The streets stretched in every direction, empty and endless.
I tightened my grip on the boy's hand as we stepped forward, the stone beneath our feet leaving faint smudges of gray that clung to our boots. Each step felt heavier than the last, as though the city itself was pulling us deeper, testing the weight of our fear.
The air was wrong here. Too thin, too dry, carrying the taste of dust that wasn't just dust — it clung to the back of my throat, bitter and metallic. Each inhale felt like swallowing glass.
The woman walked a few paces ahead, blade loose at her side. Her shoulders were tense, head turning slowly, scanning windows that seemed to lean closer when we passed, corners that warped just beyond our vision. Her silence was heavier than any warning.
Nothing moved. And yet I couldn't shake the sense that everything watched.
The boy's voice was a thin whisper. "Where are the people?"
I wanted to tell him there had never been people here. That this place was built of nothing but echoes and hunger. But my mouth stayed shut. Words were useless here.
We turned down a narrow street. The walls pressed close, carved with the same strange marks I had seen below. My skin prickled. Each time my eyes brushed the symbols, I felt a pull, as if the stone itself wanted me to read them. But the marks weren't words. They were wounds — reminders of the lives this place had consumed.
The hiss returned, faint but constant, threading through the alleys and doorways. Not approaching — not yet — but always there. A low, omnipresent hum, as if the city itself exhaled around us.
The woman stopped suddenly. Her hand lifted, sharp.
I froze.
Ahead, the street ended in a square. Stalls leaned half-collapsed, scraps of wood and fabric scattered like bones. But what froze me wasn't the ruins.
It was the shapes on the walls.
Human shapes. Blackened silhouettes burned into stone, caught mid-step, mid-turn, mid-reach. A whole crowd, frozen in their last breath, their faces twisted into screams that the stone had swallowed.
The boy whimpered. I pulled him against me, shielding his eyes. But it was too late. His small body shook with a fear I didn't have words for, and I couldn't even promise him safety.
The woman's jaw tightened. "This city eats," she said flatly. "And it leaves nothing behind but ash."
The hiss swelled, louder now, as though the city itself had heard her. The ground trembled faintly, a pulse running through stone beneath our feet. Slow. Steady. Hungry.
I felt it too — a pressure in the air, in the walls, in my chest. A presence watching, testing us.
The shadows between the buildings stretched and flexed. Windows that had been empty shifted, a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye — a step, a glance, something alive.
And for the first time since I entered the Hollow City, I knew it wasn't empty.
It was alive. And it was waiting.