Episode 4: Hollow Promises
1223 Words
Episode 4: Hollow Promises
The following morning, the warehouse smelled of smoke and pine sap. Shafts of light poured through the broken glass roof, illuminating the salt circle where Eris and Lucan had stood the night before. The echo of warmth still lingered in the air—quiet, tender, fragile.
Lucan sat shirtless against the far wall, bruises visible across his chest and ribs. He was meditating—or trying to. His breathing was uneven, as though his body remembered violence even when his mind wanted calm.
Eris approached, a steaming mug in her hands.
“Chamomile,” she said softly. “Witch-grown.”
Lucan opened one eye. “You really think I’m the tea type?”
“I think you’re the quietly-suffering-internally-screaming type,” she replied. “So yes, tea fits.”
He took it without protest. Their fingers brushed—no flare of power this time, just skin meeting skin. Familiar now. Natural.
“I had a dream,” Lucan said after a few sips. “I think.”
Eris sat beside him. “That’s new.”
He nodded slowly. “I was in the woods. Alone. Then there were eyes in the dark—dozens. My old pack. They didn’t speak. They just watched. And then... they turned to ash.”
She tilted her head. “That’s not a dream. That’s memory clothed in guilt.”
Lucan didn’t reply.
“But guilt,” she added, “means you're feeling again.”
He stared down into the tea, watching it tremble faintly in his hand. “It’s not enough.”
“It’s a start,” Eris said gently. “The Vein doesn’t flood. It bleeds.”
---
The moment was interrupted by a sudden cold wind. Not from outside—but from within the building. Eris stood, alarmed. Lucan followed, eyes narrowing.
A swirl of frost gathered at the center of the salt circle. Mist curled and rose into the shape of a woman—tall, regal, with skin like porcelain and eyes like mercury.
Lucan tensed. “That’s her.”
Eris froze. “The seer?”
The ghostly figure smiled without warmth. “Hello again, Lucan. You’ve been meddling with things I sealed away.”
Lucan stepped forward, voice low. “You said I was too dangerous to feel. You took everything.”
“I gave you a gift,” she said coolly. “A mercy.”
“Then take it back,” he growled. “I want it all. I want the pain. The rage. The love.”
Her eyes shifted to Eris.
“You must be the empath,” she said. “You’re the key, aren’t you?”
Eris didn’t flinch. “The Vein speaks through me.”
“Then it’s weaker than I thought.”
Lucan lunged forward, but the figure dissolved before he could reach her. Her voice remained, drifting like snowflakes on the air.
“I’ll give you a choice, wolf,” she whispered. “Reclaim your heart—and lose control. Or remain hollow and keep the world safe.”
Silence fell.
Lucan’s fists clenched. “I want to feel, damn it.”
Eris touched his shoulder. “Then we’ll make you whole. Together.”
---
They left the warehouse and returned to the Deepline by nightfall.
This time, Eris didn’t guide him.
Lucan led.
He walked the tunnels like they were veins under his own skin. The rock pulsed with low, warm emotion now. As if the Vein recognized him.
“I used to hunt through here,” he said. “When I was younger. Before the curse.”
“Alone?”
“With my sister,” he said softly. “Lira.”
Eris looked at him sharply. “You’ve never mentioned her.”
“She was the only one who could keep up with me,” he said, voice thick. “When I challenged the alpha, she tried to stop me. She failed. Then vanished.”
Eris reached out, gently threading her fingers through his. “Do you think she’s alive?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But the Vein remembers her.”
They came upon a chamber where the walls were marked with claw-etched runes. In the center, a pool of liquid emotion swirled like ink in water—blue, silver, and violet.
Eris knelt beside it. “Lucan... this is a memory well.”
He blinked. “A what?”
“Empaths use it to store feelings too heavy to carry,” she explained. “We pour them into this space and lock them away. But someone’s unlocked it.”
Lucan stepped forward and peered into the pool.
The moment he did, the surface shimmered.
Then—
A vision hit him like lightning.
---
[FLASHBACK]
Snow blanketed a moonlit field.
Lucan, younger, eyes bright with fury, circled an older man with streaks of grey in his beard—his alpha. The pack watched in silence.
“Stand down,” the alpha warned.
Lucan growled. “You’ve betrayed the Vein. You bargain with Seethers. You deserve the ground.”
The fight was brutal. Primal.
Lucan was faster. Wilder.
When he delivered the killing blow—snapping the alpha’s spine—silence fell. His sister, Lira, screamed.
“You fool,” she sobbed, running to the alpha’s body. “You’ve cursed us all.”
Lucan stepped back, blood on his hands, the taste of guilt thick in his throat.
“I had to stop him,” he said, voice shaking.
But Lira looked at him like she’d never seen him before.
“You’ve broken the bond,” she whispered. “And broken me.”
---
Lucan gasped as the vision faded.
He was on his knees. Eris held him up.
“It was her,” he said. “My sister. She tried to stop me. She—she left because I broke the Vein between us.”
Eris pressed her palm against his chest.
“Lucan, listen to me,” she said, her voice urgent. “You didn’t just kill a man. You killed a thread. The bond between siblings, between packmates. That’s why the Vein silenced you. It severed your link.”
Lucan closed his eyes. “Then how do I fix it?”
Eris smiled softly. “You reconnect it.”
---
They returned to the surface in silence.
Back at the edge of Elridge, something had changed.
The streetlamps flickered red. The air was heavier. Emotion rolled through the concrete like waves.
“They’re close,” Eris whispered.
“Who?” Lucan asked.
“The Seethers. They’re feeding.”
They ran.
---
At a hospital five blocks away, chaos had erupted.
Patients screamed. Nurses collapsed. Fear drenched the halls like acid rain.
Eris and Lucan burst through the emergency doors.
They were too late.
Every patient in the ICU was unconscious—faces slack, eyes open. Alive, but empty.
“They drained them,” Eris gasped. “All their emotion. They left the bodies... soulless.”
Lucan’s jaw clenched. “This is what they want. A world without feeling.”
A whisper slithered down the hallway. Lucan turned, his wolf senses sharpening.
Then—
A single figure stepped out of the shadows.
It was a young girl. Pale, barefoot. Her eyes glowed silver.
Lucan froze.
“Lira?”
The girl smiled.
“Hello, brother.”
---
- Writer
