Dozens of young men and women stood in the center of an enormous room. The painfully bright white walls burned their eyes. Silence surrounded the crowd.
A tall man stood in front, his hand rested lazily on his waist while the other held a document.
"You all look nervous." He scanned the crowd and remarked.
The silence carried on. None of them could reply because their hearts beat louder than the man's voice. The silent whispers and the chaos in their minds didn't make it better.
"Well, since this is your first departure to the Hollow, a little anxiety is normal. Although..." He paused and took a quick glance toward them.
Eventually, he sighed.
"You people have the highest probability of becoming a human portal." His low voice echoed throughout the room. His words drew several gasps and sobs from the crowd.
'They've set a schedule for our deaths? How convenient.'
Leon thought to himself. Although most of them looked frail and had a worse constitution than ordinary people, Leon's unusual pallor made him stand out from the group.
Leon's gaze studied the man in front of them and wondered why he looked like he didn't want to be there more than they did.
"I'm sure that all of you are bearers of the Hollow Hex. And have experienced all of its symptoms. But just in case, I'll state the symptoms that a Hollow Hex bearer would experience." The man paused and shut the file in his hand.
"There are four phases after gaining a Hollow Hex. Phase 1 is when people start to stare into space, and experience brief auditory hallucinations. Phase 2 is when you start to have strange dreams of ruins, caves, and darkness. Phase 3…" The man paused, examining each of their faces before continuing.
"Slowed breathing, reduced blinking, and pale skin."
No one dared to say a word, but the silence was far from calm.
Someone in the crowd looked down on her hands, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. Another man bit his lower lip, a crease formed on his forehead. Emotions leaked behind their glassy and semi-dilated eyes.
All of them knew the symptoms he mentioned. They had experienced it themselves and paid enough price for it. No one comforted the other, because in the end they were all strangers brought together by the same curse.
"Finally, Phase 4, also called the invitation phase."
Thud.
The man couldn't continue his explanation. Among the crowd, someone fell to the floor. He sighed upon seeing a girl looking at him with teary eyes. Her chest rose and fell aggressively, and her lips trembled.
"Right on time." The man tucked the file under his arm and walked up to the girl. He scooped her up as if she weighed nothing.
He looked back at the crowd and continued, "Phase 4, you guys will stop moving completely, your pupils will dilate, and the whispers… Well, technically, there won't be whispers anymore."
Dozens of pods lined the walls like silent sentinels. Each was shaped like a narrow capsule, large enough to fit a single person inside. The white surfaces reflected the room's harsh brightness, making them look almost surgical.
The glass lids displayed numbers and strange symbols that Leon didn't understand.
The machines hummed faintly as if something inside was already awake.
Amidst all the humming, a thought brushed against Leon's mind. A faint whisper he couldn't understand. It lingered for a few seconds like an echo inside his mind.
He glanced around the room, but no one else seemed to notice. A few people had the same distant look in their eyes. But most were watching the girl on the floor with stoic expressions.
He carried her to one of the pods lined up across the entire room before gently placing her inside.
"Your name?"
A single teardrop from her glassy and dilated eyes.
Finally, a small grunt left her lips.
"A-avery."
The man opened the file and scanned for her name before marking a check beside it.
"You can go now, Avery." He turned back to her and spoke.
Confusion filled her pained face before her expression became completely stolid. In that instant, her presence disappeared. Avery had gone to the other side.
They all felt it. She was gone. Leon, who couldn't believe what he felt, inched closer to the pod and took a quick glance inside. Avery laid still like a lifeless body.
The man closed her eyes which were still wide open before closing the pod she was in.
"Now, as I call on your names. Each of you will go inside a pod. I know your limbs are screaming because they don't wanna move, but force yourselves. How will you survive in that place if you can't even do that?"
The man shut the file which caused a loud thud as if trying to awaken their clouding consciousness.
Leon walked towards one of the pods after hearing his name. His eyebrows twitched and his hand slowly reached to it. Hesitant that once he's inside it would awaken whatever dormant monster he held.
Leon didn't realize that the man was standing behind him until he placed his gigantic and heavy hand on his shoulder, encouraging him. "Go on."
"And please, close your eyes. I don't want all of you staring at me with your apathetic gaze. It's hard enough to sleep after this."
His voice sounded distant to all of them as their consciousness slipped through their hands.
The man returned to the center of the room. His tired gaze scanned the pods—basking in the room's usual stillness. But the silence was nothing but a premonition of the horror soon to come.
Seconds passed and runes appeared atop the closed pods. One by one, until every single one illuminated the white room agonizingly bright.
[Welcome, Daydreamers! The Hollow awaits your arrival.]
The man watched the runes pop up with quiet resignation. He had watched these scenes countless times before. They might have different names and different faces, but always the same ending.
Some would die, and cause havoc in reality. And a select few would survive the Hollow and either join guilds or eventually return to rooms like this. Not as victims, but the ones giving the briefing.
***
Humanity once believed the world stood on the verge of collapse. Wars raged endlessly between nations. Natural disasters struck without mercy. Famine and drought followed in their wake.
Then the first cases appeared.
A small number of people began to experience a strange dissociation—staring into space for hours, their minds reaching far beyond reality. At first, people dismissed them as those who lost their will to live. Individuals who chose to continue living because death didn't promise peace.
But the phenomenon spread.
Soon, millions of people showed the same symptoms. Humanity's already dwindling population was further thrown into chaos. But the true horror had yet to reveal itself.
Monsters began to emerge from the bodies of those afflicted by the dissociation—ripping their bodies from the inside. Governments were forced to take action. But by the time they did, it was already too late.
Entire regions plagued by mass dissociation became territories ruled by monsters. Humanity didn't lose their lands to war, but to mindless creatures born from their own people.
Scholars and scientists from every nation gathered to search for a cure. Instead, they found the truth.
The dissociation was not a disease. There was no cure for a curse. And that curse was later called the Hollow Hex.
***
Out of habit, the man scanned the room once more. One pod caught his eyes. The runes that glowed above every other pod were missing. But the person inside had clearly gone to the Hollow.
Inside that pod, Leon's eyelids fluttered. He felt his stomach churn and the sudden drop in temperature sent shivers down his spine. He had the urge to open his eyes, but his motor skills prevented him from doing so.
The lights flickered inside the room. And darkness swallowed the white walls for a split second.
The man couldn't ignore what just happened. He frowned at the slight disruption to his work as he documented the pod's unique keys next to each name on his list.
The short quake made him even more unable to overlook the event. Because even though the temblor was small, it couldn't escape the sense of a Master Hex bearer like him.
"That wasn't a normal earthquake."
Shift.
His eyes shifted from the blinking light to one of the pods. It was the same irregular one, the same pod that didn't have the runes.
Inside that pod, Leon's eyelids fluttered once more. Images started flashing through his mind. And at the end of it, an old voice whispered.
[Wake up.]