They say the humans were real once.

Before the rivers ran backward. Before the forests stood still in mourning. Before we knew silence as a sky-born curse. When I was a young sapling, just roots and questions, my elder told me stories of them.

The Hollow Men, they called them. Bones on the outside. Warm-blooded but war-born. Soft. Short-lived. Dangerous in ways even thunder couldn’t replicate.

W...