The silence did not end when the figure stepped free.
Rooms once filled with faint sound—buzzing lights, ticking clocks, breathing—were reduced to emptiness. Sound collapsed as though swallowed, leaving only the vibration of stillness. Darkness thickened unnaturally, not tied to the absence of light but to its presence. Even in bright spaces, shadows stretched too long, bending away from natural laws.
The figure moved differently outside the glass. It did not walk, not exactly. It unfolded, stretching forward, folding itself across space like a sheet of darkness being dragged along the floor. Limbs bent wrong, yet never broke. Wherever it passed, surfaces dulled, reflections blackened, and the world felt thinner, weaker.
Those who saw it directly felt their vision strain. The outline flickered as though refusing to be observed. Some swore it had more than one arm. Others swore it had none at all. What remained constant was the sensation: the pressure of being watched by a face that did not exist.
Its hunger revealed itself slowly. Objects vanished first—keys, photographs, trinkets left on tables. Reflections of those objects remained for hours afterward, long after the physical items had dissolved into nothing. Then came larger things: furniture, doors, entire walls. A corridor ended abruptly where it had not before, leaving only a blank reflective surface stretching in its place.
Finally, it began to seek people.
Shadows crept closer in every room, gathering around ankles like fog. The figure appeared in every corner, not as a reflection but as a presence. It circled, closing distance in silence, arms extending until the air itself seemed to fracture.
Those who met its hollow gaze were the first to go. Not quickly—never quickly. They stood frozen, as though caught in glass, their own reflections distorting until they warped into silence. Then they were gone, erased without scream, without trace, leaving only the faint impression of their shape on the nearest reflective surface.
The Hollow Stalker did not need mirrors anymore. The world itself had become its reflection.
And it was growing stronger.