{"sf1_id":2241476,"sf2_id":"Jew5Zjbn","title":"The Dreamwalker's Archive | The Hollowing","author":"SleepwalkingFox","words":394,"posted_at":"2025-04-06T22:36:56.000Z","tags":["Ascendants","Dark Fantasy","Dream fantasy","Dreamscape","Emotional storytelling","Hollowbound","Lore drop","Luminaries","Metaphysical","Original universe","Soft horror","The sleepwalker's lantern","Velune","Worldbuilding","surreal"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/2241476-the-dreamwalker-s-archive-the-hollowing","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/Jew5Zjbn","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/ac/16/ac16032d-6baf-4e46-8a8b-d69eb84a8c93","description":"The wars scarred the waking world.  \nThe Hollowing scarred the dreaming.  \n  \nThis isn’t just history —  \nit’s why dreamers still wake with shadows clinging to their bones.  \n  \nThis is the first lore drop from The Sleepwalker’s Lantern —  \na soft horror fantasy exploring the fracture between dream and waking.  \nIt begins with the Hollowing —  \na time when the dreamworld began to falter…  \nand something darker began to take root.","content":"The Hollowing marked the beginning of a fracture that would echo through dream and waking alike.\n\n  \n\nThe waking world called them World War I and II.\n\nThe dreaming remembers them differently — the Convergence, and the Second Convergence.\n\nTogether, their echoes became the Hollowing.\n\n  \n\nA time when pain and suffering was the only dream left to dream. A time when people forgot how to love, how to heal. It marked the moment the Luminaries began to falter in their mission.\n\n  \n\nMillions of souls left to drown in the brutality of human greed — and the quiet horrors of what we are when love is forgotten.\n\n  \n\nThis convergence of chaos and pain rippled through the dreamworld, shattering the last threads of order.\n\nThe Luminaries healed as best they could in the wake of the Hollowing; spread too thin, they began to falter. Their light faded to a shimmer, and their grace fell to nothing more than a whisper. The Luminaries were another victim of humanity's darkest days.  \n  \nThough not extinguished, some say their light has grown too faint — too distant to be felt. Hidden from the dreamers they’re meant to protect, they now linger in the far reaches of the dreaming—waiting, hoping their numbers might rekindle.  \n  \nIn their silence, the Hollowbound rose.\n\nDarkness etched itself into the very fabric of the dreaming, corrupting the dreamscape in ways not seen in aeons. Realms that once radiated joy and purity now stand in ruin. A fractured echo of a time long gone.  \n  \nThe dreamworld didn’t just break — it changed. Not because of nightmares alone, but because the light it was meant to protect started to flicker. That light? The human soul.\n\nThings didn’t fall apart overnight, but when they did, it spread like a sickness. Anger. Fear. Doubt. All of it dug deep.\n\nEven now, you can feel the weight of that time in the way people dream.\n\nThat’s when the Hollowbound slipped through. They didn’t storm in — they seeped.\n\nNow they’re legion — not a swarm, but a rot. The kind that settles in unnoticed… until everything begins to fall apart from within.\n\nEven the Ascendants can’t hold them back the way they used to.\n\nAnd when the Hollowbound touch something, it twists. Not just the dream. But people too. Something inside them dims, and they don’t always notice until it’s too late."}