Story 1199: Becoming Hollow

The stars were no longer in the sky. They pulsed beneath the skin of the world—inside walls, beneath fingernails, behind eyelids. And those who gazed too long at the horizon found it staring back.

Clara stood on the cathedral steps, the relic clutched to her chest. The hourglass had stopped flowing. Its sands no longer obeyed gravity. Time itself had bent, its spine snapped in reverence to them—the Hollow Ones.

Bells rang, not from towers, but from inside the bones of the faithful.

Those still human were fewer now. Their eyes had emptied. Their voices echoed in strange delay. Their hearts beat not to live—but to summon.

Jasper had vanished in the night. When Clara awoke, she found only a trail of skin where he’d slept, curling like petals.

Evelyn no longer had a face.