Color hollow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Color Hollow pressed their skeletal hand against the broken stump of their horn. The surface felt cold. No light pulsed beneath the bone. They held still and waited, counting seconds the way they used to count miles when running still seemed like an answer. At forty-three seconds, they felt it: a faint pulse, distant but unmistakable. The missing half was still out there. Still alive. That meant it could be found. They pulled the scanner from their pack and aimed it at the stump. The device hummed and clicked, its screen filling with patterns they didn't understand. But the pulse showed there, a rhythm marked in green lines that spiked and fell. The scanner couldn't tell them how far. It couldn't tell them which direction. It only confirmed what their body already knew: the missing piece existed somewhere in this world, and distance was the only thing keeping it from them. Color Hollow turned and looked back at the manor. Blood-red streaks ran down its white stone walls like old wounds that refused to close. They had stopped running here three days ago, collapsed at the gate with nowhere left to go. The horn had split that night while they slept. When they woke, half the rainbow was gone and their hand had turned the grass beneath them into a circle of gray. Now a group of small winged figures lay motionless near that same spot, their bright wings drained to ash where Color Hollow had stumbled into them yesterday. The fairies hadn't moved since. The scanner pulsed again in their hand. Color Hollow wrapped it in cloth and tucked it away. They had what they needed: proof that the missing half could be tracked. They stepped away from the manor, careful not to touch the stone, and started walking. This time they weren't running from something. They were walking toward it.