Hollow City The Graphic Novel Novels & Stories

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.

"Does that mean something?" I think about Delara's room. The records. The maps on the shelves that she has been keeping for forty years. The record of what the city is. The first maps were made in the building where the Hollowing has been living. The Hollowing moved into a space that was designed, before anything else, to *know the city.* "It means something," I say. "I thought it might." He is quiet for a moment. "If it's reclaimed — properly — and rebuilt as something that belongs to the city rather than something that is in the city against its nature—"

The sky looked sick again, always moving and changing like it couldn't decide what color it wanted to be. I'd spent the night on the roof of the apartment building, barricaded in by a rusted door and a couple of metal pipes. The Hollowed had wandered below for hours, circling the street like sharks, they didn't sleep, didn't tire and didn't stop. When dawn or whatever passed for dawn had came, they just drifted away, following the pull of something I couldn't see. I hadn't slept much either every sound made me jump and every creak felt like a heartbeat that wasn't mine. Now, with my backpack slung over one shoulder and the knife tucked into my belt, I stared at the city stretched beneath me

“Piano. Something slow. I think you played it once.” “I did. Before Eidolon, I taught for a while.” “That makes sense,” he said softly. “There’s something about your hands. Like they know both creation… and destruction.” That brought a tight laugh to my throat. “You don’t forget some things.” He didn’t answer, but when our fingers brushed as I handed him the canteen, he didn’t pull away. Small miracles. The Hollow was a concrete scar in the mountains. Once, it had relayed global signals through an array of underground servers. Now, it was dead—except for the chamber Paladin had marked in red ink. There, behind layers of steel and rock, lay a terminal unlike any I’d seen before.

“It’s a containment system that turned into a parasite after the kingdom broke it by accident and kept feeding it fear for centuries.” Jax let out a short breath. “That is the worst possible interpretation of anything ever.” And when it finally appeared beneath the collapsing structures, it didn’t look like anything we had prepared for. Theo reached out slightly. “Raven—” But Marek stopped him. “Don’t,” he said quietly because he understood what we were watching. The Hollow screamed. Like reality itself was tearing in reverse. The underground city collapsed around it, archives burning, sealed chambers breaking open, old councils and old lies finally losing shape under heat that didn’t negoti

Still, I know I’ll be harder to track here than I would in the forest. Of course, the city comes with its own dangers—dangers like the Ravagers. But at least they aren’t hunting for me. I have a good lead on my pack, but I’m not going to be able to keep running forever. The important thing now is to get to a place of safety—somewhere I can hunker down and hide. Somewhere they won’t find me. The city is full of places like that. Hollowed-out buildings that used to be homes and businesses before everything went to hell. Places that have sat empty for decades, completely useless in the modern world.

It was a wound. The sky above was gray and rotting, and the air shimmered with a pale, golden mist that clung to her skin like grief. Black trees stretched into the horizon like skeletal hands, their bark wet with sap that smelled of iron and burnt sage. Riven came through behind her, and the Gate sealed itself shut. They were alone. But not for long. “The Hollow senses you,” he said. “Is that good?” “No.” They walked in silence, through the pathless land where the ground cracked and pulsed beneath their feet.

\[CONTAINMENT FAILED. Good. High on the fractured horizon, something changed. The far edge of the hybrid city rippled—the place where the Graveyard’s ink rivers had bled into the neon streets. The dark smear of that horizon jerked upward, as if someone had grabbed the line of it and lifted. Ink pooled there, thickening, coalescing. Not into a river. Into shelves.

I swallow hard and close my eyes until the room steadies again. Where am I. The walls are concrete and bare. Old paint peeling in strips. There’s graffiti on one side, faded and layered, like people kept coming back here to leave pieces of themselves behind. Names. Symbols. Words I can’t fully read. Black Hollow. The name comes to me out of nowhere and my stomach drops.