The Watch begins again.
Another shift. Another darkness. Another silence.
I step onto the stone walkway, above the Hollow and the vastness swallows me whole. My boots echo against the slabs, the sound devoured by the still air. The glow along the walls flickers faintly, like frost-breath in the cold. Nothing has changed since yesterday—and yet everything feels different.
I tell myself it's only my nerves. The Hollow has always been silent. It is meant to be silent. That is the proof of Koutso's watchfulness.
But my hand stays near my sword.
Mirela and the others leave me at my post.
"Be steady," she says. Her face is pale in the glow, her smile a fallacy. "It's just the Hollow."
"Just the Hollow." I repeat, trying to believe her.
The hours stretch. Shadows shift where the roots rise and descend, black against black. My eyes sting from staring too long. Then—earlier than before—it begins.
A faint scrape, too sharp to be growth, too quick to be settling stone.
I freeze. My breath slows.
Another scrape, from a different direction. Then silence.
I step to the edge of the walkway, leaning over the abyss. Below me the roots twist like arteries, pulsing with the slow hum of Koutso's breath. Something moves between them—a ripple, a shadow gliding across the void.
"Nothing," I whisper. "Just my mind."
But my voice sounds brittle.
Later, the others return with the same easy laughter, though softer now. They glance at me more than before, as if weighing my face for cracks.
"Any more stories in the dark?" Othgar says, trying for a joke.
"None worth telling," I answer.
We share food again, though the warmth is gone from our voices. Conversation collapses into fragments. Borros stares at the edge of the Hollow. Mirela chews without looking up. Something hangs between us unspoken.
Then—movement.
A sound like breath against bark, not from below but behind us.
We all turn. Nothing.
Borros mutters, "The roots grow strange these days." But his hand never leaves his blade.
When the shift ends I return beneath the outer wall. Dreaming of the calm life within the inner walls.
I wake in my cell to find Othgar gone. Vanished between rotations. The captains tell us he fell, slipped between the roots. "The Hollow takes what it wills," they say. Their faces are carved from stone. Most of the other sentinels of the outer walls all had nothing left within, they were husks who lost too much.
But I know what I heard.
I know what moved in the shadow.
And that night, as I stand watch again, the whisper comes. Not faint, not distant—inside my skull.
Not words at first. Only the sound of chitin on stone, multiplied until it becomes a hiss like speech. Then—faint, but clear:
Tokarn.
My name, spoken as though through a throat of wood and bone.
I stagger back. My sword scrapes against the wall.
"Who's there?" My voice cracks.
The whisper laughs. A sound like dry leaves crushed underfoot. Then silence.
I do not sleep after my shift. My dreams are only roots and eyes.
When dawn—or what passes for it—comes, I am summoned.
Through the inner halls of the Watch they lead me, past walls lined with prayers carved in languages older than life. At the chamber before me stands one I have only heard rumors of: Tokkiel, the Arch Sentinel of Koutso.
He towers like a statue carved from black stone, his armor veined with light like sap. His eyes burn steady, not with flame but with the same glow that clings to the walls.
He speaks without turning:
"You heard it."
I swallow. "I… I don't know what I heard."
"You know." His voice is heavy as earth. "And you must not listen."
I clench my fists. "What is it?"
Tokkiel steps closer. His presence bends the air. "A thing from before the roots. Older than Koutso's sleep. It feeds on hearing. On doubt. The more you listen, the deeper it grows."
"What does it want?"
His gaze pierces me. "You."
He leans in, the glow of his eyes searing my vision.
"Do not answer it. Do not believe its words. When it calls your name again, fill your mouth with prayer until your tongue bleeds."
Then he turns and is gone, leaving me alone in the chamber.
I stand there shaking, his warning echoing in my head.
I tell myself it was nothing but roots growing.
But I no longer believe it.