Chapter 34: The Hollow that Watches
The forge hall slept behind them, torches dimmed to embers along the wall, Karvendral stretched ahead with the weight of a mountain holding its breath. The air cooled as they pressed eastward, down the corridor carved with the pick relief, every step muffled by the stone that seemed to swallow sound whole.
Elias kept his hum low, threads brushing the walls like fingertips over harp strings. The echoes came back strange, not sharp, not broken, but hollow, as if the mountain had left spaces in its ribs where nothing should live. Rook stayed close, nose working, ears twitching at sounds no one else could name.
The squad moved with soldier's care, Hale setting the pace, Elvi on point with her bow strung and ready, Lysera trailing a gauze of veils thin as breath, Thorek's boots heavier than the rest but his eyes sharper, every glance cutting into stone as if searching for memory.
The corridor widened into a chamber that should have been a storeroom, shelves carved into the walls, alcoves for tools, bins for ore, but most stood empty, only a scattering of broken shards left on the floor, not scattered by hands but worn, gnawed almost, edges dulled to powder.
Noll crouched, picked up a fragment, turned it over in his palm. "Stone shouldn't look like this," he said, his voice hushed, as if afraid the rock itself would hear.
Thorek's jaw tightened, beard bristling. "No, it should not," he answered, his tone flat, his eyes already heavy with a knowledge he did not yet speak.
Elias leaned on his spear, feeling the faint hum under his feet, steady, but thinned, like a drum stretched too tight. "Something's wrong with the weave here," he said, low. "Like it's been pulled on, frayed."
Lysera's veil brushed the walls and came back ragged at the edges. She frowned, her pale hair catching faint gleam. "Not broken," she said, "but eaten."
The word lingered in the air, cold and unwelcome.
Hale gave a small signal with his hand, two fingers down, one raised. Hold. Watch. Wait.
They did, in silence thick enough to choke.
It came first as a scrape, faint, like claws over glass, carried from the dark of the adjoining hall. Rook's head snapped up, hackles rising, a low rumble building in his chest. Elias felt it too, a subtle shifting in the weave, like threads trying to pull back from something that had no right to touch them.
Shapes moved in the dark, pale and slick, crawling low and then high along the walls, limbs jointed wrong, bodies too thin, faces blank and eyeless. They clung like insects yet moved like men, every step silent except for the scrape of claw against stone.
Elvi drew an arrow, string pulling taut, her eyes narrowed, breath measured. Noll's hands lifted, threads coiling fast, his fear tightening them too much but still holding. Lysera set her veils wide, ready to lash.
Thorek alone did not move to strike. He only stared, grim and knowing, as if the sight was not new but remembered from an old wound.
The creatures paused at the chamber's edge, heads tilting in eerie unison, no eyes yet watching, their bodies trembling as if sniffing the air not with noses but with threads. One reached out a claw and dragged it through a faint ward mark on the wall, the rune unravelled like wet parchment, its light sputtering and dying.
"Saint's bones," Elvi hissed under her breath. "What are they."
Thorek's voice came low, hard as stone cracking under hammer. "Not here, not yet," he said, his hand tightening on his hammer. "Fight first. Speak after."
The things answered his words with motion, lurching forward as one, limbs scratching, mouths opening though no sound came, only the sharp scent of dust and cold.
The squad braced.
The silence of Karvendral was about to break.
The chamber broke like glass.
The first of the pale things skittered low across the floor, claws scratching shallow grooves into stone. Elias thrust his spear down, fire singing at the tip, and the creature split under it, not bleeding but unraveling, body collapsing into grit that stank of mold and iron.
The others came fast, too many limbs bending at wrong angles, crawling along the ceiling, dropping in silence. Rook lunged, teeth flashing, jaws crushing into one's neck until it burst into the same choking dust. He coughed, sneezed hard, then growled deeper, more furious.
"Keep them off the boy!" Hale barked, his voice sharp, his shield slamming up to catch a claw swipe that rang like metal on stone.
Noll's ward flared, thin but steady, threads shimmering like a spider's net. One of the things struck it, claws screeching, the sound made Elias's teeth ache. Noll held firm, sweat already sliding down his temple, jaw locked as he poured everything into not breaking.
Lysera moved quick, her veils snapping wide, threads cutting across three at once. Their limbs tangled, sliced clean, bodies flailing as they collapsed. Her eyes burned cold, her face pale with effort, but her hands did not shake.
Elvi's bowstring sang, arrow after arrow flying. Each shot landed true, shafts splitting skulls that crumbled into nothing. She spat dust, cursed, grabbed another shaft, her rhythm steady even when her quiver began to run thin.
Elias swept his spear in a broad arc, flame trailing like a banner. He pushed, not just at the tip now but into the air itself, a fireball swelling, bursting forward in a rush that seared the front rank. Their bodies burned to chalk, leaving black scars on the stone.
The heat took something from him, not the sharp sting of bleeding his life thread, but a pull all the same. He gritted his teeth, forced his breath steady. Progress, but costly.
Thorek roared, hammer rising, slamming into one mid leap. The thing exploded against the wall, leaving dust and fragments behind. Another dropped at his side, claws snapping, and he caught it with the hammer's spike, ripping it down and stomping the skull under his boot.
"Hold the line!" Hale called, his shield driving forward. He cut with precision, spear thrusts clean, never wasting a step, every motion practiced like the ticking of a clock.
Still they came, crawling from the dark, skittering like locusts with no sound but scrape and breath. Elias felt the threads themselves recoil, as if the Loom despised their presence.
"Saint above, how many," Elvi hissed, loosing another arrow, breath sharp.
"Enough to test us," Thorek grunted, crushing another to dust. His eyes burned, not just with effort but with old memory.
The chamber filled with choking powder, the air thick with their ruin. Elias's lungs burned as he fought, the spear dancing in his hands, every strike punctuated by fire and grit. Rook fought beside him, snarling, his coat stained gray with ash.
Lysera drove her veil like a blade through the last of them, cutting it to ribbons. It collapsed, body quivering once before falling still. Silence crashed down, sudden, suffocating.
Dust swirled, torchlight bent through it in uneasy shafts. The chamber stank of rot and stone.
No one spoke at first, only the sound of heavy breathing, the scrape of steel returning to guard, the low rumble in Rook's chest that had not yet faded.
Noll's hands shook as he lowered his ward, threads flickering out. His face was pale, lips pressed tight. Elias put a hand on his shoulder, grounding him, the hum of his Resonance Sense carrying calm.
Hale scanned the shadows, every muscle taut. Only when nothing moved did he lower his spear. His voice came low, steady. "Thorek. Speak. What are they."
The dwarf leaned on his hammer, chest rising and falling. His beard was gray with dust, his eyes shadowed, heavy with something older than fear. He spat into the grit at his boots, wiped his mouth, and finally said, voice flat as a chisel striking stone,
"They are Hollowspawn."
The word echoed, heavy, final, older than the dust still settling around them.
Elias frowned, eyes narrowing. "And what does that mean."
Thorek's gaze lifted, grim and distant, as if he stared through centuries. "It means this mountain remembers more than stone and steel. It means the old stories were true."
The silence that followed was thicker than the dust, waiting for his tale.
The squad gathered in the settling dust, torches guttering low, ash still drifting like snow that refused to rest. Rook shook himself hard, sending gray plumes into the air, then pressed back to Elias's side, ears pinned, eyes sharp.
No one spoke until Thorek did.
He leaned heavy on his hammer, beard clotted with grit, shoulders set against the weight of memory. His voice came slow, not just telling them, but dragging the words out of stone itself.
"Hollowspawn," he said, the name alone enough to sink the room colder, "not beasts, not men, not even demons, though some would call them kin to both. They are emptiness given teeth. Old emptiness."
Elvi frowned, rubbing dust from her face. "Emptiness with claws feels like enough of a problem. Go on."
Thorek grunted, eyes narrowing, torchlight cutting lines deep into his face. "My father told it, his father before him, all the way back to the First Forgers. The tale says when the Loom first wove this world, not every thread took. Some tore loose, scraps left behind. Those scraps gathered in the dark places, in caverns too deep for daylight, and they festered. They grew hungry. They wanted the warmth of living threads but could never weave their own. So they wore stolen shapes, half formed, half true, things that look like life but have none of its song."
Lysera's veil flickered faint around her fingers, testing the air, eyes sharp. "That explains the way they felt. Like pulling against nothing. Like the Loom didn't want them here."
"Aye," Thorek said, nodding once, slow. "Because the Loom never called them. They are mistakes that learned how to walk. Hollow inside, filled only with hunger. You kill them, they crumble back to grit, and still the dust stinks of their spite."
Noll swallowed hard, his hands still shaking. "And they've been here, waiting, all this time?"
"Waiting," Thorek confirmed, voice dropping low, "and watching. They nest where men forget, where stone holds silence too long. Karvendral stood proud, sealed tight, untouched by Warden or beast, but the Hollows wait in any dark that isn't guarded. They creep in through cracks thinner than a beard hair, they gather like mold, and when the gate was shut, they claimed what was left."
Elias frowned, fingers tightening on his spear. "Then why didn't they hit us harder. There weren't enough of them to overwhelm."
Thorek spat into the dust, eyes grim. "Because that was only a first taste. Scouts, or the scraps that wandered closest to our noise. The tales say Hollows are like rot in a barrel. You see one, you've already got a dozen more beneath the surface."
Elvi clicked her tongue, sharp, unsettled. "So we've just taken up house in a nest of walking mistakes."
"Aye," Thorek said again, no humor in it. "But a nest can be cleared, if you've got fire and iron enough. Dwarves built this place to last against worse. If we light the forges, fill the halls with work and voices again, the Hollows will starve. They hate flame, they hate song, they hate stone that remembers its makers."
Lysera turned, eyes sweeping the chamber, veil brushing the edges of shadow. "And until then, they will test us."
"Every night," Thorek said, hammer resting heavy in his grip. "Until we prove louder than their hunger."
The words hung. Even the echoes seemed to listen, then fade away, leaving only the slow pulse of the mountain beneath their boots.
Elias looked at the ash scattered across the stone, the brittle remains of the things they had cut down. His Resonance Sense still hummed low, uneasy, as though the Loom itself whispered caution. He lifted his eyes to the dark vault above, threads faint as stars in a cloudy sky, and set his jaw.
"Then we don't give them silence," he said. "We give them fire. We give them song. We make Karvendral breathe again."
Thorek's teeth flashed in a fierce grin, grim and bright. "Now that is a forge prayer worth swearing."
Rook growled low in his throat, not fear, but challenge. The mountain heard, and in the deep stone, something shifted, quiet, waiting.
The squad tightened formation, each one glancing to the other, knowing the stronghold had given them welcome, but not without its price. The dust settled, the torches burned, and Karvendral remembered.