Page 91 of Hollowed

But for ruin.

Because I was done pretending I could be whole without the hands that had hollowed me.

I walked.

Back toward the stone.

Back toward the man who tied silence into my skin like scripture.

Because he was the only vow I had ever meant.

And I needed to be ruined by him again.

ChapterFourteen

He looked smallerwhen I returned.

Not diminished. Not broken.

Just—hollowed.

Like the shape of him had stayed, but the man inside had been scraped thinner by every breath I didn’t take beside him.

The chapel hadn’t changed.

The stone still bled cold into the soles of my feet.

The altar still loomed like it had never been touched, though we’d both bled on it.

But he?—

He had unraveled in silence.

His hair was looser than I’d ever seen it, falling over his shoulders in thick, tangled strands. The color dulled at the ends, like he hadn’t touched water since I left. His cheeks were sharper. The hollows beneath his eyes darker. His mouth, cracked.

He looked like someone who had forgotten what it meant to be touched.

I wanted to reach for him.

But I waited.

Because this ache—this ruin—I needed to see it first. I needed to witness what my absence had carved.

He knelt at the base of the altar.

Not like a man repenting.

Like a man who didn’t remember how to rise.

The firepit was cold.

The basin dry.

The candle wax on the floor had hardened into pale streaks, like rivers turned to bone.

Dust covered the edge of the altar.

His robe hung limp around his frame.

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