The Hollow Season arrived like a fever dream, a time when the world tilts askew. For one month each year, the veil between the living and the unknown breaks apart.
Across the globe, people vanished, some return, hollow-eyed and silent; most don't. Scientists call it a "spike in unexplained phenomena"; priests call it judgment. No one agrees on why it happens, only that it does. In the city of Ashwick, the air grows heavy as October dawns, and the streets hum with an eerieness. The Hollow Season is here again.
Seed knows the season's weight better than most. At thirty-two, he carries the look of a man who's seen too much and slept too little. His dark hair is streaked with grey strands as his hazel eyes is resting atop heavy eye bags.
He sat at his desk in the cluttered office of The Ashwick Chronicle, surrounded by stacks of files and a flickering computer screen. His colleagues muttering about how they can't believe he gave up his detective Job to become a journalist. Seed's fingers hovered over his keyboard, but his mind is elsewhere, snagged on the memory of this day five years ago.
Five years ago, his little sister, Lila, vanished during the Hollow Season. She was seventeen, vibrant, with a laugh that could light up a room. They'd been close, the kind of siblings who shared secrets and fought over the last slice of pizza. That October, she'd gone to a friend's house and never came back. No body, no clues, just a police report that gathered dust. Seed had torn through Ashwick, knocking on doors, chasing rumors and false leads, but the Hollow Season had swallowed her whole and left nothing behind. The police called it a runaway case. Seed knew better. Something unnatural had taken her, he just didn't know what.
Journalism became his weapon. After Lila's disappearance, law enforcement was his first thought, he was already a Cop at the time so he quickly got promoted and became a detective but the badge came with too many rules. Reporting, though, gave him access to crime scenes, with his police contacts and whispers of the city's underbelly, so he gave up on being a detective and went for journalism, that way he figured he hear things faster. If Lila was out there, or if her fate was tied to something more depressing, he'd find it in the stories he chased. Every missing person case, every strange occurrence, was a thread he pulled, hoping it led to her.
Today, October 1st, is the anniversary of Lila's disappearance. It's also her birthday, she'd be twenty-two now. And it's the first day of this year's Hollow Season. The coincidence sat like a stone in Seed's chest as he grabbed his notepad and headed out for a story.
A call had come in an hour ago: a family of four; father, mother, two young sons, missing from their apartment on Crescent Street. The landlord, chasing three months of unpaid rent, found their home untouched. Clothes in closets, dishes in the sink, a half-eaten pizza on the counter that has rotted into mold. No signs of a struggle, no notes. Just gone.
Seed quickly drove over to the scene, Police tape fluttering across the entrance. A small crowd of neighbours murmuring nearby, their faces tight with unease. Seed spotted Detective Delgado, a grizzled Detective and his Mentor that he had known since his old days as a Cop. Delgado nodded as Seed approached him, his expression grim.
"Wallace," Delgado said, scratching his stubble. "you ain't supposed to here"
"I know, I know, so what's this one about?"
"Come on, man". Delgado sighed but replied to him nonetheless. "just Another weird one. Family's been gone at least a month, maybe more. Landlord says the place smells like they were there yesterday."
Seed scribbled some. Rubbish into his notepad. "Any leads? Witnesses?"
"Nope. Neighbours heard nothing, saw nothing. It's like they evaporated." Delgado lowers his voice. "Hollow Season's starting, though. Are....are you alright?"
"Yeah yeah, i'm fine, tip top shape man, guaranteed by my psychiatrist! don't worry about me"
Seed's jaw tightened. He knows Delgado didn't believe that. But he had to focus on the crime In front of him not his mental health. He's covered enough vanishings to see the pattern, spikes in missing persons, strange sightings, all brushed off as coincidence. He stepped into the apartment, taking in the scenery of a family lived home. The living room littered with kid toys. Seed's stomach twisted. It was familiar, Lila's room had looked like this with her own dolls.
He snapped some photos, asks the landlord a few questions (the man's more annoyed about the rent than worried), and exchanged nods with the other officers. There's nothing concrete to report, just the eerie absence of answers. By the time Seed left, the sky had darkened
Back at his apartment, a cramped one-bedroom on the edge of Ashwick's downtown, Seed dropped his keys on the counter and slumped onto the couch. The place was a mess, as any real man's space should be. A photo of Lila sat on the coffee table, her smile frozen at seventeen. Today, her birthday and the anniversary of her loss made him sink in grief more than ever. He rose up to pour a glass of whiskey, to let that good ol' throat burn be a small distraction, and let the memories flood in. Reminiscing about all the time he spent with Lila had become his habit.
A knock at the door jolted him. It's late—past 9 p.m.—and he's not expecting anyone. Frowning rose up and opened the door to find a package on the welcome mat, no sender's name, no address. Just his name, Seed Wallace, scrawled in black ink. The box was small, wrapped in brown paper that felt oddly warm.
Inside was a book, no, a ledger. Its cover is leathery, unnervingly soft, like skin stretched over bone. A faint pulse seemed to emanate from it, though Seed convinced himself that was his imagination. A note slipped from the pages, written in the same sharp script: A ledger of The deaths to come. Read it. Act on it. Or don't. Your choice.
He scoffs. Fucking Halloween pranks, someone must think he's that stupid to fall for this high school crap. But as he reached for the book and touched its cover he felt a sharp pain shoot across his whole body from the tip of his fingers to the sole of his feet.
"ARGGHHH!!!!!" he screamed as it felt like his chest was being torn open. And just as his was wriggling in pain a voice echoed in his head, eerie and sharp, like the sweet voice of a devil leading you into temptation.
[New Archivist bounded...]
[fate is being rewritten...]
[Hell is beckoning...]
[The Ferry man of the sea of death smiles upon the new soul that shall need transport...]
[You Soul is being corrupted....]
[We....Look forward to your entry, Archivist.]
And just as Voice stopped, the pain started residing. Seed fell to the ground grasping for air and his chest.
Huff huff huff!
He stared at the ledger that had fallen with him and he thought about what had just happened but his rationality was betrayed by his curiosity as He felt a pull to touch it again.
He reach for it again and touched the cover, Quickly closing his eyes, ready for the jolt of pain again to hit him but....nothing happened. So flipped open the cover, the pages brittle and yellowed. The first page had his name and some information that was hard for him to understand.
[1666th Archivist: Seed Wallace]
[Constitution: Bound Human+]
[Level: 0]
[Death energy: 0/100]
It felt like looking at a screen ripped out of an online game, seed kept reading as his eyes darted downward.
[Privileges]
As the Archivist of the Ledger of death. You shall be granted some privileges begetting of one who wears death as an armour.
[1.Death Prediction]
Random deaths shall be predicted Upon each page, giving the Archivist the opportunity to gave death or not.
[2.Death Remark ]
Grants you the ability kill anyone by writing their real name and cause of death into the ledger while picturing their face
[3. Death inheritance]
You inherit a small portion of the Abilities of those you kill and the Chance to transform into them and wield their full powers once
[3.Death Absorption]
You absorb death energy to level up, Levelling up strengthens and increases the abilities and privileges you have
"Death prediction? Death Note? Death absorption? What the hell ???" seed muttered under his breath as he read the last words of the first page and swallowed his salvia as he flipped to the next page.
The entries on the second page stopped his breath.
[Death prediction]
[Rebecca Hayes, Apartment 3B. Strangled by her own hair. 9:10 p.m]
His neighbour, Rebecca, the quiet artist who always waved at him in the hall. Seed glanced at the clock, 9:05 p.m. Five minutes. He laughed, a nervous bark, ready to toss the ledger aside. It's absurd. A coincidence.
"This all can't be real, the stress is finally getting to my head, what an elaborate prank". Seed kept trying to convince himself that the pain he had felt earlier was probably just some hallucination due to stress but his mumbling was cut short by the next thing he head.
"MHMMMHHHHH!!!!!!!!"
A muffled shriek that cut through the thin apartment walls.
Seed froze, his heart hammering. The sound was faint but unmistakably coming from Rebecca's apartment next door. It wasn't a scream of pain, but of fear, high and desperate.
The clock ticked to 9:06. His eyes darted to the ledger, its ink seeming to shimmer in the dim light. This can't be real. But the shriek came again, sharper, and with something else, a wet slithering sound, like ropes twisting.