( Aria’s POV )
The Hollow did not sleep.
Even when silence fell thick over the ridge and the fire burned to its last fragile ember, the air still whispered. It was the kind of quiet that carried weight, a quiet born not of peace, but of something waiting.
Aria had learned to listen to it.
Kael slept beside her now, his body still coiled even in rest, the faint gold glow threading through the dark veins beneath his skin like molten lightning. The baby lay between them, tiny chest rising and falling, the only sound that wasn’t borrowed from the Hollow’s restless pulse.
She brushed a hand over the infant’s soft curls and felt it again, the faint tremor under the earth, the heartbeat that didn’t belong to them. It moved through the soil like a thought trying to become flesh.
The Deep was
