dark journey

---The Dark JourneyBy the time they crossed into the Hollowlands, both Chrises had already died once—just not in ways the world could see.---1. The CrossingRain had been falling for seven days when the two Chrises arrived at the edge of the Hollowlands.One wore black—Chris Vale—his coat long and torn at the hem, eyes the color of rain-slick iron. The other wore gray—Chris Delane—his clothes dusted in ash, fingers stained with ink. They did not speak as they stood before the old border gate, rusted and hung with bells that had not rung in a hundred years.The gate had no lock. Only a sigil burned into the iron: a circle with a thorn through it.Chris Vale reached for it. His fingers trembled.“You don’t have to go,” Delane said.Vale didn’t answer. He pressed his hand to the sigil.The bells screamed. Not rung—screamed.And the gate swung open.They stepped through, and the Hollowlands swallowed them whole.---2. The First SilenceThe air inside the Hollowlands did not move. It was not hot or cold. There was no wind, no sound. Only stillness—and the weight of old things watching.The world beyond the gate was not a forest, not a desert, not a city. It was all of them and none. A land fractured by memory. One moment, they walked through burned fields, stubble crunching underfoot. The next, they passed through shattered ruins, walls leaning like drunks, doors still swinging open with no one behind them.Delane lit a lantern. The flame was blue.Vale stared at it. “Do you think they’ll be waiting?”Delane didn’t look at him. “They always are.”Above them, the sky flickered—sunset, moonlight, storm, then back again.The Hollowlands were not real in the way the world outside was. They bent to those who entered. They whispered, echoed, played.They remembered.---3. The Church of ThornsOn the third day, they came to the Church of Thorns.Its spire was broken, collapsed into a yawning pit. The doors hung open, and vines grew through the altar, through the walls, through the pews—alive, pulsing with slow rhythm like veins.Vale stopped at the threshold. “It was here,” he said.Delane closed his eyes. “Where she fell.”Inside, the church was colder. Each step triggered a breath of dust from the floor. Candles lit as they passed, casting long shadows. Something moved in the rafters.At the center of the sanctuary, where once a statue had stood, now there was only a mirror—tall, rimmed in bone.Delane approached first.The mirror rippled.He saw himself—not as he was, but as he had been. Young. Laughing. Holding someone’s hand.Vale stepped forward, and the mirror shifted again.It showed a woman. Black-eyed. Hair like drowned silk. Her smile was wrong.Delane turned away. “We shouldn’t stay.”But Vale’s voice was far away.“She’s here.”The mirror cracked.The walls moaned.And the vines began to move.---4. BloodrootThey ran through corridors that hadn’t existed seconds before. The church twisted behind them, reshaping. Every hallway ended in a mirror. Every mirror showed a version of them—older, hungrier, more tired, more cruel.Delane threw down a glyph-stone. The ground shuddered, the vines recoiled.They escaped into the open.But something had followed them.At the edge of the ruins, Vale collapsed. Blood seeped from his nose, his mouth.Delane knelt beside him. “What did you see?”Vale didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, he whispered: “She’s not dead.”Delane looked up at the Hollowlands’ ever-changing sky.“Then we’re already too late.”---5. The HollowfolkThey met the Hollowfolk on the fifth day.At first, they looked like scarecrows—tall figures in robes stitched from smoke and moss, faces hidden by porcelain masks. They moved without sound. They did not speak with words.They spoke through dreams.Vale slept first. His dream bled through Delane’s.They stood on a cliff above the Hollow Sea, a black expanse that shifted like oil. The Hollowfolk circled them, chanting not with mouths, but with memories. The dream smelled like rosewater and rot.“She lives beneath,” they said. “She was not claimed.”“Then why call us?” Delane demanded.The Hollowfolk turned as one.“Because one of you must be claimed in her place.”---6. The Sea That Isn’t WaterThe Hollow Sea wasn’t made of water. It was made of forgotten things—names, secrets, grief.Every ripple whispered.They built a raft of bone and driftwood. The Hollowfolk watched from the shore, silent, still. The raft carried them toward a tower that floated on the sea like a mirage.Delane read from the Book of Sinew, the spells binding them together. Vale kept the lantern burning.Halfway across, the sea began to remember them.Delane saw his sister’s face. Saw her drowning, the way she’d died in the waking world.Vale heard his mother’s scream, relived the fire.The sea whispered their names.“Chris Vale.”“Chris Delane.”“Choose.”to be continued .......---