Hollow

Prologue

It always starts with the dreams.

"The emptiness embraces the dark. Twisting pleasant sounds, smells, sights into sickening lies laced with loneliness, feeding into the needs, the lust and greed. The need for more. Power for the weak. Riches for the poor. Love for the lonely."

"He knows this game. He plays it every night. A delightful picturesque of a marble palace furnished with golden silks and carved statues of wolves and elk: depictions of Llewelyn, the elven goddess of nature, earth and spirit."

Home.

"But it's not his. This is not his home, it's theirs. The ancient ones. And even if it were, it's not real. It never was and it never will be. Yet still, every night, he wants to let himself believe. Just a few minutes. Hours. Days. So much time could be spent wandering wistfully, longingly through the polished halls, searching, scratching, scraping for just a few more moments before it all goes black."

"Silence fills his ears. He hates the silence. It reminds him of it all. Of the power. The riches. The love. Of how he is weak, poor and alone."

"As darkness comes, he begins to run. From the need. From the nothingness. The desire for more and yet the fear of eventually having it. The nightmare, the horror in the shadows that watches, wants, withering away his resolve piece by piece, bit by bit with tethers of greed."

"It makes him see. Through the darkness, his eyes are filled with lavender light. His body breaks down, cracking, creeping the corruption through his bones. Tearing him apart but still he hangs on. Not by the Entice's inky tethers of everything he doesn't have but could, but by something he already has."

"He feels the ground shake as it splits in two. The first tear through the Horror Reach, reaching out with the first shades to pass between realms. Feeling the sky on their grotesque faces, masses of the void merged to create terrors of human error."

"Demons of envy, Jeals, that which claw for everything it does not have because nothing is ever enough. Its hatred for the nothingness and lust for the satisfaction it will never be able to achieve. More. It always has to be more."

"The prideful shades of Vanity that believe it is above such satisfaction and nothingness together. It hungers for fame, power, recognition and remembrance but not finding it brings out the rage, the raw, rippling dismay of disappointment."

"Greed, temptation, lust. When lovers lose the longing of life, or when the farmer lacks the stock to sell for coin to feed his family, Entice invites the lost with whatever they want for prices unseen until it has already been paid."

"Mimics are the face that's not a face, the life made from lies, deception that doesn't show until it's already too late. See a man, then you blink and he's a mouse that scurries between the cracks in the walls. A raven's claws, a wolf's bite, a man's blade. It isn't real. It just is. It watches, waits, until eventually it strikes."

"Silent shadows are never seen, never heard. Only felt. In the darkest whispers at the back of the boy's mind, the voices that encourage him, pushing him onward with words, whispers alone that let him take that final tantalizing step before the noose goes taut. Alone in the dark, dank cellar with the grasping apathy. The cold, tender touch of an Accidie."

"And now, they all claw their way to freedom. To the surface of the nightmare to see things clearer, crisp air over the fields. The sounds of music, gentle notes float through the air back to the tavern but fade from earshot where he remains asleep in the forest outside. A small camp, he slumbers, stumbles through the meaningless dark, trapped in the nightmare."

"The Entice offers him everything he lacks. Power. Riches. Love."

"But for a price; a deal that cannot be unmade. Secrets lying, laying in wait, watching from beneath the table as the bargain hangs heavily with every breath, every word, every finger crossed behind the Entice's back."

"Nothing to lose, he thinks. He fears, but still he wants. He knows this game. He has played it so many times before that he has begun to lose count, yet he never learns from the last long night of looking into the horror's eyes and smile of shadowy mist."

"A game he has won so many times that winning doesn't satisfy him anymore. What if, just once, he were to lose? The earth is opening up, the sky is bleeding, the end is approaching."

"No price could be worse than the Third Year of the Hollow."

"He shakes the Entice's hand. The grasp of darkness, of fate finding fear festering within his heart but the curiosity drowns it out in a gentle hug. Warm, welcoming arms wrapped around him like a lover's embrace."

"He feels wracked with pain, pulling, ripping through his flesh with cracking poison filling his veins, weakening his strength he already lacks and pulling him to his knees as the agony sets in and his blood ignites with violet flames."

"The deal has been struck. He is promised power, riches and love but at a price he has yet to know."

"The darkness recedes, and he is once again left alone. Weak."

"It always starts with the dreams."