Emily hit the ground with a thud—soft, not bone-breaking, but jarring. For a moment, all she could do was lie there, dazed, her cheek pressed against something cold and damp. It wasn't dirt. It wasn't grass.
It was stone.
She blinked rapidly, struggling to adjust to the dim glow around her. The light came from high above—a faint, flickering blue ring marking the stone circle she'd fallen through. It hovered impossibly far overhead now, like the mouth of a well, closing slowly as if the forest itself were sealing her fate.
Then it vanished.
She was alone.
Underground.
Trapped.
Emily pushed herself up, muscles aching, and took in her surroundings. The chamber was vast, circular, and completely silent. Its walls were smooth, carved with ancient symbols similar to the ones she'd seen on the standing stones above. They pulsed gently, casting the room in a faint, eerie blue glow.
She wasn't in a forest anymore.
She was in something older.
Something buried.
A faint humming filled the air—not mechanical, not electrical, but organic. Like the slow breathing of something colossal and asleep.
Or pretending to be.
Emily shivered and stood on shaking legs, every instinct screaming to move. To run. To hide.
But there was nowhere to hide down here. The chamber had no corners, no furniture, no shadows to disappear into—just a single tunnel leading deeper into the earth.
She turned slowly, and that's when she saw them.
Footprints.
Dozens of them, made by small, bare feet in the thin layer of dust covering the floor. Some fresh. Some ancient. All leading in the same direction.
Emily swallowed the lump in her throat and followed.
The tunnel was narrow and sloped downward, the air colder with every step. The humming grew louder. Beneath it, she could almost make out words. Not in a language she knew—but familiar in a way that made her skin crawl. Like lullabies she'd forgotten but her bones remembered.
She tried not to listen.
She kept walking.
The tunnel opened suddenly into another chamber—this one filled with old, broken furniture: child-sized beds, school desks, cracked chalkboards, shattered toys. The remnants of a place that had once tried to be safe.
But failed.
At the center of the room was a mirror.
Tall. Ornate. Unbroken.
Emily approached cautiously. Her reflection stared back—filthy, wide-eyed, her hair tangled and matted with dirt. But something was wrong. She leaned closer.
Her reflection wasn't moving.
It blinked too slowly.
Smiled too wide.
And then it stepped forward.
Emily screamed and stumbled back—but didn't hit anything.
Because she hadn't moved.
Her reflection had stepped out of the glass.
It stood before her now, identical in every way but one: its eyes were completely black.
"Who are you?" Emily whispered, her voice trembling.
The reflection tilted its head.
"I'm you," it said. "The part that belongs to the forest now."
It lunged.
Emily ducked just in time, scrambling through the ruined furniture, crashing over broken desks and splintered chairs. Her mirror-self chased her, barefoot and silent, gliding across the floor like smoke. It wasn't trying to kill her. It was trying to replace her.
She ran blindly down another tunnel, heart hammering, the air growing heavier with each breath. Behind her, the echo of her own voice followed—mocking her, laughing.
"Hide and seek, seek and hide,
The forest knows the truth you bide…"
She reached a second chamber—this one full of drawings. The walls were covered with childlike scrawls: stick figures playing tag, smiling suns, houses with triangular roofs.
And then, beneath them—
Horrors.
Dark, jagged shapes with too many limbs.
Children with hollow eyes.
Figures hanging from trees.
One image made her stop cold: a girl, identical to her, surrounded by shadows, her mouth open in a scream.
Emily backed away, breath shallow.
The shadows in the drawings moved.
Subtle at first—barely noticeable—but undeniably alive. The longer she looked, the more they twisted, eyes opening within the black shapes, teeth forming in grins.
She turned and ran again.
Back into the tunnel.
Back toward the voice.
Her reflection stood at the next bend, waiting, calm.
"You can't run from yourself," it said.
Emily clenched her fists. "You're not me."
The thing smiled. "Not yet."
Then it lunged again, faster this time.
But Emily was ready. She ducked under its arm, grabbing a rusted pipe from the floor. As the thing turned, she swung hard, catching it across the face.
It shrieked—a sound that made her ears bleed—and fell back.
The mirror on the far wall cracked.
Emily didn't wait.
She ran to it, heart thundering, and smashed the pipe through the glass.
The mirror exploded in a shower of shards. Her reflection screamed again and dissolved into smoke, vanishing into the cracks of the chamber.
Silence.
Only her ragged breathing remained.
The tunnel ahead glowed faintly—green this time. New.
Emily stepped through.
And found herself in a narrow passage lined with doors.
Hundreds of them.
Each marked with a child's name.
Each one… locked from the outside.
Emily turned to the nearest.
SARAH THOMPKINS — carved deep into the wood, almost angrily.
She tried the knob.
It turned.
The door creaked open.
And inside… was a child-sized bed, untouched. Clean. Still warm.
The room pulsed with sadness so thick it made her chest ache.
But Sarah wasn't inside.
None of them were.
Just the impression of their presence—like ghosts held in place by grief.
Emily stepped back, whispering, "What is this place?"
A voice answered.
Low. Gravelly.
"The Hollow."
She spun, and standing at the end of the hallway was the figure—taller now, more distinct. Its face was still cloaked in shadow, but two pale lights burned where its eyes should be.
"The children belong here now," it said. "Their stories ended when they entered the forest. Yours… is almost over."
Emily's fists clenched at her sides.
"No," she said. "I'm not done yet."
The Hollow didn't move.
But the hallway behind her changed. Doors slammed shut. Walls folded inward. The forest below had decided.
It was time to finish the game.