Chapter Thirty
We take advantage of the weak spot in the Hollow while we still can—using every stolen second of borrowed magic before the forest shifts again and devours it whole.
I’ve already healed Ryder’s bruised eye, though he still refuses to meet my gaze fully.
Yet when my fingers brushed his cheek, I swear I felt him lean into the touch—just barely, just enough for my heart to catch.
For a fleeting moment, it felt like the Hollow, the serum, the trial…
none of it had ever existed. Like we were still us.
But moments like that don’t survive long here. Not in a place engineered to starve anything gentler than fear.
River flinches when I press my hand to his swollen jaw, but his eyes… they don’t flinch at all. They hold. They cling. They search mine like they’re desperate to find something—clarity or hope, an answer I don’t have. His lips part, the beginning of a confession trembling on them.
Something that could ruin everything.
“Don’t—”
I stop him before the words can spill out and stain the air between us. My voice cracks like a branch underfoot. His expression tightens, a flicker of pain shadowing the soft hope that had begun to rise there.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I force out, but River doesn’t look away. His eyes still watch me carefully as if he is studying me, hurt swimming in the hazel.
“….Not to you.”
The words land like a stone in my stomach, heavy and final.
He takes my hand, and the contact is so unexpectedly tender that my eyes sting instantly, betrayal and guilt sparking at the edges of my vision.
But before a single tear can fall, he lets go.
And then he turns and walks away with a heaviness in his shoulders that feels like it’s dragging my heart with him.
We pass more of the carved symbols, each one making my lungs loosen a little, as if every mark is proof the Hollow hasn’t twisted our path or bent the world beneath our feet.
My gaze drifts to the new tattoo stamped into my palm.
In the dim, shifting light, it shimmers with shades of amethyst and electric blue whenever I flex my fingers—like it’s alive, like it sees more than I do.
If only it could grant the clarity it promises. If only it could tell me how to make Ryder forgive me for not trusting him… or how to help him forgive himself for what he cannot control.
And River… Gods, River’s heart feels as exposed as the fresh ink on our skin—raw, cracked at the edges, held together only by hope he shouldn’t still have. Every time I glance at him, I see it fraying a little more.
I hate it.
I hate that the trial asked me to choose between truth and trust, and in choosing, I hurt both of them in different ways.
My tattoo pulses faintly with each heartbeat—amethyst and blue, a promise of protection… but not wisdom.
If magic could mend hearts as easily as skin, I’d pour every ounce I have into fixing this.
But the Hollow doesn’t deal in mercy, and neither does love, not when it’s tangled and sharp-edged like this.
The branches seem to stretch and curl around us, snagging at our shirts like clawed hands begging us to turn back.
It feels almost intentional, as if the Hollow senses we’re slipping from between its teeth and refuses to let the bile it’s swallowed rise from its throat.
Every rustle sounds like a warning. Every whisper of leaves feels like a plea.
My sword hangs at my side in the holster Ryder fashioned from twisted Hollow vines.
It fits almost too perfectly. He’d tied it around my waist with white-knuckled force, his jaw tight, eyes somewhere far away, as if his thoughts had wandered into the worst possible places and dragged his hands with them.
He didn’t even realise how constricted my breaths had become until I told him I couldn’t quite inhale. He loosened it instantly, the guilt in his eyes flashing so quickly I almost wondered if I imagined it.
“See that over there.” Ziek points toward what looks like a large red rose bouncing through the underbrush, darting toward us with almost childlike curiosity.
At first, I can’t help blinking in confusion—flowers don’t move like that.
Flowers don’t choose their direction. But the closer it gets, the more my jaw slackens. It’s not a rose at all.
It’s a creature.
Chubby and squirrel-sized, with impossibly large doe eyes and layers of red petals cascading down its spine like a blooming rose frozen mid-blossom. For a moment, my heart warms; something so small shouldn’t look so heartbreakingly gentle.
“It’s what we call a bloomblade,” Ziek says, and the word drops like a stone into my stomach.
Suddenly, I’m stepping back, just a fraction, but enough to betray the instinct curling low in my gut.
Of course, the Hollow would make its most lethal things look like they belong tucked behind someone’s ear or floating in a meadow.
Of course, it would hide danger in sweetness; lull you into softness, then strike when your guard slips.
Like the Lady of Death. The Hollow doesn’t need to stalk its prey—it only requires you to trust the wrong thing for one breath. Then it sinks its teeth in.
“Bloomblade?” River echoes, his brows knitting. His expression mirrors mine perfectly—we had both mistaken it for something beautiful and harmless, safe even.
“Those petals are razor-thin,” Ziek continues, his pace never faltering. “When it spins or shakes, they fan outward like blades. They make clean cuts. Deep ones.”
As if to punctuate his words, the bloomblade pauses a few feet away, tilts its head, and lets out a sound so tender and innocent it makes my chest tighten—a soft, fluttery coo, like a newborn dove taking its first breath.
I swallow hard and keep moving, forcing my steps to stay steady even as a chill prickles over my skin. The bloomblade’s coo fades behind us, but the unease it leaves behind clings like cobwebs.
I try not to imagine what else might be watching us from behind painted petals or soft fur. What other wolves here wear the gentlest sheep’s clothing? What else waits for us to blink just once too long?
The trees creak overhead, branches swaying like skeletal fingers, and suddenly every rustle feels like a threat dressed as innocence. The Hollow doesn’t just want to hurt us—it wants us to doubt everything we see, everything we touch, and everything we think is safe.
The gaps in the canopy grow wider with every step, no longer thin slivers but open wounds in the treetops where sunlight bleeds through in warm, golden spills. The light feels almost foreign on my skin after so many days of the Hollow’s cold breath on the back of my neck.
I tilt my head up, letting a stripe of warmth graze my cheek. My chest loosens, just a little.
A sign. It has to be.
The first glimpse of the sun in what feels like an eternity, breaking through the suffocating dark like a reminder that the world outside the Hollow still exists… that freedom still exists, and the sun is still holding on to some of its power.
“We’re close,” I whisper, more to myself than to the others. The forest doesn’t argue. It creaks, it murmurs, but the shadows shrink back instead of leaning in. Even the air feels lighter, less choked with the metallic taste of fear.
For the first time since entering this nightmare, I feel something warm bud in my chest—hope, quiet and trembling but undeniably there.
Maybe—just maybe—we’re almost free from the Hollow’s clutches.
“This is it.”
Ziek’s voice lands heavy in the clearing, heavier than I expect. When he turns to face us, there’s a strain in his eyes—like the voices pressing in on him are now shouting instead of whispering. The Hollow is thinning, but that only means Mourna’s grip on him is sharpening.
“This is as far as I take you,” he says, and my stomach flips, twisting tight.
Even though I knew it was coming, the words knock something loose in my chest. Ziek has been our anchor in this place, the one steady voice in a forest full of lies. Losing him—even this last stretch—feels like stepping off a ledge with no sense of how far the fall goes.
He points straight ahead. “Just keep going. Five miles that way, no detours. You’ll reach a bridge.” His tone hardens. “And it’s imperative that you cross it one at a time.”
“One at a time,” I echo, committing it to memory like a spell that might save our lives. “Got it.”
I step forward before I can overthink it and wrap my arms around him. The hug is brief because Ziek isn’t much of a hugger—but he squeezes back with surprising strength.
“Thank you,” I murmur. “For everything. Please… look after Nala.”
“You got it.” He taps his temple once. “Just save the world.”
Ryder and River come forward next—bro hugs, handshakes, those half-gruff, half-affectionate gestures men use when the real emotion is too big to hold.
Ryder grips Ziek’s shoulder a second longer than expected, gratitude shadowing his features.
River mutters something like Don’t die out here, man, and Ziek grins as if the Hollow doesn’t frighten him.
And just like that, he turns and disappears into the trees, swallowed by the shifting forest he calls home.
The moment he’s gone, the energy feels different—as if the Hollow is finally aware that we’re on our own.
“You heard the man—let’s keep going,” River says, hitching his satchel higher on his shoulder and striding ahead like momentum alone can keep the fear off our heels.
We follow.
Every fifth tree, we stop and check. Fingers brushing bark.
Eyes narrowing, searching for the familiar carved grooves.
The pattern becomes a rhythm: walk, check, walk, check—like we’re keeping time with the forest’s heartbeat.
Twice, we have had to turn back, doubling over our own footprints because the symbol doesn’t appear when it should.
But Ziek’s system works. Clean, simple, clever.
A breadcrumb trail the Hollow can’t corrupt.