Hollowed

Chapter 1

Chapter One

I knew what the red silk meant.

I knew before they dipped it in oil, before they brought the basin to the center of the stone floor, before the eldest among them whispered, “Hold still, daughter.”

I was not her daughter.

And she did not say it like comfort.

The chamber had no windows. Only a hole in the ceiling, far above, where smoke was meant to rise. Where prayers went to die. Where I looked once, and never again. I sat on my knees, naked but for the modest cloth wrapped around my hips, shoulders bare, back arched from the cold. The stone beneath me was not cruel. It was indifferent. It had held hundreds before me.

It would hold hundreds more.

The silence was not empty. It was heavy with breath, with waiting. I could hear the oil thickening as it warmed over the small flame beside the basin. I could smell the ash already stirred into it. Not incense—this wasn’t blessing. This was binding.

I didn’t ask why they chose red. I didn’t ask why they burned the blue robes we had worn for years. I didn’t speak at all. Not because I was obedient. But because I had learned that asking made the hurting worse.

I thought they might hum. Sometimes they did. Low and tuneless. A circle of women pressing sound into our bones so we’d forget what silence was supposed to feel like. But this time, they didn’t.

This time, they were quiet.

A hand gripped my chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just firm enough to tilt my head back. Another hand held the oil. Poured it slow, deliberate, over my forehead. It ran down between my brows, along the bridge of my nose, catching on my lips before sliding to my throat.

“For clarity,” she said.

It stung. The ash. The heat. The indignity.

But I did not flinch.

Another hand. Across my collarbone.

“For silence.”

Oil followed the curve of my neck. Sank into the hollow between my breasts. Crawled like something alive toward my stomach.

A third hand. Pressing low, too low. Palms curved around the bones of my hips, fingers slipping toward the top of my thighs.

“For obedience.”

My skin screamed.

But I didn’t. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

The red silk was brought out last. Drenched. Heavy. Coiled like something dead in the eldest’s arms. She began at my ankles, wrapping tight, winding it up my calves, my knees, my thighs. She paused at my hips, looked at me like I wasn’t supposed to exist, and then wrapped it higher.

Waist. Ribs. Breasts. Shoulders.

She wrapped me like a corpse.

“Stand,” she said.

I did.

The silk clung. The oil made it worse. I felt every breath stretch the fabric. Every inch of me felt touched. Not by hands. By something worse.

Expectation.

I thought maybe, at the end, they would bless me. Speak my name. Give me back some part of myself before they took the rest.

But they didn’t.

They turned away. Opened the doors at the far end of the chamber. Let the cold rush in.

And beyond those doors?—

I saw it.

The chapel.

Already burning.

They didn’t speak when they dragged me from the chamber. My feet slipped on the stone, raw from kneeling, and the moment I hesitated—just once, just one breath too long—a hand gripped the back of my neck.

“Walk,” someone hissed. Not in anger. In finality.

I did.

I walked like a body walks to a grave it dug with its own teeth.

The corridor smelled like mildew and smoke. Damp stone giving way to dry rot. Every step I took sent the red silk dragging behind me, sodden with oil, sticking to the insides of my thighs. My skin itched. Burned. My breath tasted of ash and something worse?—

Like old blood.

I reached for the walls once. Just to steady myself. The nun behind me struck my wrist hard enough to numb my fingers. Pain flared like something in me broke. I bit down on my tongue until I felt it split.

It was not a procession. It was a disposal.

No chanting. No prayer.

Only the sound of my breath and their footsteps. Me, shuffling like an animal too stunned to bolt. Them, moving like shadows trained to guide the dying.

When we reached the last arch before the chapel doors, they stopped. I didn’t.

I turned.

There were four of them.

I knew them all. I had served their tea. Washed their bedding. One had combed my hair when I was ten. Another once held me when I vomited blood during my first fast.

None of them met my eyes.

But she did.

She stepped forward from the dark.

The veil she wore was bone-colored. Threadbare at the edges. Her hands were bare. So was her mouth. No silence for her today.

My mother.

She looked at me like I was a dish she’d forgotten in the sun.

Spoiled. Useless. Burdensome.

I tried to speak. My throat convulsed. The words didn’t form. Only breath. Only ache.

She raised her hand slowly, like a blessing.

I thought—I was stupid enough to think—that maybe she would touch my cheek. Maybe she would say my name, even if only to let it die between us.

But she pushed me.

Hard .

I stumbled forward, the oil making my feet slip. The doors opened ahead of me with the wind. Smoke rushed out like a mouth inhaling. I choked. My knees hit the threshold.

I looked back.

They stood in perfect formation one moment—a line of shadows witnessing my fate.

Then, like smoke inhaled by stone, they vanished. Not one by one. All at once. As if the corridor itself swallowed them whole.

She was gone. They were all gone.

The doors closed.

And I was alone.

Except for the fire.

It reached for me like it knew me. It curled around the altar, licked the stone, tasted the remnants of the girls who had been made holy before me. The heat slapped my face. My vision blurred. The veil began to smolder.

I turned my head, shielding my eyes.

And still I did not move.

I waited for the burn.

I waited for God.

I waited for someone to call me by name.

But all that came was heat.

And behind it?—

Something else.

Not voice. Not shadow.

A presence.

Waiting.

The silk went first.

A hiss. A snap. A flare.

It lit at the hem and traveled upward like a verdict. The oil made it fast. Hungry. Ribbons of red twisted into flame, devoured my legs in seconds. I screamed. Not because of the fire.

Because of the sound of it.

Because it sounded like something being born.

The heat hit my skin, then my scalp. The ends of my hair curled and burned, the bitter smell curling up into my throat. I screamed and clawed at the wrap, hands shaking, nails splitting against soaked fabric. I ripped it from my thighs, from my chest, from my arms, until I stood half-naked, covered in oil and smoke and sweat.

Alive.

Not untouched. But not dead.

The fire had kissed my skin—left it red and tender where the oil had burned too fast, raised welts along my arms like brands half-formed. But no char. No blackened flesh. The flames had tasted me and pulled back, as if I wasn't meant for consuming.

My cheeks burned. My lungs seized. I dropped to my knees, coughing into my palm, tasting blood and ash. The fire had not finished the job.

And I was not going to wait for it to change its mind.

I turned to run. Toward the door. Toward stone. Toward anything that didn't want to consume me.

My hands hit solid wall.

Stone where oak should have been. Smooth. Seamless. As if the door had never existed.

My palms pressed flat against it, searching. My breath caught. The wall was cold—colder than the fire should have allowed.

But the door was gone.

And —he was there.

I froze.

He did not move.

He stood between me and the only exit. Barefoot. Robed in black that wasn’t fabric so much as shadow stitched together. He was tall. Too tall. Like he had been carved from cathedral pillars and set free.

His face was not beautiful.

It was brutal.

Scarred across one cheek. A split lip. Eyes that weren’t eyes—just void. Two pits of black so deep I felt like I might fall into them and scream forever.

I recoiled.

Not from fear.

From recognition.

Because I knew, without being told, what he was.

Who he was.

He did not say a word.

He just stepped forward.

And the fire did not touch him.