Harper’s Field at night looked like it had been dipped in oil. No wind. No animal sounds. Just the hum of silence so loud it pressed against their ears.


Nia stepped through the bent chain-link fence first, flashlight cutting a cone through the darkness. Kenyatta walked beside her, iron crowbar resting on his shoulder. Bree carried Jeremiah in her arms—he was unconscious, his skin burning hot, lips muttering that same phrase on repeat:


“Break the circle. Break the circle…”


Malik filmed everything, his camera strapped to his chest. “If we don’t make it out,” he whispered, “somebody has to know what happened.”


They moved past the old goalposts and overgrown bleachers, toward the clearing near the tree line. The grass there was scorched black in a perfect circle. Nothing grew inside it. Not even weeds.


“I used to play tag here,” Nia murmured. “We called this the Dead Zone.”


Suddenly, the flashlight caught something glinting in the soil. Bree bent down.


A locket. Half-buried. Inside, a picture of a little girl—and her name etched in faded script:


Camille Turner. Missing: 2007.


Bree looked up. “She was in my class…”


Kenyatta kicked over a patch of earth—and it gave too easily, like the ground had been hollowed out. He swung the crowbar. It hit something hard.


Wood.


They all stepped back as he pulled at it—revealing a trapdoor, old and rusted, but not locked.


Nia stared down into the blackness. A foul, damp air seeped out, thick with mildew and rot.


“This is it,” Malik said. “This is where it lives.”


They descended.


Wooden stairs creaked beneath them, leading into an underground chamber carved directly from the earth. Strange symbols were painted on the walls in charcoal. Charred children’s toys lay scattered. And in the center stood a totem made of bones and rusted chains, wrapped around a tree root that pulsed faintly, like it was alive.


Jeremiah’s eyes flew open. He screamed.


“IT’S A HEART—THE FIELD’S HEART—YOU GOTTA BURN IT—NOW!”


Suddenly, voices rose from the darkness—dozens of them. Whispering, wailing. Familiar voices. Mothers. Fathers. Lost loved ones.


“Ni-ni… stay here. It’s safe in the dark…”


Malik screamed and dropped the camera. A figure formed from the shadows—tall, formless, with long fingers and no face.


The Hollow.


It surged forward.


Kenyatta swung the crowbar. The thing caught it mid-air, the metal sizzling in its grasp.


Nia dove for the totem. Bree handed her the lighter and sage. With trembling hands, Nia struck flame.


“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”


She dropped the fire.


The totem lit like dry leaves.


The Hollow screamed—its cry shaking the earth.


The chamber began to collapse.


“Run!” Kenyatta shouted.


They scrambled up the stairs, flames chasing them, voices rising like a chorus of rage and sorrow.


They barely made it out before the earth swallowed the entrance, sealing the horrors beneath.


Behind them, Harper’s Field burned—cleansing the soil for the first time in over a century.