7. Seren
SEREN
Every shadow feels like a gaze, every step a listening ear.
The Hollow watches from its doorways as we move through the lanes side by side, silent and judging. The familiar steps leading to Sylas come into view, the pit within me yawning wider with every step we climb.
The door is still closed. Death remains waiting.
My dirt-bitten hand pushes it open as the wood creaks on its hinges, the scent already turning sour as the smoke and damp is now tinged with a hint of decay.
Yara shoulders past me, her steps careful and precise. Her hand guides her through the darkness until it lands on the edge of the bed frame, fingers trailing the covers until she reaches Sylas’ face.
She cups his cheek in her hand with a kindness that makes my chest ache.
“My dear boy,” she begins. “I have seen you in life—as short as it has been—and now, I see you in death. Be at one with the gods, my child.” Her hand brushes over his eyes, closing them with a finality that is a mercy my own hands couldn’t find.
Every breath is a struggle against the weight of his absence. My jaw clenches, biting down the scream that threatens to tear from my throat as the sharp, cool slide of a lone tear makes its way down my face.
Yara straightens the blanket, and smooths Sylas’ hair until he’s lying in a final, quiet repose.
She steps back, the silence in the room thick and complete as we both stare at the shell of someone we once knew.
Peace lines his features, imprinting his final resting state to my memory so that I never forget that I’m the one who brought this silence upon him.
“I’ll fetch them,” Yara says, her words a mere whisper in the roar of silence.
“I should—” My voice dies, cracking under the pressure of what must be done.
She turns to face me, her usual gaze that’s soft and unfocused, remains fixed, like clouds frozen in a cerulean sky.
“My dear, people will be looking for you. It’s best you stay hidden. Let me help you.” She pats my arm as she shuffles out of the door.
I’m frozen in place, sheer terror gripping me to the floor as I’m left alone with him. Memories of what happened flash into view. My heart calls for him, but the guilt writhing inside of my brain echoes one word:
Monster.
The shadows creep over the edge of the bed, leaning in as if eager to witness the scene of their making.
I should be mad at them, for what they did to him. But they’re all I have left.
The shadows snap at my heels at the muffled sound of boots scuffing and voices closing in.
Yara steps through the threshold, flanked by two Scavengers. The scent of smoke and decay rolls off them, swamping the room. Their long grey coats and matching masks make my stomach drop; it feels like only yesterday they came to carry Da away, only never to see him again.
They take in the scene with a cold, practiced eye—they’ve seen too many bodies to feign surprise.
“Name?” one asks, his tone a flat line—either bored or numb, it’s hard to tell.
“Sylas Thorne,” Yara says for me.
“Cause?”
My fingers knot restlessly into the hem of my coat as I avert my gaze, desperate to be invisible.
“Black rot,” she answers, the words feeling like a bittersweet mercy and a stinking lie all at once.
They exchange a look that screams of course, and set about their work. Stretcher, sheet, and hands that grab with a clinical familiarity–whether it’s cruel or gentle, I’m unsure.
When the white sheet erases his face, my knees try to give, but the shadows possessively brace around my legs, forcing them to lock. I’ve got to be strong. Sylas always said I was, even if I’ve never felt less like myself than I do now.
Heading out the door, the Scavs pause. One of them turns in my direction, a vein bulging in his temple from the dead weight he has to carry. Sylas’ weight.
“He’ll be burnt before nightfall,” he says, the words falling from his mouth like a dull recipe.
A curt nod sends them through the threshold, their grunts fading into the street as the door clicks shut. Yara turns to me, thin strands of grey hair masking her eyes in the draft they left behind.
“You can’t stay, child.”
I open my mouth to protest, but the words die in my throat. A small, desperate part of me wants to cling to her, to the only warmth left in this world. But another part—the one carved out by the Hollow—forces a slow, defeated shake of my head.
“I need to be here,” I say, the words cracked and hoarse as I look to Sylas’ empty bed. “Just for a while.”
Her face is a mask of concentration. Her filmed blue eyes are fixed on me, but she isn’t looking; she’s sensing, tracing the barbed edges of my presence in her mind’s eye.
She nods once, her feet skimming the floorboards as she draws closer.
Her hand finds my cheek, and a crease forms between her brows as if she can feel the guilt I’m carrying.
“Grab some things and go, girl. Don’t stay long.”
I nod as she pulls her hand away and retreats to the door. I turn back to the bed, the hollow in the mattress a stark, brutal reality I can’t outrun.
“Seren…” she says, her filmed eyes finding mine with a sudden, sharp clarity. “Whatever they say about the old gods…remember this: fear is a tool. Make sure you’re the one holding the hilt—not the blade.”
Before I can process the warning, she speaks again.“And Seren…take the bag.”
My head swivels toward her, but my shadows are faster—they coil toward the foot of Sylas’ bed where the satchel sits. I look up to ask why, but she’s already vanished into the gloom of the streets.
A cold, heavy silence seeps into the void she left behind. Just like that, I’m alone. The brief respite—the flickering hope of having someone in my corner—evaporates like mist.
A sick dread coils in my gut as the reality of my situation slams home. I grab the bag, the soft cloth a ghostly link to the safety she represents, but the sting of abandonment is sharp and immediate. I need to move, yet my limbs are leaden and disobedient.
My hands ache to do something—anything to avoid the sight of Sylas’ empty bed.
I scramble through my satchel until my fingers find the reassuring texture of smooth, thick paper.
The charcoal stylus is my only sanctuary, the only way I know how to bleed out what I’ve lost. I sink into the mattress, finally buckling under the weight of it all.
The coils within snarl through the cushioning, recoiling in response to my weight. I don’t deserve this comfort—not after what I’ve done.
The floorboards bite through my coat as I slump from the edge of the mattress, my sketchbook landing with a heavy thud in my lap.
My fingers throb for the feel of charcoal against paper.
I have to quiet the shards of broken glass rattling behind my ribs, every jagged edge desperate to tear through my skin.
At this moment, I don’t care who is hunting me. I only want to sit in the space Sylas left behind—to prove he existed before the world washes him away. I am the sole architect of this void, and the silence in this room screams my name.
The charcoal stains my fingers as I draw without thought, my despair bleeding onto the page. Lines find each other, morphing into a ghost I know too well.
The contours of his face take shape, carved by the years of famine. I trace the shaggy waves of his hair and the thin, pale lips that once curled with a mischief the plague couldn’t kill.
My hand stills, the coal hovering as I reach his eyes—not the ones frozen in fear by the terror of his end, but the ones that once sparked alongside his grin.
The trance snaps, leaving me staring at the page. A perfect crescent sits within his eye, a mark I have no memory of making. Confusion stings, demanding an answer the room refuses to give, while the air turns heavy and clotted with a familiar, cold presence.
“Why him?” The whisper is a ragged thing, nearly choked by a grief I can no longer cage. In the corner, the shadows writhe and knot, coiling like a reprimanded child retreating into the dark.
Nothing answers. Instead, they move closer—black tendrils sliding over my knees, offering a silent, cold apology. The cool touch against my skin ignites an unwelcome memory, a sharp image from a time when the world was still whole.
“Da?” My five-year old voice is a tiny, fragile sound. I’m sitting on his lap, tucked against the warmth of his chest, hidden from the cold bite of the Hollow outside. He’s reciting one of his old stories, but his gaze is drifting, lost in another time or place.
“Da?” I ask again, my little hand tugging at the collar of his grey shirt.
His eyes focus, his pupils anchoring on my face.
The twinkle returns—a distant star in a cloudy night sky.
Then, his mouth turns downward as he finishes the end.
“The old gods don’t give, my sweet,” he says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“They only take. You musn’t give them what they want. ”
The memory dissipates like smoke from a pyre.
The pyres. Sylas.
The thought jolts me upright. I have to go—I have to see him before the fire claims him for good. Before it’s too late.
I shove my sketchbook into the satchel with reckless force, the pages buckling under my haste.
My knees skid over the wood as I crawl toward the loose floorboard.
The plank protests with a sharp creak before I heave it aside.
I grab the coins, the weathered sketch of Da, the onyx ring, and the wedding band—the only tangible ghosts I have left.
A low, predatory growl echoes in my stomach as my body finally demands its due. When did I last eat? The memory stabs at me; the scrap of beetcake shared with Sylas. My throat tightens—the taste of it now a bitter reminder.
I jam a fist into my stomach, as if the pressure alone could strangle my appetite. It only makes the hunger bellow. I pillage the cupboards, stuffing the scant remains—a hardy carrot and a tin of beans—into my satchel. It isn’t enough, but there is no more time.
Slinging the bag over my shoulder, I catch Yara’s on my way out. My palm anchors to the door frame, the woody fibres biting into my skin as I force myself to look back one last time.
Sylas’ bed is a hollow of grey sheets, still rumpled from where the Scav’s heaved him away. Next to it, the beetcake remains untouched, a tiny monument to a future that died an hour ago.
I failed him. I failed Da. The thought settles over me like ash.
A single tear stings my cheek as I turn, stepping through the door and into the dark.