CHAPTER 55: CHAPTER 55 – THE ONES WHO REMAIN

The wind did not wait for the departing march to vanish into the southern valley before it changed its voice.

A low, keening hum swept through Grim Hollow’s battered stone corridors. Not the mourning whistle of earlier, not the breath of winter slipping through half-shuttered windows—no. This sound was the kind made by an outpost realizing it had been stripped down to its bones. The walls themselves felt colder. The open yards felt wider than they should. The courtyard echoed even when there was no footstep to make it echo.

The workers and fledglings were gone.

Only the fighters remained.

Sergeant Tyven’s voice cracked through the morning frost.

"Keep moving! Stay tight! Don’t break formation!"

The evacuation column snaked across the courtyard like a wavering spine. Workers lugged sacks or clutched children. Fledglings, half-trained and half-scared, stumbled through the snow under the weight of packs too large for their narrow shoulders.

Tyven walked backward at the column’s head, eyes sweeping over every face. He looked exhausted—not physically, but spiritually. Like a man escorting ghosts instead of people.

"Eyes up!" he barked at a few stragglers. "You walk like that out there and a Crawler will have your ankles before you can scream."

He didn’t raise his voice from cruelty. He raised it from fear. He had seen too many green recruits plucked out of life because they didn’t step fast enough.

Beside him, two handlers pushed the med-cart carrying Hailen. His skin had regained some color, but his breathing was shallow, his chest lifting like a struggling bellows. The healers had said he’d live if he reached Vester. No one could promise the same if they’d stayed.

Workers kept their eyes down. Fledglings tried armed their selves, ready for combat.

No one looked back—not because they weren’t heartbroken, but because looking back made it real.

Tyven slowed for only one moment when the southern gate rose fully open. The frost wind rolled through, carrying the scent of pine and the sound of distant snow shifting.

He saluted the outpost once.

A gesture of respect.

And regret.

"All right," he said quietly. "Move."

The column marched into the white fog swallowing the world.

Within minutes, they were gone.

Bright Morgan stood on the elevated walkway until the last silhouette disappeared behind drifting snowfall.

The outpost felt wrong now.

Hollow, ironically. Too fitting a name.

Without the workers shouting instructions, without fledglings fumbling drills, without the constant churn of bodies, the fortress seemed to sag under its own weight—as if aware of its abandonment.

Bright inhaled slowly, letting the cold air burn his lungs.

He felt small.

A soldier left behind to hold a dying place.

As he mulled over his thoughts, another private came to deliver a message.

"Come on. Atheon wants us."

Then he turned and began making his way down the stairs

The elites of the outposts and Initiates were already assembled by the time Bright or Silas walked into the central briefing hall.

It looked different now.

Before the evacuation, this chamber had been a chaotic hub of activity—maps pinned to boards, officers shouting over one another, runners sprinting between rooms. Today, it was still, cold, and half-dark. Only a single lantern burned on the round table, its flame trembling from a draft no one had bothered to seal.

Captain Atheon stood at the head of the table. He had not changed clothes since yesterday. His eyes were sunken, red around the edges, and the scar across his cheek looked deeper from lack of rest.

But the set of his jaw?

That was steel.

Around him stood the remaining defenders:

Atheon’s elite crew, the same one he takes when on missions. First lieutenant Maren serving as a documentation officer for the duration of the meeting.

The pampered pencil pushers led by Rhys as they radiated an authority to them.

The veteran army elites. Aged and hardened by battle with mostly mid Initiate level of strength.

Newcomers to that rank of power like, bright , Jorik and Silas.

Two junior officers who looked like they wanted desperately to be anywhere else.

The skeleton crew of Grim Hollow.

Over a dozen people to hold what once needed four hundred.

Atheon waited until Bright and Silas took their place, then began.

"We have three days," Atheon said, voice low but absolute. "Three days until Tyven reaches Outpost Vester. Three days until relief caravans return for whatever remains of this place."

He looked around slowly.

"In those three days, we expect attacks."

They all knew it.

They had known it even before he spoke.

Atheon continued.

"The Covenant infiltrated us. They crippled our food stores. They timed their strike with our supply drought. All of that was designed to achieve one thing: weaken Grim Hollow so it could be taken without a fight."

Atheon tapped a finger against the table.

"A normal cult would flee after sabotage. The Umbral Covenant is not normal. They believe death is liberation, and they want to give that liberation to others. Grim Hollow was a target chosen with purpose."

A shadow crossed Bright’s mind.

The assassin.

The one who bent joints backward without strain.

The one who moved like he didn’t belong to mortal anatomy. He was still alive and kicking, because bright never saw his body among the corpses sprawled after the event. He was very in tune with his intuition and it told him that targeted danger was felt far away.

Atheon didn’t notice bright’s uneasy shift.

Or he noticed but ignored it.

"Which brings us to our primary issue," the captain said. "We are outnumbered. Outgunned. And this place is large enough for ten times our number to patrol."

Rhys raised a hand. "What’s the plan sir ?"

Atheon took a breath.

"We don’t defend Grim Hollow."

The room stilled.

"What?" Jorik blurted.

Atheon placed both hands on the table. The lantern flame flickered across his scarred face.

"We hold Grim Hollow."

He let that distinction sit.

"Defending this place would mean sealing gates, manning towers, patrolling walls—acting as though we still have the numbers of a full outpost. We don’t. We have a handful of fighters, most of them exhausted. So we hold instead—control chokepoints, deny entry, ambush in confined halls. We make the fortress smaller than it is."

Bright nodded slowly.

That made sense.

Atheon turned to the tactigraph map carved into the center of the table—an etched layout of Grim Hollow.

He tapped three red-marked zones.

"These are your choke points. The inner gate. The mid-level barracks corridor. And the west upper hall."

He pointed at each certain people and made them team up.

Bright was grouped with first lieutenant estova and a corporal named Baggen, both were mid-initiates. They were told to head to the barracks corridor.

Silas and a group of four including Rhys were headed to the west upper hall.

Atheon , his team and others like Jorik would be stationed at the inner gate. Still atheon reserved the right to act independently and join any other choke point in this operation as the only adept taking part in it.

Bright felt a rush of heat settle into his chest.

The barracks corridor was one of the longest in the outpost, with

blind spots as long as forty strides. If the crawlers stormed in, that hallway would turn into a slaughter cage.

He wasn’t sure if Atheon trusted them or was sacrificing them.

Maybe both.

When Atheon dismissed the veterans to prepare, Bright and Silas remained.

Two sparks asked to light an entire fortress.

Atheon turned to them with a different expression—a sharper one.

"Listen closely," he said. "You two are strong—no mistaking that. I’ve read the report on you, Private.

And you, Recruit—I know you were there during the Shroud incident. Surviving that alone sets you apart from most."

He paused, letting the words settle.

"But strength isn’t everything. You’re still kids, with a future ahead of you—at least for now. Don’t throw your lives away trying to look fearless. Learn when to pull back. There’s no shame in surviving."

Silas raised an eyebrow. "That... sounds insulting."

"At your age," Atheon said, "fear hardens into something useful."

Bright didn’t know if that was wisdom or madness.

"At your age," Atheon continued, "you don’t accept dying, I get that . Veterans like me—we’ve accepted it every morning for years. You haven’t. And right now, before the fight starts, I need soldiers who refuse."

The room felt colder.

Atheon leaned closer.

"The crawlers will return. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in numbers. "

Bright swallowed.

Silas chuckled under his breath.

Atheon’s eyes softened—not kindly, but honestly.

"Bright Morgan."

Bright straightened.

Atheon continued quietly, "Try not to let whatever you tapped into consume you. We need a man holding that corridor. Not a feral creature."

Bright looked away.

He didn’t promise anything.

Because he wasn’t sure he could.

Fighting was as much dangerous as it was thrilling.

Atheon dismissed them, adding, "Prepare yourselves. You’ll want to say goodbye to the quiet. It won’t last."

The two Initiates stepped out of the briefing hall into the thin sunlight bleeding through cloud cover.

Snow drifted in lazy spirals.

Silas puffed. "Hope to see you again,private."

Bright met his gaze.

The same thought passed between them.

The cult attacked not at Grim Hollow’s strongest moment—but at its weakest.

Nibbled and chipped away at its foundation ,but the crawlers, they were here for one thing and one thing only— the bodies of men.

They walked along the silent upper walkways, passing banners half-torn by wind, passing the empty training yards where fledglings had once shouted drills at sunrise.

The silence pressed in.

The outpost now breathed like a dying animal.

But its defenders still walked.

Still prepared.

Still refused to give up claim to their roots.

As Bright approached the barracks corridor to inspect choke points, the wind shifted again—carrying a faint metallic tang.

The scent of steel.

The scent of something waiting.

There would be no more slow goodbyes.

Only what came next.

And Bright Morgan tightened his grip on his weapon.

Because he knew—

This wasn’t the end of Grim Hollow.

It was the beginning of its fight for survival.

And he was standing on the front line.