History books tell us of those who marched into battle and never came home. But what if not all were truly gone?
When a regiment falls, it is not only bodies that are left behind. War stains the earth, and sometimes, the earth remembers. Whispers from Saratoga and beyond tell of soldiers whose spirits did not rest, men caught between musket smoke and shadow.
The Hollowing’s Claim
The Hollowing feeds not only on the living—it thrives on the dead. Every battlefield becomes a harvest, every fallen soldier a doorway for the shadows to enter. Some are devoured entirely, their essence fueling the hunger. But others linger, warped remnants of who they once were.
They are not ghosts in the way tavern tales describe them. They are echoes, soldiers stripped of their names, identities, and loyalties. Redcoat or rebel, it matters little—the Hollowing twists all the same.
Echoes in the Fog
Travelers speak of shapes in the mist: men with hollow eyes, muskets clutched in skeletal hands, marching silently as if still bound by orders that no longer exist. Their faces are familiar to those who fought alongside them, yet wrong—skin stretched too thin, voices drowned by the wind.
It is said they appear where the Veil grows thin, where battles spilled too much blood at once. A reminder that death in war does not always grant release.
Elias’s Burden
For Elias Mercer, the memory of his lost unit is more than grief. It becomes reality. Men he once called brothers-in-arms rise before him, their loyalty twisted into something cruel. To face them is to face his own guilt, to see the faces of those he failed staring back, demanding answers he cannot give.
These soldiers who never returned are not just enemies—they are symbols. Symbols of what the Eye threatens to make of him if he falters.
The War Beyond the War
The Revolutionary War rages in the colonies, muskets clashing with empire. But beneath it is a quieter, more terrible war. A war where the fallen are conscripted into armies not of kings or congress, but of shadows.
And in this war, there is no surrender.
✨ Stay tuned: Next, we’ll peel back the curtain on The Rift Between Worlds—and what happens when the barrier that keeps the Hollowing out finally begins to break.