Hollowed out

Kieran wasn't in his body anymore.

Because there was no body left.

The thing that had worn him—the thing that had always been him—had finally torn free, leaving behind nothing but a name and a memory.

And yet, Kieran still existed.

Somewhere.

Lost in the dark, trapped inside the hunger.

He could feel it, the vast emptiness stretching around him, the pulsing mass of mouths and eyes that had taken his shape, now writhing, shifting, growing.

The angel was gone.

Devoured.

Swallowed whole by the thing that had crawled out of Kieran's skin.

And the worst part?

Kieran could still feel it inside him.

It wasn't just taking.

It was becoming.

His thoughts weren't his own anymore. They were mixed, layered, voices overlapping inside his mind, some screaming, some laughing, some whispering in languages he had never heard but somehow understood.

The hunger had opened itself to him.

And now?

Kieran understood what he was.

No—what he had always been.

Not a person.

Not human.

Something else.

Something made of empty space, of gnashing teeth and stretched, grinning faces. A thing that should have never been allowed to wake up.

And now that it was awake?

It was so, so hungry.

The world around him shuddered.

Something was shifting.

Reality itself was folding inward, crumpling like wet paper, unable to support the weight of what Kieran had become.

The sky above was wrong—not black, not dark, but deep, a spiraling mass of shifting shapes, watching, waiting.

And Kieran?

He was still falling.

Downward.

Into himself.

Into the hunger.

Because it wasn't just something inside him.

It was him.

And now, it had no reason to stop.

Somewhere, far away, something laughed.

Not a sound.

A vibration.

A ripple through the fabric of the world.

And with it, the grinning mouths opened wider.

Because now?

The feast could truly begin.