The gates shuddered closed behind him, their grinding echo swallowed by the voided quiet of the land beyond. Stone gave way to dust, and dust to ash.

  Before him stretched the Hollowed City. He did not know the name, yet he did. It drifted into his mind, unbidden and undeniable, as if carved into the marrow of his bones.

  The Hollowed City, a title older than speech, familiar in the way nightmares are, half-recognized, half-forgotten.

  The world before him was unnatural.

  Broken, beautiful.

  Crumbling towers rose like the spines of great beasts, jagged and leaning, their peaks stabbing into a bruised sky. Some hung in the air, suspended as if by the breath of the void itself, floating with impossible stillness. The ground sloped and cracked at irregular intervals, massive crevices carved through stone like claw marks, revealing glimpses of bottomless dark beneath.

  He walked slowly, cautiously. Every step fell upon unfamiliar land that still somehow recognized him.

  The city was vast, far more than ruins. This had been a capital once. A place of power. Now it lingered between states of being, half-sunken into the abyss and half-clinging to reality. The very air hummed with instability, and at times, it felt like he was walking through a memory not his own.

  The sky pulsed dimly overhead, thick clouds moving too fast, too intelligently. There was no sun, no moon, only light without source, flickering and grey.

  In the distance, monumental structures loomed. Landmarks. Names rose to the surface of his mind, involuntary and absolute.

  The Market of Echoes, far to the east, he could just make out the glint of metal stalls in the distance, twisted and half-submerged in shifting ground. Something about that place made his skin crawl. Not because of what it was, but because of what remained there. Echoes of people, of moments, replaying endlessly in a loop no one could stop.

  To the north, he saw the spires of the Blood-Forged Cathedral, jutting from the earth like the bones of a buried titan. Its towers pulsed with a slow, rhythmic glow, veins of crimson crawling across stone like infected roots. The closer he drew, the more his breath caught. Something lived inside those walls, something that was once worshipped and now simply was.

  And higher still, crowning the horizon, stood the Eclipse Spire. The tallest of them all, a tower wrapped in shadows that breathed. It didn’t reflect light so much as consume it, drinking the sky dry. It bent reality around it, subtly warping the buildings near its base, like gravity around a black hole. He did not need to approach to feel its pull, it was watching him, he knew this without doubt.

  The landmarks remained distant. He didn’t trust himself to go there yet, not now.

  The roads beneath his feet were uneven, broken by time and tectonics. Mosaic tiles crunched beneath his boots, depicting scenes worn too smooth to decipher. Lamp posts lined the paths, some still alight with ghostly fire, some twisted into grotesque shapes, as if something massive had swept through and melted them mid-breath.

  Buildings leaned at odd angles, defying logic. Some were whole but floated just above the ground, anchored to nothing. Others sat in pieces, shattered but untouched by decay.

  On more than one occasion, he passed through alleyways where sound simply ceased, his footsteps falling into silence as if swallowed by the air itself.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  There were no people, but he did not feel alone.

  He saw things in the corner of his vision. Movements, shapes, flickers of something just out of reach. The city watched him, and in some strange way, it remembered him. He did not know how.

  Eventually, fatigue took hold.

  He found a hollow in the side of a ruined tower, its lower floors collapsed, its upper portion drifting lazily above the earth. The cavity at its base had formed a small, sheltered space.

  A cave, shielded from the wind and the endless gaze of the city.

  He stepped inside and lay down.

  The stone was cold beneath him, the silence deepened, and slowly the world slipped away.

  He opened his eyes to light.

  Not daylight, not anything natural. It was sterile, blue, electric.

  The city around him had changed.

  Towering skyscrapers rose into the sky, seamless and gleaming, constructed of glass, copper, and etched rune-steel. Everything was precise, perfect lines, sharp edges. Arcs of glowing energy threaded between towers, dancing like silent lightning.

  There were roads of metal and crystal which stretched beneath his feet, marked with shifting symbols and alien script.

  It was futuristic, arcane, silent. It was not of today, and yet not of tomorrow. It was the past, he realized with a shudder.

  He wandered deeper, eager to discover, eager ro recover. Something about this place felt familiar, something about this place was as if it knew him.

  But as he discovered, there were no people, there was no sound. There was just the breath of forgotten machines and the occasional flicker of neon signs advertising things in a language he almost understood, almost.

  He walked forward, deeper still.

  Here, the city was not broken, but it was empty. Entire districts stood pristine, untouched. Trams glided overhead, empty. Doors stood ajar, waiting. Every window he passed was dark, every home a hollow vessel.

  It felt… prepared, like the city had been built for someone, and then abandoned before they could arrive.

  He moved through the silent streets, his footfalls echoing against metal and stone. Eventually, the buildings began to change, becoming older, more gothic, as if time reversed the deeper he went.

  Copper gave way to black marble, glass to obsidian, and at the city’s heart, a castle stood, massive and timeless.

  Its spires pierced the sky, wrapped in arcs of crackling blue magic. Great engines hummed beneath it, half-visible through translucent floors. Stone met machine here, ancient stone, fused with machinery that pulsed like a heart.

  The doors opened for him.

  Inside, the halls were vast and echoing. Sigils danced across the walls, shifting and rearranging as he passed. Light floated freely, ignoring torches or fixtures. Every step he took felt heavier, and finally, there was the throne room.

  It stretched endlessly, an impossible space. Walls of stained crystal glowed with scenes of war and betrayal, of something ancient crumbling. At the far end, atop a twisted dais, sat the boy.

  Black hair and green eyes that shone like stars poisoned by envy.The same one from the dream that started it all, but now, he was wrong, twisted.

  His form flickered subtly at the edges, one arm longer than the other, his neck bent too far when he tilted his head, and his grin too wide, too sharp.

  “You made it,” the boy said. His voice echoed too many times, like a conversation across a canyon.

  The silence stretched.

  “You remember me, don’t you?”

  The boy’s expression shifted. Something shone behind his eyes, like disappointment.

  “You’re getting closer, but you’re not there yet, not even close.”

  “What is this place?” he finally asked.

  The boy gestured to the throne room, the castle, the city beyond. “This? This is a dream of memory, or maybe a memory of a dream. Yours? Mine? Hard to say.”

  The boy leaned forward.

  “You want answers, but you’re asking the wrong questions.”

  He frowned. “Then answer the right ones.”

  The boy’s grin widened.

  “Why do you know the names of things you’ve never seen?”

  The question stabbed deep, he had no answer.

  “Why does the city remember you?”

  He couldn’t speak, the boy stood.H is body cracked, shifted, twitched wrong.

  “You’re not ready.”

  And then there was pain, unimaginable pain. His body ignited from the inside out, nerves set aflame, soul peeled apart like bark from a tree. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe, could only burn.

  The boy’s voice reached him through the agony.

  “Wake up.”

  He gasped awake, thrashing in the cave’s dark. His hands clawed at the earth, his skin slick with sweat, heart pounding like a war drum in his chest.

  The dream was gone, but not forgotten. He could still feel the pain, still hear the boy’s words.

  “You’re not ready.”

  He stared at his hands, and for a long moment, he wasn’t sure whose they were.

  The Hollowed City stirred outside, and something deeper… waited inside.