The next morning, sunlight streamed into the Academy courtyard, but Alaric felt no warmth. His skin still prickled with the memory of the crypt's whispers. He had told no one — not Clem, not Darian, not even his grandfather. Some truths, he feared, were too heavy to share.
Yet the Academy itself seemed unsettled. Whispers passed among the students, not of relics or tests, but of disappearances.
Three recruits had gone missing overnight. Their beds were found empty, sheets undisturbed, belongings untouched. Only one thing remained behind: husks. Fragile, hollow shells of skin that cracked at the slightest touch.
Alaric froze when he heard it. The husks were too much like the figures in the crypt.
Clem caught his expression. "You've heard the rumors too, haven't you?" she asked, her voice low. "They say… the Hollow Ones came."
"Hollow Ones?" Alaric repeated.
She leaned closer, her tone dropping to a whisper. "Creatures that slip through shadows when the torches burn low. They steal what makes you alive, leaving only an empty body behind. No one has ever seen one and lived to tell it."
Alaric's throat tightened. But I saw them. And they spoke to me.
He said nothing.
That evening, unease spread like wildfire. Students huddled together in groups, refusing to sleep alone. Guards doubled their patrols, yet the shadows stretched unnaturally long across the stone walls.
Alaric tried to rest, but the amber stone flared awake in his hand, its light sharp and anxious. His ears filled with faint whispers again — not from below this time, but drifting through the dormitory walls.
"…Draven…"
His body stiffened. The sound was not in his head. It was in the room.
The torches along the corridor sputtered, dimmed. A shape shifted in the corner — a smear of blackness that refused to follow the rules of light. It stretched upward, hollow and faceless, its edges flickering like smoke.
Alaric's breath caught. One of the Hollow Ones had come.
Slowly, it turned toward him. Though it had no eyes, he felt it see him — not his body, but the dual forces inside him. The whispers pressed harder, filling his skull.
"Vessel… incomplete… surrender…"
Alaric's pulse hammered. He wanted to summon light, or shadows, or both, but fear rooted him to the bed.
Then, the figure tilted its head. Its hollow face split open, not with a mouth, but with a gaping wound of darkness that poured toward him.
Alaric raised his hand instinctively, the amber stone blazing with both light and shadow. The Hollow One recoiled, its body rippling like water struck by a stone. But before Alaric could push further, Clem burst through the door, dagger drawn.
"Alaric—!"
The Hollow One vanished, dissolving into the shadows like smoke in the wind.
Silence crashed down, broken only by Alaric's ragged breathing.
Clem scanned the room, her eyes wide. "What happened? Why is your stone glowing?"
Alaric swallowed hard, unable to answer. The truth pressed against his lips, but the memory of the whispers bound his tongue.
Instead, he forced himself to say, "We're not safe here. Something's hunting us."
Clem's expression hardened. "Then tomorrow, we find out what."
But as she left, Alaric caught his reflection in the window. For just a moment, his eyes were not blue, nor golden, nor black. They were empty — hollow, like the creatures themselves.