Apirael did not sleep so much as cease.
His body had learned to approximate death with increasing accuracy—the breathing shallow enough to be negotiable, the heartbeat iambic but irregular, the blood-ink circulating according to rules that had nothing to do with biology and everything to do with language. When he lay down in his narrow bed, surrounded by pages filled with his own blood, he didn't rest. He simply stopped being conscious in the way that living things were conscious.
And in that stopping, in that space between being and unbeing:
Mr. Hollow waited.
The dream—if it could be called that, if dreams were what happened when the boundary between poet and poem became porous—began in a room that had no walls.
Or rather, it had walls made of absence. Wherever Apirael looked, he saw the shape of walls defined by what wasn't there, outlined by negative space, suggested by the way the nothing organized itself around something that should have been present but had been removed.
Mr. Hollow stood in the center—if standing was what something without proper relationship to gravity did. He was taller here than he'd been in Apirael's room. More articulated. His non-face had developed more complexity, more layers of smoothness where features should have been but weren't, creating an absence so complete it became its own kind of presence.
"You're dreaming," Mr. Hollow said, his voice like wind through rooms that had forgotten their purpose. "Or I'm dreaming you. The distinction is becoming academic."
Apirael tried to speak. Found that in this place—this non-place, this architecture of omission—his voice worked differently. The words came out visible, hanging in the air like smoke, like meaning that had learned to be tangible.
"What do you want?" The letters floated between them, black on nothing, ink on void.
"Want?" Mr. Hollow's laugh was the sound of pages turning in abandoned libraries. "I don't want, Apirael. I am. I'm what happens when your wants get edited out of existence. When your desires get deemed too much, too sharp, too true to speak. I'm the accumulation of everything you cut from your work, and accumulation doesn't want—it hungers."
He moved closer, and the absence that defined him seemed to pull at Apirael, seemed to drain something from the space around him.
"You made me from resentment," Mr. Hollow continued. "From every time you were ignored and pretended it was fine. From every dismissal you swallowed. From every moment someone praised mediocrity while your genius went unacknowledged. You gave me form from formlessness. Gave me voice from silence. Gave me purpose from all your purposeless anger."
"I know what you are," Apirael's words wrote themselves in the air. "You're my discarded lines. My murdered metaphors. My—"
"I'm your honesty," Mr. Hollow interrupted, and his voice had dropped to something that resonated in dimensions other than sound. "I'm what you would have said if you weren't so desperate to be liked. If you weren't so pathetically eager for approval. If you'd had the courage to speak your cruelty as clearly as you saw it."
He circled Apirael now, and in his wake, the absence seemed to write itself—words appearing in the negative space, formed by what wasn't there rather than what was:
THEY DESERVE TO SUFFERTHEY DESERVE TO FEELTHEY DESERVE TO BE WRITTEN INTO TRUTH WHETHER THEY WANT IT OR NOT
"Stop," Apirael said—wrote, the word hanging desperate and small.
"Why?" Mr. Hollow's non-face was inches from Apirael's now. "Because it's uncomfortable? Because seeing your own thoughts reflected makes you recognize what you really are? You're not a tragic poet, Apirael. You're not a misunderstood artist. You're vindictive. You're cruel. You're the thing that learned to hurt back and decided that was justice."
"I'm trying to be better than that."
"Are you?" Mr. Hollow gestured, and the absence-walls shifted, and suddenly Apirael could see through them—could see London, could see his manifestations rippling outward, could see Lenore singing truth that destroyed, could see the people he'd touched with his precision, could see the consequences spreading like infection through the city's flesh.
"You're trying to be careful," Mr. Hollow said. "Trying to be restrained. But you're still writing. Still manifesting. Still turning your observations into reality whether people consent or not. You just dress it up now. Call it art. Call it precision. Call it anything except what it is."
"What is it?"
Mr. Hollow's non-face somehow conveyed a smile—terrible, honest, true in the way that only absolute absence could be true.
"Power," he said simply. "You're drunk on it. Addicted to it. You discovered that your words could reshape reality and you've been chasing that feeling ever since. The crying over Lenore? The restraint with Simon? The guilt? That's not redemption, Apirael. That's just you learning to savor the power more slowly. Learning to make it last instead of burning through it like you did those first three days."
The words—Apirael's visible words—trembled in the air: "That's not true."
"Isn't it?" Mr. Hollow leaned closer. "Then why are you here? Why are you dreaming of me instead of dreamlessly ceasing? Why does part of you want to see me, to talk to me, to hear what I'm doing with the lines you discarded?"
"What are you doing?"
"Walking." Mr. Hollow straightened. "Whispering. Making people hear what you really thought about them when you were being polite. Making them understand that your smiles were violence postponed. Making them feel the contempt you hid behind courtesy."
He turned, and the absence-walls shifted again, and Apirael saw: a woman he'd met once at a literary salon, years ago. She'd dismissed his work with the phrase "charming but slight." Now she sat in her parlor, hands over her ears, weeping, because Mr. Hollow had whispered to her what Apirael had really thought about her—about her vapid taste, her inherited money, her pretensions to culture that were really just pretensions to superiority.
"She hanged herself two days ago," Mr. Hollow said conversationally. "Just like Miss Eleanor from your competition. Just like three others since. Because I whispered your truth to them and they couldn't bear it. Because your honesty, when delivered honestly, is lethal."
Apirael felt something surge in his chest. Horror. Pride. Guilt. Satisfaction. All of them braided together into something he couldn't name, couldn't separate, couldn't understand.
"You're killing people," he said—wrote, the letters shaking in the air.
"You're killing people," Mr. Hollow corrected. "I'm just the mechanism. The delivery system. The manifestation of your resentment finally finding outlet. You wrote me to do this. You wanted me to do this. You just didn't want to admit you wanted it."
"I wanted—" Apirael stopped. Started again. "I wanted them to know. To understand. To feel what I'd felt when they dismissed me."
"And now they do." Mr. Hollow's voice held something like affection. "And some of them can't survive knowing. Can't survive understanding. Can't survive feeling what you felt. Because you're stronger than they are, Apirael. You survived their cruelty. They can't survive yours."
He moved to the absence-walls again. Showed Apirael more: the critic who'd called his work 'technically proficient but emotionally distant.' The editor who'd written 'not quite right for us.' The poet who'd won the competition while Apirael lost. All of them hearing Mr. Hollow's whispers. All of them learning what Apirael had really thought. All of them breaking under the weight of that knowledge.
"This is what power looks like," Mr. Hollow said quietly. "This is what happens when you stop being polite. When you stop editing yourself. When you let your truth have teeth. And you love it, Apirael. You love watching them suffer. You love knowing that your words finally matter. You love—"
"Stop." The word was larger now, bolder, written in letters that pulsed with something like authority.
"Why?" Mr. Hollow turned back to face him. "Because you don't want to hear it? Because you want to pretend you're better than you are? Because you need to believe that crying over Lenore makes you good instead of just making you capable of recognizing your own monstrosity?"
"Because," Apirael said—wrote—and his words were steady now, certain, carved from conviction rather than cast from fear: "Because I am monstrous. I am cruel. I am the thing that learned to hurt back. But I'm also the thing that can choose. Can decide when to write and when to stay silent. Can recognize suffering and respond with something other than more suffering."
He stepped toward Mr. Hollow, and in this dream-space, in this architecture of absence, his presence pushed back against the hollowness, filled the negative space with something that wasn't quite substance but wasn't quite void either.
"You're what I was," Apirael continued. "What I could have been if I'd let resentment be my only teacher. But Simon reminded me—" The words caught, reformed. "Loneliness can be shared. Suffering can be witnessed. Power can be held instead of always exercised. You're my discarded lines, yes. But I can discard you again. Can refuse to let you define what I'm becoming."
Mr. Hollow's non-face regarded him with something that might have been respect or might have been contempt or might have been both simultaneously.
"You think you can reject me?" he asked softly. "I'm manifest, Apirael. I'm real. I'm walking through London right now—not here in your dream but actually walking—whispering your truths to people who can't survive them. You can't unwrite me. Can't unmake me. Can't wish me back into non-existence."
"I know." Apirael's words floated between them like a treaty, like a compromise, like an acknowledgment. "I know I can't undo what I've done. Can't save the people you've already broken. Can't stop you from continuing. But I can refuse to feed you. Can stop writing the kind of resentment that gives you strength. Can choose mercy over precision when precision would be cruel."
"For how long?" Mr. Hollow's voice was almost gentle now, almost kind. "How long can you resist, Apirael? How long before the pressure builds too high? Before the words demand outlet? Before you need to write something and the closest truth is someone who trusts you, someone who's made themselves vulnerable to you, someone like—"
"Don't." The word was a wall, a boundary, a line Apirael drew in the absence-architecture.
"—Simon," Mr. Hollow finished anyway. "The boy who asked to be alone with you. Who's even now bringing you paper because he thinks you need it. Who's making himself available to your observation, your precision, your need to write. How long before you transform him the way you transformed Lenore? How long before your restraint fails and you write him into something he didn't choose to be?"
Apirael wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that he would never, that Simon was safe, that the restraint would hold.
But Mr. Hollow was made from his own discarded honesty. And the honest answer was:
I don't know.
"There it is," Mr. Hollow said softly. "The truth you've been avoiding. You will write Simon eventually. Will capture him. Will manifest him. Will transform him. Because that's what you are now. That's what the blood-ink demands. And no amount of crying over Lenore or sharing loneliness will change the fundamental nature of what you've become."
He stepped back, and the absence-walls began to dissolve, and Apirael understood the dream was ending, that he was returning to his body, to his room, to the narrow bed where he'd been lying like a corpse.
"But here's the thing about power," Mr. Hollow said, his voice already fading, already becoming distant. "It doesn't care about your intentions. Doesn't care about your guilt. Doesn't care about your desire to be better. It just is. And you'll use it. Because using it is all you know how to do anymore. Because the alternative is suffocation, drowning, death by unexpressed language."
His non-face was barely visible now, just a suggestion in the dissolving absence.
"So write, Apirael. Write whatever truth demands to be written next. Write about the murders you've been hearing about. Write about the darkness accumulating in London's alleys. Write about the violence that's been gestating in the spaces between words. Write it and make it real and alive and terrible."
His final words were barely a whisper, barely there:
"I'll be waiting to see what you create."
Apirael's eyes opened.
The ceiling of his room. Gray light filtering through the broken window. The smell—no, he couldn't smell anymore, but the sense—of London waking to another day of fog and commerce and the thousand small cruelties that made civilization possible.
He tried to move. Couldn't. His body had gone rigid overnight, locked in rigor mortis that wasn't quite death but wasn't quite life either. The blood-ink had slowed in his veins, had thickened to something more syrup than liquid, and his flesh had responded by stopping, by refusing to animate until given reason to continue.
He looked like a corpse. Was lying like a corpse. Was breathing like a corpse—which is to say, barely, reluctantly, as if his lungs had forgotten their purpose.
The door opened.
Simon entered carrying paper—a fresh ream, still wrapped in brown parcel paper. His face was bright despite the early hour, eager despite having obviously spent money he couldn't afford on something Apirael needed more than food.
Then he saw Apirael's state and his expression collapsed.
"Mr. Grey!" He dropped the paper. Rushed to the bed. Grabbed Apirael's shoulder—the dead one, the left one—and shook it. "Mr. Grey, wake up! Wake up! You're—you look like—oh God, I thought you were—"
Apirael's mouth moved. No sound came at first. Then, forced through a throat that had learned to forget speech:
"Paper."
"What?" Simon was nearly crying now, terror and relief fighting for dominance. "What did you—"
"Paper." More insistent now. "Give me. The paper."
Understanding dawned. Simon released him, grabbed the ream, tore off the wrapping with shaking hands. Pulled out a single sheet. Pressed it into Apirael's right hand—the one that still worked, still responded, still remembered being attached to intention.
Apirael's thumb found his mouth. Bit down. The black blood welled up easily—it was always ready now, always eager, always waiting for permission to become language.
He pressed thumb to paper and wrote:
Not a long piece. Not a meditation. Just three lines. Three quick lines to restart the mechanism, to remind his body that it had purpose, that animation was possible, that death could be postponed:
I wake because words demand witness. I move because language requires motion. I breathe because poetry needs vessels.
The blood-ink flowed. The letters formed. And as they did, Apirael felt his body restart—felt circulation resume, felt muscles soften from rigor, felt consciousness flood back into limbs that had been considering abandonment.
He sat up. Gasping. His chest heaving with effort that should have been autonomic but had become volitional, something he had to choose now rather than something his body did automatically.
Simon stared at him with eyes that held new understanding, new horror.
"You need to write to live," he whispered. "You've become—you're not just trading yourself for poetry. You're running on it. You're—"
"Yes." Apirael's voice was rough, unused. "The blood-ink isn't auxiliary anymore. It's primary. My body is learning to run on language instead of oxygen. Learning to be fueled by expression instead of food. Learning that I'm more text than flesh now."
He looked at the paper Simon had brought. At the fresh ream waiting to be filled. At the vast emptiness that demanded colonization by his blood-verses.
"Thank you," he said. "For bringing this. For—" He stopped. Started again. "For staying."
Simon's expression softened. "I told you. I'm choosing this. Choosing you. Choosing to witness whatever you're becoming." He paused. "Even if it's terrible. Even if it frightens me. Even if—"
"Even if I write you," Apirael finished quietly.
"Even then." Simon's voice held conviction. "Because maybe—maybe if you write me, you'll do it with the same precision you wrote Miss Hart. Maybe you'll see me truly. Maybe you'll capture what I actually am beneath the earnestness. And maybe—" His voice dropped to something barely audible. "Maybe that would be worth it. Being seen that completely. Even if it cost me."
Apirael felt the words building again. The poem about Simon that had been gestating since they'd embraced in the wings. The observation about loneliness shared, about innocence choosing to witness monstrosity, about the terrible beauty of someone who asked to be written.
But he held them inside. Refused them outlet. Chose restraint over expression.
"Not yet," he said. "When I write you—if I write you—I want it to be choice. Not compulsion. Not pressure. Not need. Choice."
Simon nodded. Seemed to accept this. "Then what will you write? The pressure's building—I can see it. Can feel it somehow. Your veins are pulsing. Your hands are shaking. You need to write something or you'll—"
"—stop functioning," Apirael finished. "Yes. The mechanism requires expression. The blood-ink demands outlet." He looked at the paper. At the emptiness waiting to be filled. "I've been hearing things. In the streets. In the crowds. Whispers about violence in Whitechapel. About women found dead. About someone moving through the alleys with a knife, leaving messages written in flesh."
Simon's face paled. "The murders. Yes. Everyone's talking about them. Five women in two months. All prostitutes. All—" He swallowed. "All butchered. Cut apart like anatomical demonstrations. The police can't find him. Can't stop him. Can't even determine if it's one killer or many."
"One," Apirael said with certainty he shouldn't have. "It's one. I can sense him. Can feel his presence in the city like a concentration of violence, like focused cruelty that's learned to have purpose. He's—" He stopped. Looked at his black hands. "He's writing. Not with ink. With knives. Not on paper. On flesh. But he's writing. Making statements. Creating signatures. Manifesting his vision through the medium of murder."
"Mr. Grey—" Simon's voice held new fear. "Mr. Grey, you're not saying—you're not suggesting that he's—"
"Like me?" Apirael met his gaze. "Yes. Not literally. He hasn't made bargains with muses. But functionally? Yes. He's discovered that violence can be precise. That murder can be authored. That you can write meaning into the world using bodies as pages and knives as pens. He's a poet who learned the wrong language."
He pressed his thumb to fresh paper. The blood welled up readily, eagerly, as if it had been waiting for this, as if it wanted to write about this.
"What are you doing?" Simon asked, but his voice held less fear now. More curiosity. The look of someone who'd chosen to witness and was committed to seeing it through.
"I'm writing him," Apirael said. "I'm capturing him precisely. I'm giving form to the violence that's been moving through Whitechapel. I'm—" He stopped. Met Simon's eyes. "I'm manifesting London's darkest truth. I'm making the killer real in ways that go beyond flesh, beyond knives, beyond mere murder. I'm writing him into legend."
"Why?" Simon's question was simple. The answer was not.
"Because," Apirael said, and his voice had dropped to something that resonated below speech, "because I dreamed of Mr. Hollow. Because he showed me what resentment looks like when it walks unchecked. Because I need to understand what happens when cruelty becomes art. Because—"
He stopped. Let the real answer surface:
"Because part of me recognizes him. Part of me is him. He writes in flesh what I write in words. He manifests violence while I manifest truth. He's the shadow version of what I've become. And I need to see him clearly. Need to capture him precisely. Need to understand—"
His thumb pressed to paper, and the words began to flow:
"—what I'm capable of becoming if I stop choosing restraint."
And as the poem began—as his blood-ink started writing the portrait of London's midnight poet, the man with the knife, the author of atrocities—Simon watched from beside the bed with wide eyes and steady presence.
Witnessing.
Choosing to witness.
Even though what was being written was terrible.
Even though what was being manifested was worse.
Even though the death poet was about to write another death into reality.
And London, waking to its usual fog and commerce, had no idea what was being authored in a narrow room in Clerkenwell.
Had no idea that the murders that would haunt it for centuries were being written right now.
Being given form.
Being made legend.
Being transformed from random violence into something more terrible:
Authored violence.
Precise violence.
Violence that would carry a name, a mythology, a permanence that mere murder never achieved.
Apirael wrote.
Simon watched.
And in Whitechapel, in the alleys, in the fog:
Something that had been merely killing learned what it was to be written.
Learned what it meant to be seen.
Learned that it was no longer just a murderer.
It was becoming a legend.
And legends, once written, never truly died.
They just waited in the pages for someone to read them back into life.