The footsteps quickened.
A dragging sound followed — metal on stone, rhythmic and slow, like a chain being pulled by something that had forgotten how to walk.
Cael held his blade tightly, the weight suddenly unfamiliar in his hand. His heartbeat thudded in his throat. He could feel it — not fear exactly, but something older. A primal awareness. As if the very air screamed: This thing does not belong in this world.
Selene stepped in front of him.
The torch reignited on its own — not by spark or flint, but by the breach's will. The dim flame lit the corridor in trembling orange, revealing the creature that approached.
It had once been a man.
Now, its limbs were too long, its skin pallid and stretched taut over a skeleton that jutted at the wrong angles. Black veins pulsed beneath the surface like ink dragged through water. Its eyes had been hollowed, replaced with black glass — mirrors of the breach. Around its neck, a chain was fused into the flesh, dragging behind it a shard of broken stone etched with names long scratched out.
Selene whispered, "A Hollowed."
Cael didn't ask. The thing opened its mouth, jaw cracking with the sound of dry wood splintering. No scream. No roar.
Only a whisper:
"You're wearing their blood."
And it charged.
Cael barely dodged as its claws scraped the wall beside him, leaving gouges three fingers deep. Selene unleashed a flash of sigil-light, blinding and white. The Hollowed staggered — but only for a breath.
It recovered too quickly.
Cael moved, instinct and training blending. His blade struck true — but didn't pierce. The creature's body had no softness to it. Like cutting dried bark and bone.
Selene shouted, "Go for the stone!"
The chain.
The shard dragging behind it pulsed with the same dark resonance as the breach. Cael pivoted, sliding beneath the creature as it lunged again. With both hands, he drove his dagger into the stone, splitting it.
A shriek tore through the corridor — not from the Hollowed, but from the walls, from the air itself.
The creature fell, limbs convulsing, then stilled. The black glass eyes cracked. Its body collapsed into ash.
Silence.
Selene knelt beside the broken shard. "That was a remnant anchor," she said grimly. "Someone bound it to keep a part of themselves alive — or to keep something else dead."
Cael looked down the dark corridor, where the ash still smoldered faintly.
"How many more of them do you think are down here?"
Selene stood slowly.
"All of them."