The Bleeding Door
They pulled Cuco out of the forest just before dawn.
By the time his feet touched the pavement outside Hollow Creek, the sky had shifted—from velvet black to a trembling, bruised gray. Birds chirped like they hadn't watched the world crack open inside a sixteen-year-old boy.
Cuco didn't speak.
His eyes were glazed, distant.
His body moved like it belonged to someone else—someone made of glass and ghost-light.
Nox and Tariq flanked him in silence, afraid a single word might shatter him.
Afraid he might disappear altogether.
At school, everything wore its usual mask.
Laughter echoed through the halls. Lockers slammed like gunshots. Burnt coffee drifted from the teachers' lounge, thin and bitter.
But Cuco saw beneath it now.
Veins of darkness threaded through the walls—like black mold feeding on forgotten memories. Shadows that twitched when no one was looking.
The dream was bleeding into daylight.
He sat in class.
The teacher spoke, chalk squealing across the board.
Cuco heard none of it.
He heard them instead—the Hollow Ones—whispering from the seams of the room. From behind the bulletin board. Inside the rhythmic ticking of the clock.
> The gate bleeds, Cuco.
And so do you.
His mark throbbed.
He looked down.
One side glowed with a soft, golden pulse.
But the other—the black side—was spreading.
Creeping up his wrist like sentient smoke, like rot laced with memory.
Panic swelled.
He burst from his seat, heart hammering, and staggered to the bathroom.
Locked the stall.
Rolled up his sleeve.
The black mark twitched.
Then—
Knock. Knock.
Cuco froze.
A voice outside the stall door.
"Cuco…?"
Linux. The basketball captain. Friendly. Tall. Always loud in the hallways.
Cuco didn't answer.
"You alright, man?" Linux called. "Coach says you've ghosted two practices. People say you're… different."
There was something off in his voice.
Something wrong in the waver—like it wasn't echoing from this world.
The fluorescent light above flickered.
And then Cuco saw it.
In the mirror.
Just for a heartbeat.
Linux's face was warped. His eyes were deep pits.
And his shadow—
twitched the wrong way.
Not a person.
A Hollow One.
Here.
In school.
Cuco exploded out of the stall and ran.
Down the hallway. Past lockers. Past students who didn't see the thing wearing Linux's skin.
Shadows unfurled behind him—long-fingered, hungry.
He burst through the exit, lungs burning.
And behind him…
Linux laughed.
But it wasn't his laugh.
It was the First Dreamer's.
---
That Night
Cuco stood alone in his bedroom, staring at the mirror.
His reflection stared back.
He reached out, tracing the black half of the mark with trembling fingers.
"Am I still me?" he whispered.
The mirror rippled.
And his reflection smiled.
Then it spoke—his own voice, warped and echoing.
> "Not for long."