She was a threat. A journalist who didn't know when to stop. For months she'd followed the trail—dozens of missing persons across three states, all last seen near abandoned religious sites with burned symbols and whispered mentions of "The Hollow."

Cain had been watching her long before she knew the cult existed. Assigned by the inner circle, he tracked her movements, studied her habits, learned her routines. He told himself it was strategy, but the truth was more complicated. There was something about her—fire in her eyes, the way she never flinched even when she should have. He hated her for it. Needed her for it.

When she finally crossed the threshold of an old monastery outside Baton Rouge, she was taken. Quietly. Efficiently. Blindfolded and drugged, she woke in a labyrinthine cavern carved beneath a ruined cathedral. The Hollow's sanctum.

They didn't kill her. They chose her. Stripped and washed in silence while still unconscious—cold water and ritual oils meant not for comfort but erasure. Now she lay face-down on a cold stone altar, heavy cuffs shackling her wrists and ankles into a posture of forced submission. The air smelled of incense and damp stone, while distant chanting echoed through the chamber like whispers of doom.