Novel & Cerita Hollowed Minds

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.

Marcus hit her with the flat of his forearm and sent her through a glass wall. She did not bleed. She unfolded from the impact like paper. Katherine's jaw tightened. "Possession?" "No," the Hollowsmith said from the rear. He had followed them, though every step seemed to cost him. "Occupation. The Unhollow cannot create bodies. It occupies intervals inside existing ones. It sits in the spaces between intention and action." Marissa jerked upright. Her mouth moved. The voice was the same dark non-sound from the ship. Return.

But instead they both just nodded. “And you’re in mount Olympus and what used to be Zeus’s office before scarlet decided to attack them” Astraeus continued “Not Scarlet her wolf” Selene added. I raised my brow at her. “Scarlet has locked her within her own mind like a prison as a way to ignore the outside world and shield herself from all the consequences of killing Saige I believe.” She said in a worried tone. “I just fear that if she stays in there for too long scarlet as we know her will vanish into the darkest corners of her mind and never return to the surface only leaving her wolf to rein entirely alone.”

She was no longer walking but being carried, her steps echoing across moments that had already passed, reverberating through lives that once burned bright and now whispered in cinders. Arthur's voice, though faint and tethered to the surface, lingered in her mind like a thread of warmth. He was alive. That truth pulsed within her ribs even as time warped around her. For every breath she took in this strange realm, something in her changed—was revealed. The Hollow did not just show her memories. It demanded she feel them.

“I know you will not kill me, Ru. Which is why, when the time comes, it will make it so much easier for me to end you.” Staring into his green eyes for a long moment, Ru said nothing at all, only tried to penetrate behind the façade into his soul. There was an emptiness there unlike anything she’d ever seen before. He was hollow, broken. As she continued to look into his eyes, Nat slowly faded away until she was left standing on the mountaintop all alone.

After everyone showered, which got delayed because Ife was happy to be able to to get ravished by all of her mates at the same time, they enjoyed a candle light dinner on the balcony. Duskin updated her and the twins on his findings concerning Jacob and Esime. They had gone to another realm to hide out, one that wasn’t used freely and came with a steep price. They sacrificed a part of a soul every time they entered this realm and they most likely were using souls from the growing list of missing people. Ife suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling of doom headed their way. She didn’t know if it was for the pup or pups in her womb. If it was because of the battle ahead of them with Jacob and Esi

She felt isolated, but safe at the same time. She sat there on the steps for a while just trying to calm and center herself. Things had been so off lately. Almost nothing made any sense to her anymore. She had heard that growing up was hard to do. But the things that had happened in the last twenty-four plus hours just took the cake. She didn't want to think about anything really. So she focused completely on clearing her mind. She sat there for a long while just staring at the moon. Eventually, the damp air made her feel chilled to the bone and she began to shiver.

Sure, I might've been silently roasting them in my head, but I swear my lips never moved. "You said I was—beep, beep, beep, beep—" Alicia stammered, visibly flustered. I gave her a perplexed look. "What's wrong with your language settings? Did your system crash?" Harvey jumped in, continuing where she left off. "You just said—beep, beep, beep, beep, beep—" 'Oh, great. Does the Stone Family have some kind of contagious disease? Should I make a run for it before it's too late?'

But the habit of caring about him hadn’t faded yet. “Almost there,” Fen said. “You keep saying that.” “I keep meaning it.” Then the trees opened up, and I stopped. The Hollow wasn’t what I expected. I’d pictured something gloomy, like the rest of the Growth, full of rot, murk, and things with strange eyes. But this was different. The trees here were old, older than anything I’d seen, with trunks as wide as houses and roots rising from the ground in arches tall enough to walk under. In the center was a pool, still and black, perfectly round, as if someone had pressed a coin into the earth. The air shivered with a faint hum, so low I felt it more than heard it, vibrating somewhere in my bones.

The pressure it carried weakened. The cold thinned. The emptiness cracked. It stepped forward again— And collapsed. Not violently. Not explosively. It simply… fell apart. Like a shadow losing its source of light. The others followed. One by one. Breaking. Dissolving. Fading into nothing. Silence fell over the Hollow. Real silence this time. No pressure. No presence. No watching. Gone. --- No one moved. No one spoke. Because we all felt it. Not relief.