Bestiary

What walks the fog

One rule keeps you alive: only the Man can kill you. The echoes are memories the Hollow keeps replaying — they stalk, they wear faces, they call your name. They can't touch you. But a memory can still walk you off a ledge, or into him.

The Man

Lethal

Classification — the real one

The only thing out here that isn't an echo. He hunts you, specifically. He's fast, he's patient, and he does not stop. You cannot fight him and you cannot kill him — there is no weapon in the Hollow that means anything to him.

What you can do is disappear. Break his line of sight. Take corners. Kill your lights and go still in the dark he can't read. Outlast him until the static fades.

The tell: the signal rises to a scream and the world goes quiet under it. When the radio drowns everything else out, he already knows where you are. Move.

The Watchers

Echo

Classification — the obsessed

They stand at the edge of your vision and they stare. Turn to look and they're gone, or they're closer. They never close the distance while you're watching — and they never quite leave.

They can't lay a hand on you. What they take is steadier than that: the longer they watch, the more the Hollow gets into your head.

The tell: the certainty that you're not alone, in a place you've already cleared. Trust it.

The Wearers

Echo

Classification — skinwalkers

They wear shapes that aren't theirs — a player, an animal, a thing you trusted a second ago. The fit is never perfect. They move a half-beat wrong, hold a pose a moment too long, look at you when they shouldn't be able to.

A Wearer can't hurt you itself. Its whole trick is getting you to follow the wrong face into somewhere that can.

The tell: someone you know, somewhere they couldn't be, moving like they're remembering how.

The Voices

Echo

Classification — whispers on the channel

Footsteps in an empty room. A call from a direction you haven't walked. Your own name, in a voice you recognize. The Hollow knows what you want to hear and it plays it back as bait.

Following a Voice has never once led anywhere good. It can't touch you — it only needs you to walk toward it.

The tell: a sound that wants you to move. Anything pulling you into the dark is lying.

The Dark

Condition

Classification — not a creature

Less a thing than a state the Hollow falls into. Unlit night invites everything worse and wears you down on its own. The Man reads it better than you do; the echoes are bolder in it.

Keep a flame. Light is the one currency that always spends. Build toward it, carry it, and never let the last one go out.

The tell: your own breathing getting louder. When the dark is all you can hear, you've waited too long.

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