Chapter 34 – "I Was Hollow From Inside"
I was hollow from the inside.
I sat on the cold concrete for so long my legs forgot how to move. Dawn was a pale bruise in the sky and everywhere the world smelled of smoke and iron. I remember the heat from the fires, the wet stickiness of blood on my small palms, and the way my brother's body sagged like a rag doll beside me. I remember the sound of my own voice breaking into pieces when I first realized the shape of his face was not going to look at me again.
A woman's hands grabbed me and lifted me roughly because the world moved in rough hands now. She hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe and held me like a thing she'd rescued from the street. She shoved me into the back of a battered vehicle that smelled like petrol and antiseptic. In the chaos people screamed; someone prayed. Someone vomited. The city was a torn thing and we piled into the rescue van like refugees from another planet.
At the rescue center — the name stamped on the entrance was some bland governmental thing I never remembered — there were rows of people in a hundred small deaths. Wailing, dazed faces, people who screamed until they had nothing left to sound like. I sat on a cot and watched them. I tried to tell myself this was a nightmare that would break if I pinched hard enough. I kept waiting for Mom to come through the door with flour on her hands and that ridiculous smile, telling me to finish my porridge. That didn't happen.
The TV above the medbay sputtered, an announcer's voice thin with adrenaline: "—we are receiving reports of unknown entities attacking—evacuate immediately—authorities are mobilizing—" and the screen went to footage of burning streets and a silhouette that moved like a shadow in a bad dream. Someone whispered that a spirit had appeared — a protective guardian — and the room fell quiet, curious as children hearing a bedtime story.
Then a voice filled the place, not through the TV but like it had been spoken right into the room by someone standing at the doorway. It was calm, rippling soft as water, and it said: "My dear children, I am Praktesha. I have come to protect you. Obey, and you will be safe."
A hush pressed down. Some people cried with relief. Others bowed their heads in something like prayer. I stared at the ceiling and felt nothing. The word protect tasted like metal. I watched faces crumble into hope or fear. For the first time a concept caught me — that salvation could be a hand that bound you.
Within weeks the city wore a line of light across its sky: the Mother's shield. It hung there like a permanent, patient sun. At first we cheered. Fear retreated. Praktesha's voice soothed nightly broadcasts. She spoke like a lullaby and a law, and people gratefully slept under the shelter of her light.
But shelter comes with rules, and rules become chains. The first time someone refused to obey, they disappeared in the night. The cameras would show a street scene and then cut away; a neighbor's shop would be gone the next morning and everyone pretended it was not their neighbor. Those who raised their voice were made examples of. The same mouths that had thanked Praktesha for saving them now opened to whisper and were shut with a quiet brutality.
I stopped crying after that.
You'd think the violence would keep me numb, but it didn't. It calcified things inside of me. The hollow wasn't emptiness — it was a place I could shove feeling when it got too heavy. "Feel later," I told myself. "Survive now."
School was a strange, fragile thing. Kids tried to be kids, indifferent to the nightmares outside our walls. I learned math and geography and how to march in lines. I watched other children sob into pillows at night; I didn't know how they made the noise. I had no tears left for anything. I learned instead the shape of other people's pain and how to measure it like a surgeon. When the world asked who I was, I answered with a list: quiet, precise, useful.
As I grew, the choice came into my hands and there were only two options: live under the Mother's rule and pretend to be safe, or learn to hold your own hands when the world tried to break them. I chose to arm myself. I left the orphanage that took us in and I joined the United Astra Enforcement because it had a name that sounded like a promise: protection in authority. Maybe I thought it would be the place I learned to kill what had killed mom and dad and take the pain out of other children's eyes.
The Enforcement was efficient and cold. It took pity and burned it. Training was a crucible: run until your lungs turned to stone, lift until your wrists bled, fall until your knees hardened into plates. I threw myself into it like I'd been practicing for years. I was methodical, slow, and merciless with myself whenever I failed. Grief was a workbench, and I used its tools to sharpen myself.
Promotion came because I wanted it and because they respected people who could do what needed doing without pleading. I gave every piece of myself until there was a scar running under my skin that told me I had paid for the right to stand. I became Captain of Unit 3 not because I wanted power, but because power was the only language that kept my mouth from asking useless questions.
That is where I met him — Om Sai. God, he was ridiculous. He looked like a man who slept through warnings and somehow still got invited to important things. I wanted to punch him the first time he smiled at me, because his grin was casual in a place where casual got people killed. He was lazy in the way of predators: he didn't waste energy unless it pleased him. He was loud when quiet was required and calm when chaos was the only answer. He had the kind of confidence that made people either love him or want to strangle him with their bare hands.
He flirted. Of course he did. He leaned against a console like the world owed him rent and said something like, "You look like someone who'd make a good general — or an excellent tyrant." I wanted to punch him. Instead I told him I had no interest in him. He laughed. He didn't go away. He kept being behind me — in mess halls, in training fields — an irritant that became a constant. Over time, a ridiculous thing happened: his presence unpinned something in me that had been nailed down. He made me laugh in a way that surprised me, and when he got annoying enough, I hit him. He respected the hit. It was, in the end, the first honest conversation I'd had in years.
Unit 3 became my family of choice. I had soldiers who followed because they trusted command, not because they feared it. There was Miran — stubborn, sharp-tongued, first to shove a meal into my hands when we were short. Goru — a man who laughed like a bad joke but could break a tank with his shoulder. Riku — quiet, lethal with a blade and softer with jokes. We moved together, trained together, consumed each other's faults slowly until we became efficient.
Then the world tilted again. I was sent on missions that were small at first — recon, clearing pockets of infected beasts — and then larger. Once, on a retrieval for a rare mana stone, I met him: a clumsy idiot making his way out of a med ward, all elbows and apologies. He bumped into me in the corridor and, in his fluster, grabbed at my chest as he tried to catch his balance. His fingers slipped and he touched skin.
I still remember the heat of my blood at that moment — a flash of something ridiculous and human, and my hand shot out before my head could think. I slapped him so hard his cheek stung.
"You idiot," I hissed, furious and embarrassed in one movement. "Watch where you—"
He blinked, stunned. His face flushed a bright, ridiculous red, and for a heartbeat time stopped. That simple, stupid human moment — an accidental touch and a furious reaction — cut through something. It was such a small thing compared to the scales of all I'd been through, but it made my heart tumble anyway.
He mumbled an apology, his dumb eyes sincere. I turned and walked out of the ward because my stomach had folded into itself and I couldn't be that close to being normal without wanting to break down. He called after me in a voice that was so unapologetically small, I almost laughed.
I left thinking: what the hell is wrong with me? Why does one stupid touch bother me so much after everything else? But some parts of old wounds are like loose teeth — they ache when pressed.
As I pushed open the hospital doors into the sunlight, the world felt as brittle and fragile as glass. A stupid idiot had just reminded me that there were things to be angry about that weren't only about loss and fear. For a moment the hollowness inside me shivered.
Maybe that was enough to keep me moving forward. Maybe that slap healed the small, ridiculous part of me that could still be stirred by foolishness. Maybe it was nothing.
I kept walking anyway.