Chapter 5: The Thirst of the Hollows

Chapter 5: The Thirst of the Hollows

The Rust Belt was a graveyard of ambition. Skeletal factories clawed at the perpetually grey sky, their broken windows like hollow eye sockets staring into nothingness. The air, thick with the ghosts of forgotten industry, tasted of rust, old oil, and the chemical tang of decay. It was a place the city had abandoned, leaving it to crumble under the relentless rain. For Elara, it was the perfect hiding spot for a creature that didn't belong.

Her visor cast the derelict landscape in an eerie, digitized green. A single, shimmering thread of cobalt blue pulsed in her vision, a spectral breadcrumb trail laid by the crystalline dust. She had calibrated her scanner to the sample's unique bio-magical signature, the "alien" frequency that had no entry in the Guild's exhaustive archives. The Ghoul Matron’s tip had been precise; the signal grew stronger here, a lonely song of thirst in a landscape already bled dry.

The thread led her to the husk of the Sotek Automations plant. A cathedral of corrugated iron and shattered glass, its cavernous interior was a labyrinth of silent, monolithic machinery. She moved through the shadows like a wraith, her specialized boots silencing her footsteps on the debris-strewn floor. The cobalt thread pulled her deeper, toward the central assembly floor, where the signal flared from a dull glow to a vibrant, throbbing beacon.

She found a perch on a rusted gantry crane, a metal nest forty feet above the factory floor. From here, she had a clear, unobstructed view. Below, a small fire crackled in a rusted-out oil drum, a pathetic circle of warmth in the oppressive cold. Huddled near it was a man, a vagrant wrapped in layers of rags, his face gaunt with hunger. He was unaware he was not alone. He was the bait, or perhaps, simply the opportunity.

Then, a figure detached itself from the deeper shadows.

It was gaunt, unnervingly thin, its form wrapped in worn, modern clothes that hung loosely on its wiry frame. It moved with a desperate, predatory grace, its head low. Elara held her breath, her hand resting on the stock of the alchemical projector holstered at her thigh, a weapon that fired bolts of concentrated neutralizing agents. She wasn't here to engage, only to observe, but readiness was survival.

The creature didn't attack in a conventional sense. There was no savage lunge, no bestial roar. It stopped about ten feet from the vagrant, who finally looked up, his eyes widening in confusion, then terror. He scrambled to his feet, opening his mouth to scream, but the sound that emerged was a choked, dry rasp.

The air between the creature and the man began to shimmer, a heat-haze in the frigid factory. Elara watched, transfixed in horror, as the moisture was visibly pulled from the air, from the man’s body. A faint mist, like steam off hot pavement, streamed from the vagrant’s open mouth and pores, funnelling towards the waiting creature.

The creature’s eyes began to glow with a startling, intense cobalt light, the exact same shade as the energy signature on her visor. It was the colour of the thirst she had felt in the penthouse, a profound and agonizing need made manifest. The creature wasn't drinking blood; it was drinking life itself, all the water that made a person whole.

The vagrant’s scream died as his vocal cords dried out. His skin, slick with sweat a moment before, tightened, turning grey and parchment-like. He fell to his knees, his body convulsing, shrinking in on itself as it was drained. The process was silent, swift, and absolute. Within thirty seconds, all that was left was a weightless, mummified husk, identical to the one in the Eclipse Tower, its face frozen in an expression of silent agony.

As the last wisp of moisture was drawn into the creature, the shimmering in the air intensified and then… precipitated. A fine, glittering dust, the very same crystalline residue she had collected, rained down in a small circle around the new corpse, catching the firelight like a shower of cursed diamonds. The Ghoul Matron’s words echoed in her mind: a hunger that has eaten the very memory of the man. This was it. The full, horrifying cycle.

But then came the surprise. The creature did not look triumphant. It didn't revel in its kill. It doubled over, clutching its stomach, a pained, guttural sound escaping its lips. It looked… wretched. As if it had just ingested poison to stave off a terminal disease. The cobalt glow in its eyes faded, leaving behind a look of profound despair. This wasn't the act of a monster glorying in its power. It was the desperate act of a dying thing, clinging to an agonizing existence.

Elara's professional detachment fractured. She had seen the work of countless monsters, witnessed cruelty and malice in all its supernatural forms. This was different. This was a tragedy.

She had what she came for. More than enough. The process, the byproduct, the creature's appearance—it was all logged. Now was the time to fade back into the shadows, to take this terrifying new data back to the Guild.

Carefully, she began to shift her weight, preparing to retreat along the gantry. Her boot scraped against a loose flake of rust.

The sound was minuscule, barely a whisper in the cavernous space.

But the creature's head snapped up. Its cobalt eyes, blazing back to life, locked directly onto her position. There was no confusion, no searching. It saw her.

Panic, a cold and unfamiliar intruder, spiked in Elara's chest. She scrambled backward, turning to run, but a shadow fell over her.

He was standing at the other end of the gantry, blocking her only escape. He hadn't been there a second ago. He was tall and lean, with dark, dishevelled hair and sunken cheeks that spoke of a long-suffered starvation. He wasn't the same creature from below, but he radiated the same desperate, thirsty energy, though his was coiled with a terrifying level of control and intelligence. And his eyes—they were the source. A brilliant, piercing cobalt blue that seemed to hold all the thirst of his entire species.

He wasn't a mindless beast. He was a leader. He was an alpha.

"You are fast, Janitor," he said, his voice not a monster's growl, but a low, resonant baritone, laced with a weariness that seemed ancient. "Faster than the Covenant's bloodhounds. I'll give you that."

Elara froze, her hand dropping to her weapon. Her mind raced, calculating trajectories, chemical loads, escape routes. There were none. He stood between her and the way out, a silhouette against the factory's broken windows, emanating an aura of desperate power.

This was Rhys. He had to be. And the articulate, haunted man standing before her was nothing like the mindless monster she had expected.

"You've seen our curse," he continued, taking a slow step toward her, his movements measured, his gaze intense. "You've bottled our shame and catalogued our misery. Now, tell me. What does your little rulebook have to say about a species that is starving to death?"