The wind howled like a living thing, tearing through the broken trees as Orin stepped deeper into the ruins. The ground felt wrong—soft in places, brittle in others—like the earth itself had been hollowed out. He could still feel the echo of that voice, the one that had drawn him here, clinging to his thoughts like a parasite.
The air was heavy with the stench of rot, though there were no corpses in sight. Every breath scraped at his lungs. He passed a shattered archway, its stones blackened with something far older than fire. It wasn't soot—it pulsed faintly, like dying embers trapped in stone.
Orin…
The sound slithered into his ears. He turned sharply, but the path behind him was empty. Shadows moved unnaturally, bending away from the dim light of his lantern. His grip on the handle tightened.
When he reached the heart of the ruins, he saw it: a pit, wide and gaping, its edges lined with jagged shards of obsidian. The air around it swirled with a chill that sank into bone. As he leaned closer, the blackness below seemed to move—not like water, but like something alive, breathing.
Then, from within that darkness, came pale hands. Dozens of them, stretching upward, fingers twitching and curling. They were not made of flesh, but of something waxy and brittle, like they had been carved from bone.
One of the hands brushed his chest. His heart missed a beat. Then another.
The whisper deepened.
"Give yourself to the hollow…"
And before Orin could step back, the ground gave way beneath him.
He fell.
Not through air, but through something thicker—something that clung to his skin and tried to seep into his mouth, his eyes, his mind. The pale hands followed him down, and in the endless black, a shape began to take form.
It had no face, only a hollow where its features should be. Yet somehow, it was smiling.