Chapter 136: THE HOLLOW HOWLS

Toma did not sleep that night.

She tried. She lay still in her tent, wrapped in the spare cloak they gave her, listening to the low murmurs of the watch post around her. But sleep would not come.

Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the earth beneath her fingernails, smelled moss curling in her lungs. The whisper did not return, but the mark on her arm pulsed faintly, spreading now across her forearm in delicate, rootlike tendrils of light.

She covered it with a cloth.

She told no one.

At dawn, she rose before the others.

The forest beyond the palisade looked normal. Ordinary. Unbroken.

But Toma felt it watching.

She passed two guards on patrol. They nodded. She nodded back. No one saw her clenching her teeth to keep from growling.

The stream was colder this morning. Or maybe her skin was just warmer.

Toma knelt, splashing water onto her face, trying not to look too long at her reflection. When she glanced, the second face was gone.

But not forgotten.

“The Alpha will want your report.”

The words came from behind. Familiar, deep.

Captain Brivan stood at the treeline, arms folded across his chest. Older than most in the outpost, broad-shouldered and scarred, he was known for his silence—and for surviving three winters beyond the Grey Vale.

Toma straightened. The cloth over her arm itched. Burned.

“I’ll speak to him,” she said, keeping her voice flat. “Just… not yet.”

Brivan eyed her. “You wandered into the Deeping.”

Toma said nothing.

“You weren’t supposed to patrol that close.”

Still nothing.

Brivan exhaled. Not angry. Just tired. “Whatever you found out there—it’s with you now. I can see it.”

That made her heart stumble. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I do,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. In others.”

Toma looked up sharply.

But Brivan was already turning away.

Back at the camp, the others kept their distance.

Some looked at her with sympathy. Others with suspicion.

No one asked about the mark.

No one asked about Orien—her patrol partner who had not come back.

She tried to remember what happened to him, but the memory frayed every time she reached for it. Like it had been… rooted out.

That night, it howled.

Not a wolf. Not anything she knew.

The sound rose from the woods—not distant, but deep. Close. Like it came from the trees themselves. Like bark had learned to scream.

The guards roused. Weapons drawn. Eyes wide.

But the sound faded, swallowed by the silence that followed. No sign. No tracks.

Just that memory of noise—wet, hollow, and wrong.

Toma sat by the fire, teeth clenched, shaking.

The mark on her arm now reached her shoulder.

And beneath the howling silence, she realized something terrible:

She had heard that sound before.

Not with her ears.

With her bones.

Toma’s fingers trembled as she traced the thin veins of light creeping up her arm. The mark pulsed softly, like a heartbeat pressed beneath her skin. She swallowed hard, but the bitterness of iron lingered in her mouth, and the whisper, barely audible, echoed again in her mind:

You are only the first seed.

The camp around her hummed with uneasy quiet. Guards exchanged glances but said nothing. The Alpha’s shadow loomed in her thoughts—his name a weight she dared not speak aloud.

Night pressed in. The fire cracked, casting long fingers of light that danced like spirits on the canvas walls of her tent.

Then it came—the howl.

Not wolf. Not beast. Something ancient and hollow, as if the forest itself was crying out in pain.

Toma’s breath caught. She stood, heart hammering, eyes fixed on the treeline where darkness seemed to pulse.

The howl faded, leaving behind silence so thick it roared.

A chill ran through her bones.

She was no longer alone.

Great! Here’s what happens next — continuing straight from that tense moment at the edge of the camp.

Toma’s feet moved without thought, carrying her toward the treeline where the howl had died. The cold night air bit at her skin, but the mark on her arm burned warmer with every step.

The forest stood silent, but the air thrummed with something alive—watching.

Her fingers brushed against a low-hanging branch. The leaves shivered, though no wind stirred. She stopped, breath shallow, eyes straining into the black.

Then, from the shadows, a soft voice whispered.

“Toma…”

She spun, heart in her throat, but saw no one.

“Who’s there?” she called, voice cracked and uneven.

Only silence answered.

A sudden movement caught her eye—a flicker of pale moonlight glinting on something just beyond the trees.

She stepped closer.

The ground beneath her feet shifted, almost like a slow pulse. Roots twined through the soil, creeping toward her, delicate and deliberate.

Her mark flared bright. She staggered back.

“Enough,” she gasped, clutching her arm. “Leave me alone.”

But the whisper came again, gentler this time, as if coaxing her.

“You carry the echo. We are inside you now.”

Toma’s vision blurred. The forest’s breath became her own. Her pulse matched the rhythm of roots beneath the earth.

She wasn’t just a watcher anymore.

She was the seed.

Toma’s breath hitched, her pulse thundering louder than the whispering roots beneath her feet. The forest no longer felt distant—it had wrapped itself around her very soul.

She stumbled backward, breath ragged, eyes wide.

“You are the first seed,” the voice repeated, soft but impossible to ignore.

A sudden crack echoed through the trees, sharp and deliberate.

Toma froze.

From the shadows, two glowing eyes blinked open—yellow, unblinking, watching.

Not quite wolf.

Not quite human.

They stepped forward.

And in the dim moonlight, Toma saw the twisted shape of Orien.

His eyes were empty, black as soil, and a terrible smile curved his lips.

“We have been waiting for you,” he whispered.

Toma’s scream caught in her throat.

Because she knew the truth.

Orien was no longer who—or what—he had been.

TBC