Chapter Twenty-Eight
The air feels thinner behind the thick, scratchy fabric of the scarves Ziek gave us. Every breath drags a little, but I’d rather fight for air than fall victim to the Lady of Death again.
The forest looks different now—still vast, still alive in that unsettling way—but somehow less threatening. I can’t tell if it’s because Ziek walks beside us, moving with the ease of someone born from the trees, or because of the fresh symbol carved into my skin, still throbbing faintly.
Either way, the Hollow doesn’t feel quite as eager to swallow me whole.
“Earlier… you said the forest shifts. How can you be sure we’re going the right way?” I ask Ziek, curiosity running through my veins.
“The runes help, but we have another system.” He gestures to a nearby trunk, a symbol carved into its bark. “Every fifth tree is marked.” He pauses, letting his fingers brush the grooves. “When you stop seeing the symbols, you know you’ve drifted off-course.”
“What does the symbol mean?” River asks. I step closer, tracing the ridges with my fingertips.
“Unchanging,” I murmur.
Ziek shoots me a small smile. “You know your Enchantra. She’s right—The Hollow can’t shift these trees. They’ll never move, never die, never change.”
My eyes linger on the mark—I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before. Perhaps the same protection rune is threaded between each ridge, or maybe it’s just because I didn’t know where to look.
“Smart,” River comments.
“You live in this forest long enough,” Ziek says, straightening, “and you start to figure out its tricks.”
We stop by a stream to fill our flasks. I perch on the edge of a flat rock, letting the cold water rush into mine, the current humming against the metal like a quiet warning.
“So… Kalia is sweet,” I say, making conversation with Ziek.
“Yeah. She is,” he replies, taking a long swig of water, a smile sprawling on his face.
Ryder is propped against a tree nearby, sharpening his sword. I know Ziek has noticed the strange mending along the blade, but he hasn’t said a word.
“How old is she?” I ask, washing my hands in the stream.
“Six,” he answers with a small smile. “Though she acts a lot older.”
“How’s it for her—growing up in the Hollow?” River asks, struggling to hide his bittersweet intrigue.
Ziek lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “She doesn’t know any different. Sometimes I feel bad, bringing her into all this—” he gestures to the forest around us, “—but I’d rather raise her here with people I trust than out there. Too many variables I can’t control.”
I nod. A part of me gets it. She might actually be safer with him than anywhere else.
“So what brought you out to the Hollow in the first place?” I question as we start moving again.
“The same reason you found it,” Ziek says, glancing back at me.
“The gem?” I quicken my steps until I’m beside him.
He nods. “But I wasn’t trying to save the world.
I was trying to run from it—well, from my Gifts anyway.
The voices were getting too loud. I’d heard the legends and thought maybe finding the gem would free me from my duty to Mourna…
but the trials never showed.” He shrugs.
“I don’t mind. It led me here. I’d never known peace before this place. Once I felt it, I knew I had to stay.”
“And then you found the others?”
“And then I found the others,” he repeats, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Turns out I’m not the only one who wanted a simpler life.”
It’s admirable, really—walking away from everything. I’m not sure I’d have the courage.
“What about you?” he asks. “How’d you all meet? Out there, the rules are strict, but you three seem to have broken the divide.”
“It’s a long story,” I say, my eyes peeled straight ahead.
“One for after you save the world,” he teases, and an unnerved chuckle slips out of me.
“Exactly.”
A small smile blooms on my face, but it quickly vanishes when River suddenly yelps.
“Are you okay?” I rush to him, my lungs seizing for a moment. He seems okay, just a pained look on his face.
“That flower zapped me!” He’s glaring at it like it personally offended him, one hand clutching the side of his leg. I study the thing—blue, scraggly, and trembling with leftover static.
“That’s a lightning flower,” Ziek says as he crouches beside it. “They won’t kill you, but they give a nasty shock.”
“What is up with this place and flowers?” River groans.
Ziek chuckles under his breath and carries on, but River stares back at it, as if his looks could annihilate the flower.
He walks a few metres ahead before stopping suddenly, spine straightening, head angled as if listening to something only he can hear.
“Is everything okay?” Ryder asks, his fingers tightening around his sword.
“Something’s different,” Ziek murmurs. “The Hollow, she’s planning her next move.”
Ryder shoots me a worried look and clears his throat. “How can you tell?”
“I just have a feeling,” he says. “Go with your gut—it’s as good a tell as any in here.”
I make a mental note of every scrap of advice he’s given us. We might need all of it.
Ziek was right.
A shadowed figure crouches against a distant tree, its limbs too long, its posture too still—like something pretending to be human and getting the details wrong. Two pale, unblinking lights hang where its eyes should be, fixed on me with unnerving hunger.
“Are you seriously telling me you don’t see that, too?” I whisper, my finger trembling as I point.
All three of them—Ryder, River, Ziek—turn to look, but confusion washes over their features. They shake their heads in unison. Not one of them dares to move closer.
“Stand back,” Ziek orders, stepping slightly in front of River and Ryder. “The trial only wants her.”
The words coil around my throat. Only me.
Always me.
The Hollow is obsessed with peeling me apart layer by layer—as if it knows I’m already fraying.
Ryder takes a step toward me anyway, panic tightening his jaw, his hand twitching like he’s fighting the urge to grab mine and pull me back. I meet his eyes and give him a look that is half reassurance, half plea.
Don’t. If you get involved, it’ll take you too.
“I’ve never even seen a trial before,” Ziek mutters, disbelief settling into his bones. “Twenty years in this place… I thought they were just fables.”
“Well,” Ryder breathes, “you’re about to see one now.” He forces out the words between tethered teeth, apprehensive for what’s to come. And rightly so.
The creature tilts its head at me, its tangled hair spilling over a frame that barely qualifies as a body. It’s like someone took the idea of a person and sketched it wrong on purpose.
My stomach curls, but I’ve learned my lesson from the cottage. You can’t avoid the trials. The Hollow is a sick maze, designed to circle you back no matter how far you stray. I swallow hard and force myself towards it.
“H-hello,” I attempt, though my voice wavers and sounds small even to me.
I take a step forward. Then another. Each one feels like it’s prying my ribs apart, letting my frantic heartbeat echo through the gaps.
The memory of the village—the warmth of the fire, the taste of steeped herbs, Nala’s laugh—feels like it’s slipping away, too fragile to hold onto in the face of this.
Another trial.
So soon.
The Hollow isn’t giving me time to breathe between blows.
Maybe that’s the point. Wear me down. Strip me hollow. Break me.
The creature extends its arm slowly, the bones shifting beneath its papery skin. It lifts its head, but still I see no face. Its muscles move with such stiff, rigid precision that I half expect to hear an engine whir beneath its skin, or the squeal of a hinge begging for oil.
“Do you accept the challenge?”
The voice is a grinding rumble, like stone dragged across stone. Too deep for its fragile frame.
My mouth dries. I swallow again, this time, the lump in my throat refuses to give. “…yes.”
Before the sound fades, its skeletal fingers whip forward and clamp around my forearm. The speed steals my breath. I jerk, a strangled sound escaping me, as my teeth clack together.
Behind me, all three boys gasp—finally seeing what I’m seeing.
The creature leans in, its breath cold and rancid, and speaks:
“For the gem to rise, let truth be spoken.
Speak your heart, or ties fall broken.
When choice is made, and fear is close…
Kiss the soul you trust the most.”
Another riddle.
Another damn riddle.
My mind replays the words again and again until thought itself begins to fracture. The gravestone. The cottage. Now this. These trials aren’t just physical—they’re psychological, stripping me bare. Like peeling the coating off a live wire, they unravel my sanity one coil at a time.
I trust Ryder. I do. But the Hollow wouldn’t have chosen this trial if it were meant to be easy.
Part of me wants to run—to leave and never come back, to let the world burn. At least then I might know peace. I might know a world that doesn’t ache for my help. But I know better. Even with the legs of a cheetah and the heart of an elion, I can’t outrun the Hollow. And I can’t outrun my destiny.
My stomach drops. I look at Ryder first. His eyes are wide, fear drowning every ounce of colour in them. There’s hurt there too—he’s already bracing for something, like he’s preparing for impact.
Then River.
He’s not hiding his hope.
It flares like a spark in dry grass. One kiss—that’s all it would take for that spark to become a wildfire.
My heart trusts Ryder. It always has. Even when it scared me.
But my mind—my mind still remembers the serum.
His hands around my throat. The way the world narrowed. The way my breath had failed.
And the Hollow knows it.
It knows everything inside me—the flaws, the fears, the fractures.
It wants to use them all.
“Is there… another option?” I ask the creature, my voice dangerously thin, low enough that Ryder won’t hear.
I know the answer before the question leaves my mouth. As if the Hollow would ever be merciful. As if something wrapped so completely in malice could offer forgiveness.
I wonder, in this moment, if the creature was once human—if it ever knew love. If it began its journey the same way I did, chasing the gem, believing survival meant victory… only for the Hollow to reach it first.
Maybe this is what happens when you fail a trial. Maybe it’s worse than death.
Maybe you become the Hollow’s whore, condemned to inflict pain on others, knighting them with the very blade that damned you.
Its grin stretches horribly and brings me back to the present.
“Death amongst friends.”
Its laugh is dry and scraped bare—a sound that doesn’t need lungs.
“You choose who to end.”
My blood turns to ice.
“That won’t be necessary,” I snap, desperately, and Ryder steps toward me instinctively—expecting, assuming, hoping the answer is him.
But the Hollow isn’t testing courage. Or love.
It’s testing the fault lines.
If I kiss River… I risk everything with Ryder. I’d confirm his worst fear: that I don’t trust him anymore. That maybe I never will.
If I kiss Ryder… I crush River. I give him something bright for one breath—only to snuff it out the next.
My chest tightens like I’ve swallowed barbed wire.
“Make your choice,” the creature hisses.
And then Ziek screams.
His body collapses, knees slamming into the forest floor, hands clawing at his skull as if invisible fingers are digging inside.
“Or he dies.”
My mind fractures between the two possibilities, unable to choose. My feet move anyway, driven by Ziek’s frantic cries and the thunder of my own heartbeat.
…Toward River.
It’s instinct. No—strategy. No—Desperation. Sacrifice or survival—I can’t tell. It’s all twisted together so tightly I can’t separate them.
You can’t outrun the Hollow. You can’t hide from it. It has eyes everywhere—in every crevice, every ridge, every vine, every gap in the awning above.
I turn, tears already burning behind my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Ryder.”
The words crack in my throat, sharp and meaningful.
And before I can think—before guilt can consume me—I pull his scarf down and crash my lips onto River’s.