Color hollow's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Color Hollow stepped inside. The room glittered with soft pink light from the mushroom walls. A figure sat at a low table, back turned, sorting small buckets of bone shards that pulsed in slow rhythm. "Don't touch anything," the figure said. "I know what your hands do." Color Hollow froze. A scanner lay beside the buckets, ticking in time with the shards. The figure finally turned. Their own horn was whole, but scarred near the base. "I lost a piece once too. I've been collecting what others leave behind. Yours isn't here. But I know where it went." The figure slid a folded paper across the table, keeping their hands clear of Color Hollow's reach. "Take it. Don't thank me. The last person I sent after a fragment is the body you stepped around on the road." Color Hollow's throat tightened. They picked up the paper by its corner. The door behind them creaked wider in the wind. They had a name for the danger now, and a new place to go. The waiting was over. The walking had just gotten worse. Color Hollow looked past the table. More papers lay scattered across the floor in messy piles. Each sheet held sketches of horn shapes, dates, and small maps. Some pages showed Color Hollow's own broken horn, drawn from angles they had never shown anyone. "You've been watching me," Color Hollow said. The figure didn't deny it. "Since before the split. I track every horn that breaks. Yours broke loudest." Color Hollow's hands curled tight at their sides. The drawings meant someone had seen them running. Someone had seen the thing they ran from. Color Hollow tucked the folded paper into their cloth bag, beside the wrapped fragment. The figure turned back to the buckets without another word. Outside, the mushroom caps swayed in a wind that hadn't been there before. Color Hollow stepped through the door. The map in their bag pointed somewhere new. The watcher's words pointed somewhere worse. They started walking before they could think about which direction hurt more.