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One hundred and forty-two winters ago...
Snow crushed the mountains in silence, blanketing the cabins of the original Duskwind settlers in pale death. The year was 1883. Famine had come early, cruel and absolute.
Twelve families remained. Half of them had lost children. Livestock had vanished — taken by wolves or starved. The nearest town was seven days' walk through frozen wilderness. They were trapped. And they were hungry.
On the third week of starvation, Old Reverend Halberd summoned them to the chapel.
"We are not animals," he had said, voice hoarse, eyes sunken. "We are men of God. And yet God does not feed us. So we must ask — is hunger a sin?"
That night, the first body was taken from the frozen stream.
It had been accidental, the Reverend claimed. The girl had slipped, cracked her skull. No one killed her. But when the bones were found picked clean in the hearths of three families, no one spoke.
The second was no accident.
They called it The First Table.
Ten elders sat in a circle around a bonfire in the snow. Ten carved bowls. One long slab of cedar wood laid between them like an altar. They had drawn lots. The sacrifice was a drunk, a thief, someone no one would mourn.
They ate in silence. No one cried.
The snow melted two days later.
Spring came early.
They called it mercy.
They called it a miracle.
And from that day forward, every decade, on the coldest night of the tenth winter, ten would feed the Hollow.
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Present Day
Emma snapped awake, the journal she had borrowed from the town library still open on her lap. Dust clung to the old pages, handwritten by the first mayor of Duskwind Hollow.
She reread the line again:
"Ten seats. Ten names. The hunger must be satisfied or the Hollow starves."
It wasn't a metaphor. It was a ledger. The next page had names.
Some were from old towns, others listed only as "drifter," "widow," "merchant from Pinesgate." And each entry ended the same way: Returned to the Hollow.
Returned. Not buried. Not mourned.
Consumed.
Emma's hands trembled. These weren't just rumors. This was ritual. Religion. The entire town built upon a foundation of blood and bone.
She closed the book gently, as if afraid to wake the spirits still trapped inside.
Then she noticed something new: a fresh insert — a loose page slid between the binding. Inked in a different hand. Newer.
Ten lines.
Nine of them were already filled out. Names of travelers. A teacher passing through. A social worker from the next county. A hitchhiker who never checked out of the inn.
The tenth line was blank.
Emma stared at the empty space, a chill running down her spine.
Then, slowly, the truth slid into place like a blade behind her ribs.
The tenth was always the one who found them.
And this time, it was her.