Slow Hollows Novels & Stories

Because I’ll be the one to teach her. To break her open to it. And by the time we’re done, she won’t just walk through this land. She’ll own it. * * * The edge of the Hollow is quiet. Too quiet. The birds don’t sing here. The wind pulls in strange directions, like it doesn’t know which way to go. Even the trees lean just slightly away from the old burial site—as if something inside the earth breathes wrong. By the time we reach the place, the light’s gone low. The sun dips behind the western ridge, and the sky bleeds gold into gray.

“It’s like the forest is scared.” Kael tightened his grip on his sword. “Forests don’t get scared.” Lena didn’t correct him this time. Because they all knew better now. They walked slowly, every step deliberate. The deeper they went, the darker it became, though the sky above remained pale and open. The light simply refused to reach the ground. Like it was being swallowed. Then they saw it. The Hollow. It wasn’t a pit. Not exactly. It was a circle where nothing existed.

The Hollow sang at dawn. It wasn’t a melody made by mouths or instruments—it was bone-deep, a rumble that rose through stone and soul alike. Lilly felt it before she heard it, a vibration in the soles of her feet that climbed into her chest like a second heartbeat.

LYRA The Hollow does not celebrate. That’s the first thing I understand as the council’s voices fracture behind us and the city exhales like something wounded but not yet dead. There is no triumph in the ground beneath my feet. No warmth. No reassurance. Only gravity. The Hollow pulls—not forward, not down, but inward. Toward a center that has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with cost. Cain feels it too. I know by the way his steps slow. By the way his shoulders square, not in dominance, but in readiness.

The silver light beneath her skin dimmed to a soft glow. “Ready?” she asked. He glanced back once, toward the Hollow. The gold veins threading the stone seemed quieter now, content, or waiting. “As we’ll ever be.” When they started down the northern trail, the wind picked up, carrying the scent of winter and something darker beneath it. Far behind them, deep within the Hollow, the fissure they’d left behind pulsed once more. Something vast shifted below the stone, like a heartbeat answering their departure. And in the faintest whisper that wasn’t the wind, the Deep murmured, soft, pleased, patient.

Even the wolves pacing alongside the caravan moved with ears low and fur bristled. “Stay sharp,” Kael whispered, his hand never straying far from the hilt of his blade. “This fog isn’t just weather, it's a warning.” As they reached the base of the Highland slope, the fog parted abruptly. Like a mouth opening. They entered. The Hollow Basin was a wound in the land. A perfect circle of blackened earth, ringed by ancient stones etched with runes that shimmered faintly under the red sky. At its center was a spiraling pit, no bottom in sight, filled with a humming sound that was neither alive nor mechanical. It simply *was.*

Dawn at Hollow Creek tasted like metal. The creek itself wasn’t pretty. People liked to talk about neutral grounds like moonlit glades and sacred stone rings and “place of peace.” Hollow Creek wasn’t that. It was a shallow cut in the land where water slid slow over black rock. Frost-killed scrub hugged the banks. Tree roots jutted out like ribs. Mist crouched low to the ground and didn’t rise, like it didn’t trust the air. The land felt stripped. Claimed and unclaimed at the same time. A place everyone said belonged to no one and everyone, which in wolf terms meant “no one will admit to owning the mess that’s about to happen here.”

He had never seen someone like Jill—stubborn, pitiful, yet full of aggression, like a fragile flower. After that day, Jill became completely fixated on the peach tree. She practically ate, lived, and slept next to it, afraid that something might happen if she were to take her eyes off it even for a moment. I didn’t know exactly when it started, but I began to notice Noah frequently watching Jill through the study window. Jill had unsettled his heart. When he returned to me, his collar often had suspicious lipstick marks. Perhaps at that time, Noah hadn’t fully betrayed me yet—he was just brushing the edges of infidelity.

From the depths came a dim, unearthly light that threw unsettling shadows on the nearby rocks. Zara stated, quietly yet firmly, "We camp here tonight." "We're going in at first light." Too tired to protest, Kael and Elara nodded. The Secrets of the Hollow They went down into the Black Hollow the following morning. With each step, the air became thicker and colder, and the dim light revealed odd carvings on the walls, patterns and symbols that appeared to move and writhe when viewed from the corner of the eye. With his fingers never far from his weapon, Kael mumbled, "This place gives me the creeps."

I answered, opening the files Kevin gave me last time. “I think we could still boost it at a hundred percent,” Kevin spoke. “But I need your opinion and approval on this.” He clicked on the presentation he created. “We still have time to promote this, and my team was thinking about opening the portal this year.” His presentation slide showed a picture of the famous large rock formation on the lake that showed the large opening like a doorway believed to be the portal to the hell and convergence of the undead for many years. Looking at it closely, the hole looked like an open mouth of a giant’s head resting on the ground.