Three days passed.
The world continued as if nothing had happened.
Daniel couldn't.
He returned to the farmhouse.
The basement was empty.
The glass container was gone.
The symbols on the walls had faded.
For the first time since he was a child, the house felt like a house.
Not a prison.
Not a battlefield.
A home.
Mara stood in the doorway.
"You okay?"
Daniel nodded.
"I think so."
Michael entered carrying a box.
"We found something."
Daniel turned.
"What?"
Michael placed the box on the table.
Inside were old journals.
Elias's journals.
Daniel opened the first.
The earliest entries were written nearly three hundred years earlier.
The first page read:
We found something beneath the earth.
Daniel continued reading.
The entity hadn't been created by the hunters.
It had been discovered.
It existed before the book.
Before the first hunter.
Before the town.
It had no name.
No shape.
No beginning that anyone could find.
The hunters called it the Hollow.
Daniel looked up.
"The Hollow."
Mara nodded.
"That's what it called itself."
Daniel continued reading.
The first hunters had attempted to destroy it.
They failed.
Then they discovered it could be bound.
Not killed.
Bound.
The book had been created as a prison.
But over generations, hunters began using the prison's power.
That was the first betrayal.
They stopped treating the book as a weapon against the Hollow.
They treated it as a weapon for themselves.
Daniel closed the journal.
"So the real monster wasn't the entity."
Michael shook his head.
"It was what people did with its power."
Daniel looked toward the window.
"That's always how it starts."
Mara smiled faintly.
"Sounds like something your father would say."
Daniel smiled.
For the first time, it didn't hurt.
Then the farmhouse lights flickered.
Everyone froze.
Michael slowly turned.
The black book sat on the kitchen table.
Daniel stared.
"No."
Mara raised her weapon.
The book opened.
A page turned.
Then another.
Daniel approached.
The final page was blank.
Until a single sentence appeared.
THE HOLLOW IS CLOSED.
Daniel exhaled.
Then another line appeared.
BUT THE HUNTER REMAINS.
Daniel frowned.
"What does that mean?"
The page turned.
A photograph appeared.
Daniel.
Standing alone in the forest.
Older.
Scarred.
Holding a weapon.
Underneath it:
THE LAST HUNTER.
Daniel looked at Mara.
The book closed.
He picked it up.
"Maybe that's not a warning."
Michael frowned.
"What is it?"
Daniel looked toward the road.
"A job."
He placed the book inside his bag.
Mara smiled.
"Where are we going?"
Daniel opened the door.
"Wherever the monsters are."