Blood and Sparks: The Edge of Power
Chapter 22: The Hunger Beyond the Veil

Chapter 22: The Hunger Beyond the Veil

The light swallowed me whole.

But it wasn’t light.

It wasn’t anything.

Not fire. Not energy. Not warmth.

Just—hunger.

A vast, unending appetite that didn’t roar or rage but simply was. A presence so absolute it defied comprehension, pressing against me from all directions, seeping into the spaces where my thoughts used to live. I wasn’t falling anymore. I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t even existing the way I used to—not in the way I understood existence, with edges and boundaries and a sense of me.

I wasn’t.

And yet—I was aware.

I could still feel my heartbeat, faint and erratic, a stubborn rhythm thudding beneath my skin, pulsing like a war drum in a world stripped of sound. My body still existed—somewhere—but it didn’t feel like mine anymore. It felt borrowed, stretched thin across something impossibly vast, a canvas pulled taut over a frame too large to hold. My nerves buzzed with kinetic energy, a restless hum that crackled beneath the surface, but it had nowhere to go. No outlet. No purpose.

The hunger around me pressed closer, curling around the edges of my thoughts like smoke, pulling at my mind with delicate, probing tendrils—fingers tracing through still water, leaving ripples in their wake. It wasn’t attacking. It wasn’t even trying to consume me, not yet. It was testing. Tasting. Sampling me like some rare specimen, dissecting the pieces of what I was—or what I thought I was—without ever drawing blood.

I gritted my teeth, instinct urging me to move, to fight, to push back against this suffocating void. But I had no limbs to swing. I tried to breathe, to draw in air and steady myself, but there was no air to take—just an absence so complete it mocked the idea of lungs. I tried to fight back—but against what? There was nothing to strike, nothing to resist, just this endless, patient want that enveloped me like a second skin.

A voice echoed through the emptiness.

Not through my ears.

Through me.

It reverberated in my bones, vibrated through my skull, stitched itself into the fabric of my being.

"You are... incomplete."

The words weren’t spoken—they were known. A truth imposed upon me, undeniable and cold. The pressure in my skull twisted, a dull ache blooming behind my eyes as though something was rooting around in there, sifting through the clutter of my mind. My thoughts shuddered, fracturing under the weight of it, splitting apart only to be pieced back together in shapes I didn’t recognize. My body—wherever it was—felt like it was being rewritten, line by line, by something I couldn’t grasp.

Not pain.

Not yet.

But the promise of it lingered, sharp and inevitable, a blade held just above the skin.

The pressure around me shifted, subtle but deliberate, and suddenly—I wasn’t alone.

The Watchers in the Hollow

Shapes rose from the emptiness, emerging from the void like shadows cast by a light that didn’t exist.

Not creatures. Not beings.

Just... fragments.

Half-formed things, aborted attempts at creation, caught in the act of becoming but never crossing the finish line. They hovered in the distance, flickering in and out of focus, their edges stretching and warping like ripples across deep, dark water. Some were vaguely humanoid, silhouettes with too-long limbs or torsos that bent at impossible angles. Others were shapeless, amorphous smears of intent, pulsing with a faint, sickly glow.

Some of them had faces—or the suggestion of them—smooth planes where features should have been, hollows where mouths might have opened. Some of them had eyes, glistening orbs that caught no light, staring without seeing. None of them had a voice. And yet—they were speaking to me.

The knowledge didn’t come in words. It bled into my mind like ink into water, slow and invasive, pooling in the crevices of my consciousness. It wasn’t communication—it was imposition. Memories flooded me, unbidden and alien. Thousands. Millions. Visions of worlds I’d never seen, places I couldn’t comprehend—sprawling cities of glass and bone, oceans that burned under twin suns, skies fractured by storms of light and shadow. Civilizations that rose and crumbled, their histories written in languages I couldn’t read but somehow understood.

They had all fallen.

Not to war.

Not to time.

To this.

To Hunger.

Not a force.

Not a creature.

Something deeper, older, more primal than either. Something that had existed before existence itself had a name, a void that gnawed at the edges of reality until nothing remained. The Hollow wasn’t a place—it was a wound. A scar left in the fabric of the universe where something far worse had torn through, leaving behind an emptiness that remembered what it had taken. And now—it wanted me.

"You are unfinished," the voice said again, rippling through me, breaking apart my thoughts and reassembling them into something jagged and unfamiliar. "But you are useful."

The words sank into me, heavy and cold, and I felt my body again—slowly pulling back into itself, sensation returning in jagged, stuttering bursts. My fingers twitched, phantom sparks dancing across my knuckles. My skin burned, a raw, electric heat that raced along my nerves. My heartbeat slammed against my ribs, too loud, too fast, a desperate protest against the silence.

Something had grabbed me—something inside this nothingness. I couldn’t see it, couldn’t pin it down, but I could feel it curling through my body, coiling into my bones, threading itself into the marrow. It reached deeper, probing for the system inside me—the kinetic core that had kept me alive through every fight, every wound, every impossible odds.

And the system fought back.

System Error: Unknown Interference Detected

A warning flashed through my skull, sharp and insistent, flooding my mind with a cascade of cold, clinical data.

System Alert:

Foreign Presence Detected.

Psionic Contamination Reaching Critical Levels.

Potential Integration: 87% Compatible.

Host Status: Unstable.

Recommended Actions: Isolate. Resist. Submit.

That last word hit like a punch to the gut.

Submit.

I ground my teeth, my jaw locking so hard I thought it might crack. "Not a chance," I snarled, the words clawing their way out of my throat even though there was no air to carry them.

The Hollow shuddered around me—not a tremor, not a quake, but a ripple, like the surface of a pond disturbed by a single drop. The hunger pulsed, pressing in closer, but it wasn’t anger. It wasn’t offense. It was curiosity—a slow, deliberate tilt of interest, as though it hadn’t expected me to push back. As though it had assumed I’d simply let go, dissolve into it like all the others before me.

My limbs snapped back into place, sensation flooding back in a violent rush—sound, light, pain, all crashing into me at once. My knees buckled under the weight of it, but I caught myself, hands slamming against something solid. The swirling black emptiness had shifted, hardening into a surface beneath my feet. It wasn’t smooth anymore, wasn’t liquid or air—it was stone. Or at least, it was trying to be. Cold and uneven, it felt like an imitation, a copy of something the Hollow had glimpsed in a memory it didn’t fully understand.

I straightened, my breath ragged, my pulse pounding in my ears. The Hollow was different now. The void had taken shape—not fully, not perfectly, but enough to anchor me. And in front of me—It loomed out of the darkness, massive and incomprehensible.

It wasn’t made of metal.

It wasn’t made of stone.

It wasn’t even really a gate at all.

It was an idea—a concept given form, an entrance carved from thought rather than matter. A threshold that pulsed with a faint, sickly light, its edges fraying into the void like threads unraveling from a tapestry. It didn’t stand still; it shifted, its shape bending and twisting as though it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A doorway one moment, an arch the next, then a jagged tear in reality itself.

It led somewhere—beyond the Hollow, beyond this wound in existence. I could feel it pulling at me, not with force but with a quiet, insistent promise. A whisper of something more, something greater, something I couldn’t turn away from.

And standing at its center—Was Rylan.

Or what was left of him.

His body was whole, but he was fractured, a shell held together by something that wasn’t him. His arms hung loosely at his sides, swaying slightly as though caught in a breeze that didn’t exist. His head tilted at an odd angle, his mouth half-open, lips parted like he’d started to speak but forgotten the words halfway through. His skin was pale, too pale, stretched tight over bones that seemed sharper than they should have been.

His eyes were wrong.

Not black anymore.

Not hollow.

But filled—brimming with something else, something that had crawled inside him and decided to stay. They glowed faintly, a dull, unnatural sheen that didn’t reflect the light around us because there was no light to reflect. They were windows to something deeper, something that watched me through him.

He turned toward me, his movements slow and deliberate, like a puppet remembering how to pull its own strings. His head tilted further, his jaw working silently for a moment before sound finally emerged—not his voice, not his words, not even speech as I knew it. It was a command, a truth carved directly into my mind, searing like fire against my thoughts.

"Step forward, Kai. You are the first in centuries to reach the threshold. The first to be chosen."

The words slammed into me, and I staggered back, my hands tightening around my rifle—its familiar weight a lifeline I hadn’t realized I’d reclaimed. My skin buzzed with kinetic charge, sparks snapping along my arms, my mind screaming at me to run, to fight, to do something. But I couldn’t move. My boots were rooted to the stone, my body locked in place by a truth I couldn’t deny.

I had come too far.

I had changed too much.

And the Hollow had been waiting for me—patient, eternal, inevitable.

Liv’s voice cut through the dark, sharp and raw with panic, shattering the silence like a gunshot.

"Kai—don’t!"

Her hand grabbed my wrist, her fingers digging into my skin, her own kinetic sparks snapping against mine in a frantic burst of heat and light. She was real—solid, alive, an anchor in this sea of nothing. Her grip tightened, her nails biting into me, her breath coming in short, desperate gasps as she pulled me back.

I could barely hear her over the roar in my head.

The Gate was pulling me in—not physically, not yet, but in my mind. It wasn’t just a doorway. It was a choice, a fork in a road I hadn’t known I was walking. A decision that hung in the air, heavy and final, waiting for me to reach out and take it.

The Hollow’s voice slithered through me again, soft and certain, threading itself into every crack of my resolve.

"You are already one of us."

And the worst part?

It wasn’t lying.

I could feel it—deep in my core, beneath the kinetic hum, beneath the system’s warnings, beneath the part of me that still clung to the name Kai. Something had taken root, something small but growing, a seed planted in the dark. It wasn’t foreign anymore. It was me—or it was becoming me, rewriting the edges of who I’d been until I couldn’t tell where I ended and it began.

Liv yanked harder, her voice breaking. "Kai, look at me! You’re still here—you’re still you. Don’t let it take that!"

Her words hit harder than the Hollow’s, sharper than the system’s alerts. I blinked, my vision clearing just enough to see her—wild-eyed, sparks dancing across her skin, her face streaked with dirt and desperation. She was fighting for me, clawing me back from the edge with everything she had.

But the Gate was still there.

Rylan—or whatever wore his skin—was still watching.

And the Hollow was still waiting.

I took a step back, my boots scraping against the stone, Liv’s grip steadying me. My rifle hummed in my hands, its charge building, a familiar weight against the chaos. I forced air into my lungs, forced my voice to work.

"I’m not yours," I said, low and rough, spitting the words into the void. "Not yet."

The Hollow didn’t answer.

But it smiled.

I felt it—a shift in the air, a ripple of amusement that wasn’t mine. The Gate pulsed once, bright and blinding, and then—

Darkness.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.