Sandra had spent her life following Gemini, not by choice, not by force, but by something deeper, something ingrained, something older than either of them, something written into the marrow of their bones, into the silence of their childhood whispers under quilted blankets, into the space between their footsteps as they ran through the darkened fields of Black Hollow, never questioning where they were going, only knowing that Gemini would lead and Sandra would follow.
But now, standing in the middle of a city that no longer belonged to them, with the air pressing thick and wrong against her skin, with the streets stretching longer than they should, with the very bones of Black Hollow shifting beneath her feet as if it were something alive, Sandra finally understood.
She would no longer follow Gemini.
Gemini walked ahead of her, barefoot against the cobblestones, her movements slow, effortless, as if the twisting houses and watch windows were nothing more than a lullaby sung just for her, a song she had always known the words to.
Sandra hated her for it.
Hated the way she didn't flinch at the things moving beneath the cracks in the street, at the shadows bleeding out of the alleys, at the way the air itself seemed to hum with something waiting, something hungry. Hated that Gemini had always known this would happen. Hated that she hadn't warned her.
Hadn't told her that the market had never left her. That it had never had to. That Sandra had reluctantly brought it back with her. Her stomach twisted.
She had to go. Right now. Sandra's breathing was too fast, too shallow, each inhalation coated with the thick, wet smell of decay that clung to Black Hollow like a second skin. She glanced over her shoulder, past the crooked houses, past the unnatural flicker of the gas lamps, past the shifting cobblestones-looking for a path, an opening, an escape. And then Gemini stopped. Sandra's breath caught in her throat.
Gemini turned her head slightly, just enough for the dim, blood-red light of the sky to catch the sharp curve of her cheekbone, just enough for Sandra to see the glint in her eyes as she smiled. "You think too loud, little bird," she murmured, her voice soft, quiet, listening. Sandra's stomach tightened. She didn't move, held her breath.
Gemini turned around now, and took a slow step toward her, her bare feet making no sound on the uneven cobblestones. Her dark hair was unbrushed, tangled from the wind, but there was something deliberate about the way it fell against her shoulders, something that made her look less like a girl and more like something that had crawled out of the very foundations of this place, something that had been waiting for Sandra to wake up to the truth.
"You want to run," Gemini whispered, tilting her head. Sandra's pulse pounded in her throat. She refused to speak. Because Gemini would hear the lie before she could finish. Gemini's lips curled, something pleased flickering in her eyes. "You still think there's a way out." Sandra's hands clenched into fists. There had to be.
Gemini exhaled, softly, amused. "You're so stubborn," she murmured, taking another step closer, reaching out with a delicate, false hand, her fingers barely brushing Sandra's sleeve.
Sandra jerked away and Gemini stopped. The air thickened as the city listened.
Sandra took a slow step back, heart pounding, every muscle in her body coiled tight, ready to run, ready to fight, ready to do anything but stand here under Gemini's gaze, under the weight of something so much bigger than either of them, something Sandra had spent her entire life refusing to see.
Gemini tilted her head, watching her with that smile. "Do you think," she mused, almost sweetly, "that if you run far enough, this place will let you go?" Sandra's fingers twitched. Her answer should have been yes, but it wasn't.
For deep in her chest, beneath the rising panic, beneath the cold sweat that ran down her neck, she knew. The Black Hollow wasn't just cursed. It was alive. And it was keeping her here. Gemini hummed as if she could hear Sandra's thoughts unraveling, as if she could feel the realization sink into her sister's ribs like a twisting knife, sinking deeper, deeper, deeper, and then, softly - "Go on, then." Sandra blinked. Gemini smiled. "If you really think you can walk, then walk."
Sandra's pulse skipped. For a moment she did nothing. She turned quickly and broke into a sprint, her legs aching, her lungs burning, her boots hammering against the cobblestones as she ran, as she pushed forward, as she tore through the empty streets of Black Hollow as fast as her body would allow.
The city stretched with her. The houses bent. The gaslights flickered. And the shadows moved. Not behind her. Not in front of her. Beside her. Running with her. Keeping pace. Matching each of her frantic steps, each ragged breath, each frantic heartbeat-never falling behind. And for the first time since she started running, Sandra realized something. She wasn't escaping. She was being led. Her chest clenched. She kept going.
Faster.
Faster and faster.
The road twisted. The air thickened. And then she saw the edge of the city. The trees. The forest. The place where Black Hollow ended and the world began. A way out. Sandra pushed forward, forcing her legs to move, forcing herself toward the trees, toward the place she had grown up believing would always be there for her, the place that had been safe, had been freedom - the road ended. Not in the dirt.
Not in trees. Not in anything. Just blackness.
Sandra's breath caught. She skidded to a stop inches from the edge, the place where the city simply ceased to exist. She looked down, but there was no ground.
No sky above her. No world beyond the Black Hollow. Just a hollow void, endless and starless and deep. Trapped. Sandra's body shook. She turned slowly. And there, standing exactly where she had started, was Gemini.
Smiling.
"See?" she whispered.
"You never really had a choice."
Stolen story; please report.
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The city shifted. Not subtly, not quietly, not in the way old wood groaned under the weight of time, or glass warped slightly in the heat of summer. No, this was something deeper, something alive, something that had been waiting.
Sandra felt it under her feet before she saw it. The ground in Black Hollow had always been uneven, the cobbled streets cracked and imperfect, the dirt paths lined with the occasional gnarled tree root that stretched too far, but now - now it was different. Now the earth moved.
Not a quake. Not a shudder. Not the result of something breaking.
Something was breathing beneath them.
Sandra pressed a hand to her stomach, nausea twisting deep in her gut as if her body recognized the wrong before her mind could catch up.
The air felt too thick, too damp, too present, as if it wasn't just something to breathe, but something with weight, something that wrapped around her ribs and pressed deliberately against her skin. The streets, too, had widened again, the spaces between buildings yawning wider, the doorways higher, the windows darker.
She swallowed hard.
Lea had told her that Black Hollow was cursed, that the town itself was older than it had any right to be, that the roads didn't always lead where they were supposed to, that if you walked long enough at night, you'd find yourself somewhere you didn't recognize.
Sandra had never believed it. Until now.
She forced herself forward, her boots clicking against the uneven stones, the sound swallowed too quickly by the weight of the air. She wasn't sure where she was going, wasn't sure if she was trying to outrun something or just prove to herself that she could still do it.
The houses along the street - houses she had known since childhood, places that should have been familiar, safe - shifted with her.
The porches stretched too far forward, their railings curved inward, their wooden beams creaking softly as if stretching after a long sleep. The doors once lined up in neat rows, tilted at sharp angles, as if the houses had grown restless after standing in place for so many years. And the windows - the windows were the worst. Because they watched. She wasn't imagining it.
The glass, smeared with age and dirt, had taken on a reflective sheen that bent the world in ways that didn't make sense. The distorted images inside weren't right - weren't just reflections of the street, the sky, and the houses across the street. Some of them showed other things. Things that shouldn't be there. Things with too many eyes. Sandra's breath caught.
She turned away, forcing herself to focus on the road ahead, forcing herself to ignore the way her pulse was pounding against her ribs, forcing herself to pretend she hadn't seen her reflection staring back at her - except that her mouth had moved when she wasn't speaking.
She kept walking. She had to.
She reached the town square, the place where the market stalls had once been set up every Sunday morning, where old women had sold herbs from their gardens, and where children had run barefoot through the dusty streets. It was empty now. But not silent. The church bell rang again. Like a heartbeat.
Sandra shuddered. The trees that lined the other side of the square - the ones that had always been gnarled and skeletal, their branches curled like fingers toward the sky - were moving. Not in the wind. There was no wind. They were walking.
Sandra stumbled back, her breath hitching, because she wasn't seeing things, wasn't dreaming, wasn't caught in the haze of exhaustion. The trees had stepped forward. Their roots lifted out of the ground, long and tangled and dripping with blackened earth before they pressed down again, the wood groaning as the trunks tilted, and the branches curled further inward, reaching, waiting. They were coming. The streets stretched, the houses twisted, the trees walked - Black Hollow awoke.
Sandra turned sharply, her pulse a frantic, uneven thing, only to find Gemini watching her, standing too still in the middle of the square, her bare feet planted on the cobblestones, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her lips curled into something small. Pleased. Sandra's stomach twisted. "You feel it now, don't you?" Gemini's voice was soft.
Sandra clenched her jaw, fists curled at her sides. "What did you do?"
Gemini just tilted her head. "Me?" she echoed, false innocence dripping from her tongue as if she hadn't led them to this moment from the beginning, as if she wasn't the reason the city had changed, the reason nothing was right anymore.
Sandra's throat tightened. "This isn't real." Gemini sighed. "Of course it's real." Sandra took a step back. "Black Hollow isn't..." Gemini's eyes flashed, dark and endless. "Black Hollow isn't what you thought." Sandra's breath caught. The city groaned. The cobblestones shifted beneath her feet. The trees came closer. And for the first time since she'd returned, since she'd clawed her way back from the market since she'd seen Lea die since everything had changed - Sandra realized she hadn't escaped anything. She had been deliberately brought back.
Black Hollow had never been a city. It had been a cage. And now that she was finally awake - it would never let her leave. The sect had always been a distraction.
Sandra had spent so long fearing them like any child, running from them, imagining their black robes as the source of every shadow that followed her, the architects of the horrors that had unraveled her life piece by piece. She had believed that they were the true enemy, that they were the reason Black Hollow had become something twisted and wrong, that if she could just stop them - if she could fight them, escape them, destroy them - then maybe she could stop everything else from getting worse.
But now, standing in the center of a city that was no longer a city, under a sky that no longer held a sun, surrounded by streets that moved when she blinked and houses that breathed when she wasn't looking, she knew. The cult had never been in control. They were just servants.
Sandra stood still, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her pulse hammering against her ribs, her breath coming fast and uneven as she stared across the ruined town square at the figures standing in the church doorway. The cultists. Seven of them.
Draped in their long black robes, their faces hidden beneath deep hoods, their hands clasped to their chests in eerie stillness. They did not move. Not breathing. They just stood there, a silent, unmoving wall between Sandra and the only building in Black Hollow that had not changed.
The church. The bell had stopped ringing. The last echo of its chime hung in the air, lingering too long, fading too slowly as if the sound itself would not leave. Sandra exhaled sharply. She had feared them for so long. And now she realized - they were afraid, too. It wasn't the way they stood that gave it away. It wasn't in their hands, their breath, their silence. It was in the way the air around them felt.
As if they were waiting for permission to move. Sandra's stomach twisted. "You see it now, don't you?"
Gemini's voice curled around her, soft and sweet and knowing, as if it had been waiting for Sandra to catch up as if it had been waiting for her to understand. Sandra turned her head slowly, forcing herself to meet Gemini's gaze. She was standing beside her, barefoot in the middle of the road, her dark hair curling at the ends, her eyes gleaming in the dim, unnatural light that had replaced the sun. Her lips curled into something small.
Amused. As if she had always known how this would end. Sandra swallowed. "You were never afraid of them." Gemini sighed. "Why should I be?" Sandra's breath caught. She turned back to the cultists. They still hadn't moved. But the church had. The doors were open now, wide and waiting, the darkness inside too deep.
The windows - tall and arched, once filled with images of saints and martyrs, of angels with golden halos - were empty. As if the glass had never been there. As if whatever had been inside had left. Sandra's pulse pounded. She took a slow step forward, forcing herself to breathe evenly, forcing herself to keep her voice steady. "Why are you just standing there?"
The cultists did not answer. Not with words.
But one of them - the tallest - tilted his head slightly, just enough for the hood to shift, just enough for Sandra to see. There was no face underneath. No flesh. No bone. Just empty, hollow blackness that stretched too far inward, curling at the edges like a wound that had never healed. Sandra stumbled back. Her stomach churned. She had seen it before.
She had seen things like this at the market. She turned sharply toward Gemini, her pulse pounding. "What are they?" Gemini just smiled. "What they've always been."
Sandra's breath came too fast now, her chest tight, her mind screaming at her that she had missed something - something important, something she should have realized the moment she stepped back into this city. The sect was just a distraction. Always had been. A lie. A trick. Something to make people think they understood what was happening. But they didn't. Not really. They had prayed to something that was already inside them.
Sandra's vision blurred.
Her breath caught.
The church windows weren't empty because something was gone. They were empty because something had never belonged there. The city had never belonged to the sect. The cult had belonged to the city. And now the city was waking up. Sandra turned back to Gemini, a sharp, aching fear crawling up her spine. "You knew." Gemini laughed. Not loudly. Not cruelly. Just softly. Pleased. "Of course I did." Sandra clenched her fists.
The church doors yawned wider. The air pulsed. The cobblestones shifted beneath her feet. The city had been patient. It had waited for years. But now? It was done waiting. Sandra's pulse pounded against her ribs. She turned to run.