​This is the prologue to my first attempt at creative writing, it aims to set the narrative tone for the story and do a bit of worldbuilding. your thoughts?

I didn’t come here on purpose.
That’s the first lie I told myself.

The Hollow doesn’t let you remember how or why, only that you’re here, and maybe you’ve always been. The sky has never been anything but this sick crimson, the air never smelled of anything but wet earth and copper, and my name has always been Leo. At least, that’s what they tell me.

Sometimes I get flashes. A woman’s voice, humming. The smell of bread, warm and burning. The weight of a child’s hand in mine. But when I reach for them, they dissolve like steam from a dying fire. Maybe they were never real. Maybe the Hollow put them there just to watch me ache.

The villagers say it doesn’t matter. “Before is gone,” they murmur, always with that same waxy smile. “Only the Hollow remains.”

I used to claw at the edges of my mind, scraping for anything that proved I wasn’t born here in this rot. Now I’m not so sure I want to know. The Watcher pulses in the sky like a blister ready to burst. The Vein beneath the fields twitches if you stare too long, slick and black, like it’s waiting to be fed. Sometimes I think remembering would be worse.

And sometimes I ask myself:

Is this Hell?
Is this purgatory for lost souls?
Is this punishment for sins I can’t even remember committing?

These answerless questions have haunted me for too long, echoing louder than my own thoughts. The villagers don’t help. They sometimes don’t even seem real, like props in a forgotten dream, faces stretched too tight, eyes that don’t blink enough. Hollow shells, existing just to be. Is that what I’ll become, too? Will I dissolve into this place if I stay long enough?

Or am I here for something else entirely?

The others don’t speak of Before. They don’t speak much at all. They drift like clockwork ghosts, repeating their chores, tending to houses that sigh and creak like they’re trying to breathe. I once thought they were hiding something. Now I think they’ve simply forgotten how to be anything but here.

But even they remember one thing.

Sylvie.

They whisper her name like a hymn, like a warding spell. They sing about her in that too-flat way children don’t. “Sylvie weaves, Sylvie sees, mind the whispers in the trees.” They leave things at the old oak, curled flowers, teeth, locks of hair that don’t match their heads.

I’ve never seen her. No one has. But when the watcher takes over the sky at night, I hear movement. Soft, deliberate. Something that doesn’t breathe. Something that knows.

Sometimes I find myself muttering her name in my sleep, or wake with dirt under my nails and no memory of why.

And I wonder,

if I ever do meet Sylvie,
will she have answers?

Or am I already starting to lose my mind,
starting to unravel,
starting to become one of them?