Hollow Stones Novels & Stories

“What?” Her eyes stayed fixed on the dark creature. “It remembers the Moonborn.” The ship fell silent. Even the ocean suddenly felt colder. Gabriel’s expression hardened. “What exactly is that thing?” Lyra answered quietly. “A Hollow.” The name alone sounded wrong. Ancient. Dangerous. Trevor slowly raised his hand. “I don’t like the name already.” “Nobody asked,” Cassian muttered. Lyra stepped closer to the ship edge carefully. “The Hollows were created during the first Moonborn war.”

“They’ve found us.” A Hollow One stepped into view at the cave’s entrance, its skeletal form draped in tattered robes that fluttered like wisps of shadow. Its eyes burned like twin coals in the gathering dusk, and it let out a piercing screech that reverberated off the stone walls. Without hesitation, it charged, its claws outstretched toward them. Caden met it head-on, his sword clashing against its bone-like talons in a shower of sparks. Torren grabbed his daggers, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his leg, and flanked the creature, his blades darting in to seek weak points in its unnatural defenses.

This is her house now so she needed to get used to all of it's unfamiliarities. Alicia immediately lashed her eyes forward where the Stonehedge towered closer and closer making the distance between them shrink so rapidly. For some reason, Alicia kept having a strange feeling about the hedge. Most especially when the Stonehedge kept glimmering with the that color of a brandishing ancient black crystals which has everything medieval clouded around it. Alicia passed the Stonehedge, the strange stone monoliths silhouetted against the horizon and immediately Alicia paused. Something caught her damned interest. The strange stone only exhibits the strange aura once anyone unfamiliar gets closer to

“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.

blonde wood, with an emerald green canopy draped over it. The room screamed royalty. All of the furniture matched the blonde colored wood of the bed. There was a huge armoir on one wall, a vanity with a large ornate mirror behind it, once beautiful rugs adorning the stone floor, and a beautiful chandelier made of what I could only assume was crystal in the center of the ceiling. I walked over to my mother's vanity, and ran my finger over a thick layer of dust. I gasped as the room seemed to spring back to life. "Princess, the castle recognizes your blood signature. It's coming back to life." Gideon told me. I stared at him with wide eyes as the room returned to it's pre-dilapitated state. "

Damn it! I lifted my head, smoothed my disheveled hair with my hands, started the car, and drove away. *** My phone kept ringing incessantly, but my heartbreak left me unable to answer. I arrived at my destination and stepped out of the vehicle. Despite the encroaching darkness and falling snow, I remained indifferent. I craved solitude, away from any disturbances. Fortunately, my GPS was turned off, ensuring my location remained a mystery. I located a parking area and disembarked. Before me stood a massive ebony edifice adorned with the phrase 'Pelican Club' illuminated in blue light.

Sereth said, touching the stone with reverence, “is the Aurel Shard. It fell from the sky before memory began. We built the Hollow around it. Its magic cloaks us, but it demands a price.” Aria shivered. “What kind of price?” Sereth turned, her eyes reflecting the obelisk’s glow. “Life. The Refuge endures because the stone consumes what the world forgets. We feed it names — those who no longer wish to exist.” Kael felt a chill settle in his bones. “And if you stop feeding it?” “Then the Hollow becomes visible again,” Sereth said. “And the Covenant will come.” The weight of her words hung between them like fog. Aria stared into the shimmering depths of the chasm, her voice barely a whisper.

“The Hollow is near.” They crested a ridge, and beyond it, nestled in a glade shrouded in mist and snow, lay ancient ruins. Black stone pillars jutted from the earth like broken teeth. Vines coiled around archways inscribed with runes Lyra couldn’t read, but somehow felt. This was it. The Hollow. A place older than blood, older than Alpha lines, older even than the curse. Kaelen motioned her forward, but paused before crossing the threshold.

Crescent Hollow greeted us like a graveyard. The clearing cracked open through the trees—wide, solemn, eternal. The ring of stones still stood. Worn by rain, scorched by fire, soaked in the blood of those who had come before. Each stone taller than a man. Each one humming with the weight of tradition. This was where thrones were claimed not by words, but by war. I dismounted slowly, boots slamming into the sacred dirt with a jolt that echoed in my chest. Elijah followed, his silence fierce beside me. I looked around, and it was like the Hollow breathed with me—alive and waiting.

“It’s not physical. It’s in his soul.” I thought as much... But unfortunately, that makes it more difficult to even do anything now. A whisper rides in the wind. I don’t know who speaks it first. Maybe one of the old fae who linger at the edges of the battlefield. Maybe one of the dying spirits. "The Hollow has taken him." My blood goes cold. The Hollow. It’s not death, not exactly. It’s the space between, a veil-thin plane where souls are neither here nor gone. Where time frays and memories decay. Where you forget who you are.