Prologue: The Hunger of Eldritch Hollow

In the rotting spires of Eldritch Hollow, where moonlight bled silver into alleys choked with sentient fog, the city stirred like a beast rousing from slumber. Its cobblestone veins pulsed beneath the feet of the damned, its shadowed canals whispering secrets to those who dared listen. The Hollow was no mere place—it was alive, a nexus where the veil between worlds frayed, where eldritch entities slipped through to feed on mortal desires. Nobles in their towering manors bartered souls for nights of unending ecstasy, their moans echoing like shattered glass behind velvet curtains, while people experiencing poverty in the underbelly offered their screams to shadows that grew fat on despair. This city wants me, Elara thought, her heart a drumbeat against the silence. It’s always wanted me, but I’m not its prey. I’m the thief, the one who takes.

At twenty-five, Elara was a creature of the Hollow’s making, a thief of whispers cloaked in raven silk that clung to her lithe form like a lover’s regret, its fabric whispering against her skin with every step. Her pale flesh bore faint scars from a childhood of survival, her gray eyes sharp with defiance yet clouded by doubt. Orphaned at eight when her mother vanished into the fog—she left me, or was she taken, moaning in some shadow’s embrace?—Elara had learned to steal not just coin but secrets, the kind that could buy passage out of this cursed city. Her father was a mystery, perhaps a noble lost to opium dens or a sailor swallowed by the misty harbors. The Hollow had raised her, its lessons brutal: trust no one, for every face hid hunger, every touch a prelude to betrayal. I’m not like them. I take what I need, not what I crave. But why does my blood hum with the city’s pulse?