Hollowing Souls Novels & Stories

“Thanatos, Death incarnate. One of many demons who walk the Earth searching for souls to collect. Otherwise known as The Grim Reaper. There are many who fill this role but none so well-suited as the son of Azrael.” “The son of Azrael?” Ru repeated. Of course, the words “Grim Reaper” had also stood out to her. Living in a town named Reaper’s Hollow, they were all well aware of the legend of the man with the black cloak and the scythe, but Thanatos looked nothing like the bony depictions she’d seen in every other picture of The Grim Reaper she’d ever seen.

The Still-Lands didn’t just absorb sound; they absorbed hope. As the Silas-puppet unhinged its jaw, the hundreds of Hollowed behind him began to vibrate, a collective humming that set my teeth on edge. It was the sound of a vacuum trying to fill itself with our very souls. "Form a circle!" Kaelen roared.

Lillia voiced out firmly, and this time, Anubis met her gaze. “You were blocked by Azazel, the gatekeeper of The Hollow because you were alive. The Hollow is the realm of the dead. It is home to all things vile and evil, and if they smell you, they will latch onto you and will not stop until you are dead.” Anubis lifted the bowl and handed it to Lillia again. “Drink…” she repeated coldly. “…if you want to save your friend.” Lillia swallowed. Slowly, her fingers stretched and grabbed the bowl from Anubis but she did not bring it to her mouth.

**KELLY THOMPSON'S POV** The moon's corpse left a void in the sky, a starless wound that bled silence. In its absence, the laws of the world frayed. Rivers ran backward. Wolves gave birth to stillborn shadows. The plague-veins in Eden's arms lay dormant but restless, a sleeping storm neither he nor Isolde could name. The packs called it *the Hollowing*-a sickness of the soul, a hunger for what the moon had taken.

“ The next game is called the game of Echoes.” Luke announced, standing on the makeshift ring where the five used to practice fighting. “Each competitor will go through the East portal which leads to the world of the hollows. For the sake of those who do not know,” he continued. “ Hollows are phantoms that can see guilt, pain, rage, jealousy, and envy. They can also materialize into your greatest fears, your deepest desires and the things that haunt you when you sleep.

Eventually, the two halves will become whole… with a single intimate act. Based on a nosey young girl’s questions on the matter, it was found that soulmates could feel each other when in the same vicinity. A beacon, of sorts. This beacon draws them closer until they find each other. This pulsating warmth, that thumps relentlessly in the chest of the pairs,… is an encouraging nudge to follow the bond to their destined mate. This is often used to draw two souls together across distance, but it does not dim after this initial meeting. It grows stronger until one half of the pair can find the other half—no matter where they are. Although this warmth is able to be ignored, the loss of warmth leav

To my surprise, the demon laughed and the spat a black sticky substance at the soul. The black substance stopped within the soul at the area the heart used to be. The soul tried to get it out but it couldn't. I looked at the demon and it breathed in and then out. Suddenly blood started piercing out of the demons jaw and it stared directly at the place where the black substance was. It was only then I had realized the kind of demon I had summoned. This is a demon that create something in a human's soul, that little hope, that little good, and then when the humans are happy, it would squeeze down to bits what that human loved the most.

I replied, my fingers digging into the rough stone as a massive, gray wolf with milky white eyes and a jaw that hung loosely from its hinges stepped into the light of the cave entrance. ​"They’re Hollowed, they’re what happens when the shadows we saw at the gate catch a wolf and peel the soul right out of the skin, leaving nothing but a hungry shell that doesn't feel pain and doesn't stop until it’s shredded to pieces," Kael explained, his voice flat and grim as three more of the creatures scrambled over the rocks, their movements jerky and unnatural.

Before he could respond, the hall went quiet. Not gradually. All at once. Next thing she knew. The Hallowed Hall was the kind of room that made you understand why certain spaces were built large not for capacity. Stone arches rose sixty feet overhead. and the modern lighting suspended within them managed the remarkable feat of feeling both cold and warm simultaneously. The floor was dark marble. The seating was arranged in a wide semicircle facing a raised dais at the front. and every seat was filled with vampire students to the left Nora had been cataloguing the room since she sat down.

It rolled to a stop at my feet, his sightless eyes fixed in a final expression of terror. "The Coven is bored with games, Elara," Selene said, her eyes glowing with a black, oily flame. "The Eternal Eclipse requires a sacrifice of Hallowed blood. And since you’ve been so kind as to gather all the rejects in one place... I think I’ll just take everyone." The black mist began to pour into the clearing, and from it emerged the Coven’s true army: The Hollowed. They were wolves whose souls had been completely removed, replaced by the shadows of the Blighted One.