Blood and Sparks: The Edge of Power
Chapter 21: the Gate of the Hollow

Chapter 21: the Gate of the Hollow

The walls were screaming.

Not the way humans screamed. Not in fear or pain.

This was something older. Something deeper. Something that had never needed a mouth or lungs or flesh—just existence. A presence vibrating at the frequency of reality itself, unraveling the air, sinking into the stone, pressing into the space between heartbeats.

The tunnel was closing in.

Not with dust. Not with rubble.

With itself.

The stone wasn’t collapsing. It was moving, folding inward, warping like a muscle tightening around an infection.

And we were the infection.

I tightened my grip on my rifle. The kinetic charge pulsed beneath my skin, threading through my bones, sinking into my marrow. My heartbeat hammered against my ribs, syncing with the green glow of my weapon, but even that rhythm felt wrong—like something was trying to sync me to itself instead.

Beside me, Liv’s breath came in short, uneven gasps. Sparks crackled in her hands, wild, erratic, a living storm barely held together by flesh. Tucker had one arm hooked around Rylan’s body, keeping the unconscious man upright, but his machete was raised, sharp and gleaming in the flickering light. Jace limped forward, his ribs bruised, his face pale, but his gun was steady.

We were together.

But we were helpless.

Because this—whatever it was—wasn’t something we could fight.

The walls groaned again.

And Rylan’s body convulsed.

His back arched sharply in Tucker’s arms, his muscles locking, his breath ragged and shallow.

Then his head snapped back—

And he spoke.

"You are late."

It wasn’t his voice.

It wasn’t speech at all.

The words sank straight into my mind, bypassing my ears, cutting through thought, digging into the part of me that knew things before I could understand them.

Liv’s sparks flared, blue light arcing down her arms, crawling up to her shoulders. "Kai, what the hell—"

Tucker nearly dropped Rylan, jerking away like he’d just been burned. "What the hell is wrong with him?"

Jace took a sharp step back, favoring his injured ribs, gun raised, breath uneven.

I lifted my rifle, my knuckles white around the grip.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

Rylan’s body twitched again, but his eyes—

They weren’t his eyes.

The pupils had gone black. Not just dark. Hollow.

Like someone had dug them out and left nothing but a void behind.

And yet—

They saw me.

His lips barely moved. But the words still came.

"You do not belong here."

The sound scraped against my skull.

Not one voice.

Many.

Like a dozen separate minds whispering through him at once, overlapping, weaving together into a single directive.

I knew what this was.

This wasn’t Rylan.

This was something else.

Something using him.

System Alert:Psionic Contamination Detected.Host Status: Rylan Cormac (Compromised).Foreign Presence: Multiple Signatures Detected.Threat Level: Unknown.

Liv’s blue light flared, electricity rippling up her arms. Her fingers twitched, like she was about to throw a bolt straight into Rylan’s chest, but she hesitated—

Because what if he wasn’t gone?

What if there was still something left of him inside?

Tucker’s jaw clenched, his grip tightening around the handle of his machete. "Do we—" His voice cut off, like even speaking the question out loud would make it real.

Jace exhaled sharply. "If we have to, we have to."

I didn’t lower my weapon.

But I didn’t fire.

Because there was something deeper at play here.

The tunnel wasn’t just closing. It was changing.

The walls were melting, stretching, curling inward like they were forming a—

A door.

A gate.

And on the other side—

Not space.

Not another place.

Something... waiting.

Something older than the war above.

Older than the Skraiths.

Older than us.

I could feel it pulling at the edges of my mind, twisting through the flickering emergency lights, threading through the broken air, curling through Rylan’s voice—

And then—

We fell.

Falling Through Nothing

There was no gravity.

No wind.

No direction.

Just—

Falling.

Not even in a downward sense.

It was more like we had been removed from the concept of space itself.

Like reality had let us go.

I reached out, grasping for anything, but there was nothing to grasp.

Only the sensation of movement in a world where movement no longer existed.

I could still see Liv, but she was wrong—her sparks flickering in reverse, light curling inward instead of outward.

I could still see Jace, but his body looked fragmented, like he existed in multiple places at once.

Tucker’s voice was muted, coming from somewhere farther than it should be.

And Rylan—

Rylan was floating.

Not falling.

Not moving.

Just waiting.

Then—

We hit.

The Hollow Beneath the World

The landing wasn’t impact.

It wasn’t violent.

It was soft.

Like stepping onto something that didn’t quite exist, something that shifted just slightly underfoot, adjusting, recognizing.

I opened my eyes—

And I wasn’t in the subway anymore.

The sky—if it could be called that—wasn’t black. It was absence.

A void.

Not empty.

Just... hollow.

Like something had taken a bite out of the universe and left only the edges behind.

The ground beneath us was smooth, not quite stone, not quite metal. It shifted under my touch, warping slightly, like it was adjusting to me.

Liv pushed herself up beside me, sparks still crackling over her skin. Her breathing was ragged, her hands curled into fists, her entire body coiled like she was ready to fight the air itself.

Jace groaned. "Where—" He cut himself off, exhaling sharply. "Where the hell are we?"

Tucker rubbed the back of his head. "Not Kansas, that’s for sure."

I turned—

And saw Rylan.

Standing.

Waiting.

His body was still.

His face blank.

But his eyes—

They weren’t empty anymore.

They were filled.

Not with thought. Not with life.

With something else.

With something watching through him.

Behind him, the ground split open.

Not cracking.

Not breaking.

Just unfolding.

A seam of light poured out. But it wasn’t light.

It was memories.

Cities crumbling.

Planets devoured.

Not by war.

Not by fire.

By something older than destruction itself.

And at the center of it—

A shape.

Not a person.

Not a creature.

Just hunger.

It saw me.

And it knew me.

Rylan—or whatever was left of him—stepped forward.

"You are one of us now."

And the Hollow screamed.

I clenched my fists.

And I stepped forward, into the light.

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