Chapter 17 - The Hollow Between Worlds

Anastasya: “No… no, no, no, what is this?!”

She was falling, then floating, then standing.

Her feet met something that felt like fog made solid, glassy and rippling beneath her. Above her was no sky, only dark velvet streaked with glowing red veins, pulsing like a heartbeat. The shrine was… scattered. Pieces of it drifted in midair half a torii gate here, a warped fragment of a prayer tablet there. Lanterns hung from invisible threads, flickering with blue fire.

Anastasya turned slowly, arms wrapped tightly around herself.

Anastasya: “This isn’t any part of the shrine I know.”

Everything was twisted, impossible, like the inside of a dream that remembered too much.

She walked carefully, her bare feet making no sound, eyes catching the occasional shimmer of movement between the floating debris. Whispers clung to the air. Her name. The soft rustle of pages. A far-off sound like dripping water—or something bleeding.

Then-

Voice: “Found you.”

Anastasya spun, breath caught in her throat.

A boy stepped from the mist.

Haruki?

No, he looked like Haruki, but… his eyes glowed too bright. His mouth stretched just a bit too wide when he smiled. And there were cracks along his skin, faint and spidering, like old porcelain trying to hold back something inside.

Haruki?: “You opened a door you weren’t meant to.”

Anastasya: “You’re not him. You’re not Haruki.”

Haruki?: “But I’m part of him. The part he hides. The part you’ve started waking up.”

Anastasya backed away, fists clenched.

Anastasya: “This place, it was behind the offering stones. Why? What is this place?”

Haruki?: “It’s the Hollow. A boundary layer. It keeps the shrine from unraveling. It’s where the pieces of forgotten things go.”

Anastasya: “I didn’t want to find it.”

Haruki?: “And yet here you are.”

A shape flitted behind her, something long and shadowed, its form impossible to track. She turned fast, but there was nothing.

Then-

Haruki: “Anastasya!”

The real one. She knew it instantly, his voice carried warmth, urgency.

Haruki stepped forward from the mists, his hair tousled and damp with sweat, his breath uneven. He looked scared.

Haruki: “You weren’t supposed to go this deep.”

Anastasya: “I didn’t mean to. I-I tried all the escape routes and they failed. Then something pulled me in, something took me!”

Haruki’s jaw clenched.

Haruki: “The Hollow doesn’t like being searched. It answers curiosity with confusion. That’s how it protects itself.”

Anastasya: “So it’s alive?!”

Haruki: “In a way. It’s… tied to the shrine’s core. The part even I don’t fully understand.”

He reached for her hand gently.

Haruki: “Let’s get you out of here before it notices you too much.”

Anastasya hesitated. She wanted to scream. Cry. Hit something. But his eyes were calm, grounding her.

She nodded.

Haruki whispered something, words that didn’t sound like language and the fog beneath her feet turned dark, swallowing her vision. Just before it all blinked out, she heard a voice that wasn’t Haruki’s.

Voice: “She keeps looking. Soon she’ll remember.”

...

She awoke in her shrine room. The futon felt heavier. The walls closer. Her chest throbbed with something unspoken.

Anastasya: “…What the hell was that place?”

She sat up slowly. Haruki wasn’t in the room. Aurelya wasn’t either.

She stood, crossing to the low wooden table where her plan had been hidden beneath fake prayer scrolls.

Three possible routes, all failed.

She bit her lip hard enough to taste iron.

Anastasya: “I need more. I need to find something, anything, that leads out.”

She moved to the window, the garden bathed in moonlight.

Something was moving in the reflection of the koi pond. Her own silhouette but smiling when she wasn’t.

She stepped back, chest tightening.