Page 10 of The Baker’s Shadow

The mud-man sinks back into the water with a wet plop. “Good luck with that, shadow-born.” Its voice trails off as it dissolves. “You’re going to need it.”

The wisps scatter, their laughter fading into the drone of insects and the distant croak of frogs. I’m left standing alone, water lapping at my waist, chest heaving even though I don’t need to breathe.

She has part of me.

And I can’t get it back.

The barrier calls. I feel it pulling at what’s left of my core, a tug like fishing line going taut. It’s weakening again. Hungry for power I don’t have.

I should go. Should walk the perimeter like I have every full moon for two centuries. Feed what strength I can spare back into the cracks, keep the Rot from seeping through.

But I’m hollow. Emptied out. The widow took my fire and now there’s nothing left to give.

The barrier will have to wait.

The earth bucks.

The tremor travels up through the silt, through my bones, rattling my teeth. Birds explode from the canopy in a screaming cloud. The bull gator from before thrashes to the surface, then dives deep, fleeing something it can’t see.

I know that fear. I’ve been the thing that causes it.

This is different. This is wrong.

The sound comes next. A mechanical roar that doesn’t belong in the Hollow. Diesel engines. Heavy equipment. The stink of exhaust and hot metal cutting through the clean rot-smell of the swamp.

I dissolve into shadow and move. Something in the Hollow is dying. I can taste it on the wind. Magic bleeding out through torn earth.

The branches blur past. I leap from cypress to cypress, flow between the gaps in the canopy like smoke, following the sound. The wisps’ laughter still echoes in my skull. You’re hers. You’re hers.

I reach the perimeter and stop.

The tree line ends abruptly, sheared away like the Hollow got cut in half. Raw earth stretches ahead, gouged and bleeding. Yellow excavators tear into the peat, their steel jaws ripping massive chunks from the wetland. Black water gushes through industrial hoses, draining into containment pools.

They’re exposing the bedrock. The ancient obsidian that lies beneath the Hollow, pulsing with the magic that keeps this place alive.

And standing on the ridge, immaculate in a tailored suit that doesn’t belong within ten miles of mud, is Preston Crane.

I’ve seen that hunger before.

Not the face. Not the name. But the want bleeding off him tastes familiar. Forty years ago, maybe fifty. Different skin, different accent, same bottomless greed underneath. He’d been sniffing around the barrier then too, testing the edges, looking for weak points.

I’d assumed he died. Most of them do eventually.

But here he is. Still hungry. Still circling.

He’s not human. Something else wears that perfect face, something that knows what the obsidian is, what it does. Something that wants it badly enough to risk tearing the Hollow apart.

My jaw unhinges. Teeth extend. My throat opens to pull in the crushing gravity of the void. I’ll flatten the machines. Feast on the crew. Tear Preston apart so slowly he’ll beg for oblivion.

The power doesn’t come.

I reach for that well of strength, the core that lets me bend reality, unmake flesh, swallow screams before they form. It should be there. Always there. Infinite and dark and mine.

Instead, there’s just a hollow ache. A phantom limb I can feel but can’t use.

Because it’s not here.

It’s there.