Book Hollowed Out Novels & Stories

I just mumble back to him. I'm not sure how long after he left I woke up fully, but the side he sleeps in is cold, so he must have left hours ago. Turning, I see the paper on the bed. I smile and reach for it. Turning it over, my eyes widen. The sketch shows a person with the centre of their body hollowed out and empty. There's no longer a heart there. I read the poem. Hollowed out Empty within Nothing lingers Nothing lives Cold spreads quickly

I stayed at the cemetery all night. … I got home the next day around noon. The swing in the yard had been cut down and replaced with an easel. The pond my daughter loved had been filled in. The red goldfish she raised were now stuffed specimens for Pete's paintings. When she saw me frozen in the yard, Jody's face flushed with guilt. She grabbed my hand.

My heartbeat had not yet steadied and I could still feel my arms vibrate by my side. Today's episode of healing mister Holloway was the scariest I had ever encountered in all my life. Face to face with what could have turned to homicide. I wiped my sweat from my forehead with the back of my palm and headed back to the kitchen. Water, I needed water.

Then I hit a hollow so wide, it feels like the world forgot to finish it. At the center: a wound. Not bleeding—draining. Something used to be here. Something that took all the tension, all the leftover force, and sort of leveled it out. Now it’s gone. Something huge presses at the edge of the hollow. No face. No real thoughts. Just hunger—patient and endless. Not evil, just… not us. This is the debt, the silver whispers. I wake up gasping. Feels like that emptiness is stuck under my ribs.

“Mrrrp.” Mason froze. ⸻ Another. Closer. “Mrrrp.” ⸻ The empty village flickered. ⸻ Then… “MEEEEEEH!” ⸻ Mason almost laughed. ⸻ The Hollow’s voice sharpened. “They leave.” ⸻ “Prrrp!” ⸻ The illusion cracked. ⸻ Mason looked down. Green vines pushed through the dirt around his boots. ⸻ Bramble. ⸻

Kaela stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching him. Finally— "You gonna tell me what that was back there?" she asked. His jaw flexed. “You don’t want to know.” “Try me.” Silence. Then— “My father called it the Hollowborn.” Kaela stepped in. Slowly. “That doesn’t sound fake at all.” “He said it used to be human. Once. Maybe.” That made her stop. Cold. “What do you mean maybe?” Ronan looked up. His eyes were flat. “I mean something took what we were and broke it. Cracked it open and filled it with something else. Rage. Hunger. Emptiness. It doesn’t shift. It becomes.”

LYRA The Hollow does not celebrate. That’s the first thing I understand as the council’s voices fracture behind us and the city exhales like something wounded but not yet dead. There is no triumph in the ground beneath my feet. No warmth. No reassurance. Only gravity. The Hollow pulls—not forward, not down, but inward. Toward a center that has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with cost. Cain feels it too. I know by the way his steps slow. By the way his shoulders square, not in dominance, but in readiness.

he said flatly, “but we found the Hollow. And it’s not empty.” Lyla pulled away, breath ragged, voice sharper than steel. “Show me.” Ten minutes later They stood at the edge of a jagged, narrow gorge. The opening looked like a wound in the ground, pulsing with a faint red light. Lyla’s boots crunched against bone and frost. Jonas pointed down. “It’s not just a cave. It’s alive.” Eli stepped beside her. “Whatever’s in there it’s calling to someone.” “Not me,” Lyla said, tightening her grip on the blade at her hip. “And that’s a problem.”

Its eyes burned like molten obsidian. The ritual ended with a sound like a crack of thunder inside the earth. Kane opened his eyes, and for a heartbeat, I didn’t recognize him. His gaze was still his… but rimmed with shadow. His skin seemed to drink in the light. Then the Hollow came. It tore itself from the fissure, massive and terrible, a shape of shifting stone and shadow bound together by a core of blinding hunger. Its eyes, that’s if they could be called that locked on me, and I felt its intent as clearly as if it had spoken: I was prey.

The sound built until the hollow shook with it—a den speaking itself back into truth. The route convulsed. The towering figure in the hollow staggered as if the names themselves had become blades. Brine burst from the earth in black sheets. The hidden lines under the house, the nursery, the old archive, the sanctuary remains, all lit at once in jagged red veins and then began to fail. Ty’s witness locked onto me with merciless steadiness as I reached down into the pulsing structure under the hollow and tore. Not flesh. Not stone. Connection. The old path screamed as it came apart.