There was no sound but the shifting of his own breath. Not the echo of wind or the distant drip of water — only that steady rhythm, shallow and uncertain, as Katsuro stood frozen at the edge of the vast chamber. It didn't feel natural. This place — this hollow where the cave thickened and the walls gave way to darkness — was far too quiet. Like it had never been meant to be found. Like it remembered silence better than it remembered sound.
He took a step forward. The stone beneath his feet was smooth, worn down by time or something older than time. Every grain seemed pressed by the weight of things that had passed through before him. And yet, the space ahead was devoid of any mark of life. No footprints. No moss. Just the hollow, yawning mouth of the chasm that split the room in two.
His fingers brushed the wall to his left. Cold. Dry. Ancient. The walls themselves breathed unease. Not in a way he could explain, but in how they pressed down on his chest, slow and heavy, like invisible fingers curling under his ribs. He swallowed but it felt like nothing moved down his throat. It stayed there — lodged like a stone.
He tried to speak. Tried to force out even a sound, a word, anything. Nothing. Not even a whisper escaped him. It had been like this since he woke. Voice gone. Memory gone. Name — gone. What remained was a body, a mind, and the ache of a question too large for thought.
Why was he here?
Not just in this hollow. In this world. In this place that didn't make sense. Where light didn't behave the way it should. Where pain felt sharper, colder, and more personal. Where even the system that guided him — that emotionless voice with its square brackets and sterile tone — refused to offer comfort.
It guided. But it never answered.
He knelt slowly at the edge of the pit. It wasn't a crack. It was deliberate. Circular. Wide enough to swallow a house whole, and so deep that even when he dropped a loose stone into the void, there was no echo. No sound of it ever landing. The darkness inside didn't feel like absence — it felt like presence. Like it was waiting.
He stared into it for too long. He knew it. Felt his heartbeat begin to change — the rhythm not his own. Slower. Deeper. More… ancient. The kind of beat you feel in your bones when you're alone too long in an unfamiliar place.
[ SYSTEM WARNING ]
[ HOLLOW INTERFERENCE DETECTED ]
[ MENTAL INSTABILITY RISK: RISING ]
He blinked. Looked away. The message was brief — mechanical, like always — but it tugged him back from that dark rhythm. Still, a question bloomed in his chest.
What was the Hollow?
Why had it been capitalized? And why did the presence feel… familiar? He should have felt only fear. But there was more to it. Like he was standing not at the edge of death, but at the edge of something half-remembered — a place he had been before in a dream long forgotten.
Another step forward and the whispers began. Not voices, not truly — but sensations shaped like words. Like thoughts he didn't author.
"Not ready."
"Not yet."
"Not again."
Each one struck a different chord inside him, like tuning forks set against the back of his skull. He staggered back from the edge, heart hammering, but the whispers did not recede. If anything, they followed.
He turned — and saw it.
Across the chasm, faintly visible in the pale glow of the chamber's stones — a shape. A figure. Chained. Long hair obscuring most of its face, body limp but not lifeless. Its wrists bound to rings that had been carved directly into the rock. Not just bound — imprisoned.
He stared. Not out of curiosity. Not out of fear. He stared because some part of him felt recognized. That thing — that being — knew him.
It raised its head slowly.
Eyes — pale, almost silver — met his.
And his knees nearly buckled.
Not from power.
From memory.
It wasn't that he knew this being. But rather — that it knew him. Not in the way strangers do. In the way time does. In the way pain does. In the way truths buried deep in the bones always remember their shape.
The figure smiled.
A sad, weary thing.
"You've come too soon," it said.
Katsuro tried to speak. Still nothing. Only breath. Only a tightness in his chest that had no name.
"You were supposed to forget," it said again. "You were supposed to sleep."
He shook his head. He didn't understand. He had never understood. But the sadness in that voice — it almost made him fall.
[ SYSTEM INTERRUPT ]
[ THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN ENTITY — PASSIVE ]
[ SUGGESTED ACTION: RETREAT IMMEDIATELY ]
A low rumble started beneath the stone. The pit glowed for a single second — violet light rising from within like a breath held for a thousand years.
"Run," the chained figure said softly. Not a threat. Not a warning.
A gift.
Katsuro did.
He turned without thinking, breath held, legs moving like they were made to flee. The walls shifted around him. Paths that were there before now vanished. Other cracks appeared. The cave was alive with response — not anger. Not malice. Just… awareness.
He didn't stop until he reached the chamber he started from. He fell to his knees, panting, arms braced against the cold stone floor. Blood from his scraped palms dripped slowly.
He had seen something.
Something real.
Something that remembered him — even if he didn't remember himself.
And the Hollow had whispered his truth:
He was never meant to wake up.
[ SYSTEM UPDATE ]
[ NEW OBJECTIVE: SEEK THE NAME YOU LOST ]
He stared at the message.
Then — for the first time — he wanted to scream.