​​A brilliant, foul melange of slipp’ry voices—some half-French, some Acadian drawls, others wild, nearly lost sounds caught ‘twixt the tongue and teeth of men who’d pass’d months under the trees—swept over the soaked clay of the port as the men gather’d ‘round. Pelts and muskets jostl’d in the battered canoes, their wooden hulls crackin’ ‘gainst each other in the dawn swell, which came now over Lake St. Clair, light breakin’ wild across the Strait and settlin’ on Detroit. Gerard DuMont, leanin’ on his stick and puffin’ smoke with a bitter taste o’ Amanita still cling’d to his mouth, look’t on this mess o’ would-be voyageurs, disgust’d.
​​
​​“Ah, non!” he mutter’d, his spit hittin’ the mud. These boys, half of ‘em still lookin’ green from city life, dandies and sons of store-keepers, here to prove themselves. The true men o’ the woods—they’d laugh themselves hoarse at these rags and baubles. These were not the coureurs, the true runners, who’d split wood by their own hand and cut trails overland, nor the men who’d taken Amanita to speak with the old spirits or swallow’d Datura to see through the shadows. “Portage!” they’d cry, thinkin’ themselves grand, but half could hardly row a pirogue straight down the Strait if the wind rose.
​​
​​The morning light pierc’d his eyes, his vision swimmin’ with the effects o’ last night’s draught, and he felt his head spinnin’ wild as the lake open’d out like a grand, holy mirror, swallowin’ the world in light. Then, as the port began to fade, he smiled at the sound of the paddles slappin’ water—a sound that, for all the noise, still held promise in that strange new day.
​​
​​The clay’d port was seething with a wretched mix o’ dialects, half-spoken French, Acadian mutterings, drunk and dreamt whispers muddled together in that claggy morning as these men—all shades of boy, dandified sons o’ port-keepers, illiterate half-wits—try to make themselves voyageurs. Gerard spat upon the ground, eyein’ ‘em all. This reverence they gave to the “Voyageur” struck him as poison, a fashion for noble and rustic men twisted to fit dandies who’d never struck an axe against wood in their life.
​​
​​Real men—coureurs du bois, fur trappers, true bush-lopers who’d gone rogue from any King, any notion of home, who’d carved life into cabins hidden so deep only others of their own could find ‘em—they’d become folklore. These port boys just play at it, with their baubles and clumsy beads. So, Gerard, puffin’ on his pipe, squinted and thought ‘bout how sick he was of this whole charade, till his eye caught a figure: DuBois, his old friend and a map-maker like him. DuBois slapped his back and together they look on, two Frenchmen steppin’ back as the stink of these boys filled the port.
​​
​​Through some bashful askin’, DuBois set Gerard up to meet ‘em, line of ‘em like fresh ox for sale, and Gerard hobbl’d along with an affected limp, mockin’ ‘em, this cigar-stump between his teeth. All ‘cept one—FranSwah. This one, the young lad, stood out. He wasn’t the port kind, Gerard could tell, and as they lock’d eyes, both recognized somethin’ the other had in ‘em.
​​
​​With a grave face, Gerard enlist’d FranSwah, DuBois, and two boys not more’n sixteen. “Two canoes,” he says, “one for temperin’ the bigger, down the Strait and through creeks. This why I got ye, yer knack for that steady rowin’.”
​​
​​“Aye,” says FranSwah, “Down de Streight.”
​​
​​“Aye.” Gerard mockin’ him, his accent thick with that mornin’s drink, “Pass’t de Streight t’wards the smaller canals, where ye fine yer bloody beavers.”
​​
​​“Eh, fuck-head!” FranSwah snaps, but they shake hands, with FranSwah tsk’tsking ‘bout Gerard’s “Jewish-seeming nose,” and Gerard nearly laughin’, claimin’ he’s been pickpocketed—though he had, in fact, by FranSwah, who filch’d a locket from him, the only thing he had left of his mother, a lock of blonde hair held in amber.
​​
​​As they set out, Gerard cursed the sight of ‘em all, dressed up like dogs from cheap novels, some o’ them with faces too pretty to belong to any woodsman. He made a scene o’ the whole thing, jeerin’ and spittin’ till he drove off a crowd, and beside him, this lad FranSwah stood with the grin of a thief.
​​
​​Then they were out on the water, makin’ their way down the Strait, the port behind them. They paddle’d and Gerard felt the dawn rise sharper. Canoein’ had become his ritual, though he’d said more’n once it felt like paddlin’ his own coffin. He rambled ‘bout it, puffin’ smoke, while he scribbled margin notes, notes he never could keep straight as his head swam and the lake took on the look of paint swirlin’ in a bowl. The port was a faded thing, nothin’ left but smoke, and this bright, awful dawn o’er Lake St. Clair stretchin’ like a fresh map he’d draw from scratch.
​​
​​“DuBois,” he says, “you hear me?”
​​
​​“Aye, Gerard.”
​​
​​“As my sole accomplice in this accursed errand, know there’s an escape only you know.”
​​
​​“Let’s first see if FranSwah can make it to the cabin,” DuBois says, dry, as FranSwah near falls from the canoe, puffin’ on a handmade hemp pipe that popped and smelled sharp.
​​
​​Then they row’d in silence, the marshes comin’ up thick, weepin’ willows leanin’ in as if to block their way. A heat broke over Gerard as they cut a line through the marsh, and his head began to swim stranger, the Amanita and Datura grip still upon him. The trees clos’d in like fingers. They’d meet the cabin soon, he kept mutterin’, though what they’d meet he knew not. He saw FranSwah driftin’ close, terrified in a way that shook him.
​​
​​By the time they hit the shore, all their heads buzzin’ with dread, Gerard saw the first light break through the reeds. “Ah,” he mutter’d, his voice a sigh, “What a cursed, cursed mornin’.”
​​
​​FranSwah, the fool, he’d become the villain and the hero, the shadow in the tale no one would tell right, and Gerard thought, as the new day broke, that maybe he’d write this tale after all—while FranSwah drifted into the mist, no words left, just the lake, still and strange as the stories he’d tell, tales that’d split and grow as they hit the dawn of a world not yet seen.
​​

Dr. Malcolm Greaves awoke to find himself spiraling downward, sinking through a dark so thick it felt like liquid, its weight pressing into his skin, squeezing him into a shape he didn’t recognize. He reached out, but his hands met nothing, only the endless weight of shadow as he plunged deeper into the pitch.

Then, light — a single, blinding point, far below. It was strange, a shimmer of spectral color that fractured as he fell toward it, splitting into shades and shapes, revealing itself as a thousand glistening surfaces, mirrors within mirrors, prisms cut at impossible angles. Greaves felt his vision splitting, his mind stretched thin across layers of images — a cascade of faces, landscapes, eyes, countless eyes — all peering back at him with a terrible, unblinking clarity.

And he knew, somehow, that this was Hell.

But Hell was unlike any he’d ever imagined, a place less of fire than of sight. He found himself on a vast, reflective plain, the ground like polished glass that twisted and bent beneath his feet, forming warped reflections of himself and other figures — shadowy forms, eyeless men who walked with unnatural confidence, seeing without seeing. These figures loomed everywhere, slipping between mirrors, leaving no ripples as they moved, their heads cocked as if observing some hidden horizon.

Ahead, enormous kilns bubbled with thick, viscous tar, optical black that rippled like oil but gleamed with flashes of spectral light. Greaves peered into one of the tar pits and saw his own face staring back, split and refracted, endlessly multiplied, each expression etched with terror, confusion, fury, grief.

“Aye, ye lookin’ for the lost ones?” came a voice behind him, thin and reedy, as though spoken from the other side of a wall. Greaves turned to see a figure draped in ragged robes, its face obscured by shadow, one hand stretched forward. “Them ye left to burn, to writhe, aye?”

“I didn’t… I couldn’t save them,” Greaves stammered, feeling the weight of his failure. “They were damned already…”

“Aren’t we all?” The figure chuckled, its mouth stretching into a grin that revealed teeth like broken glass. “Down here, souls are shattered — every last bit, seen and unseen, stretched across mirrors till all ye are is a ghost in glass.”

Greaves looked down and saw the reflection of his own eyes in the mirrored ground, though the face staring back was not his own. It was that of the blind man, his grin wide, mocking, an echo from the living world twisted now into something eternal.

“Go,” the figure rasped, gesturing toward a distant horizon, where an obsidian tower loomed, its edges blurred and shimmering. “Forge what ye can. Down here, even salvation needs a sharp edge.”

He walked, trudging through optical fog, his steps echoing in the vast emptiness. Around him, the eyeless figures glided with ease, some holding strange objects — a polished lens, a cracked mirror, a splinter of glass they clutched as if it held all their memories. The air was thick with the acrid scent of burning film, like old celluloid catching fire.

Greaves came to a pit where half-molten glass oozed from a fractured lens embedded in the ground, casting fractured shadows that twisted in impossible angles. With trembling hands, he reached down, shaping the glass, the heat scalding his palms. He forged it slowly, feeling his own thoughts bend as he worked, the glass hardening into a crude, jagged blade that shimmered with a pale, unholy light.

But as he gripped the blade, a dizziness overtook him, the mirrors around him warping, revealing endless corridors of lives he’d never lived, people he’d never met, each face flickering in and out of focus. The figures, the eyeless men, turned toward him, mouths stretching wide, though no sound emerged. His own face was reflected in their empty eyes, twisted and distorted, hollowed out by the endless reflections.

“Ye think ye can save them?” came the reedy voice again, though this time it was sharper, crueler, cutting through the haze. “Save ‘em from what? We are all reflections down here, all mere echoes of who we once were.”

Greaves staggered, clutching his blade, his vision splitting again, and he saw a decrepit figure hobbling toward him, a skeleton draped in tattered robes, its face a ruin of bone and shadow. In one skeletal hand, it held a blunt, rusted pencil, its end worn down to a jagged nub.

“Come here, Greaves,” the figure rasped, its voice like gravel grinding against glass. “Hold still.”

Greaves tried to pull away, but the figure grabbed his arm with a strength that defied its fragile frame, dragging the pencil across his flesh, carving a cross into his skin with slow, deliberate strokes. Each line burned, the pain intense, as though his very soul were being marked, branded.

“Only way out,” the skeleton muttered, its hollow eyes fixed on the mark it had made. “This cross — it’s the tether, the link. Without it, ye’d be lost here forever, like the others.”

Greaves gasped, feeling the pain radiate through him, but the mark gave him a clarity he hadn’t known before. The mirrors around him shimmered, the images twisting, shifting, until the reflective plain dissolved, morphing into something new.

He found himself in a vast, sprawling field, but it was not empty. Rows upon rows of graves stretched as far as he could see, each headstone carved from glass, each one glistening in the dim, spectral light. As he moved closer, he saw that each grave held a projector, its lens pointed skyward, casting faint, ghostly images into the air.

In every image, lives unfolded — fractured scenes, glimpses of strangers’ lives, laughter, grief, fury, all tangled together in a chaotic tapestry of existence. Each projector fed into the next, overlapping in endless grids, casting shadows that shifted and merged, like echoes rebounding across eternity.

Greaves felt a deep, unnamable sorrow well up within him. This was a place where memory was eternal, yet fractured, scattered across lives, across souls, like pieces of a puzzle that could never be whole.

In his hand, he felt the weight of a pair of scissors, small and sharp, their silver blades glinting in the dim light. And there, on a cracked reel, he saw his own life, played out in fragments, overlapping with others, twisting into something unrecognizable. He lifted the scissors, feeling the weight of the choice, the temptation to cut through the reel, to sever the endless web of memory and reflection.

If he could cut it, destroy it, then maybe he could escape, maybe he could end it all.

The scissors hovered above the film, trembling in his grip. He could see his own reflection in the blade, fractured, haunted, the face of a man who had seen too much, who had become lost in the endless maze of mirrors and memories.

And as he stood there, poised to sever the threads, he felt a tooth loosen, sliding from his gums. He spat it out, staring at the blood-streaked shard in his palm, feeling a strange terror grip him. Another tooth loosened, then another, each one falling, clattering to the ground as he tried to steady himself.

Through the haze, he saw a mirror standing alone among the graves, a single phrase scrawled upon it in trembling, jagged letters:

Ye can never leave.

His vision blurred, the words twisting, and he felt his teeth fall faster, his mouth an empty hollow, his body fading, slipping into the endless grid of lives, of memories, until he was nothing but another reflection, another shadow lost in the endless web of Hell.

The bullet burned as it lodged deep into Dr. Greaves’ side, a hot agony that clamped his throat shut. It was a dull pop, a tremor that seemed to pull him apart, and when he looked down, his coat was already blooming red. His eyes lifted, meeting the milky gaze of the blind man, who held the still-smoking pistol in his gnarled hand, his face a perfect picture of startled horror, like he’d just awoken to his own ghost.

“Señor! I—ay, Dios mío!” the blind man stammered, the gun trembling in his grip before he shoved it into his pocket. “It was not meant for thee, no, no, maldito Hollow, it plays tricks, plays tricks!” He babbled, shaking his head, his voice thick and guttural, as if Hollow’s air clung to his tongue.

Dr. Greaves staggered, clutching his side, breath hissing through clenched teeth. He felt the warm seep of blood, slick between his fingers. “Y-you fool,” he rasped, trying to summon anger but finding only a rising tide of weakness. “What… what have you done, you blind devil?”

“Peace, peace, señor,” the man replied, his hands fluttering out, reaching for Greaves as if to calm a wild beast. “The wound, ’tis small, nothing to worry, ah? But come, come — I shall bring thee to a holy hermit, a healer of souls. He can mend you, mend you right.”

With a half-mad gentleness, the blind man seized Greaves under one arm, pulling him forward, his fingers digging deep into his flesh as they stumbled through the twisting streets of Hollow. The alleys seemed to narrow, bending inward, folding like the ribs of a skeletal beast. Greaves felt his vision blur, the world around him taking on an ethereal glow, twisting like smoke in a glass.

“Hold fast, hold fast, docteur,” the blind man murmured, his voice low and raspy. “The hermit — ah, he is a friend to us all, a saint in this wretched place. You’ll see, you’ll see.”

They reached a crumbling shack, half-swallowed by shadows and creeping vines, its door hanging loose on rusted hinges. The blind man guided Greaves through the threshold, into a small, dimly lit room where the air was thick with the scent of rot and damp earth.

There, lying in a heap upon a straw-strewn mat, was the hermit — or what seemed to be a man. His form was obscured, tangled hair falling across his face in greasy ropes, his breath slow and deep, as though he dreamt of things long dead.

“Rise, saintly one, rise!” the blind man whispered, nudging the hermit’s shoulder with the edge of his foot. “A soul in need hath come, wounded by a bullet gone astray. The gods, they mock us, but you — you can save him.”

The hermit stirred, his eyelids fluttering open, revealing eyes that seemed unfocused, as if he were peering through layers of veils. He looked at Greaves, his mouth twisting into a vague, drowsy smile.

“Ah, another wanderer in Hollow,” he murmured, his voice thick, like honey laced with dust. “You come here, you bleed here, all the same. But fear not, for here, the pain doth pass.”

“Will… will you help me?” Greaves managed, his voice weak, every word a strain against the weight in his chest. “The wound… it festers… I need a doctor, not a… not a mystic.”

But the hermit only chuckled, a sound soft as a sigh, and patted Greaves’ shoulder with a strange, paternal gentleness. “Aye, you shall have what you need,” he replied, voice soft as shadows. “But know, my friend, in Hollow, the body and spirit must suffer alike. Ye be in the hands of fate now.”

With that, he turned away, muttering in some forgotten tongue, his fingers tracing invisible patterns in the air as if weaving a spell. Greaves lay back, breathing shallowly, watching as days seemed to slip by, the light changing, fading, until time itself felt like a feverish dream.

The blind man and the hermit treated him with a kindness that was almost mocking, feeding him strange, bitter herbs that did little to ease the pain but seemed to set his mind adrift. And still, they pressed him into labor, sending him stumbling to fetch water, or clean the grime from the shack’s walls, tasks that seemed to loop and repeat, as if the work itself were as endless as Hollow.

One day, the blind man approached, his head tilted, listening to some distant sound Greaves couldn’t hear. “The doctor, he comes,” he said, his voice thick with reverence. “A man of healing, a man of bone and blood.”

Greaves felt a surge of hope, weak and flickering, like a candle in a storm. He leaned forward, watching the doorway, and at last, figures emerged, shuffling shapes in ragged clothes, their faces obscured by cloths tied tight around their heads. They moved like ghosts, silent and slow, their eyes glinting with a strange, hungry light.

The tallest among them stepped forward, reaching out to touch Greaves’ forehead with fingers rough and calloused. “Señor,” he murmured, his voice thick, cloying. “You seek healing, yes? But healing in Hollow… it comes with a price.”

Greaves nodded, feeling the words stick in his throat. “Whatever it takes,” he whispered. “Please… I am dying.”

The “doctor” only laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that sent a chill through Greaves’ bones. “Dying? Oh, señor, dying is but a word. Here in Hollow, death is not what it seems.”

The others laughed, their voices echoing, twisting into something darker. The “doctor” produced a needle, gleaming in the dim light, and held it up, turning it slowly, like a blade before a sacrifice. Greaves tried to pull back, but his body was too weak, his limbs heavy as stone.

“Hold him fast,” the doctor whispered, and hands closed around Greaves’ arms, fingers digging in, pinning him down. He felt the prick of the needle, cold and sharp, as it slid into his flesh, and a strange warmth spread through him, a numbness that settled over his mind.

The hermit chuckled softly, watching from the corner, his face half-obscured by shadow. “The wound is cleansed,” he murmured, almost to himself. “But the soul must pay its price.”

Greaves lay still, unable to move, his mind clouded with fog, his vision swimming. He could feel the laughter of the others, hear it echoing in his ears, but it seemed distant, as if coming from another world.

“Tell me,” he whispered, his voice barely audible, “What… what is this place? Why am I here?”

The doctor leaned close, his breath warm against Greaves’ ear. “Hollow,” he replied, his voice like the hiss of a serpent. “It is where you belong. The darkness claimed you, long before you knew.”

The days continued, each one bleeding into the next, his mind trapped in a feverish haze, his body forced to endure endless tasks that felt like penance. The blind man would pat his shoulder, murmuring soft, nonsensical words, while the hermit watched, his eyes half-lidded, a faint smile on his lips.

One night, as the pain grew unbearable, Greaves cried out, his voice hoarse, desperate. “Please! Help me! I can’t bear it any longer!”

But the hermit only chuckled, shaking his head. “Patience, patience, my friend. The journey is not yet done. We must cleanse the spirit, as well as the flesh.”

And then, at last, the truth came. The “doctors” threw off their masks, revealing faces twisted and leering, eyes gleaming with malice. The hermit shrugged off his robe, revealing himself not as a man, but as something hollow, a shape given form by shadows and smoke.

They laughed, a sound that filled the room, echoing off the walls, growing louder and louder until it drowned out Greaves’ own thoughts. He lay there, helpless, his body wracked with pain, as they surrounded him, their laughter mingling with the darkness, their faces blurring, shifting into shapes he could not comprehend.

He tried to scream, but no sound came, his voice lost in the laughter that swallowed him whole.

Epilogue: The Pit

They burned, all of them, the hermit, the blind man, the so-called doctors. They writhed in an endless sea of flame, their skin blackening, peeling, dripping like wax, their mouths open in silent screams that echoed through the fire.

“Mercy!” they cried, voices thin and stretched, each word dripping with agony. “Mercy, release us from this torment!”

But the flames rose higher, consuming them, filling every crack, every hollow, with searing heat. They clawed at the walls, their fingers curling, blistering, their faces contorted with a horror that knew no end.

“Please, let us out!” they begged, their voices hoarse, raw, as the fire licked at their flesh, consuming them from the inside out. “We are damned, but show mercy, we beg you!”

In the city of Hollow, as far south as south dared to go, in a crack of Mexico that felt barely clung to the earth itself, Dr. Malcolm Greaves had set up his life and his ruin. Hollow, that place where the street slants like it wants to slip right off the planet, where light hovers like old gauze, never quite sure if it should stick around or die out. Greaves had come to Hollow with a plan once — a vision, even, though it had long since fled him like a ghost from a broken bottle.

His practice was barely marked, a sooted window smeared with dust and an almost mocking sign, “Optique Greaves,” though he rarely got visitors who weren’t shadows or drunk. When he did get a real client, it was more curse than blessing.

One evening, just as the sky turned that yellowish-brown that seemed Hollow’s permanent twilight, Greaves was jolted from his stupor by a pounding on the door. In stumbled a wild-eyed man, his face smeared with dirt and desperation, his clothes hanging like they’d been torn from a scarecrow. Before Greaves could speak, the man staggered towards him, mouth hanging open like he was trying to chew the air.

“Cigars!” the man screamed. “CIGARS!” His voice echoed in the cramped room, bouncing off the walls like it was trying to escape. He jabbed a finger at Greaves, shaking it with a strange, ritualistic vigor. “You, you don’t know nothing about cigars, Doc, nothing at all! You think you can see? You’re blind as the rest of us! Cigar smoke’s the only thing clear in this world, the only way to see the lines, to see through the muck, see the devils crawling out in plain sight!”

Greaves recoiled, as though the words themselves carried a stench. The man kept screaming, his voice growing thick and ragged. “You think you got sight, eh? But you’re blind! Blind as a corpse! The only way you see is in the smoke, Doc, you hear me? The smoke, all those ashes rising and falling, twisting in the air like spirits!”

Then, just as suddenly, he fell silent, stumbling back into the shadows, his eyes rolling back until only the whites showed. His mouth hung open, still mouthing “cigars” over and over, softer and softer, as he dissolved into the dimness. Greaves didn’t dare follow. His skin felt tight, his head buzzing with some murky terror he couldn’t name.

As he tried to steady himself, Greaves left the shop and wandered down the crooked alleys of Hollow, his feet carrying him without direction. He felt a hollow urgency, the need to escape something that clung to him, a shadow within his own shadow.

It was then he saw him — a figure bent low by age or weight or both, a blind man with a filthy coat, a cloud of tobacco-smoke wafting off him like an aura. The man turned his head as if he could see, even though his eyes were a milky, opaque white. A hand emerged from the coat, clutching a cigar held together by frayed edges and sheer will.

“Señor, cigar for you, best in Hollow, best in all Mexico,” the man wheezed, his voice damp and oily, like wet earth.

Greaves shook his head violently, trying to pull himself out of whatever fever dream this felt like. “I don’t need your Mexican memorabilia,” he spat, his voice clipped and thin. “No souvenirs, no trinkets, no smoke.”

But the blind man only grinned, his lips curling back to reveal teeth more mold than bone. “Ah, señor, this is no trinket. This is the only way to see in Hollow, the only way to see what’s in the dark. You take it, yes? For a price?”

“Leave me!” Greaves hissed, recoiling. “You’re mad! I don’t want your trinkets or your smoke!”

The blind man cackled, his laughter filling the street like a choked wind, scattering the dirt and litter that piled up in Hollow like memories no one wanted to keep. But as Greaves turned to flee, he heard the man’s voice again, soft and lilting, like a lullaby turned rancid.

“You’ll come back, señor. They always do. Can’t see in Hollow without a little smoke, a little shadow.”

Greaves fled, his footsteps uneven, stumbling like the earth beneath him was slanting, pulling him down to the heart of Hollow. He knew he’d heard that phrase before, that talk of “Mexican memorabilia,” whispered by the shadows in the alleys, repeated like an incantation by the drunks at the edge of his shop, but he could never place it, never put a reason to it. Hollow itself seemed to hum with it, that desperate, ridiculous urgency.

His steps took him in a loop, round and back to his shop, his head ringing with the blind man’s words, and when he finally burst back into his cramped quarters, he saw something there, sitting squarely in the center of his desk. A box. Small, squat, dusted with an ancient mold that seemed to breathe.

A box he recognized.

Greaves approached it slowly, the musty scent hitting him like a punch. He reached out a hand, trembling, fingers grazing the moldy surface of the tape. It was an old VHS cassette, the label nearly worn off, but the word scratched in jagged letters was still clear: Apocryphos. The word sent a chill through him, a sickly thrill, like a memory he’d never lived but couldn’t shake.

With the care of a man handling dynamite, he took the cassette and slid it into an ancient, barely-functioning player he kept for reasons he could never explain. The screen flickered, static bleeding into a faint, ghostly image.

There, on the screen, was himself, but young, barely more than a child. He was wandering through a vast, empty field — no, a desert, Hollow’s own cracked and sprawling earth, beneath a sky like yellowed parchment. The boy Malcolm was clutching something in his hand, a small, unlit cigar, and as the image distorted, twisted, he seemed to be staring straight at Greaves, at the man watching him, his eyes wide with some awful knowing.

“You were always here,” the boy on the screen whispered, his mouth opening in slow, silent syllables, his voice slipping through the static like a specter. “Always looking. Never seeing. The smoke, the shadow, it’s all you need.”

The image sputtered, flickered, twisting in on itself. The boy’s face contorted, stretched, till his eyes were black pools swallowing the screen, and then, for a brief, impossible instant, Greaves saw himself as he was now — an old man, hollow and lost, clutching at a handful of ashes. The boy’s face warped, split into a grin that was nothing but teeth.

“Apocryphos,” the boy whispered, laughing, and then the screen went black, leaving Greaves alone in the dim, moldy room, his breath coming in shallow gasps.

Outside, Hollow seemed to hum with a new urgency, a pulse in the dark that had no rhythm but its own. He heard footsteps, voices, that desperate cry — “Cigars!” — echoing through the alleys, fading into the night as the city held him, the smoke, the shadows, the secrets of Hollow curling tighter around him.

1. And in those days, the great kilns of the ancients
belched forth noxious fumes, and the men of old
coughed their lives into the void.
2. The Progenitor, fourth of his line, established the
great refinery in the time before memory.
3. His forefather vanished into the mists of Acadia,
where earth and sky merged in unholy union.
4. The Patriarch extracted life-essence from stone,
naming it Maroon Fuel, a blasphemy against nature.
5. He wrung sustenance from the bruised heavens,
standing tall amidst the desolation of his creation.
6. The laborers, mere husks of humanity, flailed at
spectral beings, unseen by mortal eyes.
7. And lo, the Moon diminished, retreating from the
sorrow of the Earth.
8. In dilapidated dwellings and abandoned houses of
worship, the people whispered of their doom.
9. For the old ways crumbled like the mountains, weary
of their eternal vigil.
10.In the latter days, a serpent-chariot, corroded by time,
ascended the Witch’s Path for twelve cycles.
11.The Serpent-Tamer, leader of the Band, perceived the
snare laid before them.
12.For they were embroiled in the Second War of
Division, their spirits as stagnant as ancient waters.
13.The Serpent-Tamer administered unholy sacraments:
the dust of angels, the milk of poppies, and the
crystal of enlightenment.
14.The Band suffered great tribulations, their bodies
crying out for false salvation.
15.One among them spoke in tongues of desire, and was
cast out to the dwelling of Marie the Elder.
16.When the sacraments took hold, the Narrator offered
tribute to the Serpent-Tamer: currency and a golden
idol.
17.The Serpent-Tamer, young in years but old in
wisdom, was guided by dark prophets of antiquity.
18.Inanimate objects came alive with unholy purpose,
tormenting the faithful.
19.Before the revival of Videi, mystery-worker of
Gamewood, the Narrator sought chemical oblivion.
20.Videi smote a man for his transgressions, removing
his ear as punishment for unknown sins.
21.The Band dreaded the Hour of Nine, when sleep must
be undisturbed lest the sun mark them as outcasts.
22.The men of color were untroubled, but false armies
grew restless, demanding tribute of outdated worth.
23.And so it was foretold: the end times approached,
with the four horsemen riding a yellow chariot of
learning to the final judgment