The Hollow was cold.
The Mortar Zone?
Alive.
Not with life. Not with breath.
But with rage.
The moment I stepped into it, I could feel the heat crawling into my lungs—not like warmth, but like a violation. The kind of heat that tears at your insides and makes your blood boil emotionally before it ever touches your skin.
The ground was cracked red stone—blackened veins glowing lava-orange beneath the surface, like it was bleeding from some slow, ancient wound.
And the sky…
Gods, the sky.
It never stopped screaming.
Thunder without clouds. Roars without mouths. Explosions in the upper atmosphere that cast shadows across the land like dying stars.
I wasn't even five minutes in before the first bomb hit.
Not aimed at me.
Just another cleansing strike from orbit.
A column of fire erupted maybe a mile away—no sound at first, just blinding light—and then the wave hit, rippling through the air like an invisible beast had just broken the atmosphere with its spine.
I dropped to a knee, hands covering my head, the heat burning across my shoulders even at that distance.
This place wasn't meant to be survived.
It was designed to erase you.
I pressed on, deeper into the red-soaked terrain.
Volcanic ridges stretched like broken teeth across the horizon, and ash swirled in lazy cyclones from the constant blasts.
I didn't know what I was looking for.
Maybe shelter.
Maybe just a place where the ground didn't tremble like it was about to crack open and vomit fire.
But I wasn't alone.
Not for long.
I heard them first.
Heavy.
Stone cracking beneath weight that had no right to exist.
Like titans shifting in their sleep.
I turned slowly—and that's when I saw them.
Two of them at first.
Then a third stepped from behind a plume of smoke.
Bipedal.
Ten feet tall.
Made of molten stone and flame.
Their skin was cracked obsidian, glowing from within. Fire pulsed through their cores with every movement, like blood made of magma.
And their eyes?
No pupils. No whites.
Just lava tears, streaming down their faces as if the pain of existing here had broken them into violence.
They didn't speak.
Didn't growl.
They just charged.
I reacted late.
Too slow.
I managed to draw my blade and swing wide—but it only glanced off the first one's shoulder, carving a shallow groove in the stone.
It didn't flinch.
Didn't even seem to notice.
Its fist slammed into my chest and sent me flying back ten feet, crashing into a jagged outcrop. I felt something crack in my side.
Ribs.
Definitely.
I tried to roll to my feet, but the second one was already on me. It brought its leg down like a falling boulder—barely missing my head. The shockwave still dazed me.
I swung again, this time channeling what little Essence I had left—not enough to ignite, but maybe enough to cut.
It sparked against their body like a flint.
But nothing gave.
"Not good…"
The third one grabbed me from behind and slammed me into the ground.
Once.
Twice.
The air left my lungs with the second impact, and the world tilted.
The heat.
The stone.
The ash.
It blurred.
Everything blurred.
They didn't even look angry.
Just… purposeful.
Like I was in the way.
Like I didn't belong here.
And they were right.
I fought to crawl away—my fingers clawing through broken obsidian, muscles spasming.
My Essence wouldn't respond.
I screamed into the dirt—more frustration than pain.
The first one kicked me in the side.
I spun.
Skidded.
Something broke.
Then I saw it.
A gap in the ridge ahead.
A hole in the ground—part cave, part collapsed fissure.
Small.
But enough.
I ran.
Staggered.
Dragged my broken body into the narrow crevice, sliding in sideways as heat chased behind me. One of them reached for me—but the gap was too tight.
I fell.
Rolled.
Kept falling.
Darkness swallowed me.
The heat dimmed.
The pain didn't.
But I was alive.
Barely.
I laid there for what felt like hours—curled in the fetal position, breathing dust, tasting blood. Bones cracked. Skin blistered. Muscles twitching with trauma.
I wasn't just broken.
I was empty.
And for the first time since waking in the forest...
I wanted to stay down.
But I knew better.
They would come for me.
They always did.
And when they did…
I would break completely.
I pressed my back against the wall of the hole, breathing in short, sharp gasps.
The pain in my ribs had numbed—not because it was healing, but because my nerves had started to shut down. My body was trying to protect me from myself.
I could still hear them above.
Their footsteps weren't stomps.
They were deliberate.
Each step a slow grind of stone on stone.
Each movement humming with pressure—like the heat in their bodies was forcing the ground to shift around them.
I didn't know what these things were.
I didn't know if they were demons, constructs, or some twisted mutation left behind by the war the Dracus brought.
But I did know one thing:
They didn't bleed.
And they didn't die.
One of them walked across the surface just above me.
The sound of its footstep pressed into the stone like a weighted hammer.
Dust fell around me.
Ash drifted through the hole in thin ribbons, glowing faint orange in the dark.
I bit down on my lip to stay quiet.
I'd never felt this helpless.
Not in the shrine.
Not in the Hollow.
Not even when Violet left.
This was different.
This was primal.
I didn't understand how something that big could move so silently when it wanted to.
But it did.
I could hear the soft sound of stone shifting against stone—shoulders turning, maybe.
A low, steady hum filled the air like a furnace winding up to boil.
Then… a sound that nearly made me scream:
A slow inhale.
Not mechanical.
Not artificial.
They were breathing.
Alive.
I crawled deeper into the fissure.
My blade scraped the rock once—too loud.
Way too loud.
I froze.
Didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
And then I heard it.
That step again.
This time... closer.
A faint glow lit the entrance above.
It wasn't sunlight.
It was them—their cores pulsing just out of sight. Flickers of internal magma casting rhythmic light into the dark like a heartbeat.
I pressed myself to the wall and stared at my hands.
They were trembling.
Not from the cold.
From the sheer realization that I wasn't a threat here.
I was prey.
One of the giants leaned toward the opening.
I didn't see its face.
But I saw the orange light rise.
And I heard the sound again—
Not a roar.
Not a growl.
But a mournful tone.
Like a choir made of stone… chanting through its bones.
It was looking for me.
"They're not hunting for territory," I whispered to myself.
"They're cleansing."
Not random violence.
Deliberate extermination.
They weren't just driving people back from the Wastelands.
They were tasked with burning hope out of the land.
The air began to thicken again.
Not heat this time.
Smoke.
Black and sharp. It drifted into the hole like it had been poured, curling around the walls in slow tendrils.
One of them was lighting the ground above on fire.
They were going to flush me out.
I gritted my teeth and began crawling deeper.
The hole narrowed, sloped downward—too tight to stand, too jagged to move fast.
My hands bled from dragging my body.
My knees scraped raw on glass-like stone.
I kept hearing that breath behind me.
Every few seconds.
Slow.
Controlled.
Hungry.
The heat built with every foot I crawled.
Soon it wasn't just smoke—it was the distant pulse of fire pushing through the cracks, like the ground itself was preparing to erupt.
If I didn't find a new way down...
I'd be cooked alive inside the earth.
I moved faster.
Vision blurred.
Throat burning.
Flesh peeling at the edges of my knuckles.
I slid through a tight bend—and then the floor gave out.
A sudden drop.
No time to react.
I fell—ten feet, maybe more—and landed hard on my side.
Agony spiked through my ribs again.
This time, I couldn't hold the scream.
It ripped out of me like it had been waiting.
And above?
Silence.
Then…
Footsteps again.
Closer.
I dragged myself to the wall, clutching my side, biting down on my sleeve to stay quiet.
But it was too late.
I'd made noise.
And the monsters had heard it.
They were coming.
And I was too broken to fight.
Too slow to run.
Too weak to climb.
All I had left was hope they wouldn't find the hole…
…or if they did—
That Nyxia would catch me when I fell.