Entry Nine: The Hollowmarked Returned

Since Hollowmark, sleep has become a fragile thing. When it comes, it brings with it visions like ripples across black glass—soft-footed figures in the undergrowth, songs hummed without voice, and the feeling of being remembered by something vast and wordless. I do not fear it. But I no longer rest.

Last night, I awoke to a silence that felt watched. The kind that breathes behind you, though no wind moves. My lantern—unlit—still cast a weak, flickering glow. Outside the hut, frost feathered the moss in a pattern I didn’t recognize. It led east, toward the clearing, toward the place where nothing grows but the bones of old trees.

And there I saw them.

Not a shadow, not a trick of mind. A figure, still and upright as stone, yet swaying as if to a rhythm only the dead might hear. Cloaked in moss and moth-bitten cloth, with a veil of woven roots obscuring their face. A lantern hung from their belt, dim and cold, but pulsing faintly in rhythm with my breath. Around their wrist: a crown of bramble, dried and thornless.

I knew. Somehow, without explanation or proof—I knew.

They were one of the Hollowmarked.

One of those who offered themselves wholly to the forest, whose names were written in silence and whose stories are spoken only in dream.

They lifted one hand. Not to greet. Not to warn. But to acknowledge—like those who once gathered at The Forgotten Shrine of Hollowmark, where even silence was an offering.

To remember.

And then they were gone—vanishing not in haste, but in stillness. Like mist leaving a stone.

I remained in the clearing long after the Hollowmarked vanished, uncertain if I had even moved. As dawn light filtered through the trees, birdsong slowly returned, and the forest's heavy silence ebbed away like a retreating tide.

At the spot where the figure had stood, I found a token. A small charm, carved from bone, wound with silver thread and bearing a single word etched deep in Nocten script:

Lunethra

“I remember you beyond silence.”

It weighed little in my palm, yet I carried it home with both hands.

They do not speak, the Hollowmarked. They do not guide.

But they return.

And when they do, the forest listens.

So must we.

Comments

  1. Sunwoven Path22 April 2025 at 13:24

    There’s a weight to these words, like footsteps echoing in places once thought forgotten. The Hollowmarked Returned feels both ancient and newly awakened, like something stirred beneath the moss. The way memory coils around the present here—it’s hauntingly beautiful. I felt the lantern flicker a little differently in this one… as if shadows weren’t just waiting, but remembering.

    ☀️ Sunwoven Path

    ReplyDelete

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