Chapter 18: The Hollow Truth
Elias no longer knew where—or when—he was. Time, space, even his sense of self had fractured. He sat in what once was a stone corridor, but it had melted into something unrecognizable. The walls now pulsed like flesh, twitching with a life of their own.
Eyes. Dozens of them. No—hundreds. Peering through cracks in the walls, watching his every move. They knew him. Knew what he had done. What he had become.
He wanted to scream, but every attempt was strangled by invisible fingers around his throat—cold and relentless.
Then, from the wall of flesh, Grayson stepped out.
But it wasn’t Grayson.
His face was blank. Smooth. Featureless like wax. No eyes. No mouth. No nose. Just the silhouette of a man wearing a familiar uniform, exuding a presence that made Elias’s blood freeze.
“Grayson?” Elias whispered, voice shaking.
The creature tilted its head. Then—without a mouth—it laughed. A deep, dissonant sound that echoed from everywhere at once. It wasn’t just laughter. It was a chorus—as if a thousand broken souls were mocking him.
“You’re not real,” Elias whispered, stepping back. “This isn’t real.”
“But it is.” The voice didn’t come from the creature. It came from inside Elias’s mind. “This is what lies beneath the surface. The chapel, the girl, the hunt—they were all distractions. This is the core.”
Suddenly, pain flared in Elias’s temple. Memories—horrifying ones—rushed in like floodwaters breaking a dam.
Emily Thornton, screaming as she was dragged beneath the earth.
Grayson, bleeding out, whispering Elias’s name with his last breath.
And Elias himself—standing in a circle of carved sigils, blood on his hands, smiling.
“No,” Elias gasped. “I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t—”
“You did. And you will again.”
The ceiling above cracked wide open. Crimson light poured down like liquid fire. Elias was no longer standing—he was floating between two realms: the living and the unknown.
And then came the choice.
Stay and accept the truth—embrace what he really was.21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyc5zPhGwFI
Or fall deeper into the unknown, where worse horrors waited.
Elias chose.
He jumped.
🔥 Up Next: Chapter 19 – “The Red Room”21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKjVzYOx5mS
Ready for it? Because this next one’s gonna take the horror and twist it into something you’ve never seen before. Realities will blur, identities will break, and nothing will be what it seems.
