The night was still, but Hollow Creek High felt like a dying thing.
Lena and Dre stood in front of the old gym, flashlights flickering. The door hung loose on one hinge, creaking with every gust of wind.
"This place has been closed off for years," Dre whispered.
"Because it's buried under here," Lena replied. "The root. The thing that started everything."
Dre held out a baseball bat wrapped in torn wires. "Let's go find it and make it wish it never woke up."
They pushed the gym doors open.
Inside, the floor was cracked, as if something beneath had tried to break free.
A trapdoor waited in the center.
Lena knelt beside it. "This was never for maintenance."
She opened it.
The smell hit first — rot, old dirt, something alive.
They climbed down the ladder, one rung at a time.
---
The Tunnel
The flashlight beams barely cut through the dark.
The tunnel stretched for miles — roots lining the walls, pulsing slightly like veins.
"Do you hear that?" Dre asked.
Lena nodded. A heartbeat. Faint. Deep.
They followed the sound until the tunnel opened into a massive underground chamber — a cavern.
In the center, a living tree grew upside-down from the ceiling, its roots hanging like nooses.
And below it… Kai.
He knelt alone in the center of a blood-marked circle, breathing hard. His arms were wrapped in black vines, but he wasn't unconscious.
He looked up, eyes half-black.
"Lena," he whispered. "You have to end me."
She froze. "No."
"You don't understand. It's using me. My blood. My voice. It's almost done."
Lena stepped forward. "Then help us stop it."
---
The Hollow Speaks
The cavern trembled. The roots twitched.
Then a voice, deep and impossible, echoed from the walls.
> "You came too late, child of the broken line."
Lena clutched the book. "Shut up."
> "We were buried, but you remembered. You fed us with fear. You fed us with names. Now, we rise."
Suddenly, vines lashed toward them. Dre swung his bat, shattering a few, but more came.
Lena ran toward Kai, pulling the book from her backpack. "This ends now."
Kai's hand shot out — black veins glowing. "The page," he gasped. "Read it. Page 77."
Lena opened the book. Page 77 glowed red-hot.
The words were in the old language, but somehow — somehow — she understood:
> "By blood forgotten,
by name betrayed,
let the root that chokes the world
be cast into flame."
She shouted the words.
The tree screamed.
Flames erupted from the ground in a ring around the circle.
The vines holding Kai sizzled — and snapped.
He collapsed into Lena's arms.
---
Collapse
The cavern began to fall.
Roots tore from the walls. Rocks crashed down.
"We have to go!" Dre yelled.
Lena pulled Kai up.
Together, they ran. Back through the tunnel, up the ladder, bursting through the gym doors just as the earth behind them caved in with a roar.
---
Silence
The gym was silent now.
So was the school.
Lena sat beside Kai, both of them breathing hard, covered in ash and dirt.
Dre sat across from them, still gripping his bat.
"So," Dre said finally, "was that the end?"
Lena stared at the horizon.
And then whispered:
> "No. That was just the first root."