FAMILYR, Chapter 8
The Hollow Summons
Hey friends, this one’s landing a little later than planned (life decided to steal a few weeks from me), but we made it! Chapters 8–10 were especially tricky since I had to tear them apart and rebuild the pacing, but I think it’s starting to click into place now.
Thanks for sticking with me, I’m excited to share what’s next with you.
*Content warnings: violence, gore, animal death, blood, supernatural horror, psychological distress.
Welcome to FAMILYR (Pronounced Familiar). Previous chapters are linked below if you missed them…
Table of Contents
Chapter 2 - On the Edge of Two Worlds
Chapter 3 - Where the Hearth Divides
Chapter 4 - Through Shimmer’s Eyes
Chapter 5 - The Breaking Point
The air collapsed around me, stolen on a single wrong exhale. A hollow yawned where breath should have been, drawing everything impossibly tight. My heartbeat stuttered, then slammed brutal and loud, quickening with the pressure coiling closer. Numbness crept upwards, locking my jaw, blurring the edges of my vision.
The forest leaned in, listening. I hadn’t noticed the rustle and chatter until it was gone. I could feel it: The hush pressed too close, thicker than sound, gnawing at the edge of thought. The kind you know is listening back. The tiny creature before me jolted, wings buzzing in a blur as it bolted for the undergrowth, then faltered in a frantic half-circle. In the span of a blink, it darted back, pressing against my boot as if my shadow might shield it. It quivered there, wings clamped, eyes screwed shut in a stillness that pretended to be invisible.
“What is … this? It’s hard to breathe.” My voice caught, brittle, useless. My hand pressed at my ribs then throat, as if I could peel away the vise cinching my lungs.
Grissel’s face drained to ash. His eyes darted left, right, left again, waiting for something I couldn’t see. His hand hovered near the knife at his hip, knuckles bone-white. “Stars damn it.” His voice came low, clipped, dragging like a growl through broken breath. “You senseless, hollow-brained girl. Now you’ve brought it down on us.”
My stomach dropped at the panic edged in his voice. Gravel crunched under my heel, my body bracing to run before my mind caught up. Something was wrong. Badly wrong.
Vaira drew a long, deliberate breath; her eyes rolled back, snapping shut. A rush of faint, quick words spilled from her mouth in a foreign tongue. She raised her hands, palms outward. The air shivered, bending outward in a luminous pulse. Its touch swept across my skin, frail as morning frost. For a heartbeat, the pressure eased—a fragile relief, like breath slipping into starved lungs. But it was only a ripple, feeble before the weight of an oncoming wave, some vast mind peering closer still.
“This can’t be… it doesn’t make sense.” The words snapped out fast but rang hollow, brittle as a twig underfoot.
Vaira’s chant cut quicker, rising like a blade’s edge. Her arms stretched higher, the shimmer prickling against my skin, slight but insistent. Strands of her hair, pale and shifting as leaves in sunlight, dulled at the edges, darkening like bark left to rot.
The air felt under siege: malice coiling tight and desperate pulses straining to drive it back.
Grissel’s mouth twisted, his words grinding through clenched teeth. “That chant’s thinner than piss-water.” He tore through his cloak and pockets with frantic, jerky movements, hands shaking so hard they barely obeyed him. The air continued to cinch tighter around us, taut as a bowstring across my ribs. He clawed through every fold, breath ragged, until at last he froze, chest heaving. The words ripped out raw: “Rotting hollow take it!” His hand lashed at the air, as if striking the absence itself.
“What is it?” I asked, my breath snagging sharp in my throat.
He spat under his breath. “Forgot my cursèd salt pouch.”
The color had completely drained now from his face. His eyes flicked to me, then back to the woods, like he expected something already circling. When his gaze cut to Vaira, his jaw tightened. The smallest patch on her cheek and forearm began to sink and rot like waterlogged driftwood. She looked hollowed, spent. The ground at her feet withered, grass curling black as if the forest’s strength was bleeding away into her spell. He took a half-step back from the spreading stain, then barked, voice sharp and raw-edged. “Ash it all, root-romancer! That blight’s sweet nothings without blood to nail it down. That thing’s just chewing through it… and you!”
Blood? My throat went dry. “I don’t understand,” I stammered. “Why would you use… what do you mean?”
Vaira’s chant faltered; her body bowed inward, as if something had dragged her under. Then she surged back, rising straighter, arms higher, words tearing out sharper, harsher, desperate. They came brittle, scraped raw, like they were being pulled from an empty well. Her hair lifted, ends crackling with charge, darker streaks bleeding through the strands. Her cheeks hollowed, shadows carving sharp at her bones. Her shimmer flickered and faded like it was being eaten through at the edges. It feels like she’s trying her hardest to shield us. And whatever force pressed back was draining her by the breath. Uselessness crept over me again, a cruel echo mocking my every misstep.
Suddenly her eyes snapped open. Black tears streamed down her cheeks, streaking her jaw. Fierceness blazed there, but behind it lurked something starved and terrifying. Black bloodshot eyes with centers darker than pitch, sunken and wild. The desperation in them struck me harder than the pressure clawing from the trees. Her gaze cut to mine, raw, searing, holding me for a breath, then dropping sharp to the ground at my feet.
A sound tore from her throat, not words, not chant, but a raw storm-gust, wind forced through a canyon, startling in its violence. Before I could flinch, she was upon me.
She seized the helpless creature at my boot, her movement a blur of leaf and wind. One hand closed around it, the other around a stone. Her storming cry broke on a crack—wet, brutal, final: it was a death made sound.
My world tilted.
Blood and brains spattered the bark, streaked her arms, sprayed hot across my cheek. Vaira lifted the ruined body high, chanting more unfamiliar words that made my skin crawl, then hurled what remained against me.
It struck like a slap. Warm. Reeking. Raining down my face, my tunic, dripping to my boots. My mouth forgot itself, lips hanging helpless in horror as iron spilled hot across my tongue. It had clung to me for safety, the way I’ve clung to others my whole life. But still, I couldn’t protect it.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. My body shrieked to flee, heat sparking through me like struck flint, but I stood bound to the ground as the forest shuddered with me. And felt the pressure uncoiled at last, its grip easing.
Vaira’s eyes dropped onto me, crushing me where I stood. Her glare clamped down like an iron cuff, merciless, daring me to look away. Fury and grief burned in her eyes, and for once she said nothing at all. Her hands dripped red from the life she had ended.
I wanted to scream, to scrape the filth from my skin with my nails. But my lungs wouldn’t obey.
Grissel’s knife-hand twitched, then lowered. His mouth opened, closed again. When he finally spoke, his voice came out rough and wrong. “Bloodied hollow, girl.” His throat worked as he swallowed. “You’ve near signed our death writ. Spit a name like that, and it’s no simple word… it’s a summons.”
The words scraped against my ears. Summons? How can that be with just a name? I shook my head, dizzy, bile rising. “I didn’t mean to. I just—”
Vaira’s glare deepened, blazing, feral heat rolling off them so sharp I flinched. “Silence. Learn when your words cost more than they’re worth.” Her tone was colder than I had ever heard from her.
It was a heartbeat that felt eternal… then Aunt Lydia’s voice whispered up in me, warning that names carry power. Guard them, but some, best forgotten.
Grissel blew out a breath that rattled the silence. He glanced at her hands, the ruined mess staining the ground, then at me. His eyes wouldn’t hold still.
I had no words. Nothing would step forward in my thoughts. They all blurred into a jumbled mess of confusion as I just blinked at them, still reeling.
He stepped in, swiped some blood from my sleeve, then worked it across his own skin in rough smears: forearm, then cheek, then the edge of his chest, scrubbing his fingers clean on himself as if daring the stain to stick. “Don’t mind if I do.” His mouth twisted into something meant to be a smirk, but it didn’t reach his eyes. They stayed sharp, jittering, searching the shadows. “Won’t do me a whit of good, you hogging all the stink.”
The air eased at last, the biting cold thinning to autumn’s natural chill. The forest’s grip slackened, and sound slowly seeped back in: a crow croaking far off, the creak of branches.
The creature’s mental grip had loosened, but the echo of its phantom fingers still clutched at my bones.
My legs trembled, blood sticky on my skin, and still Vaira’s glare burned against me. She shook her head, whispered to the roots at her feet, and spat in the dirt.
Her voice rasped low, whatever fire she had left guttered fast. She spoke with weakened anger tangled with sorrow and a bitterness that cut deeper than rage alone. “A debt lies with me. The leafkin will taste this loss, and I must answer. Root and river do not forget. I will kneel in their silence until they are soothed.” Her gaze wavered toward Grissel, threaded through with weariness and grief. “Get her to the tavern. Quickly. The hollow’s grip is broken, but its spawn still prowl. Feral things, hungry for what lingers.” Her very presence exhaled a sigh, her eyes tracing the ruin below with quiet guilt.
Grissel barked back with offense. “Easy for you spitting orders, storm-harloting away, and leaving us boot-dragging through muck!”
Vaira didn’t spare him so much as a glance. Her eyes fixed instead on her own bloodied hands as she raised them, trembling like branches caught in stormlight. “I must return to form, to mend what has been torn. Flesh… will no longer hold me.”
The words cut sharp, final. Her shape had already begun to blur, edges dissolving into leaf and wind, strands of hair lifting as if caught in a current only she could feel. She drifted back, each step unraveling into motion too fluid for flesh. In a breath she was gone, slipping into the forest again like wind through trees. Her glare was her parting gift—heavy with resentment, threaded with despair. The stillness in her wake was heavier than her fury.
Grissel’s hand closed around my elbow, firm, steady, steering me forward. It took a few steps before my mind caught up to my body, before I realized we were moving again.
His voice hummed low beside me, words I barely registered at first, slipping past like rushing water. Then they sharpened into shape.
“Let’s get going before I lose all appetite from this mess… If they’ve got rosemary-brined brisket, I’ll need two plates—one to eat, and one to beg forgiveness for gluttony.” His hand remained steadily fixed on my elbow, guiding me in a quicker stride as he gave a grunt, trudging like a martyr on blistered hooves. “And rootshine ale, or maybe a pint of bramblejack. No… wyrdhive mead. A whole keg of it.” He cut me a sidelong look from under his brow, mouth twisting. “After all the trouble you’ve caused me today, I deserve a little something to settle my nerves.”
I blinked at him, the words sliding over me without sticking. My chest still felt bound, my skin damp and prickling, my thoughts staggering.
The path widened beneath our feet. Through the trees, the tavern crouched low in its clearing, cloaked in ivy and crooked beams, lanterns swaying from its eaves. For a moment, sound teased the air: the faint thread of music, the clink of tankards, laughter bursting raw and sudden, spilling into the night. It should have felt comforting. Safe.
Then came a cry.
Thin. High. Wrong.
It split through me like something enormous had punched hollow into my chest. My feet jolted against the path underfoot, a sharp tremor running up my legs. Gooseflesh broke cold over my arms. For a heartbeat I couldn’t draw breath at all.
The sound came again, sharper, louder.
My body broke loose before I knew it. My boots hammered the dirt, gravel biting up through the soles. They were mine, but didn’t feel like it. My cloak lashed my legs, tunic damp against my chest, every sound too close. I felt unmoored inside it all, as if my body were dragging me forward while my mind lagged behind. Still I ran, headlong toward the cry.
Why am I running? Where am I running? What am I running for? The thoughts battered as wildly as my heartbeat, but none of them slowed me. Only one thing mattered, the helpless cry I had to reach.
More to come. Until next week… ᛟ
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This forest is no joke. If Vaira had to expend themselves just for the Nuckelavee, I can't imagine what other more sinister, larger beings might do to them...
Can I say that it's really enjoyable to read the way you describe the magick scenes. Everything from the way that Vaira's hair moves for currents that only they can feel to the way that she speaks incantations to ward/fight against the malevolent beings... I think what makes it so enjoyable for me is the juxtaposition of power against what is typically painted as a quaint, gentle backdrop, being that of a forest.
Though as we know, there are plenty of forests that don't have its visitors' bests interests at heart...