----------"The hole always collects its due"- The collector-----------
On days when no tremor shook the earth, the priests said that the gods slept. Orrhollow's abyss still breathed slowly as it always has. The wind that rose from its gullet carried with it a thousand sounds, faint howls, the rush of unseen waters, voices that could not be understood. Some said that they were the death-throes of an ancient empire buried long ago within the hole, whose inhabitants has turned to monsters. Others claimed that it was nothing but the shifting of earth and air. But to Jalen, they were something else entirely.
Jalen was one amongst the many first ringsorphans. His parents were long gone. Killed by the monster break that happened when he was only eight.
Jalen had learned, from the time he could walk barefoot on the cracked plated stones that paved the streets of the First Ring, that the Hole whispered to him differently than to others. Not as a curse, he thought. Though some called him cursed, he felt as if the abyss were leaning close, speaking secrets in his ear while everyone else heard only wind.
This morning, the air was restless.
Jalen carried a basket on his shoulder, trudging along the broken causeway that wound the circumference of the First Ring. The boy was wiry, all sharp angles and sinew, his growth stunted by years of thin rations of the first ring. His skin was a sun-browned bronze, weathered and cracked from wind and ash. A jagged scar ran across his right forearm like a thin long broken branch, a souvenir from when he'd fallen on shattered stone as a child. His dark hair thick and dusty, but hacked unevenly short with a dull blade, stuck up at odd angles. It made no difference as hair did not matter in the first ring, only coin and food did.
His eyes were the one feature people remembered. Grey, but not dull, a strange, storm-cloud hue that seemed to shimmer when he stared too long into the Hole. It unnerved the other scavengers. They said no bottom ringer should have eyes like that, as though the abyss itself had painted them.
Jalen's clothes were little more than rags -- a patched tunic that hung loose on his narrow frame, a rope belt holding it together, and trousers frayed at the hem that barely reached his feet. His feet were wrapped in strips of cloth instead of shoes, already stained with dried blood from the jagged stones.
From where he walked, the kingdom stretched above him in dizzying terraces. Rings segregated them. Walls upon walls, stacked higher than he could see, each ring home to a different stratum of Orrhollow's people, traders and artisans in the mid-rings, nobles and scholars in the upper tiers, and, highest of all, the palace of obsidian and gold, perched like a crown on the rim overlooking the entirety of the abyss.
He was a boy of the First Ring. A scrap-collector. A nobody.
The smell of ash stung his nose. He adjusted his basket and quickened his pace. The basket contained the remains of abyssal spores, pale motes that drifted up from the Hole at night and stuck to stones near the rim. Gather enough of them, and the alchemists would pay a copper coin for each handful. Enough copper meant bread, or if fortune smiled, a stew with a shred of meat. He had been collecting since before dawn, brushing the glowing dust from the rocks and walls, ignoring how it burned faintly against his skin.
Most scavengers were quick to sell their spores to the guilds. Jalen lingered. He liked to watch the fog curling from the Hole when the sun rose, shifting in hues of violet, grey and black. But what he liked even more was the silence that sometimes followed a tremor, when the whispers were clearest.
Not that anyone believed him.
"Boy!"
The shout came from a distance. He turned. A patrol of Hollow Guards marched along the causeway, their polished iron helms reflecting the morning sun. People scattered from their path--fishmongers, scavengers, beggars alike-- for the guards had a way of enforcing the king's law with fists, boots and whips as often as with words.
Jalen dropped his gaze, hunching his shoulders. With his lanky build and ragged clothes, he blended into the faceless crowd that parted way for the guards. If they saw his basket, they might take it. Or worse, accuse him of hoarding spores for heretical rites. More than one scrap-collector had disappeared into the dungeons under such charges.
But the patrol did not stop for him. They passed, shouting at others, demanding coins or pressing for information that the bottom-folk never knew. Jalen exhaled slowly and continued along the wall.
The path ended at an overlook — a wide stone platform jutting out toward the Hole. It had no railing, only a cracked flat stone jutting into the hole, as if daring the unwary to slip. Priests said the overlook was a place of offering, where once sacrifices had been cast into the abyss to seal old pacts by the ancients.
Jalen often came here.
He sat at the edge now, legs dangling over the abyss, basket at his side. Below him stretched nothing but darkness. The dark fog rising and falling like the breath of a leviathan. An endless throat that seemed to swallow light itself.
He leaned forward. "I can hear you."
The words vanished into the mist. No echo. No reply. But in his chest, he felt it — that low vibration, the same one that hummed during the dawn quake.
A shadow fell across him.
"You'll fall in if you sit like that."
Jalen stiffened and turned around to find that a girl stood a few paces behind him, wrapped in a cloak of rough wool. Her blonde hair was cropped short, her eyes sharp. She carried a staff notched with strange sigils — not the markings of a priest, but of a Hollow Scholar. One of the students at Blackmirrth, the only academy that teaches magic in Orrhollow.
He scrambled to his feet, clutching the basket to his chest. His thin shoulders hunched instinctively, his posture always half-apologetic, as though expecting a blow. "I wasn't...."
"Don't lie," she said flatly. "You were listening."
His throat went dry. "To… what?"
Her lips curved faintly, though it was not a kind smile. "The Hole. That's what you do, isn't it?" She looked at him like an interesting specimen.
No one had ever said that to him before. Not aloud.
Jalen swallowed. "Who are you?"
"A student of the Academy." She tapped the staff against the stone, as if the word alone should command respect. "I came to see the spore levels. The priests claimed last night's bloom was unusually strong."
Jalen hesitated. Then, against his better judgment, he held out the basket. "I collected some."
Her eyes flicked to it, and for a moment he thought she would seize it. Instead, she leaned closer, studying the faint glow. "Impressive. You gathered more than half the guild collectors did."
He shifted uncomfortably. His scarred hands tightened around the handle of the basket. "Do you… want it?"
She shook her head. "Keep it. You'll need it more."
The way she said it unsettled him, as though she knew something he didn't. Before he could ask, the ground shuddered.
Not a tremor this time - a true quake. The overlook cracked beneath their feet. Jalen stumbled, his bare-wrapped feet slipping on the dust, clutching the basket as stones rained from the walls. The fog below swirled violently. From the depths came a sound that froze his blood.
Not the wind or the stone.
A cry.
Low, drawn out, rising until it became so deep that it pierced the marrow of his bones.
The girl raised her staff, chanting in a tongue Jalen did not recognize. Symbols flared along its length, casting pale light against the fog. "Back!" she shouted, seizing his arm.
They staggered away from the edge as a fissure split the flagstones where he had been sitting seconds before. Stones tumbled into the abyss, vanishing into darkness without a splash. The cry faded, but the echoes lingered, as though the Hole itself had spoken.
When silence returned, Jalen realized his hands were trembling so badly some spores spilled from his basket. The pale dust clung to his skin, glowing faintly against the grime and old scars.
He looked at the girl. "What was that?"
She did not answer immediately. She stared at the Hole, her expression grim, as though confirming a suspicion. At last she whispered, "Something is waking."
The rest of the day unfolded like a fever dream.
Word spread quickly through the First Ring - another quake, another cry. Some said it was the gods demanding more sacrifices. Others said it was the abyss birthing new monsters. Priests marched the streets, ringing bells, chanting and urging people to donate offerings. Guards patrolled more aggressively, seizing anyone who spoke heresy too loudly.
Jalen tried to lose himself in the crowd, clutching his basket tight, but he could not shake the sound of that wail. Nor could he forget the girl's words.
When night fell, the Hole glowed faintly from within. A pale light, pulsing like the heartbeat of some vast creature.
Jalen sat alone in his hovel, spores spread before him. He should have been grinding them into powder to sell, but instead he listened.
The whispers were louder tonight.
And clearer.
A voice, deep as the earth itself, rumbled through his skull:
"Child of the Hollow. Come closer."
Jalen's breath caught. He pressed his scarred palms to his ears, but the words were inside him, not around him.
He remembered the fissure at the overlook. The girl's staff glowing. The cry from the depths. The sound felt similar, eerie and deep.
Slowly, as if in a trance, he rose. The spores glowed brighter, as if urging him on. He stepped out into the night, his ragged tunic fluttering in the Hole's endless wind. He looked towards the abyss.
And the abyss whispered his name.
"Jalen"