The sewer grate slammed shut behind them.
Lena cursed under her breath, cradling her side. "I think I broke a rib."
Reya didn't answer. She was too busy trying not to pass out. Blood soaked her side, thick and dark. Her breathing was shallow, hands trembling from the feedback of the obsidian shard's magic. She hadn't let go of it since the altar exploded.
Jace led the way, one arm dragging Reya, the other gripping his blade tight enough to make his knuckles crack.
His back burned like someone had carved fire into it with a rusted saw.
They didn't stop.
Not until they were three levels below the city—deep into the forgotten belly of a world built over bones.
No maps led here.
No light reached here.
And yet, somehow… something saw them.
The walls whispered.
Jace didn't trust the silence anymore.
—
They found a room—a half-collapsed maintenance bunker stinking of mold and rust. Someone had slept there before, long ago. Empty cans lined the walls. Cigarette butts. A poster of a woman in red, her eyes scratched out.
Jace eased Reya down against the wall. She hissed, but didn't cry out.
He tore the sleeve off his shirt and pressed it against her side, trying to stanch the bleeding.
"Hold on."
She smirked weakly. "You're not really a nurse type, you know that?"
Jace gave a tight, half-smile. "Yeah. You'd die faster."
"Romantic."
Lena dropped beside them, sweat glistening on her neck, hair matted to her forehead. She scanned the room like she expected the walls to bite.
"Whatever you did with that shard," she said, "scared the shit out of the Order."
Jace looked at Reya.
"What was that?"
Reya's eyelids fluttered. "A lockpick," she muttered. "Not for a door. For a mind. You cracked something open. Something that shouldn't remember how to breathe."
Jace didn't like the sound of that.
"Did it work?"
"I don't know," she whispered. "But you changed. I felt it."
He said nothing.
Because she wasn't wrong.
Something had shifted.
That blade inside him—the Hollow—it wasn't just whispering anymore. It was learning. Every kill, every drop of blood, fed it.
And Jace couldn't lie.
He liked it.
Too much.
—
Later, while Reya slept and Lena stood guard at the door, Jace wandered into the next chamber.
It used to be a control room, long dead. Rusted panels. Shattered screens. Scrawled warnings in faded ink: DON'T SLEEP HERE. IT WALKS.
He found a mirror.
Stood in front of it.
And froze.
His reflection wasn't quite right.
The eyes were his, but darker. Hungrier. Like something inside was watching back, amused.
"You're not afraid of me," Jace said to it quietly.
The reflection grinned.
"You should be."
Jace blinked.
The mirror was empty.
Just his own face. Tired. Bloody. Broken.
He stepped back, unsettled.
Then—footsteps.
Not Lena.
Not Reya.
Too light.
Too many.
He turned slowly.
Shapes moved in the hallway.
Silent.
Not hostile.
Just… watching.
Translucent. Grey. Children. Men. Women. Dozens of them, their forms flickering like static.
Ghosts.
Jace stepped into the corridor.
They didn't flinch.
They stared at him, mouths moving without sound.
One of them—a little girl in a tattered dress—reached forward and pointed at his chest.
At the mark.
Then she whispered.
"He's not whole yet."
And just like that—they vanished.
Gone like smoke in wind.
Jace stood still.
Heart pounding.
—
Back in the bunker, Reya had stirred.
"You saw them, didn't you?"
He nodded.
"What are they?"
She looked at him, eyes dark.
"Echoes of what was buried here. Victims of the Hollow's first awakening. This city's built on graves, Jace. They never left."
Lena looked shaken for the first time. "Then why didn't they attack?"
"Because he's not done," Reya said, nodding toward Jace. "He's still waking up."
Silence fell.
They were no longer just running from the Thorn Order.
They were running toward something.
And Jace?
He wasn't sure he wanted to stop it.