The Beast of the Hollow Needle

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The Hollow Needle does not belong to this world.   The land raised it against its will, forced it skyward when the Agriss Mountains buckled and broke, tearing through the ancient veins of the earth. It is not a place of worship, nor a ruin of some forgotten people. It is something else, something older, something that was never meant to be found.   No trees grow near it. No animals nest in its crevices. The wind bends around it in unnatural ways, carrying no sound of its own—only the echoes of things that should not be remembered. And when people speak of it, they do not call it by name.   They say only this: it is watching.   The first to set foot inside were miners, drawn by greed. They had no fear of old stories, no time for the nonsense of frightened shepherds or the vague warnings of elders who refused to explain themselves. Arin Silver was rumored to run deep beneath the Needle’s base, and where there is silver, men will follow.   They did not make it far.   The tunnels inside were too smooth, as if something had moved along them for a long, long time. Passages that should have curved doubled back on themselves, swallowing light in ways that defied understanding. Some men swore they heard echoes before they spoke, that their own voices came back wrong, stretched out, unfinished. Others reported the feeling of being studied. Not followed. Not hunted. Observed.   Then the first man vanished.   The second was found days later, sitting against the stone, his face slack, his breath stilled, his fingers curled around something that was no longer there. The third was never found at all.   The miners left. The silver did not matter anymore. But some things do not care if they are abandoned.   It does not need to chase.   That is the worst part.   Stories tell of the creature inside, though no two accounts are ever the same. Some call it a beast, a thing of muscle and hunger, its limbs twisted into shapes that do not belong to any natural predator. Others claim it is a shadow, something that flickers along the walls of the Hollow Needle, watching, waiting. A few—only a few—say it is neither. They say it is something that wears the shape of those who stray too close.   And sometimes, they say, it walks away.   There have been sightings—never close, never long enough to be sure. Figures moving through the fog, walking too smoothly, too carefully, as if remembering how to move. Travelers found wandering, confused, unable to recall where they had been. A merchant once stumbled into a village at dawn, his clothes torn, his skin pale as death. He sat by the fire, silent for hours, staring at his hands as if seeing them for the first time.   He did not speak again.   That night, he was gone. His boots remained by the door. His coat was still folded at the hearth. There were no footprints leading away.   And when his name was spoken, the wind did not carry it.   There are rules.   No one who knows the old stories enters the Hollow Needle. Those who must pass near it do not call out to lost travelers. They do not answer when a voice—not quite right, not quite wrong—calls from the dark.   They leave offerings of silver at its base, though no one remembers why. Some say Arin Silver keeps the thing inside at bay. Others say the silver is not protection—but a bargain. Proof that the traveler still belongs to the world of the living.   But above all, they do not turn around.   If they see something, just beyond the firelight, they do not look too long.   Because if it was truly someone lost, truly someone returned?   They would have called out first.