The Market screamed.

  Not the shrill wail of a dying thing, not the rattling gasp of something fading into nothingness—this was something else. Something worse. It was a sound that crawled into the bones, that twisted through the air like a living force, thick and wet, seeping into every crack, every breath, every hollow space where fear could fester. It was a sound of hunger. A sound of something feeding.

  And Black Hollow was its meal.

  Sandra staggered back, her boots slipping on the cobblestone that was no longer just cobblestone, but something shifting beneath her feet- something that pulsed, that twisted, that breathed. The town was unraveling, its edges peeling away like rotting flesh, revealing the truth beneath the Market had never left, had never been destroyed. It had only been waiting.

  And now, it was waking up.

  The air rippled, heavy with the scent of burning wood and blood-soaked earth, thick with whispers that had no mouths to speak them. The houses- those old, familiar homes that had lined the streets of Black Hollow for generations- were changing.

  Their wooden beams stretched, warped, growing taller, thinner, twisting like ribs clawing their way toward the sky. Their windows blinked, the glass shifting, warping, filling with reflections that weren't reflections at all but eyes. Watching. Waiting.

  Sandra's breath hitched. The town was alive.

  The cultists, those silent, robed figures who had once seemed untouchable, now screamed. They clutched at their own faces as their skin bubbled, as their fingers curled inward, as their very forms dissolved into the Market's gaping maw. Some tried to run, but there was nowhere to go.

  The streets stretched, curled, folded in on themselves, turning into corridors of meat and stone, swallowing them whole.

  One fell to his knees, hands outstretched, praying, begging, weeping. The Market took him anyway.

  Sandra stumbled, her pulse pounding, her lungs burning with the weight of the air pressing down on her, thick and suffocating. She turned, searching. Where was Gemini? Where was the one who had made this happen, the one who had built this nightmare, the one who had betrayed her? And then she saw her.

  Standing at the center of it all, a figure of perfect stillness amidst the chaos, her dark eyes glinting, her lips parted in something that wasn't quite a smile, wasn't quite a sneer. Her dress was soaked, the hem trailing along the shifting cobblestone, her bare feet leaving no prints, untouched by the ruin unraveling around her. Gemini was thriving. Sandra's stomach turned.

  The cultists weren't dying. Not really. They were being used. Their bodies weren't breaking apart. They were merging, stretching into the Market itself, their voices becoming part of the endless, hungry whispering that slithered through the air. Their arms twisted into wood and sinew, and their faces melted into the walls of houses that weren't houses anymore. Their bones cracked, and reformed, becoming the very foundation of the new Black Hollow.

  And Gemini just watched.

  Sandra's hands shook. "You planned this," she whispered, but her voice was lost beneath the screaming. She swallowed, her throat dry, her pulse a drumbeat against her ribs. "You knew this would happen."

  Gemini exhaled, slow and sweet, like a woman soaking in the last rays of the sun at the end of a long day. "Of course."

  Sandra's blood turned to ice. This wasn't destruction. This was creation. Black Hollow wasn't collapsing. It was becoming something else. Something worse. The Market was taking root. And Gemini had been waiting for this moment.

  The wind howled through the town, a deep, shuddering force that carried old voices, new voices, voices that didn't belong to anything human. Sandra turned in a slow, horrified circle, watching as the last remnants of what she had once known were swallowed into the living, breathing Market.

  The ground beneath her lurched, tilting like a ship in a storm, forcing her to stumble. The cobblestones cracked apart, revealing flesh beneath them. Not stone. Not earth. Flesh. The town wasn't just alive.

  Sandra's body moved before she could think, instinct kicking in, survival screaming through her veins.

  She didn't know where she was going, didn't know where she could go, but she ran anyway, feet pounding against the ground, dodging twisted street lamps that breathed, ducking beneath windows that whispered her name. But there was no escaping this.

  Because Black Hollow wasn't Black Hollow anymore.

  It was the Market. And the Market never let anything go. She felt it behind her, chasing her- not with footsteps, not with hands reaching to grab her, but with hunger. A hunger so vast, so bottomless, it swallowed the very air around it. It pulled at her, tugged at the edges of her mind, her skin, her soul. The Market wanted her. And she wasn't sure if she could stop it. A voice curled through the wind, smooth and dark and delighted. "You can't run from home, Sandra." Gemini.

  Sandra skidded to a stop, chest heaving, turning to face her because there was no point in running anymore, no point in pretending she could ever truly escape. She had always belonged to the Market. She had been born to be here. Gemini took a slow step forward. The town shifted with her. Her dark eyes gleamed. "You're finally where you're meant to be."

  And the Market breathed.

  Sandra's breath came sharp and shallow, her chest tightening with every frantic inhalation as she forced herself to move, to run, to ignore the horrifying way the town was no longer a town but a thing, a living, pulsing, shifting thing that had begun to reshape itself into something new, something monstrous, something utterly hungry.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  She sprinted past houses that no longer stood still, past doorways that twisted and gasped as she passed, their frames bending, stretching, their windows peeling open like eyelids. The streets, once firm and familiar beneath her feet, had begun to undulate like the spine of some great, unseen creature, each cobblestone shifting, rippling beneath her weight. She wasn't running on stone anymore.

  She was running on something alive.

  Sandra clamped her teeth together, choking down the scream that threatened to rise in her throat, because she knew, that if she started screaming, she might never stop. A house lurched forward, its wooden beams groaning as it bent toward her, its front door splitting apart, revealing something inside that was not a home, something that was not supposed to have ribs.

  She dodged, barely avoiding the way the porch lunged toward her like a jaw snapping shut. She could hear it, the horrible sound of wood cracking, shifting, breathing.

  The town was folding in on itself, but not collapsing. It was consuming itself. And she was trapped inside its stomach. Somewhere behind her, Gemini's voice drifted through the air, light and sweet, untouched by fear. Amused. "Still running, little bird?" Sandra didn't answer. She couldn't.

  Her body lurched forward, feet slamming against the twisting ground, dodging the writhing architecture of Black Hollow as it pulled itself apart, as the very walls of the town began to open. And she saw them. The cultists. Or what was left of them? They weren't screaming anymore. Not the way they had before. Because they were no longer people.

  Their robes hung from them like loose, empty skins, their limbs elongated, stretched far beyond what should have been possible. Their faces had melted into something else, their features smoothed away, and their mouths had widened into something cavernous, something that stretched from one ear to the other, grinning.

  Not in joy but in hunger.

  Sandra skidded to a stop, her breath catching in her throat as she watched them move—not running, not chasing, but gliding forward, their elongated arms trailing behind them, their hollow, gaping faces all turned toward her. Waiting. Expecting.

  She stumbled back, her pulse throbbing in her ears. The ground beneath her shifted again, and if she didn't move, if she didn't keep running, she would be swallowed whole, taken like the rest of them, turned into something else. Something that belonged to the Market. A whisper curled in her ear. "You don't have to run."

  Sandra whipped around, pulse hammering. Gemini stood behind her, a dark silhouette against the chaos, her bare feet untouched by the writhing streets, her dress fluttering like she was standing in the center of some unseen storm. Her smile was wide and pleased. Sandra's nails bit into her palms, trying to keep herself grounded, trying to hold onto whatever scraps of reality still remained in this town that was no longer a town, in this world that was no longer her own.

  "You did this," she hissed, her voice barely more than a breath. "You let this happen."

  Gemini's smile only widened. "No, little bird." She tilted her head, her dark eyes gleaming with something ancient, something that had never belonged to the girl Sandra once called sister.

  "I made this happen." Sandra's blood turned to ice.

  She should have known. From the moment they returned, from the moment Gemini stepped foot back into Black Hollow, the town had begun to twist, to stretch, to break. But it hadn't just happened. It had been waiting. Waiting for Gemini. The Market hadn't followed them back. It had come home.

  Sandra felt it then: the truth, the horrible, suffocating truth that had been crawling beneath her skin this entire time, whispering at the edges of her mind, waiting for her to finally understand.

  Gemini was the Market. She wasn't just part of it.

  She had always been. And Sandra had been nothing more than a pawn in her game. She shook her head, stepping back, her boots sliding against the pulsing, shifting cobblestone beneath her. "No," she breathed. "No, you… you're lying." Gemini only sighed, almost disappointed. "You always did hate the truth." The ground lurched. Sandra fell.

  The town moved with Gemini's will, the very foundations of Black Hollow twisting, stretching, devouring itself as it bowed to its true master. Sandra hit the ground hard, the breath ripped from her lungs as the cobblestone beneath her rippled like flesh, curling around her wrists, her ankles, holding her down, trapping her. She fought, thrashing, kicking, but the town was no longer something she could escape.

  And Gemini was everywhere. She crouched beside Sandra, tilting her head, her fingers brushing against the stone that was no longer stone, her touch soft, gentle, reverent.

  "You were never supposed to leave," she whispered. The cobblestones tightened as Sandra screamed. Sandra gasped, her breath sharp and broken, as the cobblestones beneath her no longer felt like stone but something pulsing, something breathing, something alive. The town had swallowed her, had bound her to its streets, had made her part of its endless hunger, and no matter how much she fought—no matter how much she thrashed, kicked, and screamed, it would not let her go. Because it belonged to her now.

  No. Not to her. To Gemini.

  Sandra choked as she twisted against the force that held her down, her fingers clawing at the shifting ground, at the grotesque parody of a street that was no longer a street but a thing with ribs and flesh and a heartbeat that matched her own. The air around her was thick, sweltering, suffocating, pressing against her skin like a second layer of existence that did not belong to her, that had never belonged to her, that had only ever belonged to Gemini.

  Gemini stood over her, watching, waiting, smiling. Not with cruelty. Not with mockery. But with certainty. With the absolute knowledge that this had never been a battle. Never been a war. That this was always how it was going to end. Sandra shook her head violently, her nails scraping against the ground beneath her, her voice raw, broken, desperate.

  Gemini crouched down, slow, elegant, her bare feet pressing into the shifting cobblestones that curled like veins beneath her touch, her dress flowing in an unseen wind, her eyes reflecting something not of this world. Something older than the Market.

  Her fingers trailed lightly over Sandra's cheek, the touch was cold, too cold like she had drawn her hand straight from the marrow of something dead. Gemini whispered, voice soft, almost sad: "I never had to bring it back." Her hand trailed lower, brushing against Sandra's throat, feeling the pulse there, the erratic thudding of a heart that still refused to stop fighting. "The Market never left."

  Sandra's stomach lurched.

  The Market had always been part of Black Hollow. Had been buried beneath its streets, woven into its foundations, into the bones of every building, into the marrow of every person who had ever drawn breath in this place. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was her. Her family. Her bloodline.

  She realized it now.

  She had been born into it, had been created for it, had been raised in a house that stood atop something ancient, something that had never been a town at all but a gateway, a place where the Market could bleed through, could take, could feed, could grow. Gemini had been the key.

  Sandra thrashed, trying to shove her away, trying to make it stop, trying to wake up from the nightmare that had always been real. "You were supposed to be my sister!" she screamed, the words tearing from her throat like broken glass, each syllable a wound, each breath a failure.

  Gemini's lips curled in a one side smirk, not in a grin, but in something deeply satisfied. "I never was." The words broke something inside Sandra. The streets of Black Hollow shuddered, the houses groaned, and the air rippled with a force that did not belong in this world. Gemini rose, lifting her chin, her hair moving like a liquid shadow around her shoulders, her bare feet stepping lightly across the breathing cobblestones.

  She turned, arms outstretched, palms open, welcoming to the thing that had begun to emerge from the Market's ruins, from the abyss that stretched where the church once stood, from the shadows that had no source, from the spaces between the spaces where logic and physics and reality itself had begun to crumble. A shape. No, a presence. Not human. Not anything that should exist.

  Because Gemini had made it so.

  Sandra gasped, chest heaving, body trembling as she tried to force herself upright, trying to push herself away from the town that had become her prison, her grave, her god.

  "You're the Market," she whispered, the realization choking her, drowning her.