The hollowed one's breath came in wet, ragged gasps. Its four arms strained against the gold-infused chains, the metal biting into gray flesh. Three legs twitched, the middle one ending in a hooked claw that scraped grooves into the table. Its vertical mouth hung slack, strands of black saliva dripping onto the floor where they sizzled like acid. It tried to struggle free but all was for naught as it's fate was sealed the moment it was captured.
Jack circled the creature, his scalpel catching the flickering lamplight. The blade was ordinary steel—no enchantments, no curses. Just cold, sharp precision. Jack knew his priorities and what he was looking for on the hollowed one , his mind was as focused hunting crocodile.
"You recognize something, don't you?" Jack murmured, tilting his head. "The Hollow Maw's scent on me. Or maybe..." He pressed the scalpel to the hollowed one's temple. "You smell her."
Jack pointed to Elara but at the same time his gaze was way past Elara, he was pointing at her just to ruffle her feathers.
The creature's star-pocked eyes dilated. A shudder ran through its malformed body.
Elara stood by the door, arms crossed. The Starved Saint's power coiled in her gut, restless. She'd spent the last three days forcing it to digest scraps of hatred stolen from bar fights and back-alley grudges. It fought her every time. She knew that her lack of power and her being tied to human morals has led to Jack excluding her in his deeper plans. Even after he remade her to the point that she could feel herself that she was tied to him on deeper level.
Now, watching Jack work, the hunger in her own veins felt trivial.
Martin knelt in the corner, head bowed. His skin had taken on a gray pallor, his fingers elongating into near-claws. The crow inside him was growing. Once it fused perfectly , he could then turn into a crow at will and use more power bestowed by his leige.
"You've spread the whispers?" Jack asked without looking up.
"Yes, my lord." Martin's voice was layered—his own, and beneath it, the rasp of feathers. "The first mark has been placed."
He held up a necklace: an inverted cross, a crow perched atop it. The metal was dull, unremarkable. But when Elara focused, she saw the faintest pulse of darkness in the grooves.
Jack nodded. "Good. Find more. The freshly infected are ideal. Now leave."
Martin vanished into the shadows, the way only Jack's chosen could.
Elara's nails dug into her palms. "What whispers? What are you *doing*, Jack?"
Jack exhaled through his nose, the way one might humor a child. "You're still weak."
"I'm standing right here."
"Barely." The scalpel traced a line down the hollowed one's chest. The creature whimpered. "How much of the Saint's power can you wield? Twenty percent? Less?"
Elara's jaw tightened.
Jack flicked his wrist. The scalpel bit deep. Black blood welled. "Domu's power is mine. Fully digested. Assimilated. The Saint should've been easier for you—gluttony is a human sin. But you're fighting it."
"Because I don't want to eat my way through—"
"Then starve it." Jack's voice cracked like a whip. "Deny it what it craves. Make it submit. The Saint wants meat? Feed it ashes. It wants joy? Force-feed it despair. Break it until it kneels." He leaned closer to the hollowed one, his breath fogging its weeping eyes. "Everything bends, Elara. Even hunger."
The hollowed one spasmed. Jack's free hand clamped its jaw shut.
"Now leave. You're distracting me."
Elara turned on her heel. The door slammed behind her. She was pondering what Jack told her and knew that if implemented as he said , then she could reduce the time to digest the Starved Saint's power.
---
Midnight.
The clocktower bell tolled, shaking dust from the rafters. Jack washed his hands in a basin of tepid water, the blood swirling down the drain in lazy spirals.
The hollowed one lay splayed on the table, its scalp peeled back, skull exposed. Jack had worked methodically, layer by layer, mapping the corruption's spread. The creature's veins were black tributaries, its muscles threaded with filaments of void-stuff.
Most would see only a monster.
Jack saw a blueprint.
His scalpel hovered over the hollowed one's left eye. "You're listening, aren't you?"
The eye pulsed. The pupil split vertically—a second mouth, lined with needle teeth.
"She comes," it hissed.
Jack smiled. "I'm counting on it."
The scalpel plunged.
---
The alley behind the church stank of urine and damp stone. Elara kicked a bottle, watching it shatter against the wall.
Weak.
The word needled her. She'd survived Lorian. She'd let Jack carve her open and remake her. And still, he treated her like glass.
A whisper of feathers.
Martin materialized from the dark, his new claws scraping brick. "He worries for you."
Elara scoffed. "He uses me."
Martin's head tilted, the motion too avian. "Are they different?"
Before she could answer, he pressed the crow-marked necklace into her palm. The metal was warm. Alive.
"The first of many," Martin murmured. "The whispers will spread. The marks will multiply. And when the time comes..."
Elara clenched the necklace. "What then?"
Martin's smile was all teeth. "The city wakes."
---
Jack emerged as the last toll of midnight faded. The hollowed one's remains lay in a heap of twitching meat, its skull hollowed out, its spine extracted.
A crow perched on his shoulder, its beak glistening.
Martin waited at the base of the tower, his form half-shadow. "My lord?"
Jack tossed him the hollowed one's spine. "Plant it beneath the slaughterhouse. Let it fester."
Martin caught the spine, his fingers curling around the corrupted bone. "And the marks?"
"Double the whispers. Triple them." Jack's eyes gleamed in the dark. "I want every drunk, every beggar, every lonely soul in this city wearing our sigil by the new moon."
Martin bowed. "As you will it."
Jack watched him go, then turned his face to the sky.
Somewhere beyond the Veil, the Hollow Maw stirred.
And in the depths of the slaughterhouse, something new began to grow.
---