The Hollow King Stirs

The laughter beneath the manor rolled through the floorboards like distant thunder.

Low.

Ancient.

Satisfied.

Every villager beyond the standing stones heard it.

Torches shook in trembling hands. One man whispered a prayer under his breath while another stumbled backward into the mud. Even Father Matthias went pale beneath the rain.

The sound was wrong.

Too deep to belong to any living throat.

Eleanor felt it in her teeth.

In her bones.

The thing beneath Blackwood House was waking slowly.

And it was listening.

Another laugh echoed upward through the manor foundations.

Then silence.

Alaric’s expression darkened instantly.

“Go.”

The word cracked through the storm like a whip.

The villagers recoiled.

But Father Matthias remained rooted in place, water dripping from the hood of his soaked cloak.

“It’s already reaching through the mountain,” the priest shouted over the rain. “People are disappearing.”

The shadows around Alaric stirred violently.

“That is not your concern.”

Eleanor turned sharply toward him. “Not our concern?”

His jaw tightened immediately.

Wrong thing to say.

She could feel it through the bond.

Stress. Fury. Fear.

Not directed at her.

At the situation unraveling around them.

Another rumble shook the manor beneath their feet.

This one stronger.

Cracks spread slowly across the kitchen walls.

Outside, several horses screamed in panic somewhere beyond the trees.

Father Matthias stared directly at Alaric now.

“You cannot keep it buried forever.”

The silence that followed felt dangerous.

Alaric stepped toward the broken window slowly.

The storm bent around him unnaturally, rain curving sideways before it could touch his skin.

“You speak as though you understand what sleeps beneath this house.”

His voice remained calm.

But Eleanor felt the violence simmering underneath it.

The priest hesitated.

Just briefly.

Then:

“I know what your father was.”

The entire forest reacted.

Trees groaned.

The shadows surrounding Blackwood Manor expanded outward in one massive pulse.

Several villagers cried out as their torches extinguished instantly.

Only Father Matthias’s lantern remained lit.

Eleanor’s breath caught.

Alaric stopped moving completely.

The thing beneath the house knocked once from below.

Boom.

Like a heartbeat.

The priest swallowed hard but continued.

“The Hollow King devoured entire kingdoms before the gods chained him beneath the mountain.” His eyes lifted carefully. “And then his son vanished.”

Eleanor looked slowly toward her husband.

Alaric’s face revealed nothing now.

Nothing human at all.

Rain lashed violently through the trees around the manor while darkness gathered at his feet in thick rolling waves.

“He should have killed me when I was born,” Alaric said quietly.

The words hit Eleanor like ice water.

Father Matthias’s expression tightened painfully.

“You were a child.”

“No.” Alaric’s silver eyes shifted toward the priest. “I was hungry.”

The air in the kitchen turned deathly cold.

Eleanor stared at him.

He had never spoken about his childhood.

Not once.

She suddenly realized why.

Another tremor shook the manor.

This time something massive shifted beneath the house.

The villagers panicked immediately.

Several backed away from the standing stones.

One dropped his weapon entirely.

And from deep below—

A voice rose again.

Not speaking.

Singing.

Ancient words echoed through the foundations in a language Eleanor did not understand but somehow felt inside her skull.

The wards throughout Blackwood House flared violently in response.

Alaric moved instantly.

“Inside. Now.”

Eleanor barely had time to step back before the standing stones surrounding the property exploded with silver light.

A shockwave tore through the forest.

The villagers screamed.

And something enormous beneath the mountain began trying to climb upward.