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HOLLOW RESURRECTION

CADE

S ilence. Complete, suffocating silence.

Then I gasped, a violent intake of breath like breaking the surface after drowning.

My eyes snapped open, pupils contracting painfully against the sudden intrusion of moonlight.

I lay on my back in a crater of scorched earth, the soil still smoking around my splayed limbs.

The impact radius extended outward in perfect symmetry, as if something had fallen from an impossible height.

Central Park stretched around me, familiar yet wrong. Trees stood like sentinels, their shadows too long, too grasping in the cold night air. My lungs burned with each breath, oxygen feeling foreign after...after what? The memory slipped away, leaving only the residue of fire and screaming.

My clothes hung in tatters, blackened by soot and something darker that flaked away when I moved. Blood. Not mine. The knowledge came without explanation, a certainty that settled in my hollow chest.

I blinked, struggling to breathe against the invisible weight pressing on my sternum.

The city lights flickered through the trees, white, yellow, red, cycling too quickly, like a strobe capturing moments out of sequence.

A distant siren wailed, its pitch fluctuating unnaturally, stretching and compressing as if sound itself was unstable.

Everything felt distorted, like I was underwater. My hands clutched at soil, fingers digging into the earth with desperate intensity. Real. Solid. Not the burning stone of Hell. Not hooks and chains and...

The thought vanished before it fully formed, leaving a taste like copper in my mouth.

I tried to speak, to call out, but my voice emerged as little more than a rasp. My tongue felt swollen, unused. How long since I'd spoken? How long since I'd been... here?

I pushed myself up, muscles protesting as if I'd been disassembled and put back together incorrectly. The world shifted around me, reality flickering like bad reception. One moment, Central Park under moonlight. The next...

Stone walls running with something too thick to be water. Screams echoing from somewhere beyond. The smell of burning flesh, my own, as hands that were hooks that were shadow peeled skin from muscle, muscle from bone.

I jerked away from the vision, a sound escaping my throat that wasn't quite human.

My vision shifted, flickering between two worlds.

The trees around me distorted, branches reaching downward like grasping fingers.

Shadows stretched and twisted into humanoid shapes, their edges too sharp, their centers too dark.

A cold, bony hand grasped my shoulder from behind. I spun, heart hammering, but nothing was there. Just empty air and the distant sound of mocking laughter, high and inhuman. The hallucinations were already starting, bleeding through from whatever place I'd escaped.

I touched my chest instinctively, fingers finding the familiar shape beneath the tatters of my shirt. The mark burned beneath my skin, pulsing with a heartbeat that wasn't synchronized with my own. It felt alive, hungry, responding to my return to the world with eager anticipation.

Something was missing. The realization came without emotion, a simple observation like noting the weather.

A fundamental piece of myself wasn't there anymore, leaving a void that should have been terrifying but instead felt merely.

.. inconvenient. I prodded at the emptiness inside myself with clinical detachment, like tonguing the space where a tooth had been.

The mark pulsed again, hotter this time. Filling the hollow spaces with something that wasn't me but wore my skin like a well-tailored suit. The sensation should have been horrifying. Instead, I simply catalogued it: interesting. Useful, perhaps.

I looked around, taking stock of my surroundings. The crater. The scorched earth. The trees. The distant city lights. All normal, except for the lingering wrongness that colored my perception.

Then, I noticed movement at the edge of my vision. I turned sharply, hunter's instincts still intact despite everything else that had been stripped away.

A figure stood between the trees, watching me. Too tall, too still to be human. Its eyes reflected the moonlight like an animal's, twin points of luminescence in the darkness. It made no move to approach or retreat, simply observed with predatory patience.

Monster? Man? Before I could react, the figure vanished between one blink and the next, leaving only a whisper of laughter in my mind, a sound like glass breaking underwater.

I was being hunted. Or tested. The distinction didn't seem important.

I rose fully to my feet, swaying only slightly. My body remembered its purpose even if parts of my mind did not. I needed to move. To find shelter. To arm myself against whatever had followed me back from the depths.

And beneath those practical concerns, a single thought pulsed in time with the mark on my chest.

Sean.

I forced myself to move, each step a conscious decision. My limbs felt foreign, like I was a marionette held together by invisible strings. Commands traveled from brain to muscle with noticeable delay, as if my nervous system had forgotten its function after disuse.

The simple act of walking required concentration. Lift foot. Move forward. Place down. Shift weight. Repeat. My balance was wrong, center of gravity altered by whatever transformation had occurred in my absence. I stumbled once, catching myself against a tree trunk, bark rough beneath my palm.

The park stretched before me, paths winding through darkness. I chose the one that led toward the glow of streetlights, toward civilization. Toward witnesses that might make whatever was watching me hesitate to approach.

A gust of wind rushed past, carrying intense scents. Blood, asphalt, and Decay. My enhanced senses categorized each input automatically, providing information with machine-like detail.

The sudden sensory assault was overwhelming.

I staggered, one hand pressed to my temple as my brain struggled to process the overload.

The world was too loud, too bright, too everything.

A car horn blared in the distance, the sound spiking through my skull like a blade, reverberating inside my cranium until I thought it might shatter.

I gritted my teeth and kept moving. One foot in front of the other. Toward lights. Toward people. Toward normalcy I could mimic until it felt real.

As I stumbled toward the park's edge, flashes clawed at my mind.

Metal hooks digging into my skin, voices whispering in a language I shouldn't understand but did. Flames licking my bones while something watched, patient and hungry.

I stopped, pressing my hands to my temples, but the images wouldn't fade.

They overlapped with reality, superimposed like double-exposed film.

The path before me ran slick with blood that wasn't there.

The trees burned without being consumed.

Distant screams echoed, though the park was nearly empty at this hour.

I forced myself to breathe. To focus on the physical world. The cold air in my lungs. The gravel crunching beneath my boots. The distant rumble of traffic. Real things. Present things. Not the echo of torments I couldn't fully remember.

What did they do to me? The question formed and dissolved, too dangerous to examine closely. The answer lurked behind a wall in my mind, and some instinct warned that breaching it would destroy what little stability remained to me.

I saw a homeless man huddled near a bench, bundled in layers of ragged clothing against the autumn chill. The man looked up as I approached, his weathered face registering first confusion, then shock, then primal fear.

The man's eyes widened, focusing on something I couldn't see—something about me that triggered deep, instinctive terror. I tried to speak, to reassure, but my voice emerged as little more than a hoarse whisper, the words malformed after so long unused.

“Help,” I managed, the simple request taking enormous effort. “Need... help.”

The homeless man scrambled backward, abandoning his makeshift bed in his haste to create distance. “Not human,” he muttered, eyes never leaving my face. “Not human. Not human.” The words became a panicked litany as he retreated, finally turning to flee into the darkness.

I watched him go, understanding settling like cold lead in my stomach. Whatever had happened to me in Hell, whatever changes had occurred, they were visible to those who knew how to look. The man hadn't seen an injured person—he'd seen a predator wearing human skin.

And he wasn't wrong.

I finally reached the street, the transition from park to city jarring in its abruptness.

Concrete and asphalt replaced grass and dirt.

Streetlights cast harsh illumination that left no shadows to hide in.

Cars passed, their headlights burning trails across my retinas, leaving afterimages that lingered too long.

I stood at the edge of the sidewalk, swaying slightly, taking in the city spread before me.

New York continued its relentless rhythm, oblivious to my return.

People walked past, eyes averted in the practiced isolation of urban dwellers.

No one looked at the blood-stained man with the thousand-yard stare. No one wanted to see.

For a moment, I felt suspended between worlds, no longer in Hell but not fully rejoined with the land of the living. A ghost caught between states of being.

Then my instincts reasserted themselves, pragmatic and clear. I needed clothes. Weapons. Information. I needed to find Sean, Sterling, anyone who might understand what had happened.

I looked up at the skyline, orienting myself with practiced ease. The familiar silhouettes of buildings provided direction, a map I didn't need to consult. I began walking with renewed purpose, each step steadier than the last as my body remembered its function.

I was back. But at what cost?