Hollow Walker
The Hollow Walkers had haunted the oldest maps only as smudges of caution, their territories known only by the absence of settlement, by the blank space where no one dared to dwell. They were born not of ordinary flesh, but of oath-rot: the collapse of sacred vows once sworn by guardians who had stood watch over the thresholds of realms. When such a vow shattered beyond repair, the keeper’s spirit folded inward, collapsing into a hunter of fear. Thus, a Hollow Walker was made: a shadow wearing the echo of the life it had betrayed.
Broad as a stallion at the shoulder and long of limb, the Hollow Walker’s form recalled a wolfhound drawn out into something both spectral and solid. Their manes, black as oil and restless even in still air, absorbed the light until the air around them dulled. The sound of it did not reach the ear so much as settle in the blood: a faint, sibilant whisper that woke the oldest unease in any living heart.
Nature and Feeding
A Hollow Walker could pass through snow without sinking, through undergrowth without stirring a branch. They stalked not by scent of flesh alone but by the spoor of emotion. Fear seeped from the living like breath into winter air, leaving a trail only they could follow. To walk boldly in their territory was to vanish from their notice; to falter was to summon them from the dark between breaths.
The Reflection Ban
Legends told that no steel could pierce them, no snare could hold them. Yet buried in them was the wound of their making: the moment the vow broke. They concealed this behind their shifting anonymity, for to be known was to be weakened. Only a reflection, whether in mirror, ice, or still water, could strip away the cloak of myth. When confronted with their own image, the Hollow Walkers faltered, trapped between the present hunt and the memory of what they had once been. Those few who knew this truth guarded it closely, for it was both blade and absolution.
Haunts and Hunts
Hollow Walkers ranged the border-wilds of MirMarnia, favouring the dim margins where snow met wood and horizon blurred to mist. They moved as if the land yielded to them, gliding over stone and drift alike. In moonlight, their eyes were rimmed in shadow that drank the glow, but in the instant before a kill, the rims flared: a dull, ember-hued grief.
Whence They Came
The first Hollow Walkers were said to have been born in the aftermath of the Betrayal at Blackfen, when the guardians of the Fen-Gate turned from their charge and left the threshold unkept. The breach invited something nameless into MirMarnia, and the oaths themselves collapsed, twisting into predatory forms.
Signs of Their Nearness
A sudden muting of wind in the canopy.
The curling of snow as if stirred by an unseen paw.
A taste of iron at the back of the tongue.
A Remembered Incident
During the Frostfall of the Year of Ash, a single Hollow Walker shadowed the southern clans for twelve nights. On the thirteenth, a huntress named Veyra met it upon the ice-locked river. Bearing a polished obsidian mirror bound with wards, she called it by a name none had spoken in two centuries. The beast froze, its form fissuring like thawing lake ice. They glimpsed the face of a weary guardian in the cracking shadow before it howled and folded into the snow.