The gates of Valdrence didn’t open—they groaned. A sound of ancient, rusted mechanisms protesting movement after too long at rest. The sound echoed through the courtyard where we stood, six junior Hollows and four seniors, packs heavy on our backs, the air thick with unspoken fear.

  The gates parted enough to permit passage. Beyond lay not wilderness as I remembered from stories, but a wound.

  The sky above the Rot was bruised—a permanent twilight of purples and sickly yellows, as if the heavens themselves were infected. No sun pierced that haze, only a pale, diffuse glow that cast no true shadows. Before us stretched what must have once been farmland. Now, the fields were dead, the soil glittering with a metallic sheen like frost on poison. Skeletal remains of trees stood sentinel in the distance, branches twisted into agonized shapes.

  The air tasted different. In Valdrence, even in the lower sectors, the air carried the smell of stone, damp, and humanity. Here, it tasted of ozone and decay, with a sweetness underneath that made my throat tighten. A low hum vibrated through the ground, up through the soles of my boots—a deeper, wilder echo of the Tower’s resonance.

  Tavin gasped beside me, his hand flying to his chest. His disc, I noticed, already glowed a faint, sickly green at its edges. He wasn’t just feeling the atmosphere; he was absorbing it, passively, helplessly.

  Seren, in contrast, breathed deep. Her eyes closed, a faint, unsettling smile touching her lips. As if she were greeting an old friend.

  “Move out,” Elara commanded, her voice sharp in the heavy air. “Single file. Rook, take point. I’ll cover the rear. Juniors in the middle. Step only where we step.”

  We crossed the threshold.

  The moment my foot touched the corrupted soil, a jolt went through me—not pain, but recognition. The whispers in my chest, always present as a distant murmur, rose to a chorus of sighing voices. They didn’t form words, but the emotion was clear: welcome.

  I shoved the feeling down, fear tightening my gut. This was wrong. This was what the Wardens warned against. Attraction to the poison.

  We walked in silence, the only sounds the crunch of glassy soil underfoot and the ragged rhythm of Tavin’s breathing. The dead fields gave way to the edge of a forest, but no forest I had ever imagined. The trees were black, bark split and oozing viscous, iridescent sap. Fungus glowed from their trunks in pulsating patches of blue and violet. There were no bird calls, no insect buzz—only a deep, listening silence.

  As we passed through a particularly dense thicket, I noticed something odd.

  A tree trunk, split and oozing violet sap, bore marks that weren’t natural decay. They were cuts—deliberate, measured. Tool marks.

  Someone had carved into it. Recently.

  I stopped, running my fingers over the cuts. They formed a pattern I couldn’t read, symbols that looked almost like letters but weren’t.

  “Move,” Rook snapped from behind me, his hand shoving my pack.

  I stumbled forward, but the image of those marks stayed burned in my mind. Who else came out here? And why mark the trees?

  The deeper we went, the more the forest felt alive. Not with life, but with presence. The glowing moss seemed to pulse in time with my heartbeat. Veins of luminescent energy ran through the ground like subterranean lightning frozen in place. The air grew warmer, cloying.

  “Stay alert,” Mira, the third senior, whispered. She had a hawkish face and eyes that missed nothing. “The Rot reacts to fear. To strong emotion. Keep your minds clear.”

  Easier said than done. Every shadow seemed to shift. Twice, I saw movement from the corner of my eye—a flicker between trees, a fall of glowing spores that looked like a reaching hand. When I turned, nothing was there.

  Tavin was deteriorating. He walked hunched, his disc now a steady, warning emerald. Each breath was a wheeze.

  “Elara,” I said, my voice too loud in the quiet. “Tavin can’t—”

  “He can,” she cut me off, not looking back. “Or he breaks. There are no retrievals on first sweeps.”

  The callousness of it chilled me more than the alien forest. We were expendable. This was the final test, and failure meant being left to the Rot.

  Caius marched stiff-backed, jaw clenched, pretending he wasn’t terrified. Gawain was a ghost, his face pale, eyes hollow. Seren moved with a eerie grace, her fingertips occasionally brushing a glowing fungus, her head tilted as if listening.

  And me? The warmth in my chest spread with every step. The whispers chattered excitedly, a tapestry of half-formed thoughts and emotions. …home… long walk… the trees remember the fire…

  “Halt,” Rook growled from the front.

  We stopped. Ahead, the forest floor opened up.

  It wasn’t like the training vessels. There was no glass, no pedestal, no clinical distance.

  It was a scar in the earth.

  A fissure, perhaps ten feet long, split the forest floor. From its depths rose a slow, pulsing glow—violet shot through with threads of black. The air above it shimmered with heat, and the ground around it had turned to glass, smooth and dark as obsidian.

  Elara held up a fist. We stopped.

  “Grade 2 leak,” she said, her voice low. “Fresh. Maybe six hours old. The land hasn’t stabilized yet.”

  “What does that mean?” Caius asked.

  Rook answered, his tone flat. “It means the Taint is still active. Still trying to spread. And it knows we’re here.”

  As if in response, the glow in the fissure pulsed brighter. A tendril of vapor rose, testing the air like a snake tasting for prey.

  “Formation,” Elara commanded. “Rook, Joran—perimeter. Mira, with me. Juniors, behind us. Watch carefully. This is not a classroom.”

  The seniors moved with practiced efficiency. Rook and the fourth senior, a silent man named Joran, positioned themselves back-to-back, eyes scanning the twisted trees. Elara and Mira approached the fissure from opposite ends.

  Elara knelt, hands hovering above the glassy ground. “Mira and I will draw from opposite ends. The Taint will try to equalize between us. When it does, it becomes unstable—volatile. That’s when you junior Hollows step in. One at a time, you’ll siphon the overflow. Fast and clean. Don’t linger.”

  Mira mirrored her position. “It will fight,” she added, glancing at us. “It doesn’t want to be contained. You will feel its anger. Your job is to take it anyway.”

  “Now,” Elara said.

  Both women pressed their palms to the glass.

  The reaction was immediate. The violet glow surged upward, angry, reaching for them. But instead of flowing smoothly, it fought. Tendrils of vapor lashed out. The ground trembled. I could see the strain on Elara’s face—her jaw tight, tendons standing out in her neck. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped onto the hot glass, sizzling.

  “It’s resisting,” Mira grunted, her own arms shaking. “More than usual.”

  Between them, the Taint churned, swirling into a vortex of light and shadow. The fissure groaned. Small cracks spiderwebbed out from its edges.

  “Overflow building,” Elara said through gritted teeth. “2148—NOW!”

  Caius stumbled forward. He dropped to his knees beside the fissure, placed his hands on the glass.

  The moment he made contact, the overflow leapt at him. Not a gentle flow—a violent surge. He cried out, his back arching violently. His disc flared a brilliant, alarming green for one heartbeat.

  “Hold!” Rook barked from the perimeter.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Caius held. His scream died to a whimper as the surge subsided. When it was over, he collapsed backward onto the forest floor, gasping, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his face.

  Elara and Mira didn’t pause. The main absorption continued, the vortex between them spinning faster.

  “Next! 2150!”

  Gawain moved like a sleepwalker. He knelt, placed his hands, absorbed without a sound. But when he finished and stood, twin trails of black blood dripped from his nostrils. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, expression unchanged.

  “2149!”

  Seren approached calmly. Too calmly. When the overflow came to her, she didn’t just absorb—she hummed. A low, resonant note, wordless, that seemed to vibrate in my teeth.

  The Taint responded. It didn’t surge. It settled. It flowed into her like water finding a familiar channel. No pain. No struggle. Her disc glowed a steady, soft blue.

  Elara’s eyes snapped to her. “What did you just do?”

  Seren didn’t answer. She simply stepped back, her face serene.

  A muscle twitched in Elara’s cheek. “2146!”

  Tavin was shaking so badly he could barely walk. I steadied him. His disc was already glowing a faint, persistent green. “I—I don’t know if I can—”

  “You can,” I said, gripping his shoulder. “Breathe. Just take it.”

  He knelt, sobbing quietly. He placed his hands.

  The overflow didn’t just hit him; it tore into him. He screamed—a raw, animal sound that echoed in the silent forest. His body convulsed, his spine bowing as if trying to break. Black veins crawled up his neck.

  “Abort!” I shouted, stepping forward to pull him back.

  Elara’s voice cut like a whip: “He holds or he breaks! Do NOT interfere, 2147!”

  I froze, my hands fists at my sides. Tavin held. Somehow, through the agony, he held until the last of the overflow drained into him. Then he collapsed face-first onto the glass, silent, unmoving.

  “Last one. 2147.”

  All eyes turned to me. The air crackled with tension and spent energy.

  I knelt. The glass was warm, almost alive, under my palms. I could feel the remnants of the others—Caius’s terror, Gawain’s numbness, Seren’s eerie harmony, Tavin’s shattering pain—echoing in the ground.

  The overflow came.

  But it didn’t attack.

  It recognized me.

  The violent surge that had battered the others wrapped around me like a welcoming embrace. Warmth, profound and comforting, flooded my chest. The whispers coalesced into a single, clear chorus:

  …at last… outside the stone… we see through your eyes…

  Colors exploded behind my eyelids—indigo, silver, hues for which no name existed. It felt like reunion. Like coming home to a place I’d never known I’d left. I didn’t just absorb the overflow; I drank it, and it filled me with a terrifying, exhilarating strength.

  When I opened my eyes, the fissure was dark. Sealed. The glass beneath my hands had gone cold and dull.

  Silence.

  Elara and Mira were staring at me. Rook and Joran had turned from the perimeter, their vigilance forgotten. The other juniors watched, their expressions a mix of awe and fear.

  Elara stood slowly. Her hand drifted to the shock-baton at her belt. Not drawing it. Just resting there. “What are you?” she asked, her voice quiet, dangerous.

  “I’m a Hollow, ma’am,” I said, standing. My voice sounded strange to me—calmer, deeper.

  “No Hollow absorbs like that,” she said, taking a step toward me. “Not without years of conditioning. Not in the field. Not on their first mission.” Her eyes narrowed, scanning my face. “You’re Aldric’s kin, aren’t you? Gareth’s boy.”

  I said nothing. The locket felt like a brand under my shirt.

  She studied me for a long, tense moment. The forest seemed to hold its breath. Finally, she nodded, a decision made. “We finish the sweep. Then we talk. All of you—move out. Rook, check 2146. Make sure he’s walking.”

  We moved in a tense, exhausted silence. Tavin walked, supported between Caius and Gawain, his feet dragging. He was conscious, but his eyes were empty.

  The forest grew denser, the path vanishing entirely. Rook and Joran took turns hacking through thorny vines that bled violet, smoking sap when cut. The bruised sky darkened to near-black, but the forest itself brightened. The fungi, the moss, the veins in the ground—all pulsed with intensified bioluminescence, casting our faces in shifting shades of blue and green.

  It was beautiful. It was utterly wrong.

  “We camp soon,” Elara said, consulting a complex rune-compass that glowed in her palm. “There’s a cleared rise ahead. Old Warden waystation.”

  “Waystation?” I asked, my voice still feeling not quite my own.

  Mira answered, her tone weary. “Teams have been cycling through the Rot for decades. We don’t stay out here. We rotate. In, out, in, out. Like tides.” She looked at me, her hawkish eyes probing. “You’ll learn. This place doesn’t let you stay long. It… gets inside you.”

  The waystation was a rocky shelf jutting from a hillside, overlooking a sea of glowing forest. It was barren, defensible, with a sheer rock face at our backs. Old, broad scorch marks blackened the stone—evidence of many previous fires.

  But Elara forbade fire. “Light draws attention,” she said, unpacking her bedroll. “The Rot knows fire. It remembers burning.”

  We laid out our bedrolls in silence. The seniors moved with efficient routine—setting watch rotations, placing sensor-wards at the shelf’s edge, rationing out water and bland nutrient pastes.

  The juniors just sat. Shell-shocked. Caius stared at his hands. Gawain lay on his back, eyes open. Tavin shivered in his bedroll, curled into a ball. Seren sat cross-legged, gazing out at the view.

  I joined her at the edge. The forest below was a living tapestry of light. The pulses weren’t random; they flowed in slow waves, like breath, or a slow, monstrous heartbeat. Veins of light connected tree to tree, forming a vast, luminous network. As if the entire Rot was one single, slumbering organism.

  “It’s beautiful,” Seren whispered.

  “It’s corrupt,” Caius muttered from his bedroll, but without conviction. He was staring too.

  It was both. A terrible, captivating beauty. The air tasted of ozone, sweet decay, and something else—something like memory, like the smell of old books and forgotten rooms. A distant, echoing call sounded far below, mournful and unidentifiable. Animal? Unbound? Or something else?

  The hum was constant here, a vibration in the rock, in my bones. It matched the rhythm of the whispers in my chest, which had settled into a contented, murmuring drone.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  The others eventually succumbed to exhaustion or shock. The seniors took the first watch—Elara and Mira at opposite ends of the shelf, silhouettes against the glowing dark.

  I sat with my back against the cold rock face, the silver locket cool in my hand. I traced the engraving I couldn’t see. Aldric.

  Seren appeared beside me without a sound. One moment I was alone, the next she was there, cross-legged, her pale face turned toward the abyss of light.

  “Can’t sleep either?” I asked softly.

  She shook her head. For a long time, she said nothing. Then: “It’s louder here.”

  “What is?”

  “The voices. In the Taint.” She glanced at me, her eyes reflecting violet. “You hear them too. I know you do. You’re the only one who doesn’t look like you’re being poisoned.”

  I weighed denial. But the truth felt too heavy to carry alone. “I hear… something,” I admitted, the words a confession. “Not words. Just… feelings. Impressions.”

  “They’re not evil,” she stated, her voice absolute.

  “The Wardens say—”

  “The Wardens are wrong.” She said it calmly, as if noting the time. “Or they’re lying. I haven’t decided which.”

  A chill that had nothing to do with the air crept down my spine. “You can’t say things like that. Rule Two. If they hear—”

  “They won’t.” She looked at me directly. “Out here, the rules feel… thinner. Like they don’t reach this far.”

  She was right. The Tower’s halls, the soft mechanical hums, the Wardens’ scowls—they felt like a dream. Here, the only law was the pulse of the Rot and the struggle to survive it.

  “What do you think they are?” I asked. “The voices.”

  She was quiet for so long I thought she wouldn’t answer. “Memories,” she finally whispered. “Echoes of people who were absorbed. The Taint doesn’t destroy them. It… preserves them. Like a library that never forgets a single page.”

  The implication settled over me, cold and suffocating.

  “You mean… everyone we’ve absorbed. The Taint from the streets, from the training vessels, from that fissure today. They were all…”

  “People once. Or pieces of people. Thoughts. Fears. Last moments. Joy.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “The Wardens teach us we’re purifying corruption. But what if we’re just… collecting the dead?”

  I thought of the warmth in my chest. The welcoming embrace of the overflow. The sense of homecoming. Were those the collective sighs of the absorbed? Were the whispers in my mind a choir of the damned?

  “Why are you telling me this?” My voice was barely audible.

  “Because you need to know.” Her gaze was unnervingly direct. “You’re different, Kieran. You absorb like… like you’re supposed to. Like this is what you were made for. The rest of us—” she gestured toward Tavin’s shivering form, “—we’re breaking under the weight. But you’re not. You’re growing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.” She stood, a fluid, silent motion. “But the Taint does. It knows you. It wants you. And that terrifies me more than anything the Wardens ever said.”

  She drifted back to her bedroll, leaving me alone with the glowing dark and the murmuring in my veins.

  I sat there for a long time. If the Taint was made of people—of memories—then what did that make us Hollows? Containers? Prisons? Or living tombs for forgotten souls?

  From the forest below, another sound echoed—closer this time. Not a call, but a word. A single, sorrowful syllable that hung in the air.

  “…save…?”

  The cries of the past. Or the shadow of it.

  On the ledge, Elara and Mira snapped to full alert, weapons drawn, peering into the gloom.

  But the sound didn’t repeat. It faded into the slow, breathing pulse of the light.

  I lay back on my bedroll, staring up at the bruised, starless sky.

  Tomorrow, we would go deeper.

  Tomorrow, I would see what waited at the heart of the Rot.

  Tonight, I tried not to listen to the voices.

  But they were there. Always there.

  Whispering my name like a forgotten prayer.

  Or a long-awaited summons.