The tavern fire crackled low, embers pulsing like the last heartbeat of a dying thing. A hush had fallen over the gathered patrons, their mugs of dark ale untouched, their breath held as old Elias spoke.
“None enter Black Hollow and return unchanged,” he murmured, eyes shadowed beneath his heavy brow. “The village was swallowed by the forest a hundred years past, and still it lingers, a wound that festers in the belly of the world.”
An incredulous scoff came from the corner, where a hooded woman sipped her drink. “Fairy tales to frighten drunkards.”
Elias fixed her with a weary gaze. “Fairy tales do not leave bones in the trees.”
A flicker of something—doubt, curiosity—passed through the woman’s expression. She lowered her hood, revealing raven-dark hair and piercing, silver-gray eyes. “I have spent years chasing whispers of places that should not be. Black Hollow calls to me.”
A murmur rippled through the tavern. Elias only nodded. “Then may the gods have mercy on you.”
Sienna walked the path at dawn, the map Elias had drawn folded in her pocket. The road to Black Hollow was half-forgotten, nature swallowing the stone and dirt, the scent of damp earth thick in the air. The trees grew closer, their skeletal branches tangled like grasping fingers. The deeper she walked, the quieter the world became. No birds. No wind. Just silence, pressing and oppressive.
The first sign of the village came in the form of a rusted lantern post, leaning at an angle as if exhausted by time. Then the houses appeared—hunched and rotting, their thatched roofs collapsing inward, their windows hollow sockets peering into the void. The village square lay ahead, and at its center stood a well, its stones slick with moisture despite the dryness of the air.
Sienna stepped closer. A whisper curled around her, thin as mist.
“Thirsty?”
She froze. The voice was neither male nor female, neither old nor young. It was a sound that slithered into her bones.
“Who speaks?” she called.
No answer. Only the whispering wind. She approached the well, peering into its black depths. A ripple disturbed the surface far below, though no stone had been cast. Then another. And another. As if something was waking up.
The sun had fallen behind the trees when Sienna turned from the well, unease curling in her gut. She stepped toward the nearest house, pushing open the door with a groan of rusted hinges. Inside, a table stood set for a meal that had never been eaten. Mold crept along plates of long-decayed food. A wooden chair lay broken on the ground.
And then she saw them.
Figures, no more than shadows, lining the walls. Still. Watching.
“Who are you?” she whispered, fingers tightening on the dagger at her hip.
The tallest of them moved—not walked, but shifted, as though the space around it bent to its will. “We are the Hollowed.”
Sienna forced herself to stay still. “What happened here?”
“We drank.”
She frowned. “From the well?”
A pause. Then a slow nod. “The water remembers. The water takes. We remain.”
The candle on the table flickered, though there was no breeze. A voice, soft as the grave, brushed against her ear.
“Thirsty?”
Panic rose, ice-cold and suffocating. Sienna backed toward the door, her pulse a drumbeat in the stillness. The Hollowed did not follow. They only watched, their blackened eyes filled with knowing.
She ran.
The village blurred past her, skeletal trees clawing at her cloak. The well stood at the center of it all, water whispering in a language older than time. The shadows stretched toward her, reaching, beckoning.
She did not stop.
The road twisted, tangled in darkness, and then—suddenly—light. Moonlight. The scent of the world returned—earth, leaves, the distant tang of rain. She stumbled forward, gasping, the oppressive silence lifting like a veil.
She did not look back.
When she returned to the tavern, the patrons fell silent. Elias only met her gaze, sadness in his weathered face.
“You heard the water, didn’t you?” he asked.
Sienna shuddered. “Yes.”
“Then Black Hollow will never leave you.”
She felt it even now, the whisper coiling in the back of her mind.
Thirsty?
She swallowed hard, reaching for her mug of ale—but found she could not drink.
The water had already claimed her.
The End.
