The girl dug silently, her small hands clawing at the earth beneath the cherry blossom tree. The petals fell like pale pink snow, whispering around her like ghosts, clinging to her tangled hair and tear-streaked cheeks. Her fingernails split and bled as she scraped at the cold soil, but she didn't stop. She couldn't.
"Sora! Stop!" cried her brother, Ren, barely 14 years old, his voice sharp with panic. He ran down the slope barefoot, slipping in the wet grass, his heart thudding louder than the wind through the trees. "Please! Don't do this!"
But Sora didn't flinch. Her eyes—once so bright, so full of mischief—were wide and distant now. Golden, like candlelight flickering in an empty house. She looked past him, through him, as if hearing something only she could understand—something older and deeper than the world itself, humming from beneath the ground.
Ren grabbed her arms, tried to pull her back. "You promised!" he shouted. "You said we'd go catch fireflies tonight. You said you'd braid my hair like Mom used to. You said—" His voice cracked, a sob cutting him off.
She blinked, slowly. For a moment, it looked like she was coming back. Her fingers curled weakly around his. Her lips moved. He leaned closer.
"…I'm sorry," she whispered.
Then she let go, and turned back to the hole.
Rain began to fall, soft and steady. He wrapped his arms around her, trying to lift her out, but she writhed in his grip like something possessed. She kicked and screamed—not in fear, but in fury. It wasn't her voice anymore.
He couldn't hold her. She was too strong. Too determined. She slipped through his grasp and lowered herself into the shallow grave like it was a bed.
Ren ran for help. He screamed until his throat was raw. But no one came.
And by morning, the hole was filled.
The earth was smooth. Unbroken. Not a single mark left behind.
He dropped to his knees and clawed at the soil with his bare hands, screaming her name. *"Sora! SORA!"*
He dug until his nails tore and his fingers bled.
He dug until the sun rose and the birds began to sing.
And finally, he found her.
Cold.
Still.
Smiling.
As if the earth had given her peace.
Ren crumpled beside her, mud-streaked and broken, his hands trembling as he held what was left of his sister.
If you pressed your ear to the ground that day, you could still hear it:
A heartbeat.
Slow.
Alien.
Pulsing from the roots below.
They called it *The Hollowing*.
A disease with no cure. No warning signs. No mercy.
Just an insatiable, inescapable urge…
…to bury yourself alive.
---
Seven Years Later
Ren Kuroda, became one of the best doctors even with his young age
And he knew some information none of the normal people has to knew , They named it The Hollowing — but science never approved of poetry.
It begins with silence. No fever. No rash. No infection markers in the bloodstream. The patient behaves normally until one day, without warning, they develop an overwhelming compulsion to dig. Not with tools. Not in graveyards. Always by hand. Always in soil.
We now call this Stage 1: The Calling.
Victims describe the feeling as a low hum beneath the earth. Some hear whispers. Some claim it's the voice of a loved one. They become restless, insomniac, often drawn to trees or places tied to childhood memories. EEG scans during this phase show synchronized theta waves, as if the brain is listening to something.
Stage 2: Descent.
The subject begins digging. Often in the middle of the night. They will ignore pain, exhaustion, even violence, to complete their self-made grave. Once the hole is complete, they enter it willingly—lying down as if preparing for sleep.
CT scans from recovered cases (very rare) show organic changes during this stage: skin hardening to a bark-like texture, heartbeat slowing to less than ten beats per minute, and a shift in neural activity to the limbic system, associated with instinct, memory, and emotion. It's as if the body is preparing for a second kind of life—beneath.
Stage 3: Integration.
Once the subject is fully buried, the soil closes over them. No suffocation. No decomposition. The body is somehow preserved—and transformed. When excavation is attempted within the first 24 hours, the corpse appears serene, almost… peaceful. After that, attempts to retrieve the body fail. The ground rejects us.
Most disturbingly, seismic sensors near known burial sites register a single, rhythmic pulse. Like a heartbeat. But deeper. Not human.
.* * * * *
"Big brother… why won't you save me?"
The memory tore through him each time he closed his eyes: Sora, barefoot beneath the cherry blossom tree, digging her own grave with shaking hands. Her golden eyes glowing with something not quite human. Her voice barely a whisper as the earth swallowed her whole.
She had been Patient Zero.
His sister.
His failure.
"Director Kuroda!"
Dr. miko Shimura's voice crackled through the comms, dragging him back to the present. The holographic monitor above his desk glowed to life, projecting the live feed from Sector 5: a man in a business suit kneeling in the middle of a park, clawing at the soil like a frantic animal. His irises shimmered faint violet—Stage 3.
Ren's grip tightened around his stethoscope. "No. Not again. Send a containment team—now."
"Too late," miko replied grimly. Onscreen, the man collapsed sideways into his half-dug grave. Soil poured over him like a hungry wave. Within seconds, the earth was flat. Smooth. Undisturbed.
Ren slammed his fist on the desk. The monitor flickered. Somewhere, a machine beeped like a ticking clock he couldn't silence.
"Dammit!"
miko's voice softened. "Ren… you can't save everyone."
His voice was low. Hollow. "But I can save the next one."
He turned on his heel, storming out of the lab. His coat billowed behind him like a trailing ghost. The corridor was lined with missing posters—smiling faces now lost beneath the ground. Most were worn, torn, long forgotten.
But one remained untouched at the very end: Sora's.
She looked barely ten in the photo. Her smile was crooked. Her eyes were bright.
And Ren's heart cracked, just a little more.
Agent Haruto Takeda leaned casually against the wall beside her photo, arms crossed, an amused expression dancing on his face. His black tactical uniform looked too clean. Too distant from the grief in this place.
"The Prime Minister wants your progress report," Takeda said flatly. "I hope it's more useful than your tantrums."
Ren didn't slow his pace. "Negligence buries people alive, Takeda. What's your excuse?"
The agent raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Cute. But without a cure, you're just a rat digging its own grave."
Ren stopped walking.
He didn't turn. Didn't respond.
Just stared at Sora's poster, his reflection flickering faintly over her face.
And beneath his breath, he muttered
"Then I'll dig through hell if I have to.".
* * * * *
Next week The GHU lab hummed with sterile, suffocating silence. The flicker of blue-white lights overhead felt more like surgical knives than illumination, slicing the room into cold, clinical pieces. Shadows twitched on the floor like dying things.
Ren stood motionless beside the reinforced medical bed, eyes fixed on the girl strapped down before him.
Mei Sato, 16. No known relatives. No home address. No friends. Just another lost face in a world that buried its children before they ever had the chance to live.
"I'm already dead," she had said when she volunteered. Her voice had no weight. Her eyes were glassy voids. "Might as well die useful."
He hadn't asked her to explain.
He didn't need to.
Dr. Aiko Shimura stood at the edge of the room, her fingers clenched around her tablet like she could squeeze the fear out of it. Her voice trembled despite her best efforts to sound firm. "Ren… this is wrong. We haven't finished the cellular stabilizer. We don't even know if—"
"We're out of time," Ren said.
And it was true. The infection curve had spiked. Entire sectors were disappearing underground. The Hollowing didn't wait for ethics or approvals.
Ren lifted the syringe with shaking hands. The liquid inside shimmered like twilight—deep purple fading to black, with streaks of silver swirling like dying stars.
Project Eclipse. His last card. His last sin.
He didn't say a word as he injected the serum into Mei's IV line.
The monitors beeped once.
Then flatlined.
miko gasped. "Ren—she's crashing!"
But he didn't move. He just stood there, watching.
Waiting.
A second passed.
Then another.
Then—
THUMP.
The sound rattled the machines. Not from the monitor, but from Mei.
Her body convulsed violently, arching off the shattered mattress like a puppet yanked by invisible strings. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream before her lungs found voice—a guttural, primal roar that vibrated through the lab like the cracking of the earth itself.
Her bones snapped audibly, reshaping beneath her skin with gruesome efficiency. Veins turned black. Flesh swelled and stretched, muscle layering over muscle until her frame towered into something inhuman. Her skin darkened—first blue, then violet, then that haunting bruised-purple tone Ren had seen only in the test subjects that didn't survive. The restraints tore like paper.
The bed split beneath her.
She rose from the wreckage.
Her 220 centimeters tall. Golden irises glowing like molten metal. Skin like living obsidian breath steamed in the chilled lab air.
A titan.
A monster.
A miracle.
"What… am I?" she rasped, her voice deep and broken, like stone grinding against stone. She looked down at her hands—twice their size, fingers tipped with claw-like nails—and then back at him.
Ren took a shaky step back, hitting the wall behind him.
What have I done?
She was still Mei. Her heartbeat registered. Her brain activity was stable. But she was something else now. Something the world had no name for.
His hands trembled. His mouth was dry.
"You're…" He swallowed hard, the word catching in his throat.
"…a survivor."
He smiled a sadistic smile
Ren hadn't slept in two days.
The labs were quiet now, but the echoes lingered—screams, shattering glass, the roar of a girl who wasn't a girl anymore. The transformation had been violent. Beautiful, in a terrifying way. Mei Sato's golden eyes haunted him still—those flickering, inhuman irises that danced between rage and confusion, between pleading and fury. Eyes that asked a question she couldn't form.
Why did you do this to me?
She was quarantined in the GHU's maximum-security wing—a monolithic vault buried three floors below the main lab, walls reinforced with adaptive nanosteel meant for biohazard containment. The kind of place used to house viral weapons. Or now, a sixteen-year-old girl.
Ren stood outside her cell. The glass was ten inches thick. It didn't matter.
Through the reinforced barrier, Mei loomed in shadow—220 centimeters of trembling, mutated flesh. Her massive form was hunched into a corner like a broken marionette, knees drawn to her chest, claws twitching as if they still remembered tearing through restraints. Her breaths came in ragged, furnace-hot bursts that fogged the barrier.
Ren's own reflection floated over her form, pale and ghostlike. A doctor-shaped echo. A failed brother. A scientist who had gambled with something sacred.
Her eyes snapped open.
"Why won't you look at me, Doctor?" Her voice rattled the air vents—low and metallic, like it came from deep beneath the world.
Ren's hands tightened on his clipboard until the corners dug into his palms. "I'm… analyzing your vitals."
A low snort. Derisive. Too human.
"Liar."
She moved faster than he could process—her arm lashed out and slammed into the glass, claws splayed wide. The entire chamber shuddered. Spiderweb cracks bloomed across the transparent wall, shrill alarms screaming to life.
Guards rushed into the observation deck, rifles raised, safeties off. The air turned into ice.
Ren stepped forward instinctively, planting himself between the weapons and the cell.
"Stand down!" he barked, his voice cracking with exhaustion and fury. "She's not attacking. She's terrified."
"Doctor Kuroda, the subject is unstable—"
"She's not a subject," Ren snapped. "She's a child."
The guards hesitated.
Inside the cell, Mei's golden eyes narrowed. Her lip curled slightly, revealing teeth like jagged porcelain.
"Smart doctor," she said, tone dripping with something old and bitter. "Stupid hero."
She stood fully then, bones cracking audibly as she unfolded her body. Her head nearly touched the ceiling. Her shadow swallowed the chamber.
Ren's voice dropped. "You volunteered, Mei. I didn't force you."
"Because I had nothing left," she whispered. "You knew that. You saw it in my chart."
He flinched.
Her eyes locked onto him, fierce and mournful. "Did you hope I'd die, so you wouldn't have to face me like this?"
"No," Ren said, too quickly.
"Then why do you look like you're already grieving?"
The silence thickened. The hum of the fluorescent lights overhead sounded like a scream dragged out too long.
Aiko stood at the edge of the room, arms folded. She hadn't said a word during the exchange. When Ren finally turned to her, her face was unreadable.
"She's stabilizing," Ren said quietly, more to himself than to her. "No cellular breakdown. No neural collapse. This… it worked."
"At what cost?" Aiko asked, eyes on Mei. "You've saved her body. But what have you done to her soul?"
Ren didn't answer.
Instead, he sat on the bench outside the glass, clipboard forgotten at his feet. He watched Mei curl back into herself, her massive frame trembling as she fought not to cry. Her sobs were silent but shook the entire room.
Ren whispered, "I just wanted to save someone… this time."
The GHU board glared at Ren through flickering holographic screens, their pixelated faces arranged in a cold semi-circle like digital judges presiding over a public execution. Each one bore the same look—disbelief shaded by fury.
"You turned a child into a weapon," snarled the American representative, her avatar glitching in red-tinted rage. "Do you even understand what you've unleashed?"
Ren stood tall, though his spine ached from exhaustion. "I saved her life."
"Saved?" The Russian envoy scoffed, slamming a virtual fist onto his desk. The hologram cracked with simulated static. "You took a girl and turned her into a lab-grown nightmare! The media is calling her a demon—an ogre! One of our surveillance satellites caught her silhouette through the facility's windows. It's already trending worldwide. The Prime Minister wants her dissected before she sparks a panic."
Ren's nails bit into his palms, fists clenched so tight they trembled. "Her name is Mei Sato. She volunteered. She's still a person."
"Not anymore," Agent Takeda said coolly from the back of the room, where he leaned against the wall with infuriating ease. His black tactical uniform was spotless, his expression unreadable behind his usual smirk. Slowly, he polished a combat knife with a cloth, the steel gleaming beneath the fluorescents.
"A person?" Takeda repeated. "No. What you made… isn't. Her fingerprints no longer register in the global database. Her DNA mutated beyond recognition. Her strength exceeds any containment protocol we have on file. She's not human, Ren. She's a military asset."
Ren turned on him, voice low and venomous. "She's not yours to command."
Takeda raised an eyebrow, slipping the blade back into its sheath. "And yet here we are. The government funded Project Eclipse. We let you play god. Now it's time to collect dividends."
"Is that all she is to you?" Ren snapped. "A return on investment?"
The Chinese delegate's voice chimed in then, quiet and deliberate. "Doctor Kuroda, the GHU was not established to breed monsters. We exist to protect the future of humanity. Not to rewrite its definition."
"She is the future," Ren said. "Not the version you wanted—but maybe the version we deserve. If The Hollowing continues to spread unchecked, more will die. Or worse—bury themselves alive while we watch."
"She's the first Argwan," miko added, stepping forward, her voice calm but steely. "We don't even know the limits of her cognition, her stability. But she's alive. And she remembers who she is. That means something."
The board fell silent for a moment.
Then Takeda stepped forward. "The government has plans for your monsters, Director Kuroda. Whether you cooperate or not. You can either help us… or watch as we turn your miracle into a weaponized protocol."
Ren said nothing. His heart thundered.
But in his mind, he saw a cherry blossom tree swaying under morning light, and a girl with brown eyes whispering, "Big brother… why won't you save me?"
He had already lost one sister to the ground.
He wouldn't lose another to men in suits.
* * * * *
1:15 AM – Mei's Cell
The corridor was dead quiet, lit only by flickering fluorescent strips. The usual hum of biometric sensors and cameras had fallen into a hush, as if the building itself held its breath. Ren moved alone through the dimly lit halls, past steel doors and sterile walls, toward the lowest level of the GHU complex—the place they kept her.
The reinforced glass of Mei's containment cell glowed with a faint blue hue. Ren keyed in his access code and approached slowly.
She lay curled in the far corner, her massive frame barely fitting inside the space that had once been a decontamination unit. Her purple-toned skin shimmered faintly in the dim light, wrapped loosely in a tangle of blankets she had ripped from her cot. Her hospital gown lay in shreds, crumpled and forgotten in a corner. She looked like something out of a dying myth—a fallen goddess, exiled and forsaken.
Ren's heart twisted at the sight.
"I brought you something," he murmured, crouching to slide a small metal tray through the food slot.
Mei stirred, golden eyes flickering open. For a moment, something almost childlike passed through her gaze. She sniffed the air once.
"Takoyaki?"
Ren offered a faint smile. "Your file said it was your favorite."
She moved with eerie grace, despite her size—like a predator that hadn't yet decided if it wanted to kill or cry. She knelt at the slot, her claws tapping against the metal as she pulled the tray through. One bite, and the food was gone.
She licked her lips and stared at the tray. "Tastes like ash now."
Ren hesitated, unsure how to answer. "I'm sorry."
"For saving me?" she asked, tone dry. Her laugh came jagged and bitter, like a landslide breaking loose. "Or for making me a freak?"
"For not asking you if you wanted this."
Her eyes narrowed into slits. "You did ask. I said yes."
"You were sixteen. You were dying. That's not consent—that's desperation."
"Still my choice."
Ren looked down. He wanted to argue, but he couldn't. Not honestly. Silence fell between them like a curtain.
Then Mei leaned forward, her massive form pressing close to the glass. Her breath fogged the surface, and her golden eyes bore into him like twin lanterns.
"If you feel so guilty," she whispered, "then let me out."
Ren's heart skipped. "Mei…"
"I'm not your experiment anymore. I'm not a case file or a goddamn poster child. You said I was a survivor." Her tone twisted, mocking. "So let me survive."
"I can't," Ren said quietly.
Mei's lips curled in a cruel smile, revealing jagged teeth. "Then you're just like them."
She turned away, curling up again, silent as stone.
3:00 AM – Takeda's Offer
Ren returned to his office and stopped dead in his tracks.
Agent Takeda sat behind his desk, boots kicked up, arms behind his head, grinning like he owned the place. The live security feed played behind him—Mei pacing her cell like a caged beast.
"Quite the creation," Takeda said. "She'd make a hell of a poster for national defense."
Ren's voice was like a blade. "Get out."
But Takeda didn't move. Instead, he tossed a thick dossier onto the desk. The folder landed with a sickening thud, its edges worn, its contents clear without needing to be read—photos of subjects. Candidates. Desperate people.
"The Prime Minister approved Phase 2," Takeda said, voice casual. "Fifty new subjects. Volunteers, inmates, terminal cases. All expendable."
"No." Ren didn't even look at the file.
"Oh, come on," Takeda leaned forward. "Imagine it. An army of Argwans. Self-healing, unstoppable. Drop one into an infected zone—boom, problem solved. We end The Hollowing in weeks."
"You don't want to end it," Ren whispered. "You want to own it."
Takeda's grin didn't falter. "Innovation requires sacrifice, Director."
Ren's jaw clenched. "You want to mass-produce monsters."
"No," Takeda said. "Weapons. Yours was just the prototype. Beautiful work, by the way. But unstable. Emotional. Soft."
"She's a human being."
Takeda stood, sliding the combat knife back into his belt with a quiet snick. "Not for long. The question is—how many lives will you let her take before we shut her down?"
5:00 AM – The First Escape
The alarm shattered Ren's shallow sleep like glass.
He bolted upright, heart pounding. Emergency lights bathed the hallway in deep crimson. Sirens screamed in every corridor. Doors slammed shut one by one, activating lockdown protocols.
miko burst into the room, her lab coat stained with soot and something darker.
"Ren!" she shouted, tablet flashing. "Mei's gone! She breached the cell and tore through six guards like paper!"
Ren scrambled to his feet. "Is she—did she—?"
"No fatalities," Aiko said, breathless. "Broken bones. Concussions. But she didn't kill anyone."
That shouldn't have been possible.
He grabbed his coat and sprinted toward the lower levels, past overturned carts and shattered lights. When he reached the cell, the reinforced wall was bent outward like peeled tin. Sparks spat from torn wires. Blood—just a little—dotted the floor. Not hers.
But what stopped him cold were the words scratched into the titanium door.
Four words, scorched deep with claw and fury:
"FIND ME BEFORE THEY DO."
Ren stared at the message, his own reflection trembling in the polished metal.
She'd given him a head start.
But someone else would be chasing her now.
And they wouldn't bring food