Hollowed Minds Novels & Stories

“Those were only sentries. When the Hollow truly reaches for you, it won’t send something you can’t kill. It’ll send something you don’t want to.” Her breath stilled. “Meaning?” He hesitated. “Faces you know. Voices you trust. The Hollow feeds on hesitation.” She stared at him. “So you’re telling me my enemies are going to look like my friends?” “Yes,” Ragnar said simply. “And if you hesitate, you won’t live to regret it.” Before she could answer, the war room door banged open. One of the scouts stumbled in, eyes wide.

Love. Death Distance Time The Hollow feeds on those truths Twisting them. Deepening them. And suddenly I understand what it really is Not merely hunger. Not merely entropy. Despair The belief that connection is meaningless because it ends. My knees weaken slightly The void presses harder around me. Memories surface painfully Every goodbye. Every loss. Every fear of abandonment I’ve ever had. The Hollow pushes deeper “You will lose them.” Theodore laughing. Aurelion smiling softly. Vireon’s calm eyes.

And the cairn-ring hums. Approval. The seven dead before me — six of whom went mad, one of whom is sleeping in a trench off Saragossa half-mad — are pleased that I have eaten. The pearl is pleased. The Hollow is pleased. The thing under the Hollow's floor — I feel it for the first time directly — pulses once, slow and considered. Even it is pleased. I am not pleased.

Because he hadn't heard her laugh in five years, and he wanted to hear it for the rest of his life. Morning arrived quickly. Everyone gathered in the courtyard. Eryx stood beside his dragon. Morwen carried several satchels filled with herbs. Selena held Luna protectively. Queen Lyssandra looked uneasy. Caelan remained unusually quiet. Killian adjusted his sword. "Explain this Hollow Realm again." Morwen sighed. "It exists between worlds. A place created by forgotten gods. A prison. A sanctuary. A nightmare." Kael frowned. "Very helpful." Morwen ignored him. "The Hollow Realm feeds on memories. It searches your heart. It finds your regrets. Then turns them into monsters."

At last, the vehicle broke free from the encircling horde and arrived at an open, abandoned quarry. "This is it." I snapped back into focus, carrying Jude out of the vehicle. Under my guidance, the energy within Jude finally found an outlet. A transparent ripple spread outward from us. The surrounding space warped, folded, and then violently collapsed inward. Every zombie, along with the pursuing brute, was dragged into a black spatial rift the moment they touched the wave. The awakening succeeded. Jude collapsed into unconsciousness from exhaustion. I let out a long breath. By the time we returned to Vanguard Base, it was already deep into the night.

"Then maybe it weren’t the love that got her. Maybe it was the knowing." Atlas flipped through more pages. "Here. She wrote about a thing she saw. She called it The Hollowing. Said it starts slow. First dreams. Then seein' things. Then feelin' like you ain't in your own skin. Last part? You start forgettin' who you are." "I’ve felt that," Luce whispered. "This mornin', I looked in the mirror and forgot my own name for a second. Just blinked. It came back, but still... scared me bad."

A kitchen, huge TV lounge decorated with a wall TV screen that was attached to multiple gadgets of gaming consoles, music players, home theaters and much more. The bedrooms were decorated with glass walls, covered with thick curtains to prevent any eye watching the activities going on inside. It had a terrace too, facing two sides of the road with a corner. It was a home to the three of them. They were practically joined hip to hip, inseparable and insatiable. They were the HEART MIND and SOUL of each other, since childhood, throughout their high school, till now, excelled in their respective fields, yet madly in love with each other. Sounds crazy!

Jade The Hollow was not a place. It was the negative space between realities, the echo of every story left unfinished, every promise whispered and almost broken. It breathed in the dark and shimmered at the edge of memory, waiting for someone brave—or desperate—enough to cross its threshold. It was a feeling—weightless, endless, memory-drenched and constantly shifting. Sometimes it felt like falling through water and sometimes like standing in sunlight that never quite warmed the skin. Time here was elastic, stretched thin over the bones of longing.

A mist-walker born of whispers and midnight mist, belonging nowhere, belonging to no one. The Hollow was the only world I had ever known. A sprawling fortress of black stone and mist-clung corridors deep within a forest older than the oldest gods. To its warriors and noble-born candidates, the Hollow was holy ground. To its servants — those of low birth, half-breeds, mist-born or cursed — it was a prison. To me, it was both.

Then, he left their house to go to his new school with the thought of everything seemed to be pointless now. *** He took a quick glance at his watch. Past one o’clock in the afternoon, the students were asked to proceed to the covered court of their school for a special announcement. This day was no special. He did not understand any slice of the lessons taught by their instructor because he was uninterested. He also had made no effort to talk to others for he thought that that would be pointless. Although some students were initiating a conversation, he had not given any interested rejoinder. It was as if he suddenly felt like he lapsed to a state of mind that everything was pointless now.