Ethan feels like his world spins as the darkness settles in on him. It weighs heavily on his chest, suffocating him. The air becomes thick and cold, and the walls surround him like jaws of an unseen predator closing in around him. The thing, The Hollowed, creeps into existence, its form rippling in and out, like a mirage made of shadows and distorted faces. Each flicker sends chills racing down Ethan's spine, as if reality is unravelling itself before him.
"Ethan!" the voice of Olivia rings sharp with panic bringing him to attention. Her hand tautly grips his arm with urgency but the blackness enveloping them in its grasp seizes them rather, as if by some unseen current, urging them both back. Stumbling, they attempt to break free but the room is changing, warping, and is becoming altogether something new. Pulsated with sickening rhythm, alive in essence, almost like a living organism intent on devouring them whole.
The walls pulse and the floor starts cracking underneath their feet, revealing the black, deep voids underneath. The darkness is living, watching, and waiting, as if it has its own mind. He can almost hear it whispering at him, sounding like a chorus of voices echoing deep in his own mind. Each heartbeat seems like a countdown; every breath a reminder of the leak imminent with danger surrounding them.
Ethan's heart knocks fast, bringing the slowly familiar dread to him, although at this moment, he realizes he is not afraid any longer; he is trapped, swallowed, brought into the belly of something is ancient and hungry. Now, he thinks that it is not just life that is being swallowed. It craves his memories. Memories. He thinks about Irene-her cryptic warnings, the cold encounters in Room 4A. He thinks the whispers, the knocks, the haunting images of his very reflection in the mirror- distorting just as always, always out of reach.
"Irene... " Ethan gasps, attempting to twist towards her but she's gone. Vanished as she normally does when things turn real. The Hollowed is still here. And it is getting stronger, more distinct, and solid with every passing instant. Shadows twist and flicker around it to form formless strange shapes in what seems to mock him. And every flicker is a reminder of the lost faces and buried memories deep inside his mind.
Olivia pulls him back from the edge of the abyss, her eyes wide with panic. "We can't run it, Ethan! We have to retaliate against it." But how? Ethan has nothing-no weapon, no plan. All he has is urgency and that gut-wrenching feeling that every second they waste here is one more second the entity will use to steal them away. Time is very much not on their side.
The thing starts morphing into different kinds of deformed versions of itself, turning and flickering their shapes. They are faces-the memories-people Ethan knows. Distorting, melting, and reshaping, every one of them dons a unique expression of mourning, dread, or rage. The face of his childhood friend Jason, who had completely vanished without a trace. The same sad look spreads across his mother's face, as if she knows more than he does. Every single one of these faces is a reminder of connections he lost and bits of himself slipping away like grains of sand off his fingers.
It's your turn, Ethan. That unmistakable voice was his own, although it was not completely his own. This was his voice, mixed with thousands of incarnations of himself; all echoing from the deep dark cavern. Every whisper of self dispenses long-forgotten secrets and buried fears: guilt of memories he would rather forget. "Olivia-run!" Ethan shouted as blood pounded through his veins. But Olivia does not move at all. Instead, her eyes lock down into his, a peculiar calmness in them, and makes Ethan shiver.
"Ethan..." she whispers. Her voice is different now-distant, almost hollow. "You don't understand. We're already inside it." He felt the reality of her words dawn upon him; his eyes widen as he comes to terms with the facts. Ethan quickly sensed the floor beginning to sink beneath their weight, soft, malleable, as though sinking directly into the walls of the room. The truth comes surging through him in a panic: they are not only trapped physically but also trapped in their own web: the labyrinth of memories and fears woven around them by The Hollowed.
"Olivia, no…" He steps back, horrified. "You're not—" But she's already gone, her form fading into the darkness, leaving only the faintest trace of her presence behind. It's as if she never existed, as if the darkness has swallowed her whole. The Hollowed laughs. It's a low, throaty sound, reverberating through Ethan's chest. The voices multiply, converging, until Ethan can't tell what's real and what's a memory stolen. The more they speak, the more his mind unwinds. Each face he meets is yet another piece lost forever into the thing that wears others.
Then, as if the room itself takes pity on him, the walls rip open to reveal something even more horrendous: Room 4A, in all its eerie perfection, but now it has a little difference. The desks are lined up into straight rows, with students sitting completely motionless, heads bent over and eyes cast downwards. In front stands the teacher, Ms. Caldwell, at the front of the classroom. Smiling, but her eyes are wide—hollow; it seems that they've been sucked clean of all emotions.
She speaks, but the voice is not hers; rather it is that of The Hollowed, reverberating with the cold familiarity that makes every hair on Ethan's skin rise. You shouldn't have come back. It was careful to cut off his breath in his throat. He takes a shaky step forward, legs viscous with the woe of the moment. This is it, this is the moment he's been running from. "Ms. Caldwell?" His voice is hoarse, trembling as he takes another step towards the front of the classroom, desperate for answers.
The smile stretched wider, uncannily wide, to reveal teeth that seemed too sharp, too jagged. "You were never meant to leave." Ice came with those words, and Ethan felt himself shudder under the heat that surged through his chest. To that alone, the gigantic life within the walls pulsated as the shadows became shape and shifted, as if they were watching him, learning him. He felt exposed and vulnerable, as if the very essence of his being were laid bare before this entity that feeds on fear and despair.
Let me wear you. The voice echoes within, rattling his head with the thoughts now, and before he can open his mouth, the classroom shifts again, distorting and blending with the horrific images of the past. He is confronted again by the dead students whose faces have been burnt and have become missing; hovering, yet wholly aware and into being. Their eyes scream the unspeakable pain as they stare at him. Ethan, the memories keep coming back, suffocating inside, saying, "I remember the chaos, the screaming, the flames crawling around my ankles, and ran off, leaving the lost ones behind."
"Please," one of them whispers. "Help me." Ethan takes a step backward, his body feeling heavy with the weight of all the horrors around him. "I can't," he whispers. "I don't know how." The Hollowed's laughter rises to a deafening crescendo, as if defying him: "You already are." And that, too, everything drops into darkness.
He wakes up to find himself lying in the same hallway, outside Room 4A, with the ambience turning cold against his skin. His mind is hazy, and from the weight of the last hours-- no, they must be days-- his entire life feels like a bad dream. His body aches, but, even in sitting up, there's no sight of Olivia or Irene or of anything horrid that he has witnessed just a moment ago. It is as though none of it ever happened. The hallway was eerily quiet, with the fluorescent lights flickering overhead, casting dancing shadows along the walls.
Irony, though, lay in the clutched papers. The same note he had found before-- faded as it was, but still legible: "You shouldn't have come back." Now, Ethan's heart is racing. Deep in his heart, he knew it: The Hollowed has found him and will never let go. But: To Remember Enough to Fight Back?
He feels a flicker of resolve in himself as he sits there, the note pressing against his palm. The Hollowed will not consume him without putting up a fight. He remembers the faces, the voices, the pain of those who had been lost. They deserve to be remembered, have their stories told. That thought inspired him to rise again, moving determination through his blood.
He takes in a mouthful of air and balances himself against the cold wall before whispering to the darkness, "I will remember you, and I will find a way to stop you." The hallway spread out in front of him now-dark and foreboding, but fear couldn't dictate his actions anymore. He needed to face The Hollowed, and this continued to explore him into the depths of his memory, where what was his was lost.
Ethan stepped forward against that darkness once more. He understood that the conflict before him would not be an easy one, but he would not be defined by his past. The Hollowed had taken much from him, but it would not take his will to fight back. With every step, he would gather his courage to face the shadows that lurked within and reclaim what was rightfully his, not without real dangers ahead. But he was no longer just a victim; he was a survivor, and he would not be silenced.