The fog grew heavier with every step, so thick it swallowed light. Ikenna's flashlight barely pierced two feet ahead. Samuel walked beside him, breathing hard, hands trembling.
"How are we still in this town?" Ikenna muttered. "We've walked for hours."
"It loops," Samuel said quietly. "You don't leave Ember Hollow. You just circle closer to the center."
A distant bell rang once—low and hollow. It echoed unnaturally long, like a cry beneath water.
They stopped.
The fog parted just slightly ahead, revealing a narrow alley between two burned-out houses. Strange, wooden figures hung by string across the alley—like puppets.
Each one was carved in human shape, featureless, but disturbingly lifelike in posture.
As they moved beneath them, a soft whisper rose up:
"Hollow… hollow… hollow…"
Ikenna looked up. The puppets had no eyes—but he felt them watching.
"Why are they saying that?" he whispered.
Samuel answered without looking up. "Because that's what this town makes you. Hollow."
They exited the alley and stepped into an overgrown courtyard. In the center stood a massive, decaying building: once a school, now a monument of rot. Its windows were black voids, its front doors hanging wide open as though inviting them in.
A rusted sign above the entrance read:
"Ember Hollow Primary - Where Children Thrive"
"Charming," Ikenna muttered. "Why are we here?"
Samuel's expression darkened. "This was where it started. The children disappeared first."
They stepped inside.
The floor groaned underfoot. Desks were overturned. Walls blistered with mold. A faded mural on one wall showed smiling children holding hands around a sun—except the paint had peeled, and now their eyes were missing.
"I was here," Samuel said suddenly. "I remember this place."
"You lived here?" Ikenna asked.
Samuel nodded. "My family left when the disappearances began. But I remember the day it started. A girl named Chika went missing during recess. We searched everywhere."
He stopped in front of a locker with peeling green paint. Number 13.
"I remember this locker," he whispered.
He reached for it.
"Don't—" Ikenna warned.
Too late.
The locker creaked open.
Inside hung a single dress—old, torn, and bloodstained. Beneath it, a small shoe. One side burned. As Samuel stared, the shoe began to twitch—then jump slightly, as if something unseen tried to crawl out from inside it.
A whisper filled the hall:
"She never left…"
Suddenly, the classroom doors along the hallway all slammed open—one by one.
And from within, children's laughter echoed.
Wrong laughter. Gurgling. Choked.
"Ikenna," Samuel said, voice tight. "We need to go."
But Ikenna had already turned.
Down the hall stood a figure—a girl in a scorched school uniform, her face turned away.
"Chika…" Samuel whispered.
The girl turned.
No face.
Just a smoothed-over patch of skin.
She raised one hand and pointed.
"Room 6," Samuel said. "She wants us to go there."
"Or something wants us to believe she does."
Still, they walked. Past classrooms where shadows twitched and whispered. Past blackboards scribbled with nonsense words. Past hallways that smelled of ash and old blood.
Room 6 was at the end.
Inside was darkness.
And movement.
Dozens of tiny feet scurried out of sight. Dolls. Burned. Broken. They sat on desks, facing the chalkboard. Each one had names written on their bellies in blood.
Ikenna found one that read Maya.
The chalkboard lit up on its own.
Words wrote themselves in a child's shaky hand:
> "Only one leaves whole."
Behind them, the door slammed shut.
Then the dolls turned—all at once.
Their eyes blinked open. Some had human eyes sewn into their sockets. Others leaked black fluid. One began humming a lullaby.
And then they began to chant:
"Hollow, hollow, hollow…"
The air thickened. The walls bled black.
Samuel grabbed Ikenna. "They're not just dolls. They're vessels. For whatever feeds here."
The dolls began crawling—fast.
Up walls. Over desks. Toward them.
One leapt, sinking its needle-sharp fingers into Ikenna's jacket. He ripped it off and smashed the thing against a desk—it exploded in a puff of soot and teeth.
Another launched at Samuel, biting into his shoulder. He screamed, wrenching it off and hurling it across the room.
"We need to break the link!" Samuel shouted. "The one anchoring them!"
Ikenna looked around—and saw it.
A mirror—small, nailed to the back of the room. The dolls' reflections flickered in it even before they moved.
"The mirror!" he yelled.
They charged.
Dolls shrieked, launching in swarms.
Ikenna reached the mirror, raised a chair—and smashed it.
The glass burst apart in a blinding flash.
And everything stopped.
The dolls crumpled to the floor like puppets with cut strings. The chanting stopped. The room fell eerily silent.
But then…
Clapping.
Slow. Deliberate.
From behind them.
They turned.
A man stood at the entrance. Tall, thin, dressed in scorched robes. His skin was stretched tight, his face long, lips blackened. His eyes… were burning coals.
"You break one chain," he said. "But the curse runs deeper."
Ikenna stepped forward, fists clenched. "Who are you?"
The man tilted his head.
"I was the first."
"The first what?"
He smiled.
"The first to offer something to the Hollow."
He raised one hand, and black smoke poured from his fingers.
"You will offer, too. One by choice. One by force. And then the town will rest."
The smoke reached out like tendrils—grabbing Samuel, wrapping around his throat.
Ikenna rushed forward, swinging a broken desk leg into the smoke. It passed through harmlessly. Samuel gasped, choking.
"Stop it!" Ikenna yelled. "Take me instead!"
The man paused.
"Not yet," he said.
And vanished in a blink.
The smoke dissipated.
Samuel collapsed, coughing violently. Ikenna helped him up.
They left the school in silence, the words still etched into their minds:
> Only one leaves whole.