Chapter 17: The Hollow's Breath
The hollow wrapped around them like a stone throat.
Teeth-stones jutted up on either side of the caravan—taller, closer, more crooked the deeper they walked. Moss draped from their jagged tips. Branches tangled above, leaving only thin seams of bruised-grey sky.
No one spoke.
Boots squelched. Wood creaked. Leather sighed.
Every other sound felt like an intrusion.
Aiden walked near the front of the line, just behind Garrik. Myra paced at his right shoulder, hand never far from her short blade. On his left, Nellie clutched a fistful of his cloak, her smaller steps quick and careful to match theirs.
The pup slept against his chest, bundled in his cloak like a living ember. Its breathing was steady, but static still flickered now and then along its fur, thin and pale as tired lightning.
The air tasted strange.
Sharper than the marsh. Less rot. More iron.
The hollow felt like something older than roads and caravans and academies—like a place the world had built for some forgotten purpose and then left alone out of respect.
Or fear.
Fog still drifted behind them in slow, curling sheets, filling the gaps between teeth-stones. Aiden didn't have to look back to know something was inside it.
He could feel it.
The storm in his veins prickled quietly, a sense that sat just behind his heart: pressure, distance, intent. Whatever had groaned and shifted in the marsh hadn't gone back to sleep when they fled. It was pacing the edges of the hollow like a thing pressing its face against glass.
Myra leaned slightly closer, voice barely more than breath. "You're doing the faraway eyes thing again."
"What thing?" he murmured.
"The one where you're counting dangers I can't see," she said. "How bad is it out there?"
He hesitated. "It… wants us. Still. But it doesn't like this place."
"That's something, then," she muttered. "The enemy of our enemy is a bunch of rocks."
Nellie swallowed hard. "D-do you think it'll try to come in here?"
"No," Aiden said, too quickly to be anything but stubborn certainty.
She glanced up at him, wide-eyed.
He softened his tone. "The fox said this was where the marsh's hand couldn't reach, remember? It might press. It might scream. But the teeth will hold."
Nellie nodded shakily and tightened her grip on his cloak.
She walked between them, barely reaching their shoulders. She wasn't just short—Aiden had known short humans, awkward in their height, limbs all angles. Nellie wasn't like that. Her smallness was compact, balanced, built low to the ground like she'd been designed for climbing shelves and squeezing through gaps.
Even for her age, it wasn't human-small.
It was something else.
A young gnome, he thought, the word sliding into place without fanfare. One of the few who left their hill-villages.
He tucked the thought away, saving it for a quieter moment.
Up ahead, Garrik raised his spear a fraction, the gesture enough to slow the caravan without a shout.
"Watch your footing," he murmured back. "Roots. Stones."
The hollow dipped slightly, forming a shallow trench between the teeth. The mud was darker here, thick and sluggish. Thin lines of standing water reflected fragments of the sky like cracked glass.
They picked their way through.
Cart wheels complained. Someone stumbled and cursed under their breath. A hunter caught their arm and dragged them upright without breaking stride.
The teeth-stones seemed to lean inward as they passed, the space between them narrowing.
"Feels like they're listening," Myra whispered.
Aiden glanced up. The stones were rough, veined with faint iron-colored streaks that caught what little light there was.
The System flickered quietly:
[Boundary: Active]
[Area: Hollow of Broken Teeth]
[External Threats: High]
[Internal Threats: Unclear]
Unclear.
Great.
The ground vibrated faintly under his boots.
At first he thought it was just the caravan's movement.
Then it happened again—slower, deeper. A long, low tremor like something vast shifting its weight in wet darkness.
Nellie flinched. "That was it," she whispered. "The big thing. It's still there."
Myra's jaw went tight. "It can pace all it wants," she said. "As long as it paces out there."
Garrik kept his eyes ahead, but his shoulders had gone rigid. "Don't think about it," he said, just loud enough for the first few rows to hear. "Thinking about teeth doesn't stop the bite. Walking away does."
That actually got a few breathless laughs.
Fear, Aiden realized, could be pushed down easier if someone else handed you words to stuff on top of it.
They pressed on.
The hollow curved subtly, guiding them like a river channel made of stone instead of water. The teeth weren't uniform—some were broken stumps, others tall enough that their tips vanished into the tangle of branches above. In places, two leaned close together, forming rough arches they had to duck under.
Nellie rasped softly, "I don't like this. It feels like we're walking down a throat."
"On the bright side," Myra said, "we're too big to swallow in one go."
"Not helping," Aiden muttered.
She smirked faintly. "A little helping."
They reached a slightly wider patch where the hollow eased into a basin-like dip. The ground was firmer, scattered with flattish stones like stepping platforms.
Garrik lifted a hand. "Short rest. Sixty breaths. No sitting unless you can get up in three heartbeats when I tell you."
The caravan sagged in place.
Aiden eased his back against a tooth-stone, feeling its cold through his cloak. Nellie immediately slid down beside him, shoulders drooping.
Myra stayed upright, pacing a small line nearby, scanning the teeth and the thin slivers of fog between them.
"You okay?" Aiden asked Nellie.
She nodded, curls bobbing. "Just… tired. And my legs feel like they're made of boiled roots."
"That means they're working," he said. "When they stop feeling like anything, that's when you worry."
"That's horrible," she muttered.
"But accurate," Myra added.
Nellie's mouth twitched into a reluctant smile. "You're both terrible at comfort."
"I'm average," Aiden said. "She's terrible."
Myra sniffed. "Honesty is its own form of comfort."
"Not for everyone."
"It is for me."
Nellie giggled softly, then winced when another tremor rolled under them—this one slightly sharper, like something had pushed against the hollow from the marsh side.
The teeth-stones hummed in response. Not loudly. Just a faint vibration in the air and under their boots.
The pup, still resting in Aiden's arms, let out a small, low growl—more static than sound.
Aiden stroked the fur between its ears. "Easy," he murmured. "We're in the one place it doesn't want to be."
Maybe it's learning, he thought. That not every run ends with teeth around its throat.
He understood that lesson.
Garrik's voice cut through the thin quiet. "Break's done. Up."
The line re-formed with the sluggish obedience of the exhausted. Packs were hoisted. Straps checked. Parents checked their children's faces, counting freckles and breaths like they were counting coin.
They moved on.
The hollow began to rise.
The change was subtle at first—a slight angle, the way water in puddles leaned a little more toward one side of the trench.
Then roots became more common underfoot, and the mud gave way to firmer soil. Dry leaves crunched softly in places, strange after so much sucking bog.
The teeth pulled back a little, the gaps between them widening.
Aiden felt something loosen in his chest.
"We're climbing," Myra said, sounding almost surprised.
Garrik grunted. "I told you this wasn't a grave. Don't prove me wrong by dying before the trees."
Nellie breathed out. "Trees sound nice. Normal. I like normal. I miss normal."
"This is our new normal," Myra said. "Mud, monsters, lightning wolves, ominous foxes."
"And hopefully classrooms at the end of it," Aiden added.
Nellie managed a weak smile. "Classrooms sound terrifying too."
"Good," Myra said. "Then you'll fit right in."
Aiden glanced up as the sky began to show in larger shards through the branches.
The darkness had shifted shades.
Still no sun. Still no color.
But the black had bled into a washed-out grey, like the world was remembering how to be morning.
The System shivered behind his eyes:
[External Light Level: Rising]
[Fox Window: Closing]
He licked his lips. They tasted faintly of iron and dry fear.
"How much farther?" he called quietly to Garrik.
"Until what?" Garrik replied without looking back.
"Until we're out," Aiden said. "Of the hollow."
Garrik scanned the stones ahead. "If I remember right: when the teeth thin to one row and the roots start grabbing your boots more than the mud. Then we're in the old forest. Still dangerous, but the kind that makes sense."
"The kind that makes sense sounds very nice," Nellie whispered.
Behind them, the marsh gave another low, rolling roar.
Closer.
The sound bounced off the teeth, muffled and warped, but undeniable.
Aiden didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
The storm in his chest tasted it—anger, frustration, the blunt, endless hunger of something that had never learned the word no.
The teeth-stones trembled.
Nellie squeezed his arm. "It's… mad we left."
"Let it be mad," Myra said. "It can howl at the rocks all it wants. We're leaving."
Garrik's steps quickened. "Everyone, watch your footing and pick up the pace. The sooner we're out of this throat, the better I'll feel."
The hollow narrowed ahead, curving gently upward like the inside of a cupped hand. The teeth on either side grew shorter, broken, worn down. Roots clung to them like scars.
Aiden felt his own hope edging closer to the surface.
"See?" Myra murmured. "Almost there. The fox wasn't lying. Once we're clear of this, it's just normal monsters again."
"Normal monsters," Nellie repeated faintly. "Right. Of course. That's… fine."
Aiden almost smiled.
He lifted his gaze toward the lip of the rise where the hollow ended.
The sky above it was a deeper shade of grey, bruised but not black. Mist drifted along the crest of the ridge like smoke from an unseen fire.
Brain whispered: Sun will be up soon.
Heart whispered: We made it.
The storm inside him whispered something else.
Wait.
Aiden slowed a fraction.
The pup stirred. Its body tensed in his arms, fur rippling with a faint, rising crackle.
"Myra," he said softly.
She noticed immediately. "What is it?"
He didn't answer right away.
He listened.
Not with his ears.
With that strange sense that had taken root when he'd died and woken up in a world that ran on teeth and cores and systems.
The marsh behind them was loud—roaring, grinding, pushing against a boundary it couldn't cross.
But something else…
Something ahead…
Sat very, very still.
He tasted attention, like standing in the center of a ring of eyes.
"It's not just behind us," Aiden whispered. "There's something… up there."
Myra's fingers drifted toward her blade. "Ahead?"
"On the ridge."
Nellie pressed closer to his side. "I-Is it more beasts? Hunters? Bandits?"
"I don't know," he said. "But it knows we're coming."
Garrik lifted his spear, slowing the front of the line. "What are you feeling, boy?"
Aiden swallowed. "Not claws. Not the marsh. Something… thinner."
"Thinner," Myra repeated. "That's precise."
"Like bone," Aiden said. "Or branches. Or…the echo of a person."
Nellie shivered. "I hate all those options."
The air grew colder as they climbed the last stretch. Every breath felt like it scraped a little more sharply on the way in.
The teeth fell away entirely.
Roots tangled across the ground, grabbing at boots just as promised. The slope leveled out toward the top, forming a ridge line where twisted trees hunched in silhouettes.
Aiden saw it first.
A shape on the crest.
Standing sideways, backlit by the bruised-grey not-quite-morning.
Too tall to be a child.
Too thin to be an orc.
Too still to be a casual traveler.
It didn't move.
Didn't gesture.
Just stood there like a carved piece of night that hadn't realized the sky was changing.
"Myra," Aiden said quietly. "There."
She followed his gaze.
Her hand closed fully on her hilt.
Nellie's breath hitched. "I don't see—oh."
Once you saw it, you couldn't unsee it.
The shadow's outline sharpened as they drew closer—long limbs wrapped in something that moved like loose cloth, or vines, or both. Its head tilted slightly, too slow, too deliberate.
Garrik let out a very soft curse.
"Everyone," he said evenly. "Stop. Now."
The caravan shuddered to a halt.
Wheels creaked. Someone stumbled into the person in front of them. A baby whimpered, quickly shushed.
The shadow turned its head more fully toward them.
Even from this distance, Aiden felt the weight of the gaze.
The storm in his chest flared.
The pup's eyes snapped open, bright blue, electricity sparking between its ears. A low growl buzzed against Aiden's ribs.
"That's not a beast," Myra whispered.
"No," Aiden agreed.
Nellie clung to his arm. "Is it… a person?"
The shadow raised one arm.
Very slowly.
Like someone lifting a branch from deep mud.
Fog curled around its hand, gathering, coiling, thickening as if the hollow itself was listening.
Garrik's grip tightened on his spear. "Everyone," he said through clenched teeth, "if I say run—"
The shadow's arm reached full height.
Fog rolled off the ridge like smoke spilling from a waiting throat—
and the hollow's breath came straight for them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
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