Blood and Sparks: The Edge of Power Chapter 22: The Hunger Beyond the Veil

The light swallowed whole.

But it wasn’t light.

It wasn’t anything.

Not fire. Not energy. Not warmth.

Just—hunger.

A vast, unending appetite that didn’t roar or rage but simply was. A presence so absolute it defied comprehension, pressing against from all directions, seeping into the spaces where my thoughts used to live. I wasn’t falling anymore. I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t even existing the way I used to—not in the way I understood existence, with edges and boundaries and a sense of .

I wasn’t.

And yet—I was aware.

I could still feel my heartbeat, faint and erratic, a stubborn rhythm thudding beneath my skin, pulsing like a war drum in a world stripped of sound. My body still existed—sowhere—but it didn’t feel like mine anymore. It felt borrowed, stretched thin across sothing impossibly vast, a canvas pulled taut over a fra too large to hold. My nerves buzzed with kinetic energy, a restless hum that crackled beneath the surface, but it had nowhere to go. No outlet. No purpose.

The hunger around pressed closer, curling around the edges of my thoughts like smoke, pulling at my mind with delicate, probing tendrils—fingers tracing through still water, leaving ripples in their wake. It wasn’t attacking. It wasn’t even trying to consu , not yet. It was testing. Tasting. Sampling like so rare specin, dissecting the pieces of what I was—or what I thought I was—without ever drawing blood.

I gritted my teeth, instinct urging to move, to fight, to push back against this suffocating void. But I had no limbs to swing. I tried to breathe, to draw in air and steady myself, but there was no air to take—just an absence so complete it mocked the idea of lungs. I tried to fight back—but against what? There was nothing to strike, nothing to resist, just this endless, patient want that enveloped like a second skin.

A voice echoed through the emptiness.

Not through my ears.

Through .

It reverberated in my bones, vibrated through my skull, stitched itself into the fabric of my being.

"You are... incomplete."

The words weren’t spoken—they were known. A truth imposed upon , undeniable and cold. The pressure in my skull twisted, a dull ache blooming behind my eyes as though sothing was rooting around in there, sifting through the clutter of my mind. My thoughts shuddered, fracturing under the weight of it, splitting apart only to be pieced back together in shapes I didn’t recognize. My body—wherever it was—felt like it was being rewritten, line by line, by sothing I couldn’t grasp.

Not pain.

Not yet.

But the promise of it lingered, sharp and inevitable, a blade held just above the skin.

The pressure around shifted, subtle but deliberate, and suddenly—I wasn’t alone.

The Watchers in the Hollow

Shapes rose from the emptiness, erging from the void like shadows cast by a light that didn’t exist.

Not creatures. Not beings.

Just... fragnts.

Half-ford things, aborted attempts at creation, caught in the act of becoming but never crossing the finish line. They hovered in the distance, flickering in and out of focus, their edges stretching and warping like ripples across deep, dark water. So were vaguely humanoid, silhouettes with too-long limbs or torsos that bent at impossible angles. Others were shapeless, amorphous sars of intent, pulsing with a faint, sickly glow.

So of them had faces—or the suggestion of them—smooth planes where features should have been, hollows where mouths might have opened. So of them had eyes, glistening orbs that caught no light, staring without seeing. None of them had a voice. And yet—they were speaking to .

The knowledge didn’t co in words. It bled into my mind like ink into water, slow and invasive, pooling in the crevices of my consciousness. It wasn’t communication—it was imposition. mories flooded , unbidden and alien. Thousands. Millions. Visions of worlds I’d never seen, places I couldn’t comprehend—sprawling cities of glass and bone, oceans that burned under twin suns, skies fractured by storms of light and shadow. Civilizations that rose and crumbled, their histories written in languages I couldn’t read but sohow understood.

They had all fallen.

Not to war.

Not to ti.

To this.

To Hunger.

Not a force.

Not a creature.

Sothing deeper, older, more primal than either. Sothing that had existed before existence itself had a na, a void that gnawed at the edges of reality until nothing remained. The Hollow wasn’t a place—it was a wound. A scar left in the fabric of the universe where sothing far worse had torn through, leaving behind an emptiness that rembered what it had taken. And now—it wanted .

"You are unfinished," the voice said again, rippling through , breaking apart my thoughts and reassembling them into sothing jagged and unfamiliar. "But you are useful."

The words sank into , heavy and cold, and I felt my body again—slowly pulling back into itself, sensation returning in jagged, stuttering bursts. My fingers twitched, phantom sparks dancing across my knuckles. My skin burned, a raw, electric heat that raced along my nerves. My heartbeat slamd against my ribs, too loud, too fast, a desperate protest against the silence.

Sothing had grabbed —sothing inside this nothingness. I couldn’t see it, couldn’t pin it down, but I could feel it curling through my body, coiling into my bones, threading itself into the marrow. It reached deeper, probing for the system inside —the kinetic core that had kept alive through every fight, every wound, every impossible odds.

And the system fought back.

System Error: Unknown Interference Detected

A warning flashed through my skull, sharp and insistent, flooding my mind with a cascade of cold, clinical data.

System Alert:

Foreign Presence Detected.

Psionic Contamination Reaching Critical Levels.

Potential Integration: 87% Compatible.

Host Status: Unstable.

Recomnded Actions: Isolate. Resist. Submit.

That last word hit like a punch to the gut.

Submit.

I ground my teeth, my jaw locking so hard I thought it might crack. "Not a chance," I snarled, the words clawing their way out of my throat even though there was no air to carry them.

The Hollow shuddered around —not a tremor, not a quake, but a ripple, like the surface of a pond disturbed by a single drop. The hunger pulsed, pressing in closer, but it wasn’t anger. It wasn’t offense. It was curiosity—a slow, deliberate tilt of interest, as though it hadn’t expected to push back. As though it had assud I’d simply let go, dissolve into it like all the others before .

My limbs snapped back into place, sensation flooding back in a violent rush—sound, light, pain, all crashing into at once. My knees buckled under the weight of it, but I caught myself, hands slamming against sothing solid. The swirling black emptiness had shifted, hardening into a surface beneath my feet. It wasn’t smooth anymore, wasn’t liquid or air—it was stone. Or at least, it was trying to be. Cold and uneven, it felt like an imitation, a copy of sothing the Hollow had glimpsed in a mory it didn’t fully understand.

I straightened, my breath ragged, my pulse pounding in my ears. The Hollow was different now. The void had taken shape—not fully, not perfectly, but enough to anchor . And in front of —It lood out of the darkness, massive and incomprehensible.

It wasn’t made of tal.

It wasn’t made of stone.

It wasn’t even really a gate at all.

It was an idea—a concept given form, an entrance carved from thought rather than matter. A threshold that pulsed with a faint, sickly light, its edges fraying into the void like threads unraveling from a tapestry. It didn’t stand still; it shifted, its shape bending and twisting as though it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A doorway one mont, an arch the next, then a jagged tear in reality itself.

It led sowhere—beyond the Hollow, beyond this wound in existence. I could feel it pulling at , not with force but with a quiet, insistent promise. A whisper of sothing more, sothing greater, sothing I couldn’t turn away from.

And standing at its center—Was Rylan.

Or what was left of him.

His body was whole, but he was fractured, a shell held together by sothing that wasn’t him. His arms hung loosely at his sides, swaying slightly as though caught in a breeze that didn’t exist. His head tilted at an odd angle, his mouth half-open, lips parted like he’d started to speak but forgotten the words halfway through. His skin was pale, too pale, stretched tight over bones that seed sharper than they should have been.

His eyes were wrong.

Not black anymore.

Not hollow.

But filled—brimming with sothing else, sothing that had crawled inside him and decided to stay. They glowed faintly, a dull, unnatural sheen that didn’t reflect the light around us because there was no light to reflect. They were windows to sothing deeper, sothing that watched through him.

He turned toward , his movents slow and deliberate, like a puppet rembering how to pull its own strings. His head tilted further, his jaw working silently for a mont before sound finally erged—not his voice, not his words, not even speech as I knew it. It was a command, a truth carved directly into my mind, searing like fire against my thoughts.

"Step forward, Kai. You are the first in centuries to reach the threshold. The first to be chosen."

The words slamd into , and I staggered back, my hands tightening around my rifle—its familiar weight a lifeline I hadn’t realized I’d reclaid. My skin buzzed with kinetic charge, sparks snapping along my arms, my mind screaming at to run, to fight, to do sothing. But I couldn’t move. My boots were rooted to the stone, my body locked in place by a truth I couldn’t deny.

I had co too far.

I had changed too much.

And the Hollow had been waiting for —patient, eternal, inevitable.

Liv’s voice cut through the dark, sharp and raw with panic, shattering the silence like a gunshot.

"Kai—don’t!"

Her hand grabbed my wrist, her fingers digging into my skin, her own kinetic sparks snapping against mine in a frantic burst of heat and light. She was real—solid, alive, an anchor in this sea of nothing. Her grip tightened, her nails biting into , her breath coming in short, desperate gasps as she pulled back.

I could barely hear her over the roar in my head.

The Gate was pulling in—not physically, not yet, but in my mind. It wasn’t just a doorway. It was a choice, a fork in a road I hadn’t known I was walking. A decision that hung in the air, heavy and final, waiting for to reach out and take it.

The Hollow’s voice slithered through again, soft and certain, threading itself into every crack of my resolve.

"You are already one of us."

And the worst part?

It wasn’t lying.

I could feel it—deep in my core, beneath the kinetic hum, beneath the system’s warnings, beneath the part of that still clung to the na Kai. Sothing had taken root, sothing small but growing, a seed planted in the dark. It wasn’t foreign anymore. It was —or it was becoming , rewriting the edges of who I’d been until I couldn’t tell where I ended and it began.

Liv yanked harder, her voice breaking. "Kai, look at ! You’re still here—you’re still you. Don’t let it take that!"

Her words hit harder than the Hollow’s, sharper than the system’s alerts. I blinked, my vision clearing just enough to see her—wild-eyed, sparks dancing across her skin, her face streaked with dirt and desperation. She was fighting for , clawing back from the edge with everything she had.

But the Gate was still there.

Rylan—or whatever wore his skin—was still watching.

And the Hollow was still waiting.

I took a step back, my boots scraping against the stone, Liv’s grip steadying . My rifle humd in my hands, its charge building, a familiar weight against the chaos. I forced air into my lungs, forced my voice to work.

"I’m not yours," I said, low and rough, spitting the words into the void. "Not yet."

The Hollow didn’t answer.

But it smiled.

I felt it—a shift in the air, a ripple of amusent that wasn’t mine. The Gate pulsed once, bright and blinding, and then—

Darkness.