The night screamed.
Blackthorn Hollow burned, but not with fire. A cold, phosphorescent glow seeped from the earth, devouring the town in a slow, spectral blaze. Houses warped like melting wax. Trees twisted into spirals, their branches fused into clawed hands that raked the writhing sky. Eleanor ran, her infected leg dragging, each step a jolt of agony that blurred her vision. Behind her, Abigail's laughter echoed—a sound like ice cracking over dark water.
"You can't outrun the Hollow, Eleanor! It's in your blood now!"
A tendril of mist lashed from the ground, snaring her ankle. Eleanor fell, her palms scraping gravel as the mist coiled upward, whispering in a dozen guttural tongues. She slashed at it with the dagger, now permanently fused to her hand by dried blood and something deeper. The mist recoiled, hissing, and she lurched into the skeletal remains of the general store.
Jeb Lowe's corpse lay behind the counter, his milky eyes staring at the ceiling, mouth frozen in a silent scream. The shelves had been ransacked, cans and jars shattered, their contents replaced with writhing black sludge. Eleanor crouched, rifling through a drawer until she found a dusty bottle of bourbon. She doused her leg, biting back a scream as the alcohol met the infection. The wound hissed, yellow pus bubbling to the surface.
Not healing. Changing.
Her skin had taken on a waxy translucence, veins pulsing an oily green. She could feel it—the Hollow's rot—chewing through muscle, rewriting bone.
A thud against the door.
Eleanor froze. The thud came again, rhythmic, deliberate. Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Little witch… little liar… let me in…"
Abigail's voice, but warped, layered with something ancient and wet. Eleanor backed toward the storeroom, her breath shallow. The door splintered, hinges screaming, and Abigail stepped through.
She was no longer a girl.
Her body stretched seven feet tall, limbs elongated, joints bending the wrong way. Scales glinted along her arms, her face a shifting mask of human and serpent. Twin horns curled from her forehead, dripping a viscous silver fluid. But her eyes—those vivid green eyes—remained, burning with cruel recognition.
"You look tired," she crooned, tilting her head. "Let me make you strong. Let me make you… like him."
She gestured, and the air rippled. Eleanor's vision doubled—a grotesque overlay of the store and another place, a shadow-Hollow where the streets writhed with tendrils and the sky was a lidless eye. In that other world, Caleb Blackthorn stood whole, his human form restored, beckoning.
"He's waiting for you," Abigail whispered. "All you have to do is… let go."
Eleanor raised the dagger, her voice raw. "What did he promise you? Power? Immortality?"
Abigail's laugh shook the room. "Promises? No. He showed me truth. The Door isn't a curse—it's a gift. The stars will fall, and this… this festering speck of existence will be unmade. We'll be reborn in the Between, Eleanor. No more pain. No more fear."
The dagger trembled in Eleanor's grip. "And the price?"
"Oh, you've already paid it." Abigail lunged.
Eleanor ducked, rolling behind the counter as Abigail's claws gouged the wood. She bolted for the back door, the world tilting as her leg buckled. The alley outside was a labyrinth of shifting walls and pulsating moss. She ran blindly, following the distant toll of a bell.
The church.
It stood untouched by the Hollow's corruption, its chains intact, its stone walls radiating a cold, sterile light. Eleanor hurled herself against the door, the wood cracking under her weight. Inside, the air was still, the mural of Yog-Sothoth now a blank slate of ash.
At the altar lay Reverend Blackthorn.
His body was a desiccated husk, lips sewn shut with iron thread, a leather-bound journal clutched to his chest. Eleanor pried it free, pages crumbling as she flipped to the last entry:
October 31, 1987
The bloodline ends with me. Caleb's folly cannot be undone, but it can be contained. The guardian must be bound not by blood, but by sacrifice. The anchor must become the Door, sealing it from within. May God forgive me.
A drop of silver liquid hit the page. Eleanor touched her face—her tears were mercury-bright.
"Lies."
Abigail filled the doorway, her form now too vast to fully enter. "He lied to you. To himself. The Door cannot be sealed. It can only be… fed."
Eleanor stumbled down the cellar stairs, the journal pressed to her chest. Caleb's chains hung empty, swaying in a phantom wind. She fell to her knees at the bloodstained ritual circle, flipping frantically through the journal.
A diagram. A spell. A name.
Her name.
Eleanor Voss. Born under the aligned stars. The key. The lock.
The realization struck like a physical blow. The letter, the visions, the infection—it was never chance. She'd been chosen. Fashioned.
Abigail's claws scraped the ceiling above. "You see now, don't you? You were never saving anyone. You were preparing ."
Eleanor's hand moved on its own, dipping into the bowl of Caleb's dried blood. She redrew the ritual circle, her mind eerily calm. The journal's instructions seared into her—a litany of surrender.
To seal the Door, one must step through. To bind the guardian, one must become the guardian.
Abigail's talons closed around her. "No more running."
Eleanor plunged the dagger into her own chest.
The world dissolved.
She floated in the Between, the Door before her, infinite and ravenous. But now, she saw the threads—the thousand silver strands tethering it to Abigail, to the Hollow, to her.
"You cannot bind me," the Door intoned. "I am all that is, was, and will be."
Eleanor smiled. "No. But I can redirect you."
She seized the threads, weaving them into her own unraveling flesh. The Door roared, tendrils lashing, but the infection—the Hollow's rot—was part of it. And part of her.
The threads snapped taut.
Abigail's scream echoed across realities as the Door's hunger twisted, refocused. The guardian bond inverted.
Feed the Door, Eleanor thought. But feed it this.
She showed it Abigail.
The church exploded.
Stone, wood, and flesh fused in a column of black light. Abigail's wail pierced the Hollow as the Door consumed her—her power, her ambition, her stolen humanity. The tendrils retreated. The fissures sealed. The stars stilled.
Eleanor stood at the center, her body a mosaic of human and Other, the dagger now a skeletal extension of her arm. The rot had spread, but so had the power. She could feel the Hollow's pulse, the Door's whisper, the weight of a thousand watching eyes.
In the distance, the first true sunrise in centuries bled over the hills.
The townsfolk emerged, hollow-eyed and trembling, their bodies scarred but human. They didn't thank her. They didn't speak. They simply knelt, foreheads pressed to the earth, as Eleanor limped into the woods.
The standing stones waited, their whispers softer now.
Guardian.
Sacrifice.
Key.
She sat, the dagger across her lap, and closed her eyes.
The Door settled in her bones.