Page 48 of Hollowed

I reached out to the place where his chest had pressed against my back, where his hand had cupped my waist in the half-sleep of after, and felt only stone.

The blanket had slipped down my spine. My thighs were bare. His cum had dried between them, sticky and soft like a second skin. I didn’t wipe it away.

I rose slowly, each muscle stretching into ache, each bruise humming beneath the weight of what he’d made me. Not just what he’d done.

What he’d made me.

No candles burned. No fire cracked. The chapel breathed a different kind of quiet—thicker, older. The kind that waits.

I pulled his robe over my body. It hung from my frame like it recognized me. Like it had draped the shoulders of every woman who had come before me. I didn’t like the way that thought settled in my stomach.

I walked barefoot across the nave.

No sound.

No movement.

I didn’t call for him.

I let the chapel guide me. Past the altar. Around the basin. Toward the low arch at the back wall I had never crossed.

The shadows thickened here. Like memory lived in the dust. Like breath had been held too long.

I stepped down into it.

And I found the book.

It was resting on a stone ledge, spine cracked, corners curled. No cloth. No bindings. Just leather worn soft from hands that hadn’t known gentleness.

I didn’t hesitate.

I opened it.

The first pages were blank. Then stained. Then?—

Names.

Hundreds of them.

Some full. Some just initials. A few scratched over so violently the page had torn. Others circled. Underlined. Dated.

There were no explanations. No titles. No context.

Just ink and violence.

And then I found mine.

Aven.

Written not in gold.

Not in red.

In black.

The stroke was hard. Deep. Like he hadn’t wanted to write it but had known he must.

There was no circle around it.

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