Welcome back to history they buried. What you’re about to hear isn’t just a story. It’s a warning. There are villages in England that never make it to the guide books where stone cottages lean against one another as if whispering secrets and church bells ring into valleys that never seem to answer back.

 

Heroic Hollow is one of those places. A valley where the mist lingers long after dawn. Where the earth feels older than the maps that claim to chart it. and where one family, the CERS, rose from obscurity to dominance, with wealth no harvest could explain. To the world outside, they were a lineage of prosperous landowners, benefactors, and shrewd traders.

But to those who lived under their shadow, they were something else entirely. The villagers spoke in fragments, in phrases cut short by fear, in glances exchanged across tavern tables when the name was mentioned. Prosperity, yes, but prosperity that came with a silence heavy enough to choke generations.

Imagine living in a valley where bird song fades the moment you step too close to the wood, where children are told never to wander after dusk, not because of wolves or highwaymen, but because the hollow takes what it is owed. These warnings weren’t written down. They didn’t need to be. They were lived.

The Cder estate stood at the center of it all. a manner built not to welcome but to watch. Its narrow windows stared out across the valley like unblinking eyes, and its stone walls, blackened by centuries of damp mist, seemed to drink in the silence rather than echo it back.

To step into heroic was to step into a place where history had been carefully trimmed, pruned of its worst truths, leaving only whispers carried in the fog. What made the CER family untouchable wasn’t simply wealth. It was the covenant, not a treaty signed with lords or kings, but a pact far older, inked not in documents, but in ab. For every unexplained fortune, there was a missing child.

For every thriving harvest, a family left one chair empty at supper. The hollow took, the cders prospered, and the villagers endured generation after generation. But tonight, we’re going to peel back the silence that smothered this valley. We’re going to ask the questions no one dared voice. Follow the paper trails that should have been burned and step inside the rooms bricked up to keep the world from seeing what was done there.

This isn’t folklore. This isn’t superstition. This is the hidden legacy of the Cder family of Heroic Hollow. Before we begin, remember this channel isn’t for the faint of heart. If you’re here, you crave the stories that keep others awake at night.

Hit subscribe and tell me what county are you listening from? Could you handle a story like this unfolding in your own backyard? Next, we uncover the first whisper of their power hidden in the mist that never leaves the hollow. If you ask those who grew up in Heroic Hollow what they remember first, they’ll tell you it’s not the people, not the fields, not even the church bells.

It’s the mist, thick, low, and almost alive, it clings to the valley like a second skin. Even on clear mornings when the sky above shines pale and empty, the hollow below breathes out its fog, curling it around hedge, sinking it into furrows and laying it heavy over gravestones. Outsiders say it’s just weather. Locals know better. They’ll tell you the mist doesn’t just cover, it erases. Paths vanish in it.

Footprints dissolve within minutes. Voices thin into whispers even when shouted across the lane. And once more than one villager swore the mist swallowed a child whole before their very eyes. Animals sense it too. Birds cut wide arcs to avoid the valley. Dogs refuse to enter certain paths, whining and clawing to be turned back.

Cattle grow restless before dusk, their eyes rolling toward the treeine as if watching for something that never shows itself. By nightfall, the hollow feels less like farmland and more like a lung holding its breath, waiting. At the center of it all rises colder manner. Its walls, built from the same dark stone, quarried out of the valley itself, seem to merge with the mist, as though the building isn’t made of rock, but of the hollow’s own breath.

From the village lanes, the manor looms always in sight. A black silhouette above the fog, its slit-like windows staring over the valley like watchtowers. Villagers never say they live with the cders. They say they live under them, and in a way they always have. What puzzled outsiders most was how the cders flourished where others failed. Famine, plague, and poor soil crippled neighboring parishes.

Yet heroic hollow thrived. Harvests were fuller here. The cers flocks grew fatter. Their orchards bore fruit even in years of blight. Merchants traveling through spoke of tables groaning with food, barns bursting with grain, while just 2 mi away children starved. How could such fortune exist in a valley shrouded by constant mist. Villagers had an answer. They just never spoke it aloud.

In taverns, when the drink loosened their tongues, you might hear it whispered, “The cders have bound the hollow.” No one would explain what that meant, not directly, but it was understood. Prosperity didn’t come free. Something had to be given. A parish survey in 1721 notes in its margins, “The hollow prospers where the county starves.” Another villagers will records the plea, “May my sons not be chosen.

” These aren’t the words of peasants fearing superstition. They are admissions carefully disguised as scribbles and margins scattered through centuries. They are fragments of a bargain that everyone knew but no one dared write plainly. It wasn’t just the mist that erased what should have been seen. It was silence.

Silence that protected the cers. Silence that ensured the hollow continued to feed them. But every covenant leaves its trace no matter how carefully concealed. Theirs was recorded in ink. Next, we uncover a ledger that should not exist. A church record written not only by priests, but in the careful hand of theers themselves. The first true crack in heroic silence didn’t come from rumor or gossip. It came from paper.

Among the parish archives of St. Oswald’s church, tucked away in a locked drawer that hadn’t been opened in decades. Sergeant Alden Harowick, an archavist by training before he ever wore a badge, found a book that should not have existed. Its cover was plain brown leather eaten with mildew, its clasp broken, the title simply the ledger of the hollow.

Inside it masqueraded as a parish record. At first glance, the pages were filled with births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths, as you’d expect in any small rural community. But as Alden flipped deeper, the handwriting changed. Some entries bore the careful, inkthin hand of parish priests.

Others were written in a heavier, more deliberate script, called hands, unmistakable from letters preserved in the county archives. Why were the family themselves recording names alongside priests? Why did those names appear again and again marked with strange annotations like taken, promised, or spared? And most unsettling of all, why were many of those children’s deaths never recorded in official registers? The first irregular entry came in 1681.

Thomas Calder, son of Richard, spared at Lamis. Three pages later, Ellen Redern, age 7, taken for Equinox, with gratitude. This pattern continued for almost two centuries. The rhythm was unmistakable. Twice each year in spring and autumn, a child’s name entered, marked with the chilling note, taken. Sometimes the surname belonged to local families, the Bells, the Harpers, the Greavves.

More often than not, it was called to the outside world. The family looked fertile, blessed with children who inherited wealth, land, and influence. But the ledger told another story. Half the names ended in taken. Alden traced the ink with gloved fingers, feeling how the quill had dug deep into the parchment, bent, as though the writer pressed too hard, unwilling or unable to write the words lightly. These weren’t scribbles or gossip.

They were official acknowledgements of a covenant that spanned centuries. The most chilling page bore a name almost lost to damp and mildew. Jonas called her chosen at birth offered at 6 days old. Alden stopped. A newborn. The church bells had rung for a christening that never happened, and the child’s name was never entered in county records.

How many others had been erased the same way. The further he read, the more undeniable it became. The prosperity of Heroic Hollow wasn’t coincidence. It was transaction, grain for flesh, rain for silence, and always, always under the cers’s watch. Yet one page stood out above all. 1822. A different hand. The ink darker, fresher, bolder. If the hollow is not fed, it feeds itself.

The roots remember, the mist remembers, we remember. signed not by a priest but by Samuel Cer himself, patriarch of the estate. Alden closed the ledger and sat in the stillness of the archive. Through the window the hollow lay smothered in its familiar fog, for the first time he felt it pressing back against the glass, as though the valley knew he had seen too much.

Next, we follow Alden as he digs into the Cder archives at the manor itself, uncovering a sealed collection of letters that hint at dealings far beyond Harrow. The ledger had been damning, but Alden Harowick knew it wasn’t enough. Parish books could be explained away. Clerical error, damp damage, mistransation.

If he wanted proof of intent, he needed to go higher, deeper into the Cder estate itself. The manor sat at the north end of Harrow Hollow, its stone walls half swallowed by ivy, its windows shuttered against the mist. Locals still called it the house of quiet, though no one could recall who coined the phrase. Alden, armed with a countyissued writ, and his own knowing suspicion, convinced the last living heir, an ailing widow named Margaret, to let him review the family’s archives.

She led him to the upper floor where a locked oak door barred the way. The iron key trembled in her hand as she passed it over. “Some things,” she whispered, “are best left where they lie.” The room smelled of dust and candle grease, trunks, cabinets, and shelves crowded every wall, the air heavy with the weight of centuries.

At first Alden leafed through mundane records, tenency agreements, grain tallies, hunting ledgers. Then, at the bottom of a walnut chest wrapped in oil cloth, he found a bundle of letters tied with a red silk ribbon. The wax seals bore the crest, a tree root curling around a human skull. His stomach tightened.

The letters spanned from the 1700s to the early 1900s. They weren’t accounts of farming or estate business. They were correspondents between CERS and other landholding families, names from villages as far as Durham, Cumbria, and Yorkshire. The language was careful, but the intent clear. The hollow has yielded after midsummer. Your offering was received. Expect rain within a fortnight.

Do not delay lamas, lest the soil grow restless. Each line sounded agricultural, even pious. But paired with the parish ledger, Alden understood these weren’t crops being exchanged. They were lives. One letter in particular froze him. Dated 1819, addressed to a reverend Silas brand in Whitby.

It read, “If the child is marked unbaptized, the veil is thinner and the hollow feeds more deeply. Send only the unbaptized or the root will not answer. the root. Again and again the word appeared, capitalized as though it were a god, a sovereign, a power older than the church above it. Another letter from 1837 boasted, “The last harvest brought us 12-fold return.

Our cattle thrive where others starve, and no fever lingers here. Remember, the soil remembers sacrifice, and the soil rewards.” Alden sat back in the creaking chair, hands trembling. This was no isolated family madness. This was a network, a society spanning counties, bound by blood and ritual.

He copied the letters by hand, every word, knowing the originals might never see a courtroom, but one fragment chilled him more than all the rest. A note slipped between the letters, written in a frantic scroll with no date, no signature. When the hollow is hungry, the mist will carry the faces of those promised.

Do not look into it, or you will follow. The candle sputtered as though on cue. Alden glanced at the shuttered window where the fog pressed close against the glass. For a moment, only a heartbeat, he thought he saw the faint outline of a child’s face in the mist, staring back at him. Next, we follow Alden as he descends into the manor’s sealed basement, where he discovers objects far more tangible and terrifying than letters. The letters had left Alden shaken, but words on paper could always be dismissed, misinterpretation,

forgery, even superstition. What he needed was something solid, something no magistrate could ignore. Margaret Cder, though reluctant, admitted the manor held places no one had entered for decades. My husband locked it, she murmured, eyes fixed on the floorboards. He said, “The house remembers. Once you open it, the house begins to speak again.

” She led Alden to the western wing, to a door half-concealed behind a motheaten tapestry. Its iron lock was rusted, but the key, long and cold, still turned. The air that seeped out was stale, carrying the sour tang of damp stone and something else, something coppery that made the back of Alden’s throat tighten.

The stairwell descended in a tight spiral, each step uneven, worn smooth by centuries of use. His candle threw jagged shadows against the wall, shapes that seemed to move when he blinked. At the bottom lay a vated chamber, its ceiling low, its walls sweating with moisture. The floor was not bare stone. It was earth, dark, rich, and oddly soft beneath his boots.

In the center of the room stood a circular pit lined with stones, no larger than a baptismal font, its interior blackened by fire. Charred bones lay scattered around it, some small, unmistakably human. Alden bent to examine one fragment. The edges were too clean, too deliberate, as though cut before burning. He forced himself to place it back gently, though his hands shook. Around the chamber, wooden crates had rotted into splinters, but their contents survived.

Tiny shoes no larger than those of a six-year-old brittle leather cracked with age. Cloth dolls stitched crudely by hand, their button eyes scorched, a tarnished silver rattle, its handle bent, all placed neatly as though offerings then abandoned. Each object seemed to hum with a quiet dread as though he g it remembered who once held it.

At the far end of the chamber, a heavy stone slab leaned against the wall. Strange grooves had been carved into it, spirals that led inward to a single central point. Alden touched the groove with his fingertip and recoiled. The stone was warm, though the room was cold. His candle guttered as though some breath passed through the chamber, unseen but palpable. He took out his notebook and began to sketch the carvings, careful not to linger too long.

Just as he turned to leave, something caught his eye. Beneath the pit, partly hidden in the soil, lay another bundle, this time not letters, but a ledger bound in cracked leather. Its pages were damp but legible. Each line bore a name, a date, and a note. unbaptized hollow claimed soil replenished.

The most recent entry was from 1894. The name listed was Thomas Harowick, his own great uncle, recorded as unbaptized delivered. His stomach lurched. This was no distant myth. His family was bound in the ledger itself. As Alden staggered back, his candle flickered violently, throwing shadows across the pit. For a heartbeat he saw figures gathered around it, hooded, silent, their faces indistinguishable.

But when he blinked, only mist clung to the chamber, curling upward from the soil. Next, we follow Alden as he takes the ledger back to his rectory and learns the terrible truth of how deeply his own bloodline is entangled in the covenant. Alden carried the cracked ledger back to the rectory wrapped in his cloak, terrified someone might see him holding it.

The night outside was suffocatingly still, the hollows fog curling around his lantern as though guiding him home. Once inside he locked the door, lit every candle in his study, and laid the book upon his desk. For a long while he simply stared at it, the leather cover mottled with mold, the pages swollen with damp. It felt less like a record and more like something alive, waiting to be read.

He opened it with trembling hands. The ink had bled in places, but the handwriting remained clear. Each entry was precise. Names, years, notes. Some were marked baptized, rejected, others unbaptized, claimed. The pattern was unmistakable. Children who had not been christened were offered to the hollow.

Their deaths concealed within the parish books as still births or fevers. Each claimed child’s name was followed by a mark, a spiral symbol matching the grooves carved into the stone slab in the basement. At first, Alden forced himself to view it clinically as evidence, but then as the years crept forward, the names grew more familiar.

Harrow, Everdan, Cray, old families of the valley. Some still lived in cottages that lined the green. And then he saw it. Thomas Harrowick 1894 unbaptized delivered his great uncle remembered the family story that Thomas died of a sudden fever before his first birthday. But here in spidery ink was the truth.

He hadn’t died naturally. He’d been chosen. The deeper Alden read, the more unbearable it became. His ancestors, recctors and farmers alike, had been complicit. The heroic line was not victim alone. In earlier entries, his forebears names appeared in the delivered column.

Men who had stood at the pit and offered their neighbors child to the soil. His stomach churned. The family legacy he had spent his life protecting had been built on betrayal and blood. He pushed the ledger away, but it seemed to cling to him, the spiral marks crawling across his vision, even when he shut his eyes.

Trying to steady himself, he reached for the parish Bible on the shelf. He placed it beside the ledger, leather against leather, scripture against sin. One was clean, one was blackened, yet the room seemed to lean toward the darker book. For a dreadful moment he felt as though the Bible itself had lost its weight.

Then came the sound, a soft scrape at the window. Alden froze, every candle flame flickering as if in response. Slowly he turned. The fog pressed against the glass, thicker than before. Within it, faces swirled, childlike, pale, eyes wide, and unblinking. One face pressed so close he could see the curve of its lips, mouthing words he could not hear.

His breath caught in his throat. He snatched the ledger shut, wrapped it in cloth, and shoved it into the bottom drawer of his desk. But the mist lingered, watching as though the book had awakened something that would not let him go. Next, we uncover how Alden seeks help from the surviving villagers, only to discover their silence is not ignorance, it’s complicity. For days, Alden carried the weight of the ledger like a millstone around his neck.

Each sermon he preached felt hollow. Each hymn cracked against the rafters of the church like brittle glass. He could not shoulder the truth alone. So one evening, as the bell told Vespers, he sought counsel from those who had lived longest in the hollow, men and women whose families had been rooted here for centuries.

He called first upon Joseph Everdan, the blacksmith. Joseph was broad-shouldered, hands scarred from decades of work, his voice usually booming. But when Olden laid the ledger on his workbench, Joseph fell silent. He did not ask where it came from or what it meant. Instead, he ran his callous thumb over the spiral etched on the page as if tracing a memory.

“I wondered when this would come back,” he muttered, not meeting Alden’s eyes. “Next, Alden brought the book to Martha Cray, the widow who lived at the edge of the green. She was bent with age, her skin like parchment, but her gaze was sharp as flint. She did not flinch at the names within. Instead, she whispered, “It’s always been this way, Reverend. Long before you, long before me, the hollow feeds or the hollow takes.

” She closed the book gently, as though tucking a child into bed. Olden’s horror deepened with each visit. The villagers knew they had always known. Not one expressed surprise, only resignation. The sacrifices were not secrets. They were traditions. concealed beneath the veil of parish records, but carried openly in the marrow of the community.

The silence that had haunted him was not ignorance, but complicity, as deep and binding as the soil itself. At last he gathered them all in the church, the ledger laid upon the altar. His voice rang against the stone walls, desperate. Do you not see what this means? Innocence, our children, taken, bartered, burned. This is not devotion. This is damnation. His were dee echoed but no outrage answered.

Instead the villagers sat still in their pews, heads bowed, not in shame but in something colder. Acceptance. Old Martha Cray rose, her cane striking the flagstones. Reverend, she said, without the hollow there is nothing. No harvest, no health, no hollow. Do you think your own family was spared? Open the book again. You’ll see the heroics gave as much as they gained.

Her words struck Alden like a blade. He had seen the entry, his own greatuncle, sacrificed, and yet she spoke not with sorrow, but with pride, as though the offering was an honor, a duty fulfilled. The congregation began to hum and steady, a sound that reverberated through the rafters. It was not a hymn he recognized, but something older, wordless, carrying the rhythm of soil tilled and fires fed. Alden’s voice faltered.

His authority, his faith, felt like ash in his throat. For the first time, he realized he was not the shepherd calling lost sheep back to the fold. He was the lone outsider standing before a flock that had chosen another master long ago. The candles flickered violently, shadows stretching long across the stone walls. Alden slammed the ledger shut, his heart pounding.

The humming stopped all at once, leaving a silence so deep it felt like a tomb. Then Martha spoke again, softly, but with a finality that chilled him to the bone. The hollow is listening now. Next, we uncover what happens when Alden dares to challenge the Covenant directly, and the hollow answers. Sleep abandoned Alden in those nights that followed.

Every creek of the rectory, every sigh of the wind against the shutters carried the weight of the villagers silence. He could not unsee the ledger, could not forget the faces in the fog. If the hollow had fed for centuries, if his neighbors accepted it as the price of survival, then it was left to him alone to resist, to fight, even if it meant damning himself.

He began with prayer, hour after hour, kneeling before the altar. His voice cracked until it was little more than a whisper, but no peace came. Instead, the mist pressed harder against the stained glass, dimming the light even at midday. Scripture felt brittle in his hands. Words of another world that held no dominion here. So Alden turned to ritual of his own.

He scoured the Cder archives again, hunting for weakness in the covenant’s language. He traced every spiral carved in stone, every offering described in careful euphemism. The pattern became clear. Unbaptized children claimed and burned, their absence concealed as illness.

But if the hollow fed on what was withheld from God, perhaps sanctity could starve it. Baptism, light against soil’s hunger. Armed with this thought, he began baptizing every child in the hollow, whether families consented or not. He would arrive at cottages unannounced, a vial of consecrated water in his hand, prayers spilling from his lips. Some parents recoiled, others wept, but none resisted outright.

They knew what he was doing. They knew what it meant. And in their silence he saw fear, not of him, but of what would follow. It did not take long. One night, as he poured water over the brow of an infant, thunder cracked through no storm brood. The flames in the hearth died at once, leaving only the hiss of the wind.

Outside the mist rose higher than the trees, coiling like smoke around the cottage. The baby wailed, but bene with its cry came another sound deeper, inhuman, a groan that seemed to rise from the soil itself. The villagers turned their eyes from him in the days that followed, where once they had nodded politely, now they crossed themselves when he passed, doors closed, shutters slammed, children were snatched away at the sight of him.

He had broken something, not the covenant, but the unspoken agreement to never challenge it. One evening, as Alden crossed the village green, he found the chapel door unlatched. Inside, the altar was bare, the crucifix toppled, the ledger placed at the center as though enthroned. On its open page, a fresh entry had appeared, ink glistening though no pen had touched it.

Olden Harrow, baptized, marked for the hollow. His blood ran cold. He reached out, but the page rippled like water beneath his hand. The candles guttered, though no wind stirred, and from the rafters came the low, rolling hum he had heard before, the villagers wordless hymn. Only this time it was not the villagers voices.

It was the earth itself, singing through stone and soil. Next, we uncover what happens when Alden realizes the hollow has claimed him, and that escape may no longer be possible. Alden staggered back from the ledger, his breath shallow, as though the book itself had stolen the air from his lungs, his name stared at him from the page, fresh, deliberate, impossible. No hand had written it, yet the ink shone as if moments old.

He whispered scripture under his breath, clinging to words like a drowning man clings to driftwood, but the sound seemed to echo strangely, swallowed by the very walls. The chapel no longer felt like sanctuary. The pews leaned as if bowing to the altar, the stone floor vibrating faintly under his boots, pulsing like a heartbeat.

He fled into the night, hoping the cool air might clear his head. But outside the village green was deserted. No lanterns glowed in windows. No voices drifted from cottages. Heroic Hollow was silent, yet the mist churned thick and alive, curling toward him as though it knew his name, too. He reached the rectory and barred the door, but sleep refused him.

When exhaustion finally forced his eyes closed, dreams came thick and fevered. He saw roots twisting through the floorboards, wrapping around his ankles, pulling him beneath the soil. He heard the lullabies the villagers hummed, only now they carried words he could not bear to understand.

and always in the distance a child’s cry, thin and endless. Morning brought no relief. On his desk lay the ledger, though he swore he had left it in the chapel. The entry of his name had multiplied. Each page now bore it, row upon row, scrolled in varying hands, some jagged, some elegant, some almost carved into the paper. There was no escape.

The hollow was binding him, weaving him into its history as it had done with generations before. He burned the book in desperation. Flames devoured the brittle pages, smoke curling black and acrid. But when the last ember died, the ledger sat intact among the ashes, its leather unscorched, its ink darker than before. The covenant could not be undone by fire.

By evening, knocks came at his door. Slow, deliberate, he opened to find no one, only the mist spilling inside like a living thing. But when he turned, muddy footprints stretched across his floor, leading to the chapel, not his own, smaller, barefoot, child-sized. Alden followed, heart pounding, each step heavier than the last.

The chapel door stood wide, though he knew he had locked it. Inside the pews were filled. Figures sat silently in the mist, their faces indistinct, yet every head turned toward him as he entered. The hymn began low and resonant, vibrating in his chest. This was no congregation of villagers. These were shadows, remnants of every offering the hollow had ever consumed.

At the altar, the ledger opened itself. A fresh line appeared even as he watched, marked not for silence, but for sacrifice. The words bled across the page as if written in his own blood. Next, we descend with Alden into the origins of the covenant. As he learns there is a place older than the chapel or the ledger, the true root of Heroic Hollow.

Alden stumbled out of the chapel into the night air, shaken to his core. The Ledger’s words clung to him like a curse, sacrifice. He wanted to run, to leave heroic hollow behind. But the mist thickened at the valley’s edge, curling like a barricade. It was as if the land itself would not let him leave.

He returned to the rectory, hands trembling, and searched for any clue that could explain what he had seen. In the vest cupboards he found old parish records, births, deaths, marriages. At first they seemed ordinary, but the deeper he dug, the more patterns emerged. Entire families disappeared from the records without explanation. Infants marked as stillborn, though there were whispers of them living for weeks.

Young boys and girls recorded as sent away when no guardian ever came forward. Tucked between the records was a brittle sheath of papers older than the rest. They were written in a hand more jagged, more frantic. At the top, a single phrase repeated three times. The church was never first. The root was always beneath.

Alden’s skin prickled as he read on. The papers described a clearing deep in the forest older than heroic village itself. stones arranged in a circle, half buried and moss choked. Beneath them, a hollow chamber where villagers once gathered before the church was ever built. They called it the root cellar.

The writings claimed the chapel had been placed directly over this spot, not to consecrate it, but to contain it. Yet the rituals had continued beneath generation after generation, feeding the thing they called the hollow root. Alden’s throat tightened. It wasn’t the church that was holy ground. It was the soil beneath it, blackened by centuries of offerings. He thought of the children’s shadows in the pews, the bare footprints across his floor, the hymn echoing from unseen throats. They weren’t bound to the chapel. They were bound to the ghee round itself. Determined, he ventured

into the woods by lantern light. Branches clawed at his cassac, roots caught his boots. The mist seemed to thicken with every step until it hung heavy as a curtain. Then ahead he saw them. Stones in a wide circle, slick with moss, their surfaces carved with symbols far older than Latin. His lantern shook in his hand.

The ground within the circle looked different, softer, disturbed, as though recently turned. Kneeling, Alden brushed back the damp soil and uncovered wood. Rotting planks fitted crudely together. A door. The root cellar was real. From below, faint as breath, came a sound, not wind, not water, a lullabi, the same tune he had heard whispered through the village walls.

But down here it was deeper, resonant, almost mechanical, as if the earth itself was singing. The door shuddered under his hand. Something beneath was awake. Next, we follow Alden as he dares to descend into the root cellar, and what he finds inside reveals the Covenant’s true face. Alden pressed his palm to the rotten wood of the trapdo. It felt warm, as though something living pulsed beneath it.

The lullaby rose faintly again, and with a shiver, he hooked his lantern to his belt, braced his shoulders, and pulled. The hinges shrieked like a dying animal. A rush of air burst upward, damp, earthy, sour with the stench of old decay. Staring into the darkness below, he saw stone steps worn uneven by centuries of feet. They spiraled downward into the earth, their edges glistening with damp moss.

The air was thick, pressing on his lungs, and for a moment Alden thought he heard whispering voices, hundreds of them layered at top one another. But when he held his breath, the sound did not fade. It was not an echo. It was the cellar itself speaking. With shaking resolve he descended.

Each step groaned, not with wood, but with the strange resonance of hollow stone. The deeper he went, the colder it became, though sweat sllicked his brow. His lanterns flame guttered, shadows racing along the walls. Etched into the stone were symbols identical to those on the mossy circle above.

Spirals, jagged crosses, and faces without eyes. His fingers brushed one by accident. The stone pulsed beneath his skin. At the base of the stairs, the chamber opened into a vast underground hall. The ceiling was lost to darkness. Pillars of rough stone held the weight of the earth. Each one wrapped in offerings.

Lengths of hair, scraps of cloth, teeth bound with twine. Bones hung from cords, hollowed and carved into flutes. One gave a low moan as a draft stirred through. In the center lay a pit. Its rim was lined with blackened bricks fused by some ancient fire. The lullabi came from within, not sung by human voices, but rising from the pit itself like breath forced through a massive throat buried deep underground.

Alden’s knees weakened, he gripped his lantern tighter, its glow fall earning on shapes along the walls. He froze. children, or what had once been children. Dozens of small figures crouched in the aloves, their faces pale, their eyes closed as if in sleep. Their mouths moved faintly, forming the words of the lullaby, though no sound left their lips. Alden staggered back, bile burning his throat.

These were not spirits, but husks, preserved by something that denied decay. One of them stirred. A boy’s eyes fluttered open. eyes black, reflecting no light. He smiled, revealing teeth too sharp, too many. His voice joined the lullaby, but unlike the others, Alden could hear it clear and distinct. You are late, father. The pit gave a shudder, bricks grinding as if something immense shifted below.

The earth groaned in answer. Alden’s lantern flickered violently, the flame stretching unnaturally high before nearly dying out. He staggered, clutching the nearest pillar as the lullaby grew deafening, filling every stone, every breath. The boy stepped down from his al cove. The others began to stir, opening black, unblinking eyes.

One by one they turned toward Alden. Next we follow Alden as the children of the route rise to greet him, and he learns that his arrival was never by chance. It was foretold. Alden’s breath caught as the first child stepped toward him, bare feet soundless on the damp stone. The others stirred awake in their aloves, one by one, their heads tilting unnaturally in unison.

Dozens of eyes opened, eyes black as the hollow mist, reflecting no light, no mercy. Their mouths stretched in silent song, sinking with the lullaby that still hummed from the pit. The boy who had spoken before smiled wider. His teeth gleamed like shards of glass. “We knew you would come,” he whispered, though the words echoed as if spoken from every mouth in the chamber.

“We waited.” Alden stumbled backward, lantern trembling in his hand. “What are you?” His voice cracked in the oppressive air. The boy tilted his head. “We are what was given. We are what remains.” He took another step, and the others followed, moving like a single body, their feet never faltering, their expressions eerily calm.

Olden’s mind spun. These were the missing children from the parish records. The gaps he had traced in ink. They hadn’t been lost. They had been taken, preserved, bound. Their bodies looked fragile, yet the weight of their gaze crushed him. Against his will, his eyes flicked to the pit. The lullaby deepened. A rhythm like a heartbeat rising from the earth.

The black mist that clung to the bricks swirled upward, curling toward Alden. He felt it tugging at his lungs, urging him to breathe it in. The boy stopped only a few feet away. His voice dropped low, carrying words too heavy for a child. Your name is written in the root, father. Long before you came. Alden’s chest tightened. No, that’s not possible.

His mind rebelled, but his heart pounded with a terrible certainty. Hadn’t he been drawn here step by step? Hadn’t the parish called him to Harrow Hollow without explanation? The children began to chant softly, their voices weaving together like a single thread pulled taut. He read alized with horror that the chant was his name. Over and over in a hundred whispering tongues, each one older than the last. Alden, Alden, Alden.

The pit groaned, the bricks cracked, a fisher opening as though something vast shifted below. Warm air gushed upward, wreaking of earth and blood. Alden staggered as the lantern guttered, shadows stretching monstrously across the chamber walls. The boy reached out a pale hand. The covenant must be renewed. You are the chosen. Without you, the root hungers.

Alden’s thoughts splintered. Every instinct screamed to run. But the spiral stairs seemed impossibly far away. Swallowed in darkness. His feet refused to move. The chanting swelled and his name became a roar inside his skull. From the pit came a sound, a slow dragging inhale like the first breath of something that had slept for centuries. The stones under his boots quivered. Dust rained from the ceiling.

The boy’s black eyes glinted. Come closer, father. The hollow has been waiting. Next, we uncover what rises from the pit when olden resists, and why breaking the covenant might be worse than keeping it. The ground shuddered as if the hollow itself had drawn breath.

Dust rained down from the ceiling, coating Alden’s cassak in gray. The children pressed closer, their chanting of his name rising into a frenzy that vibrated through the very stones. Alden staggered back, his lantern swinging wildly, light slicing across the chamber in jittering arcs. The pit convulsed, its blackened bricks splitting further, and from the cracks seeped a thick tar-like ooze that shimmerred with faint light.

A sound rolled out of the depths, not merely a growl, but a vast resonance, like earth grinding against itself. Alden clutched his ears, but it did not help. The sound was not entering through hearing alone. It was vibrating directly into his bones.

The boy with black eyes moved closer, hands still outstretched, voice carrying with terrible calm. You cannot deny what is written. The root has claimed you. Alden tried to force his legs toward the stair, but the mist that exhaled from the pit seemed alive, coiling around his ankles like serpents, dragging him backwards step by step, his lantern sputtered, the flame stretching tall before nearly snuffing out.

Panic clawed at him. If the light died, he would be swallowed whole in the dark. Desperate, he raised the lantern toward the boy. The child did not flinch, only smiled as though amused by the attempt. The others stepped forward too, in perfect unison, a tide of pale faces and hollow eyes, their voices merged into a single wordless hum, each note sinking deeper into Alden’s skull until he thought his mind would tear apart. The fissure in the pit widened with a sharp crack, bricks toppling inward.

From below a hand emerged, or what resembled one, not flesh, but roots, gnarled and senue, wet with black sap. They writhed upward, searching, stretching toward Olden with a hunger that felt ancient. He stumbled, nearly dropping the lantern, his wreath choking in his throat. This was the covenant. This was the source of heroic’s prosperity.

The bargain struck in blood and silence. The children were its chorus, its guardians, its offerings. And now it wanted him. “No!” Alden gasped, forcing the word through his fear. “I will not serve.” For the first time, the boy’s smile faltered. His black eyes narrowed, voice colder than stone. “Then you will feed.

” The root hand slammed against the pit’s rim, spraying shards of brick across the floor. The chamber shook violently, pillars groaning under the strain. Alden stumbled backward into one of the aloves heart hammering. The children advanced, their small bodies moving with mechanical precision.

The lullaby twisting into something deeper, darker, no longer a song, but a summons. From below, the roots spread wider, clawing at the floor, splitting stone like it was parchment. The pit was no longer a prison. It was a mouth opening. Next we see what rises fully from the pit, and how Alden realizes there may be only one way to stop it, though the cost will be greater than he can bear.

The chamber roared as the pit split open further. Each crack tearing through stone like flesh being ripped apart. The roots surged upward in a tangled mass, twisting and writhing with impossible life. They were not mere roots, but a grotesque fusion of wood and senue, slick with black eyeore that dripped onto the floor in steaming pools.

The air filled with the stench of rot and something older, like soil that had never seen the sun. Olden raised his lantern higher, its feeble glow catching on shapes forming within the tangle. Faces, dozens of them half-formed and distorted, screaming silently as the roots stretched upward.

Some looked like children, others like adults, their features twisted in agony, their eyes vacant holes. Alden staggered back, bile rising in his throat. The realization struck him with bone deep horror. These were the sacrifices absorbed into the root itself. Their essence bound forever into its living mass. The children in the alco sang louder, their voices trembling the air, guiding the emergence.

The boy stood closest, his smile wide and unnatural. It rises to greet you, father. You are its vessel. From the pit, the largest root reared up, thick as a tree trunk, its surface splitting to reveal a hollow moore lined with jagged fibers that pulsed like muscle.

The sound that poured from it was no longer a lullabi, but a guttural chant, as if the very earth demanded blood. Stones rained from above as the ceiling cracked, but the children did not flinch, their black eyes fixed on Alden with worshipful intensity. His heart pounded in his skull. Every instinct screamed to run, but there was nowhere to go. The stairway was swallowed in mist. The walls pressed in with shadow.

The route surged again, slamming against the chamber floor, sending vibrations through his bones. He fell to his knees, lantern clattering beside him. The boy knelt too close. For Alden to see the black veins that pulsed beneath his skin. Do you feel it? The child whispered. It knows you. It chose you before you were born.

Alden’s mind splintered at the words, “Could it be true?” Had his entire life been guided to this moment, the church’s call, the unending fog, the ledgers, records, they all pointed here. The pit bellowed, and from its core a towering figure began to rise, woven from roots, flesh, and bone. Its form was not fixed, but shifting, human faces merging and fading within its surface, its limbs stretching like branches in a storm.

It filled the chamber with its presence, blotting out the lantern’s glow until Alden was lost in a living darkness. A single massive eye opened within the writhing mass, an eye the size of his head, black and glistening with sap. It fixed on him, and in that gaze he felt his soul pulled tort as if it were being unspooled from his body. The boy’s voice echoed through the roar, soft but commanding. Kneel, father.

The hollow root awakens. Next we see if Alden bends to the will of the root, or dares to defy a power that has devoured generations. The cavern shook with every pulse of the roots colossal body. Its vast eye never blinked, only widened. Drinking in olden soul like an endless well, the children stood still as statues, their chanting rising and falling in perfect rhythm.

With the monstrous heartbeat that echoed through the stone, Alden’s throat tightened until breathing itself became a battle. He forced himself to speak, though his voice cracked under the weight of the sound. I am not your vessel. The words evaporated in the chamber like dust on fire. The root shifted, its massive tendrils reaching outward, brushing the walls with the weight of centuries.

Every face embedded within its bark seemed to sneer at him, mouths stretching into grotesque smiles. Some looked familiar. Alden froze as one face pressed itself clear from the mass. A woman with hollow eyes, lips trembling as if she were mouthing his name. His mother, his blood turned to ice. She had died when he was a boy, or so the family had told him.

But here, her likeness writhed in eternal torment, fused with the roots body. He staggered back, rage clashing with horror. “No,” he whispered. “That’s impossible.” The boy stepped closer, his black eyes glimmering in the lantern’s dim light. “She was offered before you were born. Her life bought yours. Don’t you see? You were promised to it. Every breath you’ve taken was borrowed.

The roots tendril slammed down again, cracking stone, showering Alden with fragments of earth. A tendril stretched forward like a hand, curling gently as though to beckon him closer. In its hollow grooves, the remains of small bones were wedged, glittering faintly in the light. The boy placed a hand on Alden’s shoulder, his touch icy and unnervingly steady.

It does not ask twice. If you resist, it will take. And if it takes, you will not exist. You will be part of it, but silent forever. Alden’s chest heaved. His every instinct screamed to fight, to claw his way free, to defy this abomination. Yet in the pit of his being, he felt the truth pressing down like stone.

The ledgers names, the graves, the countless children. None had escaped. To defy it was to vanish as they had, consumed and forgotten. The monstrous eye dilated, and from its depths of vision poured into Alden’s mind. He saw heroic as it once was. Fertile fields, thriving families, harvests plentiful even as the surrounding counties withered.

The root had kept its bargain, sacrifice for prosperity, blood for bread. Then the vision shifted. He saw storms sweeping in, crops rotting in the ground, cattle dead in their pens. He saw the villagers in terror, begging the root to be appeased. And he saw the society bringing children, cradles, songs. Over and over the pact renewed, and finally he saw himself kneeling in the chamber, chosen as the vessel that would carry the covenant into a new century.

The weight of generations bore down upon him. The boy’s voice softened, almost tender. Say the word, father, and it will embrace you. Refuse and it will tear your soul apart. The root leaned closer, its breath hot and feted, vibrating the stones beneath his knees. Olden’s fists clenched. Between surrender and annihilation, there seemed no path forward. Yet somewhere deep inside, another thought flickered.

If the root could be fed, it could also be starved. Next, we see whether Alden dares to turn the roots hunger against itself, or if he succumbs to the Covenant’s ancient claim. Alden’s chest burned as if every breath he drew was borrowed from the root itself. Its vast body filled the chamber, veins and branches pulsing with an appetite that had spanned centuries.

The tendril that reached for him curled like a lover’s hand, patient, certain of its claim. But Olden’s mind, though drowning in fear, sparked with a thought that cut through the terror. If it feeds, it can starve. The boy’s eyes narrowed as though he had overheard Alden’s thought. Do not delude yourself. The root is eternal. It has never hungered without being sated.

His voice was a hiss of authority, far older than his childish frame. Alden clenched his fists tighter. Every face embedded in the root spark stared at him in silent agony. His mother’s likeness the most haunting of them all.

If he gave himself willingly, he would become another hollow mask, staring out at the next poor soul. But what if hunger could turn inward? What if its endless feeding was also its weakness? He forced his voice to steady. You call me vessel, but vessels can spill. And when they spill, what they hold is wasted. The boy flinched for the first time, his grip tightening on Alden’s shoulder.

The root growled, a low vibration that shook dust loose from the ceiling. The chamber’s air thickened with the stench of soil and rot. Alden pressed on, his words tumbling out like stones hurled at a beast. If I give myself, you will have me. But what if I refuse? Not in silence, not in surrender, but in revolt.

What if I feed nothing but your own hunger back to you? What if I break the chain? The tendrils reared back, slamming into the stone walls with such force that fractures webbed outward, showering sparks of gravel. The chanting children faltered for the first time, their perfect unison breaking into scattered murmurss.

The boy snarled, his pale skin darkening like bark spreading over flesh. You cannot break what was rooted before your bloodline began. Alden’s voice rose, trembling but defiant. Every root can be cut. Every hunger has an end. You say my mother was taken that I was bought. Then let me pay in a way you cannot control. He stepped closer to the pulsing mass, the heat of it blistering against his skin.

He forced his mind to imagine not his surrender but emptiness. A cavern with no chant, no blood, no sacrifice. He envisioned soil drying, branches snapping, the monstrous eye closing for the last time. He poured that vision out like poison, daring the root to consume it. The great eye trembled, veins tightening as though resisting a force it had never tasted.

The boy screamed, a high-pitched sound that shattered the lantern glass and plunged half the cavern into darkness. For a moment the route seemed to recoil, its tendrils twitching in agitation, unsure whether to strike or retreat. Alden realized with a shudder that he had touched something dangerous, something the society had never dared. He had given the root not obedience, not fear, but starvation, and the beast had felt it.

Next, the route lashes out violently, forcing Alden to endure its wroth while testing whether his defiance can truly wound an ancient hunger. The cavern roared alive as if the earth itself had found its voice. The root wounded by Alden’s defiance, struck out with a fury that no mortal had yet endured.

Tendrils snapped through the air like whips of ironwood, shattering stone pillars and sending shards flying. Alden threw himself against the wall, the air torn from his lungs by the force of the blast. A jagged rock grazed his arm, blood spraying across the dirt. The roots great eye flared, its pupil dilating into an abyss that swallowed all light. The faces embedded in its bark screamed, not in sound, but in silent agony that reverberated inside Olden’s skull. He clutched his head, fighting against the wave of madness that threatened to drown him.

The boy now twisted fully into a halfh human halfroot horror stalked toward him, teeth sharpened like splinters. His voice was not a boy anymore. It was the caverns, the roots, a chorus of all the devoured. You will not unmake what was born in the marrow of the world. You are no blade. You are fodder.

The children had dropped their chance, many covering their ears as the fury of the root cracked their composure. Some swayed as if entranced, blood trickling from their noses. For the first time, Olden saw their fear. They were not cultists by choice. They were vessels, too.

The route lunged again, a tendril slamming into the ground, inches from Alden’s leg, the impact shaking the cavern floor. He staggered every instinct, screaming to run, but he forced his boots to hold. His defiance had hurt the creature, if only for a moment, and that meant it could be hurt again. But how long could he withstand its wroth? His vision blurred, the heat unbearable as the roots veins pulsed brighter, glowing crimson like molten metal.

He raised his arms to shield himself, and as he did, the broken lanterns around the cavern ignited the spilled oil. Fire licked across the chamber floor, illuminating the horror in stark, merciless detail. The flames reflected in the roots eye, and for the first time, Alden saw hesitation. Fire, the eternal enemy of wood.

He staggered toward the blaze, grabbing a splintered timber from the wreckage of a pillar. The heat seared his hands, but he did not let go. The boy shrieked, his bark flesh blistering, his eyes widening with terror. No, it does not burn. It cannot burn. Alden swung the burning timber toward the advancing tendril.

The cavern filled with a hiss like a thousand serpents as the fire met the roots bark. The flesh sizzled, cracking, blackening. A stench of charred sap filled the air. The root recoiled, its massive body twisting back into the shadows, tendrils flailing in anguish. Olden fell to his knees, coughing from the smoke, but a flicker of triumph lit his exhausted eyes.

He had struck pain into the eternal. The children, wideeyed, whispered among themselves, their voices trembling. For the first time, they saw the root falter. Next, Alden discovers where the fire is truly the roots undoing, or if his defiance has only provoked something even darker beneath its bark.

The fire crackled like a living thing, its glow painting the cavern in violent shades of orange and black. Smoke clawed at Alden’s throat, his chest heaving as he forced each breath past the choking heat. Yet amid the chaos he felt something shift, an ancient certainty cracking like brittle bark.

The root, for all its vastness, feared flame, its tendrils lashed, but no longer with the same confidence. They struck wildly, desperate to smother the fire before it spread further. Alden rose unsteadily, clutching the charred timber, its embers eating into his palms. Pain seared him, but pain was power now. He swung again, sparks scattering, driving the route back.

The pale boy screamed, his voice splitting into many tones at once, each one the echo of a different lost soul, his bark flesh smoldered where the flames touched, the sap bubbling like boiling blood. You cannot undo the marrow. Fire dies and roots endure. But his words no longer rang with certainty. The children had stopped their chant entirely.

Some crawled toward the walls, away from both boy and beast. Their wide eyes followed Olden, not as prey to predator, but as one who had shown them the monster could bleed. The root reeled, its massive body folding back into itself, the eye pulsing erratically as if blind with rage. The flame spread quickly across the oil soaked floor, licking higher, consuming the carvings etched into the stone.

symbols once glowing with sinister light cracked and flaked, releasing bursts of ash. Alden’s gaze caught something strange. Beneath the outer bark of the root, where the fire bit deepest, something glimmered. It was not wood. It was not flesh. It was bone. Ancient, calcified, a latis of human remains bound together. The marrow of countless sacrifices woven into the monster’s core.

His stomach lurched at the sight, yet clarity struck him like the blow of a bell. The root was no, “Oh, mere beast.” It was a prison of the dead. Their bones stacked, their essence bound to feed its hunger. His mother’s face, etched in bark, trembled as if she recognized him, as if her trapped spirit quivered against the fire. Alden’s heart clenched.

He was not only fighting for his survival, he was fighting for their release. You’re not eternal, he whispered horsely, stepping closer to the writhing mass. You’re built on them. You’re nothing without them. The boy staggered, his bark skin splitting wider, his form unraveling, his eyes burned with hate, but fear gnored at their edges. You will free nothing. You will only join them.

Alden thrust the burning timber deep into one of the roots exposed wounds. A shriek thundered through the cavern, shaking dust from the ceiling as the faces in the bark contorted, not in suffering, but in hope. The fire caught, climbing along the bone lattice, igniting the marrow. Alden fell back, the heat blistering, but he could not look away.

For the first time, the roots power faltered not from defiance alone, but from the truth laid bare within its core. Next, Alden must decide whether to push deeper into the inferno to free the trapped souls or save himself before the cavern collapses in fire and ash. The cavern was no longer a chamber. It had become a furnace.

Flames licked across the walls, swallowing the carved symbols of the society, erasing centuries of devotion in a matter of moments. Ash swirled in choking clouds, and every breath took cut his lungs raw. Yet he pushed forward, driven not by survival alone, but by the faces locked within the roots bark, their silent pleas growing louder with every crack of burning marrow. The root howled, its tendrils flailing wildly, battering the collapsing stone.

The ground split in jagged lines, fiery veins opening beneath Alden’s boots. Each tremor threatened to swallow him, but he pressed on, gripping his embered weapon tighter. His skin blistered, sweat stung his eyes, but he would not let go. Before him, the pale boy staggered, his form unraveling into splinters of wood and shards of bone.

His voice was now a fractured echo, desperate, broken. You think to free them, you will only feed the fire. You will burn with them.” Olden’s gaze locked on his mother’s face, half buried in the roots bark. Her eyes, though carved, though lifeless, seemed to glisten in the firelight, as though she urged him forward. The realization hit with crushing weight. To free her, to free them all, he could not simply wound the route.

He had to destroy it completely. And that meant offering himself to the flames as well. His knees buckled under the thought. Every instinct screamed to turn back, to find an exit before the cavern collapsed, before the smoke claimed him. Yet the fire within him, rage, grief, defiance, was fiercer than the one surrounding him.

He staggered closer to the roots core, where the bone lattis glowed like white hot iron. Tendrils lashed at him, one curling around his waist, crushing his ribs until his breath burst out in a cry, but with his free arm he thrust the burning timber deeper into the exposed marrow. of the R. Tea shrieked, a sound so violent the cavern ceiling split, raining rock and fire.

The faces on the bark wythed, their mouths opening as if gasping for air, the trapped souls pressed against their prison, their agony now sharpened into desperate hope. Olden’s strength faltered, his body trembling under the grip of the root, but his will hardened. If this was sacrifice, then let it be one that meant something. he whispered into the inferno.

“Mother, if I burn, let it free you.” The root convulsed, the tendrils squeezing until stars burst across Olden’s vision, his weapon cracked, embers spilling, but the fire had already taken hold. The marrow blazed with a light so fierce it blinded even the monster. For an instant, Alden felt his mother’s presence, warm, fleeting, yet real.

It gave him the final strength to wrench his body forward, forcing himself deeper into the blaze. The cavern erupted in a roar, fire surging higher than stone should allow, as though the earth itself wished to consume the roots sin. Next, Alden must face whether his sacrifice breaks the roots prison or drags him into its eternal hunger.

The cavern shuddered like a dying beast. Every wall, every stone trembled as the root screamed in its death throws. Fire coursed through its marrow, igniting veins that stretched far beyond the chamber. Tendrils thrashed, smashing against the ceiling, tearing loose massive chunks of rock that thundered to the floor. The children scattered in terror, their chants silenced forever.

Their pale faces, once masks of obedience, were twisted with raw fear. Some collapsed to their knees. Others clawed for the fishes, splitting open along the cavern walls, desperate to escape. Olden could barely stand. His ribs ground like broken glass with each breath. His arms trembled, and his blistered hands no longer felt the timber’s weight.

Yet the blaze he had kindled was no longer his to command. It had become a wildfire, an unstoppable tide consuming the monster’s prison, the root convulsed, its vast body buckling inward as the faces embedded in its bark flickered. Anguish shifting to relief, despair giving way to release. His mother’s likeness, framed in the inferno, seemed to mouth a word he could not hear.

The boy shrieked, his body splitting apart, bark sloughing away in fiery shards. His form collapsed into ash, leaving only his voice, one last venomous curse that echoed through the smoke. Roots burn, but seeds endure. Alden fell to his knees, the chamber collapsing around him. Flames surged upward through cracks in the ceiling as though the very earth above were set al light.

He pressed his forehead against the dirt, every part of him surrendering to the fire. But in that surrender, something stirred. A wind unlike any natural draft swept through the cavern. It carried with it whispers. Thousands of voices freed in unison. They surged around him, through him. A tide of souls released from centuries of bondage.

He felt his mother’s presence once more, closer than before. A warm that pressed against his chest as though shielding him. His eyes flooded with tears. The walls collapsed. Stone grinding against stone, but the fire held the ruin back, forming a circle around Alden. For a moment, it seemed as though the blaze obeyed him. The root’s colossal eye, cracked and blackened, flickered one last time.

A faint spark of hunger lingered in its depths, even as the body burned away. Then it imploded, a thunderous roar shaking the cavern as its mass folded into itself, collapsing into a pit of ash and bone. Alden was thrown backward, his vision drowning in light and fire.

When he opened his eyes again, silence pressed against his ears. The cavern was gone. He stood in a void of smoke and embers, faces swirling faintly in the ash around him. His mother’s form appeared, not in bark, but as a pale silhouette, smiling faintly, her hand reaching for his, relief surged through him, but so did dread, for behind her, deeper in the ash, countless other faces shifted, eyes turning toward him.

Were they free, or had their prisons simply changed hands? Next, Alden must confront the terrifying possibility that in destroying the root, he has become the vessel of its countless seeds, carrying its hunger within himself. Alden gasped awake, the taste of ash thick on his tongue. The cavern was gone.

He lay sprawled on damp earth beneath the sky so dark it seemed scraped roar of stars. The air was heavy, smelling of soot and scorched marrow, yet no flames licked the horizon. Instead, smoke rose in long ghostly ribbons, drifting into the night as though seeking a home beyond the heavens. He staggered to his feet, ribs screaming with every movement.

His charred clothes hung in tatters, his blistered hands shaking as he pressed them against the soil. The ground was warm, still breathing with the fire he had unleashed. Behind him the landscape stretched empty, a field of smoldering ash where the heroic cavern had once yawned. No trace of the roots monstrous body remained.

Only a pit deep and black, its edges glowing faintly as though it hid embers too stubborn to die. Relief washed over him for an instant. He had done it. The root was destroyed. Its hunger silenced, but the relief soured quickly. The whispers had not gone. He froze, heart hammering as faint voices threaded through the night air. Not the tormented cries of the imprisoned, but whispers that coiled soft and insidious around his thoughts.

His mother’s presence once warm and fleeting, no longer lingered. In her place was something else, a chorus. It spoke not in words, but in sensation, a knowing ache in his stomach, a dryness in his veins, hunger. His knees buckled, and he collapsed beside the pit.

His hands dug into the earth without thought, tearing at the soil, shoving it into his mouth as though it might satisfy the void knowing inside him. The dirt crumbled dry against his tongue. But the craving deepened. He spat it out, shaking violently, realizing with terror what had happened. The boy’s final words returned, sharp as the snap of a root pulled from the ground.

Seeds endure. He staggered backward, clutching his stor. Wo! His body felt wrong, too light, too hollow. Beneath his skin, veins pulsed with a faint glow, red as smoldering ash. His reflection caught in a pool of water near the pit. And he recoiled, his eyes, once dark and human, now shimmerred faintly with a dim embers’s glow. “No,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “I killed you.

I ended you.” But the whispers answered with a laugh. a soft chorus of many voices. The root had not died. It had scattered. Its prison had been burned, its bones reduced to ash, but its seeds had taken root in the only vessel close enough to carry them, him.

Alden sank to the ground, clutching his head as the whispers pressed harder. Some voices begged for release. Others urged him to feed. The night wind howled across the smoldering pit, scattering the ash into the sky. Each ember that rose into the air carried with it a piece of the hunger. And Alden, broken and trembling, understood the truth. The heroic covenant had not ended. It had only changed hands.

Next, Alden must choose whether to resist the hunger within him or surrender, becoming the roots new vessel, spreading its seeds across the living world. Alden stumbled through the charred valley like a man split between two worlds. His body screamed with exhaustion, but his veins pulsed with a strange searing vitality that refused to let him collapse.

Each breath filled him with more than air. It filled him with whispers. They slithered like roots, curling through his mind, urging, pressing, demanding hunger. His throat was dry, his stomach a knot of emptiness. Yet it wasn’t food he craved. He tried water first, scooping handfuls from a shallow pool, but it turned bitter on his tongue, sour like spoiled wine.

He spat it out and fell to his knees, trembling. The whispers surged louder, filling the silence left by the dead earth. They spoke in fragments. Feed, bind, endure. His reflection stared back from the pool, sunken cheeks, bloodied skin, but the eyes gave him away. They glowed faintly, ember sparks buried in dark irises, and when he blinked, the light dimmed only to flare stronger with each passing second. Panic seized him.

He pressed his palms against his eyes as though he could smother the glow, but warmth spread down his arms, veins faintly glowing red beneath his skin. The root had burned, yes, but in the burning its essence had bled into him. He was no longer just old and colder. He was something else, something seeded. His mind recoiled, but his body moved without thought. He sniffed the air, drawn to something sweet, coppery.

A hair lay lifeless in the ash, charred by the firestorm, its flesh blackened, yet its blood still faintly warm. Alden’s stomach lurched with nausea, but his hand shook as he reached for it. “No,” he hissed, his voice cracking, fighting against the pull.

He had buried too many children, seemed too much death to become another beast feeding blindly on the land. Yet the hunger pressed harder, gnawing at his insides, turning his willpower into sand slipping through clenched fists. He forced himself back, stumbling, crawling away from the carcass. His breath came ragged, sweat stinging his raw skin. But as he retreated, he heard something that froze him more than the hunger. Footsteps.

He turned sharply. At the valley’s edge, a figure watched. A man, or what once had been a man. His frame was gaunt, robes shredded, eyes hollow, yet burning faintly with the same emberg glowen had glimpsed in himself. One of the keepers, long thought, burned with the cavern. The figure smiled, cracked lips parting with a whisper that wasn’t his own. The seed chooses well.

Rage flared in Olden’s chest, cutting through the hunger for a heartbeat. I am not yours, he spat, forcing the words past the knowing ache in his belly. The keeper only tilted his head. You already are. The hollow never dies. It takes root where it can.

Then, as silently as he appeared, the figure melted into the smoke, vanishing into the ruined valley. Alden staggered back, heart pounding. He was not alone in this curse. There were others. And if they lived, then the covenant was far from broken. Next, Alden will confront the first living soul from Heroic Hollow since the Firestorm.

A survivor who carries both answers and terrible demands. Dawn broke gray over the valley. Ash still drifting like snow over a land stripped bare. Alden’s body trembled from the night struggle. The ember glow in his veins refusing to dim. He had walked until his legs nearly gave, searching for silence, for distance, but instead he found a voice.

It came soft at first, carried on the brittle wind, a hymn, old, fractured, almost a lullabi. Alden froze, straining to listen. The melody came from the ruins of a farmhouse that somehow still clung to its frame on the valley’s edge. Against every warning in his chest, he pushed forward. Inside, amid blackened beams and soot stained walls, a figure rocked gently on the floor.

A woman, her hair was matted, face hollowed by smoke and hunger, but her eyes. They still held the flicker of human clarity. She stopped singing when she saw him. For a moment, they only stared. Two remnants of a place that should have been erased. Then her cracked lips moved. “You carry it,” she whispered. Alden stiffened. “Carry what?” The woman laughed.

A sound like broken glass. The root doesn’t burn. It burrows deeper. I saw them. Men, women, children, taken by flame, yet they rose again, walking with fire in their eyes. You shine the same. Alden’s breath caught. Others survived. Her head dipped slowly. Not survived. Changed. They wander in the smoke bound to it.

The firestorm was no ending. It was a sewing. She leaned closer, her hands trembling as she reached for his wrist. Her touch burned with fever, but her grip was strong. You must understand the hollow feeds on what remains. and now you are part of it. Alden pulled free, staggering back, the hunger in his gut twisted, answering her words with a low growl that echoed in his ears.

I’m not one of them. The woman tilted her head, pity clouding her sunken face. That’s what I told myself when the whispers began. But you can’t outrun hunger. Not here. You can only choose whom it devours. Her body convulsed suddenly, a shudder ripping through her as if her words had summoned something.

She gasped, clutching her chest, her voice breaking into a scream. Alden dropped beside her, trying to steady her frail frame, but her skin blazed hot as coals. Through her teeth, words forced themselves out. Not hers, but the roots. Feed, bind, endure. The air thickened with the scent of char and blood, and Alden felt the ember in his veins flare brighter in answer.

He held her as her breath faltered, eyes glowing faintly before the light flickered and died. Silence returned, broken only by the hollow thud of his own heartbeat. Alden lowered her gently to the ashwn floor, guilt clawing at him. She had clung to life, long enough only to deliver a warning and a curse. When he rose, the farmhouse felt smaller, the air heavier. The root was not gone.

It was spreading, and now he bore its mark more openly than ever. Next, Alden will uncover the ruins of Heroic Chapel, where the Covenant’s first vows were carved into stone, and where something waits for him still.

The path to Heroic Chapel wound through land scarred and lifeless, the soil blackened, trees reduced to brittle skeletons clawing at the sky. Alden walked slowly, each step crunching over ash that rose in faint clouds. His veins pulsed with the ember glow he tried to ignore, a reminder of the roots grip tightening. Yet the farmhouse woman’s words pushed him onward. You can only choose whom it devours.

At the valley’s center, the chapel rose like a broken tooth, jagged against the gray mourning, its spire had collapsed, its roof gaping, but its stone walls still clung stubbornly to form, as though built not of mortar, but of will. The air grew heavier as he neared, and a hush settled over the ruins, a silence so complete it pressed against his ears.

He placed a hand against the door, the wood blackened and warped. It swung inward with a groan, revealing a darkness that seemed to drink in what little light remained. Inside the chapel bore scars of fire, yet something stronger than flame had preserved its bones.

The pews were reduced to smoldered fragments, but the altar stood untouched, carved from a single slab of obsidian stone. Its surface was etched with grooves that formed no holy script, but spirals, roots, and eyes. Olden stepped closer, breath shallow, fingertips brushing the cold stone. The grooves pulsed faintly beneath his touch, as if veins ran beneath it. He pulled back quickly.

Behind him, the ruined air shifted, the silence fractured with the faintest echo, whispered words curling through the dark. Welcome home. Alden froze. The voice was neither man nor woman, neither loud nor soft. It was everywhere at once, vibrating in the marrow of his bones. His hands trembled. Yet something compelled him deeper.

The floor beneath the altar bore a trap door, its iron ring blackened but intact. He hesitated, then gripped it, lifting with all his strength. The dudo bar gave way with a screech, exhaling a rush of stale air. Below lay a stairwell of stone descending into blackness. He leaned forward, torch light flickering weakly from his flint.

The walls down there bore carvings, figures bound at the wrists, kneeling before great twisted roots that wound across the ceiling and into the floor. He descended slowly, each step pulling him deeper into the heart of what the Calder family had once woripped. At the bottom he reached a chamber, the ceiling arched low, tangled with petrified root systems. In the center lay a circular stone deis carved with the same spirals as the altar.

Blood stains long blackened with age stre across it in patterns. His heart pounded. He knelt, brushing his hand over the stone. The faintest warmth lingered there as though sacrifice had been made not centuries ago, but hours. Then he heard it again, a chorus, not one voice but many, rising from the roots themselves. Kneel, bind, endure.

Alden stumbled back, torch light flickering as shadows stretched unnaturally long across the chamber. The route was alive beneath Harowick Chapel. Next, Alden will witness the vision carved into stone itself. The Covenant’s first vow, preserved not in words, but in blood and memory.

The chamber’s air pressed thick and heavy, wreaking of iron and rot. Alden’s torch sputtered, its flame bending as though pulled by an unseen current. The spirals carved into the deis seemed to twist under the light, spiraling deeper and deeper until his eyes blurred. Then, without warning, the stone beneath his hand grew warm, his breath caught as the chamber around him dissolved, shadows melting into a vision that pulled him backward in time. He stood in the chapel, but not in ruin.

The walls were whole, banners hung red and black, and villagers crowded the pews. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes hollow, but hungry for something more than bread. At the altar stood a figure cloaked in gray, his voice commanding, yet unearly. The hollow gives and the hollow takes.

To endure, we bind ourselves in its root. His words rippled through the room like a tide, and the villagers bowed. Alden tried to move, but he was frozen, trapped in the vision. A boy no older than 12 was dragged forward by two men, his wrists were bound, his eyes wide with terror. The crowd did not flinch. The cloaked figure pressed a hand against the obsidian altar, and its spirals lit with a dull crimson glow.

The boy was laid upon it, his cries muffled by the chanting that rose around him, low, rhythmic, inhuman. The cloaked man drew a blade of black stone from beneath his robes. Alden felt his stomach twist. He wanted to shout, to lunge forward, but the vision held him prisoner.

The blade hovered above the boy’s chest, and the chance grew louder. Then, with a single motion, the knife pierced down. The altar drank the blood, its spirals glowing brighter as roots crawled up from the floor, wrapping the boy’s body, pulling it into the stone itself. Gasps turned to praise. The villagers knelt, their voices rising in unison. Kneel, bind, endure.

The cloaked man raised his hands, his voice echoing, lay thunder. The covenant is sealed. Through sacrifice, the hollow will protect us. Alden’s chest burned, his own veins flaring with crimson light. He stumbled backward, but still he was locked in the vision, faces in the crowd turned toward him, their hollow eyes finding his. One voice broke through, sharp and accusing.

You carry it now. The chapel dissolved back into ruin. Alden collapsed against the wall, gasping, his torch nearly slipping from his grasp. The deis beneath him still glowed faintly, as though remembering every drop of blood spilled upon it. He could still hear the chance echoing faintly in his ears.

The covenant had not been a myth. It had been carved into stone, sealed in blood, and its vows remained unbroken. Alden knew now what the root demanded, sacrifice, and he knew what the hollow still expected from him. Next, Alden will face the choice he has tried to deny, to flee with the hunger inside him, or to offer another life to the covenant’s altar. The glow of the deis pulsed like a heartbeat, casting faint red light across the chamber.

Alden’s torch hissed and went out, leaving only that sinister glow to guide him. His chest burned, veins glowing brighter than ever, and the hunger gnawed at him with unbearable force. He staggered, clutching the wall, whispering to himself, “I am not one of them.” But the root whispered louder, “Feed, bind, endure.

” From the stairwell above came the sound of footsteps, soft, deliberate. Alden froze. A figure emerged into the chamber, torch light, revealing the face of a man he didn’t know, yet somehow recognized. His features bore the colder bloodline, pale and sharp, eyes gleaming with the same ember that coursed through Alden’s veins.

“You made it this far,” the man said calmly, almost reverently. “The root has chosen you.” Alden’s hand trembled over the dagger at his belt. “I didn’t choose this.” The man smiled faintly. No one ever does. We only choose how it ends. Sacrifice or surrender. The covenant endures through blood or through you. He gestured to the deis, its spirals glowing as if eager for flesh. The hollow weights.

The hunger in Alden surged, dragging his gaze to the stranger’s throat, to the steady pulse beneath his skin. His body shivered with the urge to strike. He forced himself to step back, pressing his spine against the cold stone wall. I won’t feed it. The man tilted his head, pity in his emberlit eyes. Then it will feed through you.

Suddenly, the chamber shook, roots splitting through the floor, curling around Alden’s legs. The stranger raised his arms, chanting the words of the covenant. Kneel, bind, endure. The roots constricted, their thorns piercing Alden’s skin drawing blood. The deis pulsed brighter, drinking the drops as they fell.

Alden screamed, the hunger roaring in his ears, his dagger slipped into his hand, the blade trembling as he raised it. In that instant, the root’s voice thundered within him, demanding one life to seal its bond. He looked at the stranger, at the smug certainty in his emberlit stare, and Alden chose. With a cry that shook the chamber, he hurled himself forward, driving the dagger into the man’s chest.

The stranger’s eyes widened in shock, ember light flickering out as his blood poured across the altar. The roots convulsed, writhing, drinking greedily from the offering. The deis blazed crimson, the chamber filled with blinding light. Olden collapsed, the roots releasing him as the glow subsided. The stranger’s body was gone, consumed. Silence followed, thick and final.

Alden lay on the cold stone, his veins dimming, the hunger receding to a whisper. The covenant was not broken, but for now it was sated. He rose slowly, torch sputtering back to life in his hand, and climbed the stairwell toward the ruined chapel above. Outside dawn painted the valley gold, the mist thinning at last. Yet Alden knew the hollow would never let him go. He carried its vow.