The first thing he noticed was the cold.

  Not the kind that bit at your skin or made you shiver. This was deeper. It coiled around his ribs, buried itself beneath his skin, and settled into his bones like a weight he would never be rid of.

  The Hollow Depths.

  He didn’t know how he knew that name.

  But the moment he opened his eyes, the moment he felt the oppressive weight of the air pressing down on him, the knowledge settled into his mind like an unwanted truth.

  He was in a place where the world had been scraped raw.

  The cavern stretched endlessly around him, its walls jagged and unnatural. But it wasn’t stone. Not quite. Something darker. It absorbed the weak violet glow that pulsed from cracks in the earth, swallowing light the way a dying beast swallowed its last breath.

  The ground was uneven. Slick.

  Not with water.

  His hand sank into something soft, and his stomach lurched.

  Flesh.

  He forced himself up, breathing hard, but his vision swam. He wasn’t just weak—he was being drained.

  The air itself was thick with something unseen, something parasitic. It clung to his skin, slipping beneath it like invisible tendrils, pulling at his breath, his strength—his very presence.

  “This place eats the living.”

  The thought didn’t feel like his own.

  He braced himself against the jagged ground, trying to steady his shaking hands. His fingers left trails in the grime—not dirt, but dust. Bone dust.

  Hundreds had died here.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Hundreds had been forgotten here.

  His breath hitched as he took a step forward, boots crunching over fragments of splintered remains, scattered like dead leaves.

  Then, in the distance, he saw them.

  The ruins.

  Broken pillars jutted from the cracked ground like shattered ribs. Twisted archways loomed in the distance, half-consumed by the abyss, their surfaces etched with markings that no longer belonged to time.

  This wasn’t just a pit for the condemned.

  Something had existed here long before exile became its purpose.

  The air shifted.

  And he realized he wasn’t alone.

  A chittering sound echoed through the cavern. Wet. Crawling.

  He swallowed hard.

  The air grew heavier, pressing down like an invisible hand on his throat.

  And then, the whispers began.

  Not words. Not language. Something older. Something that spoke directly into the marrow of his bones, filling his mind with a presence that did not belong to him.

  “Another exile.”

  The voice was inside him.

  “How long will this one last?”

  From the darkness beyond, shapes emerged. They moved wrong—on too many limbs, their bodies fractured and shifting, as if they had been something else once… but had long since forgotten what that was.

  The first one crawled into view, its body cracking as it unfolded into something vaguely humanoid. Its skin was paper-thin, stretched over a frame that looked like it had been built wrong. A head that twisted too far to look at him. A mouth that split too wide into a grin made of shattered teeth.

  It sniffed the air.

  It could smell him.

  “Still warm,” it rasped, its voice like bones grinding against stone.

  The others shifted, watching. Waiting.

  Not attacking. Not yet.

  They wanted him to run.

  They wanted to chase.

  His breath was unsteady. His legs were weak. His mind still felt hollow.

  But somewhere, buried beneath the fog of his missing memories, his instincts stirred.

  He knew this feeling.

  He had been hunted before.

  And he had survived.

  His fingers curled into the dirt. The weight in his chest lightened. The fear remained, but something else stirred beneath it. Something that did not belong to prey.

  One of the creatures twitched.

  That was all he needed.

  He moved.

  The first one lunged, its limbs bending the wrong way as it launched toward him. But he was already gone. His body twisted, his weight shifting effortlessly, his hands moving before his mind could even catch up.

  A step. A pivot. A perfect counter.

  His foot slammed into the creature’s chest with more force than should have been possible. A sickening crack. The creature shrieked as it was hurled backward, its body crumpling like a discarded puppet.

  Silence.

  The other creatures froze.

  They did not look at their fallen kin. They looked at him.

  And for the first time, he saw something other than hunger in their hollow eyes.

  Fear.

  His breathing was uneven, his muscles heavy, but there was no mistaking it—his body had moved before his mind could even catch up.

  A flicker of motion. A sense of displacement.

  Like he had already lived this moment before.

  His fingers curled into the dirt. The Hollow Depths stretched around him, whispering secrets just out of reach.

  Something about this place… felt familiar.

  Why?

  His vision blurred. A pounding ache crawled through his skull, something pressing against his thoughts like a door rattling in its frame.

  Something… locked away.

  A memory?

  A voice?

  His own voice.

  “You… already know the answer.”

  His chest tightened. The pressure in his skull grew sharper. His body swayed.

  No.

  Not yet.

  The feeling slipped through his fingers like sand, vanishing before he could grasp it. His pulse steadied. His vision cleared.

  The weight on his mind was gone.

  As if it had never been there in the first place.

  He let out a slow breath. His hands relaxed. The silence of the abyss crept back in.

  He had won.

  For now.

  But something told him this was only the beginning.