Chapter 5: Feast of the Hollow

The survivors were woken not by the tolling bell, but by the stench—thick and cloying, like roses left to rot in a sealed coffin. Jin-soo gagged, the scar on his forearm throbbing in time with the double pulse that had taken root in his chest. The grand hall’s once-opulent tapestries hung in tatters, their threads blackened by mold. Tomas lay beside him, his massive frame shuddering with each wet, rattling breath. The corruption had spread overnight: black veins pulsed beneath his skin like parasitic worms, and his eyes, once sharp and soldier-clear, had clouded to milky white. Sasha slept curled against the wall, her arms wrapped around herself, fresh cuts crisscrossing her skin—a desperate attempt to carve new symbols of protection.

Amara was gone.

Jin-soo found her in the corridor outside, her back pressed to the wall as if trying to merge with the stone. The shattered remains of her camera lay at her feet, the lens cracked into a spiderweb of fractures. Each shard reflected a sliver of her face—eyes narrowed, lips peeled back in a snarl that didn’t belong to her.

“It’s changing me,” she said, her voice hollow. She didn’t look up, her fingers tracing the jagged edge of the broken lens. “Every time I look at it, I see… her.”

“Who?” Jin-soo knelt, the cold seeping through his trousers.

“My sister.” Amara’s laugh was brittle, like glass underfoot. “Not the priestess. My real sister. Lúcia.” She lifted the camera, her thumb brushing the fractured glass. “She disappeared a year ago. Last thing she texted me was ‘I found them. The games are real.’ Then nothing. No body. No note. Just… silence.”

A moth fluttered past, its wings leaving a trail of iridescent dust. Amara’s gaze followed it, vacant. “I became a journalist to find her. Instead, I found this.” She tapped the lens. “Now she’s in here. Screaming. Begging me to join her.”

Before Jin-soo could respond, the gongs began—a dissonant, ear-splitting cacophony that shook the walls. Dust rained from the ceiling as the survivors staggered to their feet.

Anya awaited them in the banquet hall.

The room was a perversion of opulence. A table stretched the length of the chamber, laden with food that glistened obscenely under the chandeliers’ sickly green light. Roasted meats dripped golden fat, fruits bulged with juice, and steaming loaves of bread emitted a yeasty warmth that made empty stomachs clench. The air hummed with the buzz of flies, though none dared land on the feast.

“Eat,” Anya commanded, her silver mask reflecting the grotesque spread. “The Hollow demands tribute.”

Tomas lurched forward first, drawn by some primal instinct. His milky eyes fixed on a platter of ribs, the meat charred and glazed with a sticky, amber sauce. Sasha grabbed his arm, her voice frantic. “Don’t! It’s a trap—!”

“I. Don’t. Care,” he slurred, shoving her aside with a strength that belied his decay. He seized a rib, tearing into the meat with blackened teeth. Juice ran down his chin, mixing with the bile that seeped from his lips.

Jin-soo’s scar flared, a white-hot brand. He grabbed a knife from the table, its handle carved from yellowed bone, and sliced into a loaf of bread. The crust split with a wet crack. Inside, maggots writhed, their bodies plump and glistening.

“Don’t eat it!” he shouted, hurling the loaf against the wall. It burst in a shower of larvae.

Too late.

Tomas froze, the rib slipping from his fingers. His throat bulged, the skin stretching taut as something squirmed beneath. “Cut it out,” he rasped, clawing at his neck. “Cut it OUT!”

Jin-soo lunged, the bone knife in his hand. The blade sank into Tomas’s throat with a sound like punctured leather. Black blood sprayed, hot and rancid, but instead of flesh, the knife grated against bone—rows of needle-sharp teeth lining Tomas’s esophagus.

A skeletal hand burst from his mouth, fingers twitching. Then another. The Hollow’s laughter echoed as it peeled Tomas open like rotten fruit, his ribs snapping outward to form a grotesque bloom of bone and viscera.

Chaos erupted.

Survivors screamed, trampling each other to reach the doors. A woman tripped, her face plunging into a tureen of soup that boiled suddenly, scalding her skin red. A man clawed at his tongue, the fig he’d eaten sprouting thorns that pierced his gums.

Amara raised her camera, her hands steady despite the carnage. “Show me!” she screamed, the flash exploding in a burst of searing light.

The Hollow materialized in the fractured lens, its fractal form reflected a thousand times—a mosaic of screaming faces, each one a shard of someone lost to the Veil. “You want truth?” it hissed, its voice a chorus of the damned. “Feast on this.”

The visions came:

Sasha, age twelve, locked in a windowless room. Cultists in black robes carved symbols into her skin, their chants drowning out her sobs. “You are the key,” they whispered. “The door must be fed.”

Viktor, younger and leaner, signing a document stamped BUDGET REALLOCATION: ST. MARY’S PEDIATRIC WARD. A nurse wept in the hallway, her daughter’s empty bed visible through the glass.

Jin-soo, gripping Min-ji’s chart, the words “Insufficient funding” bleeding red ink across the page. Her mother’s screams followed him down the hall, a sound he’d tried to drown with whiskey.

“Stop!” Jin-soo roared, snatching the camera and smashing it against the floor. The lens shattered, glass skittering across the stone.

Amara howled, clutching her face as shards embedded in her pupils. “I see them,” she whispered, blood streaking her cheeks like tears. “All the souls… they’re hungry.”

When the madness subsided, seven remained.

Sasha crouched in a corner, rocking back and forth, her arms a latticework of fresh cuts. Amara sat blindfolded with a strip of torn curtain, the fabric already soaked through with blood. Jin-soo’s hands trembled, Tomas’s black blood crusted under his nails.

Anya approached, her robes trailing through the gore. She pressed a hand to Jin-soo’s chest, her touch icy. “The Veil sees your hunger,” she said, her mask tilting toward the scar on his arm. “It will feed you soon.”

That night, Jin-soo dreamt of the field again.

Min-ji stood amid the asphodel, her hospital gown now pristine, the bloodstains replaced by embroidered flowers. Petals fell from her lips as she spoke, each one dissolving into smoke. “You’re getting closer,” she said, her voice echoing as if from a great distance. “Find the heart.”

“Whose heart?” he asked, the ground shifting beneath him. Roots snaked around his ankles, pulling him downward.

She pointed to his chest. “Hers.”

The roots yanked him into the earth. He woke with a gasp, the bone knife clutched in his hand, its edge pressed to Amara’s throat.

“Do it,” she whispered, her blindfold stained crimson. “I’m becoming her.”

In the cracked mirror across the room, his reflection grinned, its eyes pools of liquid shadow.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***