Someone was shaking me—gently, like trying not to disturb the dead.
"...Young man." The voice was low, grainy with age. "You've been asleep for quite some time now."
The words seeped into me before I could open my eyes. My body felt heavy, as though my blood had been drained and replaced with stone. My throat was dry, tongue rough against my teeth. I breathed in, and the air cut through my lungs with the taste of old smoke and dust, metallic like the breath of something forgotten.
When I finally forced my eyes open, the world swam. Light bled in from above—thin, fractured, like sunlight breaking through cracked glass. My vision settled on an old man crouched beside me. He wasn't ancient—perhaps late fifties, maybe sixty—but time had carved something deliberate into his face, like a craftsman chiseling patience out of skin. His posture, though, was strange. No hesitation, no stiffness. He crouched like a man used to waiting, spine steady, eyes alert.
"Oh," he said, with a faint smile. "Finally."
"What happened?" My voice sounded foreign, hoarse, like it belonged to someone else. "Where am I?"
I pushed myself up. The stone beneath my palms was cold, slick with condensation. My arms trembled under my own weight, muscles tight from stillness. I sat there for a moment, breathing hard, trying to understand where the world ended and where I began.
The place was vast—cathedral-like, but carved from the belly of the earth. The floor stretched out in smooth slabs of stone, marked with faint sigils that pulsed when I blinked. Water gathered in thin streams along the edges, dripping into shallow pools that reflected a sickly light from the ceiling. Columns of rock rose like pillars to nowhere, and behind them, walls glimmered faintly with streaks of mineral veins—green, ochre, silver, as if the mountain itself had been wounded and left to heal unevenly. The air smelled faintly of earth and something sharper, almost medicinal, the scent that lingers in places that have seen both prayer and blood.
The man's eyes followed my gaze with mild amusement. "You've been out of it for at least a day," he said, brushing dust off his trousers.
"Out of what?" I asked. My voice cracked halfway through.
He gave a small shrug. "They were performing the rituals. Your body didn't take it, I suppose."
The word rituals lodged in my head like a thorn. My chest tightened as flashes came—firelight, whispers, the pressure of a hand on my head, the hum of voices speaking in a language I could not recall. Then nothing.
"What rituals?" I asked, trying to steady my breath. "What happened?"
He smiled faintly, the kind of smile that never reached the eyes. "When your mind clears, you'll remember what the chamber gave you. It never hides for long. You can go now—gather yourself, walk out. The mountain's done with you."
"That's it?" I whispered. "I just… go home?"
"That's it," he said, standing easily, the movement fluid, too fluid for someone his age. "You've been given what you came for. Whether you can bear it is another matter."
I looked up at him properly then—the faint sheen of sweat on his temples, the calloused hands clasped behind his back. There was no sign of deceit, yet something in his tone unsettled me, as though the truth was hidden just beyond the shape of his words.
"Are you my companion?" I asked quietly.
At that, he laughed—softly, but with real mirth. The sound echoed against the stone, breaking the silence like a ripple through stagnant water.
"No," he said, still smiling. "I'm nobody's companion. I serve here. I keep watch. That's all."
He glanced at me one last time, eyes sharp with something I couldn't name. "You'll remember soon enough, young man. They always do."
I tried to stand, but my hand slipped on the stone, slick with some kind of thin residue that clung to my skin. The jolt sent a weak sting up my arm. My body felt heavier than it should have, as if the ground itself wanted to keep me. I took another breath, steadied myself, and pushed again—this time rising on shaking legs. Dust and bits of grit clung to my palms. I wiped them against my jeans, leaving dull streaks across the fabric.
The old man watched quietly. His eyes held neither pity nor kindness, only a kind of resigned curiosity, as though I were an animal that had wandered into a place it shouldn't have.
"Not many come here," he said after a pause. His voice carried softly through the air, steady, unhurried. "Not many are brave enough. But I've seen my share of them. I've taken care of my share of them. Still, what you've done so far…" He exhaled through his nose, a dry sound. "That's something I haven't seen before. You've got kind eyes, but your choices—those are strange ones. Every step you took to get here, whatever you're trying to claim, it's built on something I can't begin to understand."
I rubbed the back of my neck, still trying to clear the fog from my head. "You don't have to understand my decisions," I said quietly. "Half the time I don't understand them either. But I want the ends."
He tilted his head. "No ends ever justify the means." His tone darkened, like the weight of a warning wrapped in certainty. "You're in for one hell of a ride, young man."
I looked at him properly then. His face was lit from one side by the pale glow leaking through the cracks above. The lines around his mouth seemed carved by habit, not age—someone who'd spent a lifetime frowning at the wrong kind of people.
"I'm not going to see Sir Thea again, am I?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No. Their work here is done. You've served your purpose. You can go home now, Hugo. You seem able to walk back."
"For someone who serves here," I said, brushing my hands together, "you're awfully judgmental. I wouldn't do that if I were in your place."
He laughed, a rough, human sound that didn't suit the quiet of the chamber. "I get to be judgmental all I fucking want, Hugo. You'll understand what I mean once it starts. Once it gets real. You'll regret it."
"Save the advice for someone who cares," I said, turning from him. "I didn't come here for sermons. I came for something specific, not lessons in morals and virtues. Anyway, thank you for… watching over me, or whatever you did."
I looked around, "Which way should I go?"
He raised one hand and pointed toward a narrow opening in the far wall where the light dimmed to gray.
I followed the gesture, then turned my back to him. The sound of my boots scraped softly against the stone. With each step, the air grew colder, thinner, as though the chamber exhaled me unwillingly. I didn't look back.
I took out the coin. Its surface caught the dim light like water under a dying sun, pallid but alive, the edges breathing with a quiet pulse of their own. I held it up and angled it toward the corridor ahead, the walls swallowing the light and returning it in fragments—thin veins of gold stretching across the stone.
When I turned, I saw where I had been kept. From this distance, the place looked almost human in design—small chambers carved neatly into the mountain's flesh, stacked one above another like ribs inside a hollowed beast. Each opening gave off a weak shimmer, where candles burned steady in their niches, their smoke winding toward the unseen ceiling. The rooms looked lived in—shadows moved faintly behind some of them, perhaps wind, perhaps memory. For a heartbeat, the place felt like a city buried alive, its dwellers waiting for sound to wake them.
I lowered the coin and started walking. The path sloped upward, the air thinning, dry earth loosening under my boots. The silence pressed closer the nearer I came to the exit, as though the mountain disapproved of my leaving. When I finally stepped out, the light outside wasn't sunlight at all—just a diluted gray, brittle enough to sting the eyes after so long in the dark.
I stood there for a moment, breathing in air that should have felt free. My thoughts were scattered, like ash. Now what? What was supposed to happen?
I rubbed my palms together, the grit biting under my skin, and tried to sense it—whatever change I'd paid for, whatever power they promised. I snapped my fingers. The sound cracked, small and sharp, but nothing came. No flicker of flame, no warmth.
I looked around. Stones littered the path like pieces of bone. I crouched, staring at them. Maybe it wasn't fire. Maybe it was something else. I straightened, extended my hand, and moved it through the air—slowly at first, then sharper, as if I could command the pebbles to stir. They didn't. I tried again, a little more force in the gesture, but they stayed where they were, dull and lifeless.
A weak laugh escaped me. "Brilliant," I muttered. "Absolutely brilliant."
I stood there, staring at my useless hand, wondering if I'd been tricked. It didn't feel like a lie—those people, those rooms, Thea's eyes that seemed to see through me. No. If this was a scam, it was the best I'd ever seen.
I shoved the coin into my pocket and looked down the road that wound back toward the plains. The thought crossed me like a whisper—maybe I wasn't chosen. Maybe the mountain had taken one look at me and decided to give me nothing. Maybe I wasn't meant to wield power, only to want it.
The wind shifted, carrying dust and something dry that clung to my lips. I kept walking.
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June 5th 2025
Hugo Hollands, Age 24
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The night pressed close behind the shelter, the kind that swallowed sound before it could echo. I leaned against the brick wall, cigarette between my fingers, the smoke curling upward in uneven ribbons before breaking apart. The air was dry, carrying that strange city smell—wet dirt and something old, something tired.
I took a drag, slow, deep, until my chest tightened. The nicotine burned down, left a shallow comfort. My thoughts slipped where they always did, back to the mountain, to the coins, the rituals, the promises.
What did they even do with the money? Thirty thousand pounds—it had felt like a lifetime folded into paper, each note a cut, a night, a compromise. What did people like them need with that kind of currency? They didn't eat, didn't live among us, didn't sleep on rotting mattresses or wait in lines for handouts. Did they count it? Burn it? Feed it to the fire like an offering that meant nothing except proof of devotion?
I stared at the glowing tip of the cigarette until it dimmed, then flicked the ash onto the wet ground. The thought came uninvited: all of that—everything I did—was for nothing.
The men. The rooms. The way I learned to shut my mind off like a switch so I wouldn't feel their hands. The way Poppy pretended it was fine, like it was just work. The way Eddie looked at me after, like he wanted to shake me out of whatever spell I'd fallen under. I'd dragged them both into my madness, and for what? To kneel before something that turned its back on me the moment I left.
I pressed the cigarette to the wall until the ember died, then crushed the filter under my shoe. The smell clung to my fingers. I shoved both hands into my pockets, walked back through the alley, and slipped inside.
The shelter was silent except for the distant creak of beds and the slow, uneven breathing of men who had nothing left to lose. I crouched beside my bunk—the lower one, as always—and sat down. The mattress sagged under me, the springs pressing against the bones of my back.
If this didn't work, if what I was promised wasn't real, then what now? Go back to the warehouse? Knock on the manager's office door like some lost dog and ask for my job back? Pretend I never vanished?
No one called. Not even once.
Marco didn't have my number, that was true, but the manager did. I remember giving it to him when I filled out the forms, wrote it neatly beside my name. He never called. Didn't ask why I stopped showing up. Didn't check if I was dead or alive. Maybe he knew already. Maybe I just disappeared the way smoke does—something you see for a moment before it becomes nothing.
Do I even exist to anyone anymore?
I lay back, the ceiling above me painted in shadow. The air in the dormitory was warm, stale, heavy with sleep. The question turned over again and again in my head, wearing itself down until it lost meaning. I'd been invisible for most of my life. This was nothing new. A new kind of silence, maybe, but silence all the same.
I closed my eyes. The taste of ash still sat on my tongue. The memory of the mountain pressed at the edges of my mind—its walls, its light, the echo of voices that had promised I'd be more than this. But here I was. Just Hugo. Breathing. Waiting for something that never came.
The room unfolded around me before I could breathe. One blink—and I was there.
I knew this place. Every line of it. Every smell. The walls were painted the same uneven shade of butter yellow, scuffed near the corners where children had pressed their shoes. Paper drawings still hung where they always had—wobbly suns, stick families, crooked trees held up by tape curling from the edges. The light fell through the high windows, soft and heavy with dust, and I felt the warmth of it on my skin as if I'd never left.
Miss Kelly stood at the front, her hair pinned the way I remembered, her dress a washed blue. Behind her was the old corkboard where the alphabet stretched in bright uneven letters. My eyes drifted right, and there I was—sitting cross-legged on the floor, head tilted, one small hand resting against my cheek. Beside me was a little girl in a floral dress, her dark hair tied into two neat pigtails. Lola.
I hadn't thought of her in years.
I moved toward them without thinking. My shoes made no sound on the floor. The air itself felt suspended, like I'd stepped into a photograph that hadn't yet finished forming. I crouched beside the boy who was me, and for a moment, my throat tightened at how still he sat.
"Hey," I said quietly. "Can you hear me?"
No answer. The boy's eyes stayed fixed on the floor.
The door opened, and one of the teachers stepped inside. "Lola," she called, smiling. "Come here, sweetheart. Your dad brought you the money."
The girl's face lit up. Her small mouth broke into a grin, her sadness vanishing like it had never been there. She jumped up and ran toward the teacher. I watched her go, that bright little dress fluttering with each step.
I knew this day. I knew every beat of it.
There had been an ice cream truck waiting outside the schoolyard, its bell chiming in little silver tones. The teachers had told us to bring our allowance so we could buy cones and sit together on the swings after lunch. But I hadn't brought any money. My aunt had forgotten, or maybe she hadn't cared. Lola didn't have any either—not until her father came by during his lunch break, smelling of soap and engine oil, slipping her a few coins with a kiss on the forehead.
And me? No one came.
The teachers had kept me in the classroom so someone could "keep an eye" on me. I turned now, watching them—three women gathered by the desks, their skirts brushing against the chairs. Younger me sat there among them, his head drooping, small fingers pulling at the fabric of his pants. His shoulders trembled, the sound of soft crying barely there, like a whimper he was trying to swallow back.
"Don't cry," I whispered. "Please, don't cry. It's okay."
He didn't hear me.
One of the teachers spoke, her voice low. "His father's in jail," she said. "And the mother's nowhere to be found. Poor thing. Guess no one thought to give him money."
Another laughed lightly, pity turning sour at the edges. "Oh, I know the type. Just send him with a couple of pounds next time. The ice cream truck doesn't cost more than that. What's a pound, really?"
A third replied, "Must be hard, growing up in a broken home."
I stepped closer, heart pounding. "Then give him the pound," I said. "Go on. Give it to him. Let him go outside."
Nothing.
My voice vanished into the air like smoke.
I turned toward the boy again. He was lying on the floor now, curled into himself, small body trembling. His sobs were quieter but they tore through the stillness all the same. I wanted to reach for him, to lift him, to tell him something—anything—that could make it better.
The women stood watching. One sighed sharply. "Oh, look," she muttered, "he's whining again."
Another rolled her eyes. "My God, does this kid ever shut up?"
Their words cut through me. I stared at them, at their faces that once meant authority, now hollowed out of warmth. I felt my own voice tear free, desperate.
"Someone give him a pound," I said. "For fuck's sake, someone just—"
The last teacher, the one near the window, turned her head slightly. Her mouth opened, and I heard the words spill from her like venom, echoing exactly as I remembered them.
"Well," she said, "someone give him a fucking pound for fuck's sake."
The sound rang in my skull like a bell that refused to stop. The boy didn't move. He stayed there, small and alone on the floor, his tears soaking into the wood.
And all I could do was watch him.
Seven-year-old me lay there on the wooden floor, weeping. His small shoulders shook, hands pressed to his face, hiccuping breaths breaking through the muffled sobs. And these people—grown adults with pressed skirts and name tags—stood there judging him. Judging a fucking seven-year-old.
My voice broke through the stillness, ragged and useless. "Stop it. Don't—" I reached again, crouching beside the child, my hand trembling as I placed it gently on his back. My fingers met nothing. The touch passed through air, through him. He didn't feel me. He didn't even flinch.
I stood there, staring down at that tiny frame shaking on the floor. I felt something cracking inside, a slow ache spreading outward like heat beneath the skin. "What kind of dream is this?" I whispered. "What the fuck is this?"
No one turned. No one saw me.
The teachers kept talking among themselves, their voices calm, bored, even amused. The sound of it crawled into my bones.
I pressed my palms to my temples. Why am I seeing this again? I could almost taste the dust of the classroom, hear the soft squeak of chalk against the board. But it wasn't the same as before—it was sharper now, clearer. The pain was alive. It was breathing with me.
Maybe I didn't remember how it felt back then. Maybe I'd buried it too deep. But I could imagine it now—the kind of heartbreak that only a child could have, when the world's cruelty still feels personal. All that for a single fucking pound. For a cone of melting ice cream.
My chest tightened until I couldn't breathe.
I turned around, desperate for air, and that's when I saw him.
A man stood behind me, still and patient, as if he'd been there the whole time.
Before I could move, the world went black.
I woke up with a sharp inhale, lungs snapping open like I'd been drowning. My body jerked upright on the bunk. The air was thick, stale with sleep and the smell of sweat. For a moment, I didn't know where I was—the dream clung to me like a film I couldn't peel off.
And then I saw him.
He was sitting on the ladder that led to the upper bunk, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely. The same man from the dream.
The light from the small window caught him unevenly, painting his face in tones of copper and shadow. His skin had the kind of warmth that didn't belong in this place, as if the world couldn't decide whether to light him or swallow him whole. He wore a black hoodie, the hood framing his face, drawing the eye to the precision of it—the straight nose, the sharp jaw, the steady mouth. His hair fell in dark strands across his forehead, almost damp, catching the dim light like thread. Small earrings glinted at the curve of his ears.
But it was his eyes that held me. Deep, clear, almost too still, carrying a patience that didn't feel human.
My breath hitched. I blinked, once, twice, trying to separate dream from waking, but he stayed there—real, silent, watching.
I stumbled off the bed, knees weak, heart clawing at my ribs. The air felt too thick. I pushed past the curtain that separated the bunks and bolted out the door, through the narrow corridor until the cold outside air hit me like water.
In the back alley, I crouched down, elbows on my knees, palms pressed hard against my forehead. My body was shaking, lungs dragging sharp, uneven breaths. What the fuck was that?
I fumbled for my cigarette pack, dropped it once, cursed under my breath, picked it up again. My fingers trembled as I pulled one out, pressed it between my lips, lit it. Smoke filled my lungs, and I waited for it to slow me down, to settle something. It didn't.
And then a voice said, calm and amused, "Did you enjoy the show?"
I froze.
I stood up too fast, the cigarette falling from my mouth.
He was there. Standing a few feet away, exactly as he'd been in the dream—the hood up, the streetlight brushing his face in amber strokes. Those eyes, steady and coldly curious, looked right through me, and for a heartbeat, I couldn't tell if I was awake at all.