WHISPERS OF THE HOLLOW

CHAPTER FIVE: The Blood Oath

One Hundred and Sixty-Eight Years Ago.

The Edge of the Hollow Damien Voss was seventeen years old when he first bled for the Hollow. The call came just as the sun had sunk below the pine ridge. A sound he couldn't hear with his ears, but could feel in his bones, a tremble beneath the skin, as if the earth itself was whispering his name. It wasn't loud. It did not need to be. It knew he'd follow. He'd always known Ravenmoor was cursed. But, until that night, he had no idea the curse had chosen him.

Damien halted at the tree line, the dagger still sheathed at his hip, his boots crunching on frost-covered roots.

The forest ahead—the Wraithwood, as locals called it—was unusually still. No birds. There was no rustling of animals. Just silence. Even the wind held its breath.

His mother's pendant burned on his chest beneath his shirt, a sign of protection passed down through her family. It pulsed now, frantic and terrified, as if warning him to turn around. He did not. Something was waiting. He needed answers. --- Earlier that day, the fever had started. Not his.

His younger sister, Lyra, who was only thirteen, had collapsed during morning prayers. Her body convulsed, and her eyes rolled back to white. And from her mouth, a voice other than her own spoke in a language older than the town itself.

"The gate weakened. "One must stand or many will fall." The local priest attempted to interfere, but the church bell broke in half. The entire row of pews turned to ash.

Damien, powerless, had held Lyra's trembling hand until the voice faded and she slipped into a soundless sleep. She had not awoken since. The apothecaries were confused. The Morwyn documents—whispers, scrolls, and prohibited tomes—were not. They talked about an old energy. A border. A bloodline. A price. The Hollow had made a choice.

Damien wouldn't let it take her. --- He walked into the Wraithwood shortly after midnight. Each step felt heavier than the last. The deeper he got, the stranger the jungle grew. Trees bent strangely towards him. Their trunks bore old carvings—sigils that had faded and claw marks that were too deep to be animal.

The branches twisted into shapes that resembled hands, mouths, and eyes. The mirror was then visible to him in a clearing surrounded by a flawless circle of stones. Or, rather, it noticed him. It lingered in the air between two gnarled oaks. Ancient. Blackened. Veined with silver root. Its frame was bone. Human. Damien drew his dagger.

"You want me," he stated out.

"You've phoned me. Take me instead. Leave her alone. The surface of the mirror sparkled like disturbed water. A face appeared. Pale. Ageless. Beautiful and nasty. Arius. He was tall and thin, wearing robes that moved like fog. His eyes were silvery, like moonlight on still water. His mouth twisted into something other than a smile.

"You seek to bargain."

"I want to bind. You don't understand my sister. "You understand me." Arius tilted his head slightly. "The Hollow does not take. It selects. It chose you the first time you bled on Ravenmoor land. You are the design. It's important."

"Then open the door and let's finish this." Arius went forward, his image now fully formed in the clearing, his feet never touching the ground. "Do you even understand what you're offering?"

Damien's palm clutched the dagger more tightly. "I understand enough." My blood for her life. "My service for her freedom."

"Service? No, Damien. You won't serve the Hollow. "You will become it." A blast of wind came out of nowhere, lifting the leaves in a spiral. The trees groaned. The mirror pulsated like a beating heart. Arius extended his hand. The mirror beside him showed Lyra asleep on an obsidian slab, her breath faint and her wrists bound by shadow vines.

"Still alive, For now".

Damien's knees buckled. His voice shook. "Please. "Let her go."

"Kneel," Arius instructed. "Swear to yourself. "Be what we need."

Damien dropped to one knee. "I swear," he murmured, his voice shaking, "that I will protect the boundary between the Hollow and this world." I'll bleed to keep it sealed. I will stand between the living and the dead. Arius smiled.

The dagger engulfed in black fire. Damien pushed it into his palm. His blood hit the ground—and the clearing screamed. A shockwave ripped across the woods, knocking birds from trees distances apart. The soil trembled. The air cracked. Sigils burned over Damien's chest, spine, and throat.

"Guardian", The Hollow whispered with many voices in one. You're ours now.

Damien collapsed. --- He awoke hours later, to a freezing dawn. Lyra lay near him with her eyelids fluttering open. She was whole. Alive. "Dami? "What happened?" He drew her close, and tears streamed down her face. "You're safe," he whispered. "That's all that matters."

The mirror was gone. But the mark stayed. So did Arius.

Damien spent the following year in isolation. He trained. Studied. Hunted. He could now feel the curtain, noticing when it weakened and something moved on the other side. He learnt to draw sigils in salt and to inscribe wards in blood. The grimoire left behind in the woods spoke to him, and he responded. He became Ravenmoor's silent guardian. But Arius didn't stay silent.

He returned two years later, when a blood moon appeared and a kid was sent into the Hollow. Damien entered the realm alone. It was nighttime without stars. Trees are like cages. Fog whispered names. He discovered the youngster uninjured. But at the heart of the Hollow, beneath a bone throne, Arius waited.

"You could be more," he remarked.

"You bleed to protect those who would destroy you if they knew. You suffer for them. For her. "And they still call you cursed. Damien's blade trembled in his grip.

"I chose this."

"No. The Hollow selected you. And I am only its voice. Join me. Be who you're intended to be. "Rule them rather than save them." He extended his hand.

Behind him, a mirror showed a future.

Damien crowned in shadows, Lena at his side, her eyes black with power, and the town below them in mute worship. Damien looked aside.

"I will never be your king." Arius nodded. "Then you will be its prisoner." Damien has returned to the human world. He found the youngster.

That night, he etched Arius' name into the grimoire, trapping him beyond the veil—but not permanently.

Now, more than a century later, Damien stood in the Morwyn family manor, watching the last of that cursed blood grasp for the mirror. Lena. The Hollow stirred. The sigils on his skin erupted for the first time in decades. The voice inside his skull whispered:

" You have failed before. Will you fail again?" Damien turned.

But Lena had already gone. Swallowed by the mirror's glow. And Arius waited.