Rebecca pulled her knees up onto the couch, her arms folded protectively over her belly. The dawn light edged its way through the curtains, spilling across the worn rug at her feet. Nathaniel sat across from her, his long frame leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees.
"You asked about Alexander," he began, voice low, steady, but weighted with memory. "He was good. Honest. He loved Tina more than his own breath, Rebecca. That's why the Hollow keeps using his face — because it knows she still carries him here." He tapped lightly against his chest.
Rebecca swallowed hard.
Nathaniel's gaze softened. "That's how it feeds. On memory. On longing. It twists what we ache for most." "Love"
Rebecca pressed her lips together, fighting tears. "And Tina? What did she do? Why do the shadows hiss her name like a curse?"
Nathaniel's expression darkened. For a moment he didn't answer, his jaw flexing as though the words themselves hurt. Finally, he drew a breath.
"Tina thought she could save this town. Save all of us. But she chose wrong." His eyes flicked to the floor, then back to hers, heavy with centuries of sorrow. "She chose Harry Winston."
The name scraped through the air like iron dragged across stone.
Rebecca's pulse spiked. "Harry? But everyone said he vanished too."
"He did," Nathaniel cut in. "Into the Hollow. He offered himself, and Tina bound her bloodline to him, thinking it would hold the shadows at bay. But Harry was no sacrifice. He bent the bargain. He made himself into something the Hollow can't control. That broken tie is why your grandmother was swallowed whole. Why the Hollow gnaws at this town even now."
Rebecca stared at him, her throat tight. "So Tina's sacrifice… it wasn't to the Hollow at all. It was to him."
Nathaniel's eyes glinted with grief. "Yes. And when he returns and he will return the Hollow itself will tremble. Because Harry Winston is not just our nightmare, Rebecca. He is The Hollows nightmare."
The house fell silent. Outside, the birds sang brightly, but inside the walls, Rebecca felt the weight of every word pressing down on her chest.
She looked down at her hands resting over her belly, then back up at Nathaniel. "Then I don't have a choice, do I? I can't just run. I have to finish what Tina couldn't."
Nathaniel's voice softened, almost a vow. "No, Rebecca. You won't finish it alone. Not now,That's why we're bound. Whatever comes Alexander's mistakes, Tina's mistakes, Harry's shadow we face it together."
Rebecca leaned back against the cushions, her body heavy with exhaustion at last. But even as her eyelids fell, she whispered, "Then let him come. We'll be ready."
Nathaniel's gaze lingered on her as she drifted into uneasy sleep, dawn spilling across her face. His hand hovered once over hers, the weight of centuries heavy in his chest.
Outside, the shadows curled back into the earth, waiting for night to fall again.
The house was hushed, dawn's light spilling pale and thin across the curtains. Rebecca had finally drifted into sleep, her breathing steady, her hand still resting over the swell of her belly.
Nathaniel sat on the sofa beside her, silent, watchful. He had lived through centuries of nights, but this one weighed heavier than most. The binding still pulsed through his veins, tying him to her in a way that was both anchoring and dangerous.
As she shifted in her sleep, Rebecca turned onto her side. Without waking, she reached for him, her arm slipping across his chest as if it had always belonged there. Nathaniel stiffened at first, startled by the closeness. But then, something inside him eased. For the first time in too many years, the weight of his watchfulness felt shared.
He let his hand rest lightly over hers, and the contact pulled him backward into memory from years before.
The memory of raised voices and shattered dreams.
His father, Jarred Edgeworth, fists clenched at his side, eyes burning with fury. His uncle, Alexander, standing just as rigid, though his anger came laced with desperation. And in the middle of it all Tina Wewtherman. Young, frightened, her hands cradling the curve of her swollen belly.
"You'll tear the family apart!" Jarred roared, his voice echoing against the stone walls of the Edgeworth estate.
"She's already carrying his blood," James snapped back. "You think keeping her here, binding her to your rules, will stop the Hollow? You're wrong. I'll take her away from this cursed place before it swallows her too."
Tina's eyes had shone with unshed tears, her voice trembling. "Please. Stop. This isn't about your pride it's about the child." Her hand had pressed protectively against her stomach. Deanna.
Nathaniel remembered every detail, though he had been so young then. The way his father's face hardened. The way his uncle's jaw shook with fury. The way the Hollow's hunger had pressed against the walls that night, listening, waiting.
And then the moment the circle fractured. Alexander and Tina fleeing into the dark, while Jarred swore the Hollow would make them pay.
The Hollow took Jarred and Rene that night. Tina returned to The Hollow into the grasp of Harry. Alexander was never seen again.
Nathaniel blinked back to the present, Rebecca's arm warm and solid around him. He closed his eyes, breath steady, the echo of his family's broken choices tightening like iron in his chest.
Another bond broken, he thought. Another bargain that cost us all.
He looked down at Rebecca, her features soft in sleep, her hand brushing against his side as though she knew the storm he carried. He whispered into the quiet, a vow he hadn't spoken in centuries.
"I won't let history repeat itself."
And as the sun climbed higher, Nathaniel sat silent vigil, bound by memory, by blood, and now by her.
Nathaniel drifted into half-sleep on the couch, Rebecca's arm still warm across his chest. The room around him blurred, and the old voices rose again.
But this time, it wasn't his father or uncle. It was Tina.
She was alive again, her hair loose around her shoulders, her belly round with life. Her voice carried through the Edgeworth halls in a whisper, but Nathaniel heard it as clearly as if she stood beside him.
"I loved Alexander," she said softly, her hands folded protectively over her stomach. "I'll always love him. But he's gone. And I must live."
The words were meant for herself a private confession but overheard by Harry, standing in the doorway, his eyes dark, his smile sharp.
"You don't need Alexander," Harry raged, stepping closer, his presence filling the space like smoke. "You need power. You need me. I can give you a way to keep your children safe, to keep you safe. The Hollow cannot touch what I bind."
Nathaniel felt the sting of memory the night Tina agreed. He had begged her not to but he was just a child with tears in his eyes.But grief and fear made her blind. The Hollow wanted this it was the beginning of the domino effect.
She bound herself to Harry.
The energy that surged into her was wrong from the start sharp, searing, tainted. Toxic. Tina gasped, clutching her belly as if fire had poured through her veins. The Hollow had twisted Harry already, and she had pulled all of it into herself.
She gave him children Deanna, Samuel, and Thomas but every birth left her weaker, every year more hollow-eyed, as though she carried not just life but poison.
And Harry? He rotted. His body grew frail, his skin pale, his strength devoured by the bargain. The Hollow had made him its instrument, and in binding to Tina, he had poured his sickness into her line. Bedbound, he lingered, his anger curdling into venom, until the night he vanished into the Hollow entirely.
Nathaniel stirred in his chair, the memory cutting deep. Tina's voice lingered even as the vision faded. "I loved Alexander. But I chose wrong. And it broke us all."
The dream shifted again.
Nathaniel wasn't himself not yet born, not yet bound to flesh. He floated in a memory that wasn't his, pressed cold into his bones by the Hollow.
The river boiled with autumn rain, its surface black, restless, alive. On the far bank, Samuel laughed, a boy of seventeen, daring the swollen current with his friends. Nathaniel could feel the thrill in him, the sharp edge of pride.
Then the splash. The laughter twisted into screams. Samuel's arms thrashed above the waterline, his voice breaking as the river dragged him under.
Nathaniel felt the pull of the Hollow there, like hands beneath the surface, clutching, greedy. The water wasn't just current it was hunger. It wrapped around Samuel's legs, pulling him deeper, muffling his cries into silence.
The dream carried him to the shore, where Tina's screams ripped the night open. She threw herself into the river, but others held her back, her voice breaking on her son's name.
And then nothing. The river smoothed, the current quieted, and Samuel was gone. No body, no sign, only the thick taste of the Hollow pressed into every drop.
Nathaniel woke inside the dream, understanding what the Hollow had shown him this had happened before him, before Rebecca, before the circle had fractured. He should not have known it, but the Hollow wanted him to carry it, to feel the weight of Samuel's drowning as if it were his own.
He shivered in the chair, Rebecca's arm draped across him in her sleep, the echo of rushing water still roaring in his ears.
Rebecca shifted in her sleep, her hand sliding against his chest, grounding him again. Nathaniel opened his eyes, his jaw tight with unspoken vows.
Never again.
The Hollow had taken too much from their bloodlines already. It would not have Rebecca. Not if he could help it.