Durenchi

“Life for life,” the Hollow Tree said.

Its words creaked into the air, sharp and splintering, echoing through the cave as though the stone itself repeated the price. My heart strained harder with every step I took closer. The trembling in my legs had started the moment I was told my mother had passed, spoken gently, as if kindness could soften death, and it had never stopped. My body had never learned how to hold this kind of pain. I had been sheltered from hardship, protected from loss, and now I stood in a damp, forgotten cave where the Hollow Tree grew in the dark, its roots crawling across the stone floor like exposed veins. Something dark clung to the roots, old, dried remnants that were not quite sap. I understood, without being told, that I was not the first to stand here.

The air was thick with rot and wet earth. Water dripped from the ceiling, slow and deliberate. Each drop landed too loudly. The roots shifted beneath my feet, not moving, not still, waiting.

“Will you pay the price,” the Hollow Tree creaked, “make the sacrifice?”

“My life for hers?” I asked. My voice barely carried.

The bark groaned as the Hollow Tree shook with something close to excitement.

“Not your life,” it said. “Just your shadow.”

My mother had been sick for a long time. Knowing the end was coming had not softened the blow. It had only stretched the grief thin, turning every day into a quiet rehearsal for the moment I still was not ready to face. I was exhausted from the ache in my chest, from waking every morning already braced for pain. I wanted it gone. I wanted the darkness out of me.

I thought of her hands, how they always shook when she tried to drink from her water bottle with the picture of a horse on the side that I had made for her.

I nodded. “Deal. Just bring her back.”

What use is a shadow to an empty heart?

The wind rushed past me toward the Hollow Tree, carrying the smell of the living forest beyond the cave, green, damp, breathing. The cicadas cried out sharply as the birds fell silent. I felt warmth drain from my body like water pulled from a basin, leaving behind a hollow chill. I blinked.

And he was there.

Kneeling beside me was the dark silhouette of myself, a void cut from reality. A black so deep it stood out even here, in this dim cave where light crept in only as a rumor. My shadow had followed me since childhood, stretched beside me through every version of myself I had outgrown.

My shadow rose and turned toward me. There was nothing I could see, no eyes, no face, but I knew it understood why it was here. Why I had agreed. I could not see its expression, but I felt its thoughts bleed into me. Confusion first. Then fear.

As numbness spread through my chest, fear bloomed inside my shadow, sudden and frantic. We stared at one another, bound by a lifetime of shared steps and silent loyalty.

The Hollow Tree let out a strained laugh. Bark split slightly with the sound.

“Come,” it said. “And I will return her to you.”

My shadow began to move.

It never looked away from me.

With each step it took toward the trunk, I felt its pain swell, fear, sadness, desperation, gathering where my emotions had already begun to drain. Can shadows cry? Its legs trembled as it walked. Mine steadied. The numbness climbed higher, colder, until just before the roots touched my shadow, something slipped loose inside me.

A whimper.

One small, breaking sound escaped before the wall closed and all feeling went silent.

Cold calm replaced it. Even my breathing felt borrowed, as though it belonged to someone else.

My shadow collapsed, weeping, its darkness thickening as though crushed beneath an unseen weight. Drops of something black and empty spilled onto the cave floor, hissing softly when they struck stone. The roots stirred, eager, drinking deeply as the branches of the Hollow Tree bent downward, wrapping the shadow in a slow, suffocating embrace.

The cicadas went silent.

Then the Hollow Tree screamed.

It was not a voice, but the sound of wood bending too far, of something ancient shifting unnaturally, a cry of hunger finally answered.

I inhaled.

My shadow vanished.

The Hollow Tree stood still, heavy and satisfied.

“Good,” it said.

I knew I should feel regret. Horror. Guilt. But there was nothing. Only the certainty that the cost had been acceptable. My darkness was gone, stripped from me and buried in the roots. And now I could have her back.

The cave shook as the Hollow Tree vibrated, dirt and insects raining down. I did not flinch. I simply brushed debris from my shoulders, unmoved.

“She has been returned to you,” it said. “Leave. You will find her where you lost her.”

I had thought I would be happy. I had thought I would finally breathe again.

But breath was all it was, air moving in and out of an empty space.

I turned and left the cave. The forest closed around me as if nothing had happened.

I reached her home quickly, though I could not have said why. My body moved with purpose my heart no longer possessed. When I opened the door, I saw her on the couch where she had died, the same couch she had barely left for years as her body failed her.

She looked at me and smiled.

Warm. Familiar.

Then it faded.

She saw something in me, something missing, and concern replaced joy. She reached out, her hand trembling, stopping just short of touching me. Her eyes searched my face the way a mother looks for fever, for injury, for something she is afraid to name.

I felt nothing.

She was alive. And I could not feel it. I could not rejoice. I had given myself for her, and there was nothing left inside to answer her smile.

The room was quiet. The air was stale with medicine and fading light.

And through the open window, carried faintly on the wind, I heard it, the darkness in the woods weeping.

Mourning what I no longer could.

I stood there, hollow and grey.

A man without a shadow.