Page 1 of Hollowed

ChapterOne

I knewwhat the red silk meant.

I knew before they dipped it in oil, before they brought the basin to the center of the stone floor, before the eldest among them whispered, “Hold still, daughter.”

I was not her daughter.

And she did not say it like comfort.

The chamber had no windows. Only a hole in the ceiling, far above, where smoke was meant to rise. Where prayers went to die. Where I looked once, and never again. I sat on my knees, naked but for the modest cloth wrapped around my hips, shoulders bare, back arched from the cold. The stone beneath me was not cruel. It was indifferent. It had held hundreds before me.

It would hold hundreds more.

The silence was not empty. It was heavy with breath, with waiting. I could hear the oil thickening as it warmed over the small flame beside the basin. I could smell the ash already stirred into it. Not incense—this wasn’t blessing. This was binding.

I didn’t ask why they chose red. I didn’t ask why they burned the blue robes we had worn for years. I didn’t speak at all. Not because I was obedient. But because I had learned that asking made the hurting worse.

I thought they might hum. Sometimes they did. Low and tuneless. A circle of women pressing sound into our bones so we’d forget what silence was supposed to feel like. But this time, they didn’t.

This time, they were quiet.

A hand gripped my chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just firm enough to tilt my head back. Another hand held the oil. Poured it slow, deliberate, over my forehead. It ran down between my brows, along the bridge of my nose, catching on my lips before sliding to my throat.

“For clarity,” she said.

It stung. The ash. The heat. The indignity.

But I did not flinch.

Another hand. Across my collarbone.

“For silence.”

Oil followed the curve of my neck. Sank into the hollow between my breasts. Crawled like something alive toward my stomach.

A third hand. Pressing low, too low. Palms curved around the bones of my hips, fingers slipping toward the top of my thighs.

“For obedience.”

My skin screamed.

But I didn’t. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

The red silk was brought out last. Drenched. Heavy. Coiled like something dead in the eldest’s arms. She began at my ankles, wrapping tight, winding it up my calves, my knees, my thighs. She paused at my hips, looked at me like I wasn’t supposed to exist, and then wrapped it higher.

Waist. Ribs. Breasts. Shoulders.

She wrapped me like a corpse.

“Stand,” she said.

I did.

The silk clung. The oil made it worse. I felt every breath stretch the fabric. Every inch of me felt touched. Not by hands. By something worse.

Expectation.

I thought maybe, at the end, they would bless me. Speak my name. Give me back some part of myself before they took the rest.

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