Chapter 19: When the Hollow Breaks
At first, he thought he was still inside the storm.
There was no ground. No sky. Just pressure and light and the echo of his own heartbeat, banging against the edges of something too small to hold it.
He floated.
Lightning crawled under his skin like a restless animal. It whispered along his nerves, humming through his bones, searching for a way out.
Images flickered through the white:
Stone teeth sinking into earth.
Fog spiraling like living ropes.
A shadow woven from mist and purpose.
Eyes of molten silver staring straight through him.
A tiny wolf pup screaming lightning into the dark.
Then someone grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard enough to rattle the storm.
"Aiden! Aiden, wake up!"
The storm cracked.
Reality slammed back in.
He sucked in a breath he hadn't realized he'd been missing. It came with a mouthful of dust. He coughed, lungs burning, blinking grit out of his eyes.
The world around him was noise and chaos.
The hollow was collapsing.
Stone teeth groaned and split along jagged fractures overhead. Chunks of rock tore free and crashed down, shattering into shards that sprayed the path. Roots snapped with sharp, whip-crack sounds, dropping clumps of dirt and dead leaves.
Myra's face hovered inches from his, streaked with mud and fear. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks, eyes bright with something halfway between fury and raw panic.
"Good," she said, voice shaking. "You're not dead. I was going to kill you if you stayed unconscious."
Nellie clung to his arm, fingers digging so hard they hurt. Her curls were full of dust, her eyes swollen and red. "Y-you stopped breathing," she choked. "Your eyes went all glowing and then you just—just fell—"
"I'm—" Aiden's voice rasped. "I'm here."
He didn't say he wasn't okay.
There wasn't time.
The hollow roared.
A slab of stone the size of a small cart ripped free from the wall and smashed into the ground not far behind them. Mud and shattered rock sprayed the path. Someone screamed. Horses shrieked in blind terror.
"MOVE!" Garrik's voice tore through the chaos, raw and furious. "All of you, MOVE! The hollow's coming down—go, go, GO!"
The air tasted of dust and wet stone and something electric, like the aftermath of lightning strikes.
Aiden tried to stand.
His legs argued. His bones felt hollow, his muscles like wet rope. The storm inside him flickered weakly, drained, but not gone.
Myra shoved her shoulder under his arm, taking half his weight. "Up," she snapped. "We are not dying in here."
Nellie scrambled to his other side, grabbing his cloak and tugging, her small frame trembling with effort. "Come on, Aiden, please—please…"
He staggered upright.
The world tilted, then steadied enough to move.
He didn't dare look back at first. He could feel it—could hear it through the ringing in his ears—the raging clash at the hollow's mouth where fog and monster met.
But curiosity, or instinct, or something worse made him look anyway.
The ridge loomed behind them, half-shrouded in fog and falling stone.
The figure still stood there.
It hadn't fallen. Hadn't fled. It towered above the hollow like a pillar built from stormlight and shadow. Fog wrapped around it in thick, layered coils that pulsed with inner white-blue glows, like hearts beating inside a cloud.
Below it, halfway between ridgeline and path, the lightning pup crouched on a jut of stone, all fur and sparks and bared tiny teeth.
And below that—
The monster.
It had forced more of its body into the hollow.
He could see it better now, through the gaps in the mist where the fog-entity's attacks had punched holes.
Limbs like drowned tree trunks, jointed wrong in too many places. A slick, oil-dark hide that shone wetly in the eerie half-light. Claws that sank deep into stone, leaving gouges like plow furrows.
And its head—
If that was a head—
Was a twisting knot of bone and sinew and teeth. Jaws that split too wide, two sets of them layered like some horror from a nightmare. Its eyes were bottomless pits of silver-red light, burning with a hunger that had never learned to be full.
It wasn't roaring anymore.
It was laughing.
A horrible, bubbling, gurgling sound that rumbled through the hollow, making dust jump with each pulse.
Myra sucked in a breath. "We cannot fight that."
"No one's asking you to," Garrik snapped from ahead, forcing people into motion with raw volume alone. "We outrun it. That's it. No heroics."
Another stone tooth cracked above them with a sound like thunder.
Aiden flinched as a rain of smaller rocks pattered against his cloak and shoulders. He pulled Nellie closer, turning so his body shielded her as best he could.
Hunters surged around the carts, hauling injured caravanners to their feet, cutting loose spooked horses, grabbing children who froze and pushing them toward the bottleneck ahead.
"Keep moving!" someone shouted. "Don't stop—don't look back!"
The hollow pinched inward where it curved toward the forest. Teeth-stones grew thicker, leaning in close, leaving barely enough room for a single wagon to squeeze through at a time.
People bunched up.
There were too many bodies and not enough path.
Panic rippled through the line like fire through dry grass.
"We're stuck!" someone cried. "We'll never get out—"
"MAKE ROOM!" Garrik roared. "You want to stand here and let the roof fall on you?! MOVE YOUR FEET OR I'LL THROW YOU MYSELF!"
Aiden stumbled forward with Myra and Nellie, boots slipping on churned mud, breathing hard.
His head throbbed. Every pulse of his heart sent a dull ache through his skull. Lightning still hissed faintly under his skin, like it wasn't sure whether to leave or dig in deeper.
"Aiden," Nellie whispered, tugging his sleeve, "your eyes… they're still… weird."
He blinked at her. "Weird how?"
"They're… sparking," she said. "A little. Around the edges."
Myra glanced sideways at him and swore softly. "She's right. You look like you swallowed part of the storm."
"I feel like it," he muttered.
Another tremor rippled down the hollow.
This one wasn't from falling stone.
The monster was pushing forward again.
Fog snapped at its limbs, crashing into it in hammer blows that made the ground jump, but it kept coming. Each step shoved more of its bulk into the corridor, its claws tearing fresh gouges into stone. Where its limbs brushed the teeth, rock blackened and rotted as though something in its touch sped decay.
The figure on the ridge answered with violence.
Fog spears formed in midair, slamming into the monster's shoulders, jaws, chest. Some blew apart on impact. Others sank in, tearing ragged chunks of wet darkness free before reforming.
The monster screamed then, high and furious.
The sound punched into Aiden's ribs hard enough to steal his breath.
He staggered, vision blurring.
The System bled into the edges of his sight.
[External Clash: ACTIVE]
[Unknown Entity vs. Marsh Aberration]
[Resonance Risk: EXTREME]
[Recommendation: Distance Yourself.]
"I'm trying," he hissed under his breath. "Kind of busy."
A boulder sheared off the wall overhead.
Aiden looked up just in time to see it falling—a jagged, man-high chunk of stone spinning end over end, heading straight for a cluster of caravanners who'd tripped in the congestion near the bottleneck.
There wasn't time for them to scatter.
Nellie screamed. Myra swore.
Aiden's hand moved on its own.
Lightning surged.
It wasn't like before. Not a wild, uncontrolled flood. It hurt, but in a way his body understood now—a path already burned into his nerves.
Blue-white arcs snapped from his fingertips.
They struck the falling boulder with a crack like the world splitting.
Stone didn't shatter—it jerked.
The blast knocked it just far enough to the side that it smashed into the teeth-wall instead, exploding into gravel and shards that showered harmlessly over the path.
Gasps rippled through the caravan.
Someone cried out, "What was that?!"
Myra stared at him, eyes wide. "You did it again."
Nellie blinked through tears and dust. "Aiden… you're a mage."
He shook his head, dizzy. "I'm… something. We can argue about the name later."
The lightning faded, leaving his arm numb and his body shaking. He swayed, knees threatening to buckle.
Myra tightened her grip. "Stay with me."
He wondered if she knew she'd said that before.
The pup yelped.
His gaze snapped back to the ridge.
The tiny wolf had leapt closer to the figure, paws scrabbling for purchase on a slanted slab. Lightning crackled wildly across its body, sparking upward toward the fog-entity like static reaching for a storm.
The figure did something Aiden didn't understand.
It reached down.
Not physically. Its shadow-strips didn't lengthen. Its arms didn't stretch. But the fog around it bent, forming a funnel of light and mist that touched the pup like a hand.
Lightning jumped.
For an instant, Aiden saw the three of them—pup, fog-entity, monster—in a web of energy.
Lines of power linked them. Some bright and taut. Some thin and fraying. Some pulsing with each heartbeat.
One line, faint but there, stretched from the pup to him.
[Bond Thread Detected.]
[Provisional Connection: Lightning Beast Cub → Aiden Raikos]
[Status: Unstable.]
The words flashed and were gone, but their afterimage burned.
The monster roared again.
It slammed its full weight against the hollow.
Teeth-stones cracked like snapped ribs.
Chunks of the ceiling tore free, tumbling down in a crashing avalanche deeper back where carts still struggled to push through. Hunters shouted warnings. Children shrieked. A man's cry cut off in a way that said too clearly he hadn't moved in time.
Garrik snarled something wordless and shoved a wagon wheel with both hands, forcing it through the narrowest part of the bottleneck. The cart scraped stone on either side, leaving sparks and paint behind.
"GO!" he bellowed. "Once you're past the bend, don't stop! The forest's ahead—MOVE!"
Aiden's heart lurched.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Alright, real talk for a second.
WebNovel rejected Reborn with the Beastbinder System.
Yeah. They said it "wouldn't make money."
So now it's up to us to prove them wrong.
If you're enjoying the story even a little—Aiden, the lightning pup, the worldbuilding, the fights—
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(Early chapters, and it helps me keep writing.)
Thank you for reading.
Seriously.
Let's show them what this story can do.