CHAPTER 57: CHAPTER 57 — HOLLOW LINES

The west upper hall had always been the quiet wing of Grim Hollow. It wasn’t strategic, not like the barracks corridor Bright defended, nor essential like the supply trenches or the lower armory. It was a long passage overlooking the jagged cliffside, thin windows lining the wall like half-closed eyes.

Tonight, that quiet wasn’t peace.

It was pressure.

Silas stood at the far end of the hall, knuckles white around his daggers, trying to ignore how his breath fogged in the cold air. The torches along the walls flickered with uneven light, their flames shivering like they felt the same thing he did.

Something was coming.

Something big.

And as a low-initiate his chances of coming out of this alive and unbroken where close to none.

But drey was never a betting man, he planned to skew his odds just a little bit, to help himself.

Behind him, Corporal Verrick checked each soldier with a practiced eye. The man had the rigid posture of someone who’d fought in too many sieges and survived them all by following rules as if they were oxygen.

A conflicted man he may be; his facade as an inconspicuous man being led by scions of nobility was in the basis of him being brought up at House Cavendish.

"Positions!" Verrick barked. "If you can’t hold your own footing, you die. If you break formation, someone else dies. If you panic—"

"We all die?" Rhys offered dryly.

Verrick shot him a flat stare.

"...Yes."

Silas allowed himself a tiny exhale. For all the second lieutenant’s gusto, his voice still had that effect — a tiny relief valve in a place built on tension.

Rhys wasn’t originally meant for this post. His father, brother to the ruling patriarch of House Cavendish, had saw to it that he got assigned to the army as a formality.

But for the Republic’s army, its formality carried a certain truth. He’d been handed a cozy post at a supply depot a year ago—noble backing had secured him a command there. He performed miserably, and the reprieve didn’t last. Now he’d been reassigned to this death trap.

But he stayed calm.

Always calm.

Even now, as crawlers stirred beyond the frost-coated windows, Rhys adjusted the wrap around his forearm with methodical care.

The man didn’t fear battle; hardly anyone forged in the School at central did. It was akin to a seasoned swimmer braving the open sea yet shrinking from a sprinkle of rain.

Silas at the other hand decided to play into his role as an assassin in this battle, only going for kill shots and using his soul talent to keep the crawlers focus away from him.

He was confident he wouldn’t die; too many distractions and warm bodies stood between him and the crawlers for them to ever reach him.

Verrick moved to Silas’ side, voice low. "I understand you advanced only recently. A fleeting triumph. Remember your duty—you will not shirk it. I would prefer not to record a young soldier like you as AWOL in the midst of battle... though escape is impossible regardless."

Silas nodded, face blank. "Understood."

"Good. Keep your head steady. Don’t think too much."

Silas swallowed.

He’d always thought too much.

It was the habit that kept him alive—

and the flaw that kept him uncertain.

His jaw tightened as an old memory bled through the cracks.

A voice, barely above a whisper, escaped him:

"I’ve been at the mercy of men who were just following orders.

Never again."

Rhys leaned against the wall, glancing toward the windows where the first threads of movement twitched in the dark.

"You feel that?" he murmured.

Everyone did.

A vibration.

Soft at first.

Then firmer.

Like something scraping the stone far below them.

Crawlers.

Climbing.

Their bodies hitting the cliffside in dozens, then hundreds, like a moving carpet of limbs.

A soldier braced his spear against his forearm. "How many do you think?"

Rhys checked the pattern of vibrations again, closing his eyes briefly.

"...Too many."

Verrick exhaled sharply. "Then we hold until the Captain sends the signal."

Silas wondered if that would come in time or even come at all.

He knew the corporal’s talk of a "signal" was bullshit—just a glimmer of hope thrown their way. There was no joy in an endless battle when there was no promise of where it led.

He didn’t say it.

He already saw the fear in the soldiers behind them. Four defenders — five including him. Not nearly enough to cover a hallway that stretched nearly forty meters.

But that was what remained.

Everyone else had been moved or evacuated earlier.

Everywhere else had priority.

This was a holding line, not a fortress.

"It’s the door barricaded?" Verrick asked.

"Yes, Corporal," one of the soldiers said quickly.

"What about the windows, they reinforced?"

"Only as much as possible," Rhys said. "The stone here’s old. If a heavy crawler hits it—"

The window nearest the far end cracked.

Just a hairline fracture.

But loud.

Too loud.

Everyone froze.

Verrick hissed, "Positions!"

Silas’ heart slammed once, hard, and his senses sharpened like someone pulled a cord inside his skull. Every sound in the hall grew distinct:

The hum of the torch.

The air pushing through the corridor’s throat-like narrowness.

The scratch of something just outside the wall.

Then—

A shadow passed across the window.

Fast.

Wrong.

Moving like something with too many joints.

Silas raised his dagger.

"Lieutenant," Verrick whispered, "how many now?"

Rhys didn’t answer immediately.

His eyes were unfocused.

Listening.

Reading the stone beneath his boots.

"It’s not a wave," he finally said, voice thin. "It’s a fucking flood."

The window shattered.

Glass exploded inward.

A crawler burst through like a living knife.

Silas was already moving.

He thrust his dagger forward, catching the creature beneath its mandibles. Its limbs flailed, its needle-like front legs scraping the walls as it shrieked against the dagger’s blade.

Verrick lunged, cleaving down with his axe and splitting the crawler in half.

Another slammed into the next window.

Then a third.

Then four more.

The hall erupted into chaos.

"FORM UP!" Verrick roared, voice shaking dust from the rafters. "NO GAPS!"

Silas pivoted, blocking the next crawler with a sweeping strike. Rhys moved behind him, pinning another through the eye with a short blade before kicking it off the ledge.

"Left!" Rhys shouted.

Silas turned and drove his spear downward through the skull of a crawler skittering along the wall.

There were too many.

Far too many.

And the stone beneath the remaining windows began to crack.

Silas knew then what Rhys had meant.

A flood.

This wasn’t a probing attack.

It was an extermination.

The hall shuddered as something massive slammed against the outer wall — a crawler twice the size of the others, one of the heavy-breed variants, mandibles thick enough to shear through armor.

Verrick’s face drained of color.

"Captain..." he muttered. "Where are you?"

But Silas knew the Captain was fighting his own battle.

And his aid...

may not come at all.

The massive crawler hit the window again.

Stone buckled.

Silas braced himself.

They weren’t going to survive this normally.

The hall was primed to collapse.

ATHEON — POV

Captain Atheon wiped the blood from his gauntlet, his expression unreadable. The corpses of three crawlers steamed on the stone floor of the command platform, their pummeled limbs twitching like they hadn’t realized they were dead.

Behind him, his elite strike squad gathered in tight formation.

His people.

His crew.

Not strangers.

Atheon exhaled slowly. The torchlight made the scars across his jaw look deeper than usual.

"Captain," Maren said, adjusting the lengthy blade in her arm. "The western hall’s reporting impact tremors."

"I know, we can all hear it from over here" Atheon answered.

"Do we assist?"

"No."

Maren frowned. "Sir—"

"We hold the heart, and that’s here" Atheon interrupted. "If the command platform falls, if I fall, everything falls."

It wasn’t a lie.

But it wasn’t the whole truth.

Atheon moved to the railing, staring across Grim Hollow. He saw the distant windows of the west upper hall shuddering with movement. He heard faint steel-on-chitin echoes carried by the wind.

The newly minted initiate was there.

The brat from cavendish was there.

Men he had trained.

Men he had led.

Men he should have sent backup for.

But his elite squad stayed with him.

He clenched his jaw so tight it hurt.

It was selfish.

He knew it.

He didn’t care.

Better the strangers die.

Better unknown soldiers be torn apart in the corridors.

Better the faceless be damned—

than the ones he knew.

He wasn’t a hero.

He wasn’t pretending to be.

He was a soldier who had watched too many of his own die already. In the Northern Purge. On the ice marches. In the ridge-collapse six years ago when half his squad fell into the ravine while the others screamed their names.

He had few people left.

He intended to keep them breathing.

Maren stepped forward. "Captain... they’ll break the hall soon."

"I know."

"And the men—"

"I know."

Maren hesitated, then lowered his voice.

"You kept us together for a reason, didn’t you, sir?"

Atheon said nothing.

Because the reason was shameful.

Cowardly, even.

Atheon looked at Maren.

She was strong, loyal and steady.

But shaking.

With exhaustion.

They all were; each and everyone of them were coming from the battle with the cult, bruised and battered.

Jorik-POV

Jorik had felt the sharp relief of surviving the Shroud incident—especially after watching his squad leader, Roegan, fall in that nightmare. He’d poured every kill, every scrap of terror and triumph from that ordeal into forcing a breakthrough to Initiate. It had been the crowning moment of his life.

But now, staring at the oncoming tide of abominations—and at the place where his shoulder should have been—he understood the truth. His time had been borrowed, and death had finally come to collect its due.

His stomach knotted.

He’d believed he would be different—stronger, harder to break—but the truth settled heavy in his gut. The captain’s orders to regroup echoed somewhere behind him, distant and meaningless. His will had already snapped. He had no desire to feel crawler teeth closing around him.

With shaking hands, he drew the standard-issue sidearm. One pull of the trigger. The shot staggered him but didn’t end it—Initiates were harder to kill. So he fired again. And again. Until the world finally went quiet.

The group’s morale collapsed the instant they saw the Jorvik turn the gun on himself. Some tried to save him from himself but they were too late.

The ever-present fear the crawlers radiated was finally being put to some use.

Atheon opened his mouth to rally them, to stitch their spirits back together with a few steadying words—but the syllables curdled on his tongue. Nothing he could say survived the taste.

"Captain," His marksman Jake said suddenly. "Large crawler pack approaching our sector."

Atheon straightened, fist rising.

There was no time to mourn, no space for second-guessing. Their duty was to cull the monsters—and that’s exactly what they would do.

"Men!! Positions!"