Chapter 3 – The Hollow Path

  The world didn’t end with a roar.

  It ended with a low, dragging wind that pulled everything hollow. A silence so deep it felt wrong in his ears—like a note missing from a familiar song.

  Nikoi stumbled over the crumbled edge of a toppled pedestrian bridge, one boot sliding on cracked concrete. His breath came in shallow bursts, each exhale a ghost trailing from his lips.

  The hounds were gone. Or far enough he could pretend they were.

  His coat was torn at the sleeve, a diagonal rip exposing skin gone pale with cold. Blood had clotted in the fibers. He didn’t remember when it started bleeding. Somewhere back in the sprint. Somewhere between the colpsed tower and the broken overpass—somewhere where a man had screamed and Nikoi hadn’t stopped.

  He’d stopped caring about wounds like this a long time ago. Out here, the body just kept going until it didn’t.

  Three days hiding in the dark had left his joints stiff and his thoughts half-feral from silence and hunger. He’d rationed the rat meat. Swallowed beetles and breath. Stayed still while the world stalked past.

  And now, the city was behind him.

  The horizon opened like a wound. Gray hills rolled into bck forests. Trees twisted against a sky that never cleared. Farther still, where the air grew colder and rivers ran slow and bck, was where the stories said she lived.

  The Witch.

  He didn’t know if she was real. Didn’t care. He wasn’t walking toward salvation.

  He was walking because the alternative was to rot where he stood.

  The wind whispered low through a broken speed sign beside the road. He stepped past it. Didn’t look back.

  After the war—the st war, the one no one won—the survivors gathered what scraps they could and built cities the only way they knew how: upward, inward, armored against the world they’d shattered.

  Thirty-six Citadels remained. Thirty-six glittering tombs where humanity cwed at the illusion of order.

  They rose behind walls of steel and carbon-gss, wrapped in bioscreens that filtered the poison from the air, the radiation from the rain, the madness from the wind. Inside, the lights still flickered. Air still flowed. Rules were followed. People were numbered.

  Everything outside those walls?

  Forgotten.

  Out here, beyond the reach of barcodes and border drones, people built what they could. Colonies stitched from wreckage, from memory, from rust. The desperate. The unwanted. The wild.

  Nikoi had seen one of the Citadels once—two winters ago, from the ridge above a colpsed mine.

  It looked like a cathedral built by machines.

  Gss spires stabbing into the ash-fog. Drones buzzing like flies at the borders. He could almost hear the hum of sterilized air behind that shimmering dome.

  He didn’t stop.

  Too much light meant too many eyes. Too many eyes meant rules. And rules meant ownership.

  And no one owned him.

  He crossed the first ridge by nightfall, camping beneath a rusted delivery truck half-sunk into the soil. The smell of oil clung to everything.

  He didn’t sleep. Just rested his head against cold steel and listened to the whispering dark.

  At some point, he muttered aloud.

  “Keep going. North. Past the bones. She’s waiting.”

  Not hope. Not faith.

  Just momentum.

  He moved again before dawn.

  And the nd grew stranger with every mile.

  By midday, he reached a gully carved into the hillside, old drainage systems twisting like the spine of a long-dead thing. Moss-covered pipes jutted like broken fangs.

  He followed the trench for cover—until he heard the unmistakable sound of somethingbreathing. Low. Wet. Animal.

  Nikoi froze.A creature stood less than ten paces ahead, its back turned, sniffing the air. It was vaguely canine in shape, butwrong -- too many joints in its limbs, an armored ridge along its spine, its skin looking like cracked leatherstretched over bone.

  A mutt. But not the kind he'd escaped three days ago.This one was rger. Leaner. Smarter.He backed up a step -- and stepped on a twig.The crack echoed through the gully like a gunshot.The thing spun.

  Yellow eyes. A mouth too wide, too wet. It let out a shuddering hiss, something caught between growl andbreath.

  Nikoi ran.He bolted out of the gully, sprinting up the slope, boots slipping on loose gravel. Behind him, cws scrapeddirt -- fast. Faster than they should be.

  His heart hammered like a drumline. He could hear it behind him. Closer. Closer.He spotted an old utility pole tilted like a dying tree, its wires trailing down into the bush. Beyond it, theshattered ruins of an overpass y draped in vines and concrete dust -- rusted guardrails bent like wire,burned-out cars strewn across the road like skeletons mid-flight. Without thinking, he jumped, caught one ofthe dangling wires, and hauled himself halfway up before the creature lunged.

  Its cws sshed across his boot as he swung himself up and over, the momentum throwing him onto thecracked road above. He rolled, pain blooming in his ribs. The road he nded on was part of a long-fallenbridge -- its surface cracked and overgrown, windows of nearby vehicles smashed long ago. One y on itsside nearby, half-crushed beneath the weight of fallen concrete, gss glittering in the dust like ice.Then he drew his knife.

  He waited.The mutt rose from the ditch, climbing with eerie ease. It stalked toward him slowly, eyes never leaving his.Nikoi didn't blink.

  "Come on then," he muttered, voice raw. "Let's make this ugly."The thing lunged.

  He dodged left, sshing at its side. The bde scraped armor. It reared back, howled.Nikoi struck again, aiming for the eye. Missed.

  The mutt snapped sideways with terrifying speed. Its shoulder caught him square in the chest and sent himtumbling through broken gss and rusted debris. He nded hard, gasping, ribs screaming in protest. Bloodfilled his mouth -- copper, sharp, and hot.

  He crawled backward, dragging himself behind the husk of a rusted-out car frame as the beast stalked towardhim, head low, eyes locked, breath steaming. Each step it took was deliberate. Confident. Predatory.Nikoi's fingers closed around something -- a broken metal rod, jagged at one end. He gritted his teeth,pushed to his knees.

  The creature lunged.He dove sideways, the cws missing his throat by inches, and rolled to his feet. Using the rod like a spear, hedrove it into the mutt's side. It pierced soft tissue, but barely -- the thing howled, raking him across theshoulder with a wild swing that knocked him ft again.Pain. Noise. Blood.

  His thoughts blurred into instinct.He scrambled toward the utility pole -- not climbing this time, but targeting the wires. He grabbed one of theold cables -- dead, corroded, its insution rotted away. No sparks, just rust and frayed copper. But it gave himan idea. Nearby, the frame of a rusted car leaned against the road's edge, one end jagged where a battery hadonce been. He yanked the hood open with a grunt and grabbed the metal rod again, wedging it in and twistinguntil it snapped loose a piece of the chassis.

  He ran with it, dragging the sharp, sparking end along the fractured pavement, building static, praying for onest residual charge. Just enough to *scare*.The mutt leapt.

  Nikoi stepped aside and swung the rod like a club, driving it across the beast's face with everything he had.A blinding crack of light. Not from electricity -- but from metal meeting bone, shattering teeth and eye socket.The creature colpsed mid-air, crashing into the road, stunned.

  Nikoi didn't wait.He lunged, knife in hand, and drove it into the exposed throat. Once. Twice. A third time.The beast shrieked, cws scrabbling uselessly at the ground, then fell still.

  He knelt there, bde buried in its neck, hands shaking.Every breath was a fire in his lungs.And still -- he was alive.

  Panting, shaking, he stepped back. The corpse twitched once, then stilled.He stood over it, wiping blood from his eyes, the tremble in his limbs undeniable now.

  "Yeah," he whispered. "Ugly enough."--Exhausted from the battle, Nikoi slumped to the cracked asphalt near the wreckage, his back pressed againstthe rusted frame of a derelict sedan. Blood seeped from his shoulder. His breaths came hard and shallow.

  He didn't even realize how quiet it had become until the silence broke.A crunch.

  Boots on gravelHe tensed. Shifted. Clutched the knife tighter.Another footstep. Then another. More than one.

  Figures moved between the ruins -- silhouettes shambling from the tree line and the dark beyond the road,some limping, others hunched. Their outlines were human. Their movements weren't.Not mutts.People, once. But not anymore. The hunger of the wild had stripped them of humanity -- turned them lean andhollow-eyed, skin stretched thin over sharp bones. Carrion things dressed in the rags of the old world, theirfaces half-covered by makeshift masks, bone jewelry clinking at their throats. Predators.Man-shaped.

  And hungry.Nikoi pressed back into the shadow of the car, every instinct screaming. He couldn't fight that many. Notlike this. Not in this state.They hadn't seen him yet.He stayed still. Silent.

  One of them paused near the corpse of the mutt and crouched beside it, touching the blood with two fingersand tasting it. A murmur passed between them.They were tracking.And they were getting closer.

  Nikoi's pulse throbbed in his ears. He pressed lower into the debris, heart hammering. Shadows flickeredacross the broken asphalt. The pack hadn't spotted him -- not yet. But all it took was one gnce, one step inthe wrong direction, and he was done.

  A pn formed, half-formed, desperate. If he moved now, circled behind the bus husk near the ravine, he mighthave a chance to slip away. He'd have to crawl. Stay low. Time it with their movements.A sharp whistle pierced the air. One of the ferals called out -- a guttural sound, part signal, part threat. Anotheranswered.They were splitting up.He clenched his teeth. No time left.