Villain Hiring: Help! Author Wants Me Dead-Chapter 203: Dreams

"I saw her," I said suddenly. "The child. In the dreams. She was me. She had horns. And the Hollow King…he cut something out of her."

"Her potential," Venus muttered. "He ripped out her inheritance and buried it in blood. Smart. Cowardly. But smart."

I looked up.

"You were going to kill me, weren't you? When the blood reacted."

He didn't deny it. "For a moment, yes."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because you cried," he said bluntly. "And no Hollow ever cries like that."

My lips trembled.

He sighed and rubbed his temples. "Damn it all… I've spent years researching Hollow biology, understanding how their power passed through relics and corpses…but this? This is something else."

I felt the scroll fade behind me. Its magic spent.

"Is there a chance this was a lie?" I asked. "What if it's manipulation?"

Venus shook his head. "No Hollow ever needed to lie to us. They had the power to break cities. They just didn't want the girl found. Until now."

I felt incredibly sad in my chest.

Like something enormous had just dropped into a bottomless pit inside me.

"…Am I even human?" I asked.

"You are now," Venus said, almost like whatever he had forgotten what he was telling me just a while back. "Whether you were before…we'll have to find that out."

He turned to leave, but paused at the stairs. "Rest. You're going to start awakening soon. And when you do, I want to be there to make sure..." The man paused, no longer continuing his sentence.

I looked back at the pedestal where the scroll had once been.

Its glow was gone.

But something inside me had just lit up.

I was scared.

And the intention behind Venus's pause?

And it wasn't going to get out of my brain anytime soon.

***

I didn't sleep that night.

Or maybe I did.

Honestly, I don't know anymore.

One second, I was curled up on the bed in Noah's room, my heart still pounding, head buried in a blanket that smelled like old ink and cinnamon. The next, I was… somewhere else.

Not a dream, I thought.

Not exactly.

After all, it was too vivid to be just a dream.

Like my eyes were wide open but in a world that wasn't mine.

The sky was cracked.

That was the first thing I noticed.

Above me, black clouds swirled like they were boiling, lightning flashed in shapes I couldn't understand, glyphs, maybe. Symbols from a language lost to everything but bone and time.

And the ground…gods, the ground was red. Not blood red, dull and scorched, like a battlefield long since forgotten.

Everything stank of ash and blood.

I stood alone in the middle of a ruined city.

The architecture was tall, spired, and alien. Dark metals and blue-glowing pillars.

Nothing like Earth.

Yet, something in me remembered this place.

A name whispered into my mind without sound.

Vas'hereth.

The last Hollow capital.

I stumbled forward.

I didn't know why, but I had to move. Each step took effort, like I was walking through memories soaked in grief.

In the distance, I saw movement.

People. Or…something close.

Figures with horns atop their heads. Some tall, some small. Families. Children. Soldiers in dark armor, horns plated in silver, standing atop broken walls with weapons that looked like living shadows.

And then...

A roar.

No. Not a beast.

A ship.

Tearing through the sky like a blade, massive and cruel, with glowing white lights under its belly.

It looked like human technology, those blue lights and the design...

And I knew—somehow, without even needing context, that this was the attack.

The one Venus mentioned.

The one that started the extinction.

The humans were striking back.

I screamed, but no sound left my lips.

The Hollow soldiers raised their arms, blue shields flashing into life. But it didn't matter.

The sky vomited fire.

Explosions ripped through towers. Dust turned to glass. Horned children vaporized mid-step, their screams bouncing off ruined stone.

And then, there was him.

He stood atop the central spire, untouched by the chaos.

The Hollow King.

Not like in the scroll. No sadness now. Just power.

Crown of obsidian, robes of stitched stars, his horns now massive and arched behind his head like a war god. In his arms…was a baby.

The man didn't speak. He just looked down at the child and kissed her forehead.

His hands ripped with golden light, and a glowing orb, the size of a heart which floated between his palms.

He sealed something into that orb.

The baby's horns flickered and vanished.

I fell to my knees.

I knew.

Deep inside, I knew....

That baby was me.

He was erasing her Hollow nature. Ripping her identity away. Hiding her amongst the very people who would one day hunt their kind into extinction.

And then he turned…and threw the orb into the sky.

It burned like a comet, vanishing toward a rift.

Earth.

That was the blood.

That orb was the very flask I found.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped toward me— through the vision. Like he saw me.

And he said one word.

"Awaken."

I jerked awake, drenched in sweat.

The bed was soaked. My arms burned. My head felt like someone shoved fireworks in it.

I stumbled to the mirror.

And there, for the briefest second, I saw horns.

Black, delicate and 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

ghostly outlines curling faintly from my forehead.

I gripped the sink. My breath heaved. "No. No. No, no—"

A knock on the door.

"Pixie?" Noah tired and tagged sound appeared from the other side of the door, looks like wherever he had been missing yesterday didn't end on a good note.

I quickly put on a knitted cap on my head to hide the faint outlines as I unlocked the door to the room, still dressed in pink pyjamas and a black top.

There, in front of me stood Noah, with eyes as wide as saucers as he rapidly shook my shoulders.

"Pixie—The holl–hollows...

THEY'RE BACK!!"

***