The undercity changed at night.
By day, even in its rot, it still lived—vendors cried out from cracked stalls, scavengers bartered, thieves cut purses in plain sight. But now, under the thin wash of starlight filtering through the broken skylights above, silence held dominion.
Elian felt it pressing against his ribs like a weight. Each footstep echoed too loudly, bouncing back from wet stone walls lined with mildew. The air was thick with a cloying musk, half-salt and half-sour, the smell of things that had once been alive and no longer were.
Lyra walked ahead, her silhouette taut with coiled readiness. The daggers at her hips reflected faint silver in the dark, but it was the tension in her shoulders that betrayed her mood. She was a predator accustomed to shadows—but here, even she looked hunted.
A low sound broke the quiet.
Not a growl. Not a footstep. Something worse.
A dragging.
The scrape of wet flesh against stone, so faint Elian thought he imagined it—until Lyra froze, one hand raised, eyes narrowing into the blackness of the tunnels.
They stood still.
The dragging stopped.
Elian's throat tightened. He had grown up with books, with theories of monsters described by scholars who had never seen them. None of those dusty words compared to this silence—a silence that listened back.
"You hear it too," Lyra whispered, her voice almost swallowed by the dark.
He nodded. He wanted to ask what it was, but her sharp glance warned him not to. Questions drew attention. And something was already listening.
They moved again, slower now. Lyra guided them deeper into the skeletal corridors of the undercity, where pillars once carved with prayers to the stars now sagged under fungus and rot. Elian's hand brushed one absentmindedly, and the surface flaked away, leaving dust clinging to his palm like ash.
He wiped it against his tunic, but the sensation lingered—the grit, the cold. His mind kept whispering grave-dust.
The dragging resumed. Louder this time. Closer.
Elian's breath quickened. The void stirred in response, curling like smoke behind his ribs. The sensation was both alien and intimate, as though something deep in him recognized the sound, answered it. His pulse hammered in his ears.
"Don't use it," Lyra hissed, reading his tension. "Whatever's inside you—keep it leashed. Light above, Elian, I'd rather face this thing alone than risk you unraveling us both."
Her words stung, but he said nothing. She wasn't wrong. He still remembered the Ceremony of Alignment—the black fire that had ripped from him, the screams, the faces melting under shadow. He had sworn he would never let it loose again.
But what if he had no choice?
The dragging sound swelled, and then—stopped again.
A beat of silence. Then a wet breath, gurgling, wheezing, like lungs drowning in their own fluids. The hair on Elian's neck rose.
Lyra's hand slid toward her daggers. Slowly. Deliberately. The scrape of leather against steel sounded deafening in the stillness.
"Elian," she murmured, her voice stripped of all mockery, all bravado. "When I move, you don't hesitate. You run. No arguments. No heroics."
His chest clenched. "And you?"
"I buy us time."
He wanted to protest, but the words died on his tongue. The look in her eyes wasn't negotiable.
The sound came again, closer, accompanied now by a sickening slither. Something moved beyond the edge of sight—something too large, too fluid for a man, yet too deliberate for an animal. The shadows shifted as though rejecting its passage.
Then it stepped into view.
At first, Elian thought it wore a cloak, ragged and wet, dragging along the ground. But the longer he looked, the less that image held. What he'd thought was cloth was flesh—stretched, sagging, translucent. Veins pulsed beneath like threads of tar. Its limbs were too long, elbows bending the wrong way. Its head… gods, its head was a hollow. A gaping cavity where a face should be, ringed with teeth angled inward like the maw of some abyssal predator.
Elian's stomach lurched. He almost retched.
The thing tilted its hollow head, as though listening. And then it made a sound—one that scraped down his spine like rusted iron.
A sucking gasp. The air bent toward its maw, pulled ever so slightly, as though reality itself was being inhaled.
Elian staggered back, hand clutching his chest. The void inside him stirred violently, clawing at his ribs. His vision swam with stars.
Mine, a voice whispered. It is mine. Kin of hunger. Let me answer.
"No," he choked under his breath. His nails dug into his palm until blood welled, trying to ground himself in the pain.
The Hollow Hunger lunged.
Lyra moved like lightning. One dagger flashed, burying deep into its side with a wet crunch. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling against the stone. The smell of it burned Elian's nostrils—sharp, acidic, wrong.
The creature screamed without a mouth. The sound was a vibration that rattled his bones, a resonance that felt like it wanted to tear his body apart from the inside.
"Run!" Lyra snarled.
But Elian couldn't. His legs refused. His gaze was locked on the hollow head, the abyss of teeth, the way it seemed to drink light from the air. The void inside him howled in recognition.
The creature swung, a grotesque limb slicing the air where Lyra had stood a heartbeat ago. She rolled, came up slashing again, cutting a deep groove across its elongated arm. More ichor hissed onto the floor, eating into the stone.
"Elian!" she screamed. "Move!"
Her voice broke the spell. He stumbled backward, boots slipping on the slick floor. The dragging sound returned—no longer distant, but here, as the creature's massive frame scraped forward, relentless despite the wounds.
Elian's vision pulsed. Every heartbeat screamed with void. His chest felt like it might burst.
He could let it out. Just once. Just a sliver. Enough to buy them a chance.
But Lyra's earlier words echoed—I'd rather face this thing alone than risk you unraveling us both.
His fists shook. His lips parted. And then—
The tunnel collapsed inward.
Not entirely, but enough that stone rained from above, dust choking the air, cutting them off from the path behind. The Hollow Hunger roared in response, a sound like ten thousand knives drawn at once. Its hollow maw expanded, pulling dust and pebbles inward with unnatural suction.
Lyra coughed, eyes narrowing through the haze. She reached for Elian, dragging him back toward a branching corridor.
The creature followed. Always following.
And Elian knew, with a cold certainty that gnawed his bones—this wasn't a random predator. It wasn't just hunger.
It was drawn to him.
The void inside him whispered with delight. Yes. We are seen.