1053: Story 1053: Last Howl of the Hollow Pack 1053: Story 1053: Last Howl of the Hollow Pack In the deepest folds of the Mourning Pines, beneath a sickle moon, a cursed lineage stirred.
They were once men—hunters, trappers, outlaws—but greed led them to a forbidden grove where the veil between man and beast was thin as spider silk.
There, they drank from a silver spring said to belong to Lyka’ru, an ancient wolf god of ruin.
That night, the Hollow Pack was born.
Gnashing, slavering monstrosities bound not by blood but by hunger.
Their howls echoed through generations, tethered to the land by ancient rites and unfulfilled oaths.
They vanished during the first zombie wave… or so the tales claimed.
But now, they’ve returned.
And they are starving.
Salem Locke, cryptozoologist-turned-ghoul-hunter, found himself following mangled corpses into the Pines—victims shredded, not bitten.
The signs were wrong.
This wasn’t the work of zombies.
This was older.
Deeper.
Feral.
By the time the sun set, he knew the forest wasn’t just watching—it was breathing.
Trees leaned in.
Fog crept along the ground like curious fingers.
From a shattered tree trunk, he found claw marks deep enough to gouge bone.
A symbol burned into the bark—a crescent howling over a pile of skulls.
The mark of the Hollow Pack.
Night fell.
The howling began.
Not one voice.
Not two.
Twelve.
Each call a chorus of agony, madness, and rage.
The wolves did not stalk silently—they announced their hunt, for fear had always been part of the feast.
Salem took refuge in an abandoned chapel swallowed by vines and rot.
Inside, he found relics of a forgotten cult—the Brotherhood of the Silver Chain—who once tried to bind the Hollow Pack beneath the forest floor.
Their last rite had failed, evident by the bloodstained chains and torn bones.
And then the floorboards creaked.
One of them was inside.
The creature was grotesque—a hulking, matted form with warped limbs and antlers bursting from its back like broken branches.
Its maw dripped ink-like bile.
Eyes like dying stars glared at Salem.
It whispered.
“You walk our grave, fleshkeeper.”
He barely escaped, lighting the chapel ablaze behind him.
In the clearing, the full pack waited.
Alpha.
Beta.
Omega.
All cursed and conscious, beasts who remembered being men—and hated it.
But the fire drew something ancient out from the woods: the ghost of Lyka’ru itself.
The god demanded penance.
It howled once.
And the pack turned on itself.
Snarls and screams filled the Pines as the Hollow Pack tore each other apart in a final, violent rite of absolution.
Salem watched, helpless, as the forest devoured its children.
By dawn, only silence remained.
And Salem?
He walked out with a bite on his shoulder and a warning in his heart:
“The last howl is never truly the last.
It just sleeps…
waiting for a new voice to rise.”