma clung to every surface like spider silk—black vapor that writhed just slightly, as though it breathed on its own.
Matte led the way, his blade drawn, the edge faintly glowing with the resonance of his Soul Essence. It flickered like a dying flame.
Behind him, Violet kept close, her breath shallow. She wore a cloth wrap across her nose and mouth, but it didn't help. Nothing could. The Hollow was alive in ways neither of them understood.
The ceiling stretched high above them—an arch of broken stone, twisted metal, and roots that had long since gone black. It wasn't a tunnel. It was a corpse of a city, flipped upside down and buried beneath the world. Rail lines and roads fused together into crooked spirals that led nowhere.
The walls wept dark fluid from unseen cracks.
And then… the whispers began.
Not real words. Not yet. Just suggestions. Half-sounds on the edge of hearing that made the skin crawl.
Violet stopped, pressing a hand to her head. "It's in the miasma. You hear that?"
Matte nodded slowly. "Yeah. I don't like what it's saying."
Far ahead, something moved.
Not walked—crawled.
Its body was thin, unnaturally long, dragging itself with jagged limbs that bent the wrong way. It had no eyes, no face—only a vertical slit across what should've been a skull, opening and closing like it was breathing through it.
Matte lowered into a crouch. "Don't move."
The creature paused, its neck jerking upright like it sensed them without sight. Then it hissed—a shrill, high-pitched sound that echoed far too long.
Violet barely whispered. "What is that?"
"I don't know," Matte replied, "but it's not alone."
Behind it… more.
They emerged from the miasma in silence. Dozens of them. Gaunt, spidery figures with bone-white skin and stained claws. Some walked on two legs, others on all fours. A few wore scraps of clothing—rotted fabric, military insignias, even pieces of armor from pre-collapse times. As if they'd once been human.
But not anymore.
Their movements were twitchy. Starved. Restless.
And then the first one screeched.
The pack responded.
Matte grabbed Violet and pulled her down into a collapsed service hatch just as the creatures surged forward.
Their screeches bounced off the walls like glass shattering inside the skull. They didn't hunt with tactics—they overwhelmed. Clawed fingers scraped against metal above them. One of them screamed into the opening but didn't see them in time.
They didn't see.
They sensed.
Violet held her breath, and Matte remained perfectly still, watching as one of the creatures sniffed the air above.
A drop of sweat rolled down Violet's cheek.
Drip.
The creature turned toward the sound like a bullet.
Then… silence.
Matte didn't move for a full minute.
Eventually, the screeches faded, and the swarm dragged itself back into the fog—lost in its hunger.
Once the way was clear, they moved again.
Lower.
Deeper.
Until they reached what looked like an old cathedral swallowed by the earth. Its stained glass was cracked, symbols melted away by time. The altar had been torn out. Bones—human and inhuman—lined the aisles like offerings.
"Something lives here," Violet whispered.
Matte nodded. "Something worse than those."
Because he could feel it.
Beneath the Hollow, something else breathed.
Something that didn't move, didn't hunt, didn't even exist in the normal sense.
But it waited.
And it watched.
Matte and Violet moved quietly through the ruined cathedral.
The floor was soft in some places—too soft. The bones beneath the surface weren't stable. Every few steps, the ground gave slightly, like stepping on flesh stretched too thin.
A single beam of light filtered down through a shattered skylight high above, touching the broken altar in the center. Dust didn't drift in the air. Instead, the miasma itself recoiled from the light—as if afraid to be seen.
Matte squinted at the walls.
There were paintings once.
Frescoes worn nearly to nothing, their surfaces peeled and eaten away. But traces remained—wings, fangs, figures kneeling before a throne that bled upward into the sky.
"Religious?" Violet asked, studying one of the walls.
Matte shook his head slowly. "No… this wasn't worship."
"What was it then?"
He stepped toward the altar, his fingers brushing across its cracked surface.
"Something older. Maybe… a warning."
Suddenly, the ground beneath the altar shifted—just a few inches—but enough to expose something buried underneath.
Matte knelt and pried the cracked floor open with his blade, revealing a sealed hatch, etched with the same sigil Violet had found scratched into the wall days ago:
Three interwoven rings. One eye. Folded inward.
His stomach twisted.
Before he could move, a shrill clicking sound echoed through the cathedral.
It wasn't the creatures from before.
It was slower.
Heavier.
And it echoed through the bones.
Matte turned, just in time to see one of the creatures standing upright at the entrance of the cathedral—but this one was different.
Its body was wrapped in strips of human skin, stitched together crudely. Its spine was elongated, curling up over its back like a tail. Its hands weren't claws—they were tools, twisted and broken, fused into its arms. A bone saw. A rusted injector. A scalpel.
Its jaw split vertically, and it began to speak in a cracked, broken voice—not its own, but several voices overlapping, all screaming from within it.
"S̵̗͚͎̥͒̇̐Ȏ̴͖̤̼̋͒̾̈́͋͗̕Ư̵̢̲̖̠̞͖̽͋̊̕L̶̟̬̹̯̆͊̈́͝... F̷̤͊̇̔̐̚͜L̶̖͉̖̼̫̤̩̖̇̎Ę̷̋̕S̸̼̘͉̮͉͉̯̏̏̔̈́̐͒̿̚͠Ḥ̸̛̼̮̤̰̾͊͂̈́̿̒͛... G̴̢͈̹̳̼̊̽̎̀́I̷̦̠̕V̸̰̪͚͉͕͎̺͗̌̋̀̓̿͋̅E̷̢̡͈̟̘̩͗̇̄͝... T̵̲͙̫̦͆́̕H̴͖̜̼̞̞̿̀͆̋̔̽E̵̪͛̍M̷̲̓́͊̄̑̀͒̽... B̸̗͛͆͒̑̇̿A̵͓̖̖̔̍̚͝C̷̛͕̮̲̲̲͉̘̺̃̐͛̿̓̔͝K̶̲̈́̓͘͘͘͠."*
Matte instinctively stepped in front of Violet.
The creature didn't move.
It only raised a hand and pointed to the hatch—its jaw still split, still twitching.
It wasn't warning them.
It was begging them to open it.
Violet looked up at him, eyes wide. "What the hell is down there?"
Matte stared at the hatch, feeling his pulse slow as his essence stirred in his chest.
Whatever was beneath this cathedral… it was alive.
And it was calling him.