The ground was no longer still.
The soil around the cabin quivered as if breathing, and the trees—so long protectors of Silas's cursed domain—now leaned inward like spies reporting to something older.
Evelyn stood barefoot at the edge of the clearing, her breath catching in her throat. She could feel it. A heartbeat below her feet.
Slow. Rhythmic. Hungry.
---
Silas emerged from the treeline behind her, shirtless and blood-smeared from battle. His golden eyes locked onto her, but for once, he didn't speak. He only looked... tense. Distant. Listening.
"Do you feel it?" she whispered.
He nodded once.
"It's been silent for years," he murmured. "But tonight… the Hollow's waking up."
---
They returned to the cabin in silence. But Evelyn couldn't sleep. Not with the sound of roots stretching beneath the floorboards. It wasn't loud—but it was alive. Every few minutes, she swore she could hear them creak like bones shifting underground.
She wandered toward the stone hearth, reaching for her journal.
Instead, her fingers brushed something cold and metallic.
A ring.
Carved from blackwood and fused with tarnished silver, it pulsed faintly with heat as she lifted it. Inside the band was a single word, scorched in runic letters she didn't recognize.
But Silas did.
He was behind her before she even turned.
> "Where did you find that?"
"It was under the fireplace stone. What does it mean?"
His face darkened. "It means the seal is broken."
---
The Hollow hadn't always been cursed.
Long before Silas walked the forest, it was home to a small, secretive people—tribes that believed the trees held spirits, and those spirits demanded blood to keep balance.
Every generation, they sacrificed a child to the earth.
But then came settlers—men who burned forests and paved rivers. They mocked the rituals. They hunted the guardians.
Until the forest fought back.
They say a woman, half-witch, half-goddess, cursed them with her dying breath.
> "From love, let monsters rise.
From death, let hunger awaken.
Let the roots remember your sins."
And so they did.
The trees rotted. The soil soured. And the Hollow demanded new offerings—every ten years, a girl of "pure blood."
> Not virgins.
Hearts untouched by hate.
---
Silas had been the last of the forest's original hunters. A protector of balance. A man who fell in love with one of the cursed women sent to die.
He refused to let her be taken.
So he made a deal with the Hollow.
> "Take me instead. Chain me here.
I will carry the curse.
I will be your beast."
The forest accepted.
But it never forgot what he tried to save.
---
Beneath the soil, under the blackwood trees, something was shifting.
Not just vines.
Not just memory.
But a creature that had once lived in shadow and myth.
The Hunger.
Silas had held it at bay for over two hundred years, feeding it just enough with fear, blood, and his own suffering. But when Evelyn touched him—when her lips met his—something snapped.
She wasn't just a woman.
She was hope.
And the Hollow hated hope.
---
Evelyn sat by the fire, the black ring burning in her palm. She looked at Silas, his head bowed, chest rising and falling with restrained fury.
"What happens now?" she asked.
His voice was a rasp. "Now it tries to take you from me."
"How?"
> "It will use your dreams.
Your blood.
Your memories.
It will find every crack in your soul and fill it with rot."
Evelyn looked into his eyes and saw the truth:
He wasn't scared for himself.
He was terrified for her.
---
Outside, the first scream echoed through the trees.
But it wasn't human.
It was deep, guttural, vibrating the very roots of the Hollow.
And when Evelyn stepped to the door, she saw it—far off, across the ridge, at the base of the ancient black tree.
The earth had split.
> And something was crawling out.
---