The Hollow Feast

Some places are abandoned. Crow Hollow is starving. Lila Hart comes to Crow Hollow Asylum for one clean night of trespass and footage, a fast hit of adrenaline in a building that should be dead. The moment she crosses the threshold, the asylum proves it is not dead at all. Hallways bend. Doors relocate. Whispers ride a low mechanical hum, and the exits only open when the building wants them to. When Lila finds records left behind by Elias Crowe, the asylum's history turns from tragedy to design. Crow Hollow was built over a natural cavity beneath the hill, a "mouth of the earth" shaped into a funnel. Elias did not discover a monster, he volunteered to become its handler, binding himself as the Hollow Warden so the hunger would have a steady supply. Now Lila is marked, hunted, and pushed toward the real secret: the asylum is only part of the system. The town keeps the routine. The police station and its "help" have rules of their own, and the Harvest Festival is not a celebration, it is inventory. If Lila wants to leave, she has to do more than survive the building. She has to break the mechanism that keeps feeding it.