Into the Hollow Deep
They moved under the veil of a moonless night, cloaked in silence and warded shadow. Alaric had handpicked the scouts: four of the finest trackers, each a veteran of blood-soaked trails and forgotten paths. None of them spoke unless necessary—not for fear of the wilds, but for reverence of what they hunted.
The Second Failed had risen.
No one knew its shape. No one knew its name. All they had was a trail of rot where life had fled, and echoes of a scream heard only in dream.
Alaric watched them go from the ridge above Ridgefall's northern slope. Beside him, Mira stood quiet, her fingers brushing the edges of a polished dreamstone—using it to anchor herself while her mind drifted along the paths ahead. Dreamwalking could extend her awareness, but even now, the aether grew strained. Something—some presence—was muddying the flow.
Caelen stepped up behind them, his armor dark and unadorned. "We're pushing too fast."
"We're not pushing fast enough," Alaric said without looking back. "Every hour we wait, it gains more ground."
"Or more strength," Mira added. Her voice held the edge of a whisper—not out of fear, but respect. "The First Failed was a brute—strength without purpose. This one… this one waits. That's more dangerous."
---
The scouts—Bren, Kessa, Irol, and the silent shadeborn called Thorn—followed a cold trail that wound through the Hollowpine Ravines. Their path led them past abandoned villages and forests where even the birds had stopped singing. Trees bent away from a path that wasn't cut by blade, but by presence. The deeper they went, the less they heard—no wind, no rustle, only the low pulse of distant something.
Irol, the youngest, touched a blackened tree and drew back. "It's not burned," he whispered. "It's emptied. Like the life was unwoven."
Thorn gestured, sharp and silent: It knows we're here.
Still they pressed on.
By the third night, they reached the broken altar—a place once sacred to the Forestbound clans. Now it was shattered, obsidian blood pooling in the stone's veins, running without source. Something had nested here. Something had watched from here.
Kessa knelt and closed her eyes, whispering a tracker's prayer. When she opened them, they were not her own—they shimmered with mirrored light.
"It's testing its body," she said. "Moving like a child learning steps. It wears the forms of things it eats. It's trying lives like masks."
Bren's jaw tightened. "Which direction?"
She turned slowly.
"Toward the coast."
---
The message reached Alaric and Mira through dream-binding—a whisper across the strands of thought and fate. Mira collapsed as the echo hit her. Alaric caught her, her body trembling with the weight of vision.
"Coast," she gasped. "It's wearing faces. It's testing souls. It's heading for the settlements in Hollowreach Bay."
"Then we intercept it," Alaric said, already moving.
"No," Mira said, catching his arm. Her eyes were wide—not in panic, but prophecy. "We don't intercept it."
"We bait it."
Alaric narrowed his gaze.
"What do you mean?"
She stood, strength returning like a storm behind her. "It's learning how to be us. Then let it learn wrong. Let it take the shape of our traps. Let it believe we're broken. And when it moves for the kill…"
Alaric's grin was a wolf's.
"We tear the mask from its face."