CHAPTER 0: PROLOGUE
388 Words
In the beginning, when the earth was raw with blood and imbalance, the witches gathered–not in hatred, but in hope.
They called upon the old powers, tying their souls together to cast a curse unlike any before. A curse meant to cleanse the world of its growing rot, a Hollow that would strip the wolves of their strength.
A sacred rebellion cloaked in silence:
Three moonless nights of stillness, where the wolves would lose their strength, and nature could remember balance.
But power demands virtue. And the witches had none left to give. They grew weary. The curse, incomplete.
The Hollow came, but only for a single night each cycle. A glimpse of what should have been. Then it faded. Peace unraveled. And the story was swallowed by time.
But fate, always remembers.
He lingered in the womb for three nights, defying the laws of flesh and time. His mother screamed through agony not meant for mortal bearing.
Magic failed. Steel failed.
Nothing could draw him forth.
No moon shone during those nights.
The Hollow had returned. The wolves howled in silence, and even the stars turned away. Three nights of nothingness–Hollow.
On the third night, at the stroke before the dark gave way to deeper darkness, he emerged— quiet, whole, untouched by blood or tears. It was as though the earth itself, had bled for his arrival.
A full moon glowed on his skin.
Not the half-moon mark of his kind— but whole. Bright. Eternal.
And with him, the Hollow awoke fully.
Three nights. Every cycle. As the witches had once envisioned.
The curse restored.
But the world no longer remembered its purpose.
The wolves called it a curse.
The witches, a reckoning.
And the boy, an omen.
But the earth was not done.
Four years later, during the second night of the Hollow, a girl was born.
Her cry cracked the sky.
The moon returned early.
The second night was broken.
Since then, the Hollow no longer comes in threes. Only two nights fall to silence.
The second always falters.
Always bends beneath her.
One restored the curse.
One boke its pattern.
They are shadow and light.
Fate and defiance.
Curse and key.
And now, the balance trembles again–But this is only the beginning of a new shift.
- Writer
