The air in Black Hollow had changed. Thickened. Curled. Warped. It no longer smelled like earth and damp wood, no longer carried the distant whispers of wind through empty streets or the rustling of leaves in the graveyard beyond the town's edge. Now, it smelled of something heavier, something rich and cloying, something that clung to the skin and settled in the lungs like an infection.

  The scent of rot. The scent of something long dead and yet still breathing.

  Lea was gone. Maddox was gone. The Market had devoured them whole, as it had devoured so many before them, as it would devour so many after.

  The town stood still, untouched yet fundamentally different, its buildings still standing but wrong, stretched, twisted, leaning ever so slightly toward something unseen. The stones of the streets had not cracked or crumbled, and yet they felt like stone beneath one's feet, no longer felt solid but something softer, something that gave just slightly when walked upon. It was as if Black Hollow had become an imitation of itself. A hollow shell left behind, waiting to be filled.

  And at its center, standing where the Market had once opened its iron gates, where reality itself had split to make way for something deeper, something hungrier stood Gemini. She did not move one inch.

  The town breathed for her now. The Market was her.

  Sandra watched from the edge of the street, her body trembling, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps as the weight of the silence pressed against her ribs. The houses loomed closer than before, their windows empty black voids, their doors slightly ajar, as if waiting for her to step inside.

  The trees no longer swayed, no longer shifted with the wind, because there was no wind anymore. There was only the Market's will. And Gemini's will was absolute.

  Sandra clenched her fists, nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms, pain grounding her, keeping her from dissolving into the same nothingness that had swallowed the rest of Black Hollow. She had lost everything. Her home. Her family. Herself. And yet the Market had left her here. Had spared her. No, not spared. Kept her.

  The realization settled deep in her bones, cold and sharp and final. The Market had taken what it wanted. But it wasn't done.

  Gemini turned, slow and deliberate, her dark hair falling over her shoulders like a cascade of ink, her dress fluttering despite the absence of wind. Her bare feet never made a sound against the cobblestone as she approached, as if the town itself refused to acknowledge her weight as if she existed on a different plane of reality entirely.

  Her smile was soft.

  She reached out, fingertips hovering just above Sandra's cheek, close enough for Sandra to feel the cold radiating from them, close enough for her skin to prickle in response. "You're still here," Gemini murmured, her voice smooth, light, effortless as if she hadn't just destroyed everything Sandra had ever known.

  Sandra flinched, jerking back, her breath shuddering. Gemini's smile deepened. "I didn't leave you," she said, tilting her head slightly, her dark eyes gleaming with something Sandra couldn't name. "I let you stay." Ms. Sandra's stomach twisted. No, this wasn't mercy. This wasn't kindness.

  It was something else. Something far worse.

  "You needed to see," Gemini continued, stepping even closer, closing the last of the space between them, so close Sandra could feel the chill radiating from her skin, could feel the pull of something vast and ancient and endless curling behind her eyes. "You needed to understand." Sandra swallowed hard, her voice barely a breath. "Understand what?" Gemini's smile was pure satisfaction.

  "That you were never meant to leave."

  The words hit Sandra harder than any blow. She staggered back, shaking her head, rejecting the weight of them, the truth in them. "No," she choked out. "No, I don't belong here. I don't...I don't belong to you." Gemini laughed. Softly. Sweetly. "Oh, but you do," she whispered. Sandra turned to run.

  She didn't make it two steps before the town closed around her.

  The buildings lurched inward, the streets shifted beneath her feet, and the air itself thickened, pressing against her like invisible hands, pushing, pulling, keeping her in place. The houses exhaled, their doors gaping wider, dark and yawning, the windows watching. The ground pulsed beneath her feet, veins of black rot spreading like ink, creeping up the sides of buildings, swallowing the streets, wrapping around her ankles like the town itself had finally claimed her.

  Sandra screamed and Gemini watched. Sandra fought, thrashing against the unseen force that dragged her back, that held her where she stood, that refused to let her go. The Market was still hungry. And now it had chosen its next vessel. Her.

  Sandra shook, tears burning down her cheeks.

  "Please," she gasped, her voice cracking, her body trembling as the last of her strength drained from her limbs. "Please, I don't" Gemini's fingers brushed against her jaw, tilting her chin up, forcing her to meet her gaze. The streets had suddenly gone silent. The town listened. Sandra's breath hitched.

  Gemini leaned in, her lips barely parting as she whispered against her skin, voice like silk, like a shadow, like something eternal.

  "Shh," she soothed. "It's already done." And in that moment, Sandra knew, that the fight was over. The Market had her now. And it would never let her go. Sandra no longer felt the weight of her own body.

  She stood, her feet planted firmly on the cold, pulsing with the Black Hollow's distorted streets, but she felt nothing beneath her skin.

  No warmth, no chill, no tremor of breath shifting through her ribs. The air around her was thick, suffocating, pressing in like a pair of unseen hands wrapped around her throat, yet she did not choke, did not gasp, did not fight against it. Because there was no point.

  Black Hollow was no longer a town. It was a threshold. A doorway. A place where the rules of the world had been rewritten, where the streets no longer led to homes but to corridors of something much older, something that existed between the folds of time and flesh, something that had been watching for centuries, waiting for her.

  She had never belonged to the world beyond this place. She had always belonged here.

  Sandra felt it now, a slow unraveling of her past self, as if the Market had reached inside her chest and plucked the last fragile threads of her old life away, replacing them with something dark, something endless, something hungry. It was a sickness curling deep beneath her skin, spreading through her veins, seeping into her bones, filling every hollow space inside her with something that pulsed in time with the ruined heartbeat of Black Hollow.

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  She turned her head, movements slow, deliberate, like a marionette being guided by invisible strings, and her gaze fell upon Gemini.

  She stood at the center of it all. The town. The Market. The world that had been created from blood and bone, from hunger and sacrifice. She was no longer a girl, no longer something bound by flesh or mortality, no longer the sister Sandra had grown up beside in the shadows of this cursed town.

  She slowly turned into the Market itself. A living, breathing thing wrapped in human skin, wearing a body like an ill-fitting dress, her bare feet still untouched by the rotting ground beneath them, her dark eyes gleaming with something that had seen beyond time, beyond reason, beyond sanity.

  She smiled, slow and patient, as if she had been waiting for Sandra to catch up, waiting for her to accept what she already knew to be true. "You feel it now, don't you?" Gemini whispered, her voice silk-soft, curling in the air between them like smoke from a dying candle. "The pull. The hunger." Sandra shivered because she did.

  It coiled inside her, a whisper beneath her ribs, a sensation that was neither pain nor pleasure but something else entirely, something that had been planted within her the moment she had stepped back into Black Hollow, the moment she had breathed in the Market's air, the moment she had watched Lea die, the moment she had lost everything and had been left with only this.

  Sandra swallowed, her throat dry, her tongue thick in her mouth. "What did you do to me?"

  Gemini tilted her head. "I didn't do anything." She took a step forward. Then another. And another. Each movement was too fluid, too effortless like she wasn't walking but being pulled toward Sandra, drawn by something stronger than gravity, something woven between them.

  The space between them shrank, and still, Sandra couldn't move, couldn't run, couldn't even flinch. Because she didn't want to. Deep down, in the parts of herself she had tried so hard to ignore, she already knew the answer.

  "You were always meant to be this," Gemini murmured, reaching out, her fingers barely brushing against Sandra's wrist, cold and featherlight, sending a shiver rippling through her blood. "You were always part of the Market." Sandra shook her head, her breath shuddering, her mind fighting against the truth, even as her body began to accept it.

  "No," she whispered, but the word felt weak. Hollow. Gemini's smile deepened, dark amusement flickering behind her gaze. "Then why aren't you running?" Sandra couldn't answer. Because she wasn't running. She wasn't even trying. Gemini's fingers traced up her arm, slow and deliberate, each touch pressing something deeper inside her, something that grew, something that fed.

  "You don't belong to them anymore," Gemini whispered, her lips close to Sandra's ear now, her breath cool against her skin. "You belong to me." Sandra closed her eyes.

  She could feel it. The Market welcomed her. The air wrapped around her like an embrace. The whispers in the walls sank into her skin. And the realization hit her like a knife to the throat. She was never supposed to escape. She was supposed to replace Lea.

  She was the next supplier of the Market. And Black Hollow? It would never die. It would lure in new citizens. New traders. New victims. New offerings.

  The cycle would never end.

  Because as long as Sandra stood, as long as she breathed, as long as the Market continued to whisper inside her veins, it would keep pulling others in. And deep down, past the last remnants of who she had once been- she didn't want it to.

  The Market had been waiting for her.

  Not like a prisoner waits for a guard, not like a beggar waits for mercy, but like something ancient and hungry, something patient, something that had known, from the very beginning, that this moment would come.

  It had known when she was a child, when she had taken her first breath in Black Hollow, when her blood had already been marked before birth when Lea had locked her in the basement, kept her safe but never realizing- never understanding- that Sandra had never needed to be protected. She had needed to be prepared. And now, the Market welcomed her home.

  The streets of Black Hollow stretched unnaturally wide, their cobblestone paths twisting in ways they never had before, spiraling into tunnels that had no beginning and no end, curling into impossible corridors that bent in and out of reality, moving with the pulse of the Market itself.

  The houses, the ones that had once been built with hands and tools and wood, had grown, their walls no longer straight, no longer structured, but organic, shifting like breathing things, their windows nothing more than hollow, open mouths, dark and gaping, watching her as she walked.

  And Gemini, standing beside her, smiling as though all of this had been inevitable, as though none of it surprised her, as though she had always known that Sandra would come to this place, would stand beside her, Holding her Hand, would become what she was meant to be.

  Sandra's hand curled at her sides, her nails digging into her palms, but there was no pain. She wasn't sure there ever would be again. The Market had taken that from her. It had taken her fear, her hesitation, her doubt.

  It had replaced it with something else. Something heavier and permanent.

  She had spent so long fighting, so long trying to escape, so long believing there was a way out. But there had never been a way out. There had only ever been this. Her place beside Gemini. Her place within the Market. Gemini turned to her now, dark eyes gleaming, something ancient and knowing flickering behind them. "Are you ready?" she asked, voice soft, almost gentle like the words themselves were a kindness.

  Sandra exhaled, slow and steady. She wasn't sure she had a choice.

  She followed Gemini through the distorted streets, past the empty buildings that whispered when she passed, past the trees that had learned how to move, their twisted roots curling over the ground like fingers, past the gas lamps that no longer burned with fire but with something else, something that shimmered, something that pulsed like a heartbeat.

  And at the very center of it all, standing at the edge of the marketplace that was no longer just a place but a thing, a living, breathing thing that stretched far beyond Black Hollow, beyond the cavern where it had been born, beyond the world itself. A child innocently played Hide and Seek.

  Small. Frail. No older than Sandra had been when she was first stolen away when Lea had dragged her from the world she had known into the darkness she would never truly escape. The child did not run. The child did not cry. The child only watched. Sandra stopped walking. Her pulse slowed.

  She knew what this was. She knew why she had been brought here. She turned to Gemini, heart pounding, but Gemini was already watching her, already smiling, already waiting for her to understand. Because this was the final piece. Not the moment of her transformation.But the moment she proved she belonged.

  The moment she would make her first offering.

  Sandra's breath came shallow, thin, disappearing too fast into the heavy air that wrapped around her, pressing into her ribs, curling inside her lungs. The child before her did not move. She had brown hair. Pale skin. Eyes too wide. She looked like any other child. But Sandra knew, that she was not.

  Because no one was chosen at random. The Market only took what already belonged to it. Just like it had taken Sandra, Lea, and Maddox.

  And now, it was her turn to choose and take.

  Gemini stepped closer, standing beside her now, her voice a whisper, curling in Sandra's ear like the softest touch, like a hand guiding her, gentle, patient, waiting. "You know what to do," she murmured.

  Sandra did. Her fingers twitched. The child looked up at her. Innocent. Unafraid. With asking eyes. The Market pulsed beneath her feet. The houses sighed. The trees watched. Sandra breathed deeply while glowing her eyes. Her hands reached out- slow, deliberate, and certain.

  And the child stepped forward with no hesitation and no resistance. Because this was never about force. It was about belonging. The Market had chosen this child, just as it had once chosen Sandra. And Sandra, whether she had wanted it or not, had become part of it. She curled her fingers around the child's wrist, felt the warmth of her skin, felt the pulse beneath it. A body. A soul, waiting to be given.

  She turned to Gemini. Gemini smiled and Sandra swallowed hard. And then, in a voice that was no longer just hers but something else, something woven into the fabric of the Market, something that would never truly be human again and she spoke.

  "She belongs to us now."

  The Market sighed in satisfaction. And somewhere, deep within its hollow, endless corridors, it opened its mouth to feed.

  Epilogue

  Black Hollow, 2008

  Sandra sat in the car, lighting a cigarette. As she slowly inhaled, she looked into the rear mirror, brows slightly furrowed: ?She should be asleep by now, right?"

  Maddox mouth widened to a smile on the backseat: ?give it another five." he growled deeply. And Sandra nodded, looking at the House in the dark.