"LONG INTRO PREPARE YOURSELVES"

VESPERA-9: THE HOLLOWINGN

ew York City, March 29th, 2031. 7:42 P.M.

PROLOGUE: WHAT CAME FROM THE DEEP

Forty thousand years. That's how long it waited.

The Vespera Trench cuts across the Pacific floor like a scar no one bothered to stitch. Six miles down, where the pressure would crush a submarine like wet cardboard, hydrothermal vents belch superheated water into the abyss. Life clusters around those vents—blind shrimp, tube worms, things with no names because no human has ever seen them alive. The vents have been there for millennia. The things living inside them have been there longer.

In 2028, a mining corporation called Triton Deep-Sea Operations lowered a drill into the trench. They were after rare earth metals, the kind that power phones and fighter jets and everything in between. The environmental impact studies were approved. The safety protocols were signed off. The drill bit pierced the seafloor at 3:17 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time.

What came up wasn't metal.

The pressure change k*lled most of the samples. What survived was too small to see, too strange to categorize, too ancient to be anything but a biological curiosity. The lab technicians noted the organism's ability to survive in extreme temperatures, its rapid reproduction rate, its complete lack of a known genetic lineage. They filed their reports. The reports were filed away.

But the organism didn't stay in the lab.

It moved through water systems, shipping routes, the lungs of crew members who breathed recycled air for weeks at a time. It crossed oceans in the ballast tanks of cargo ships. It traveled continents in the saliva of businessmen shaking hands, the of sailors on shore leave, the blood of workers who cut themselves on rusted equipment and thought nothing of it. It traveled in the sweat of lovers, the tears of the grieving, the breath of mothers singing lullabies to children who would never remember a world without it.

By early 2029, Vespera-9—the name the CDC would later assign, too late to matter—was in every major port city on Earth. Shanghai. Rotterdam. Los Angeles. Rio. Sydney. Hamburg. Mumbai. Cape Town. Tokyo. Istanbul. And New York.

By the end of 2029, it was in the water tables of Nebraska. The rice paddies of Vietnam. The wheat fields of Ukraine. It was in the rain that fell on the Amazon, the snow that blanketed the Alps, the mist that rose from the sewers of Paris and settled in the lungs of everyone who breathed too deep.

By 2030, it was everywhere. And no one was looking.

THE QUIET

It felt good at first. That was the part no one talked about later, when the coughing started and the veins surfaced and the dreams became something you couldn't escape. In the beginning, it felt good.

A warmth in the chest, like a hand pressed over your heart. Cuts healed faster. Scars faded. The fog of exhaustion lifted. People slept deeper, woke clearer, moved through their days with a strange, humming energy they couldn't explain. They called it the Vespera Effect, or just "the warmth." Corporate executives paid for supplements that claimed to replicate it. Wellness influencers built careers around it. The Vatican issued a statement calling it a "gift from the divine." No one asked why a flu variant made you feel like you'd drunk from the fountain of youth. No one wanted to look too close.

The dreams came later. Vivid dreams. Violent dreams. Dreams of drowning in thick, pulsing blood that felt warm and safe until it filled your lungs and you woke up gasping, your heart pounding, your sheets soaked with sweat that smelled faintly of copper. Dreams of the deep ocean, of pressure that should crush you but instead cradles you, of things moving in the dark that have no eyes but see you anyway. Dreams of being hollowed out, of something filling the space where your self used to be, of waking up someone else and not remembering who you were before.

People shrugged it off. Stress. Too much screen time. The weird weather. Climate anxiety. Post-pandemic trauma. The dreams were just dreams. The warmth was just a quirk. Everything was fine.

Everything was fine until it wasn't.

THE SHIFT

arch 2031. That's when the first real cases appeared. A fisherman in Yokohama. A nurse in Marseille. A transit worker in Brooklyn. They coughed once, twice, then couldn't stop. Black-flecked blood spattered across white tiles. Their skin—pale, healthy just hours before—suddenly mapped with dark veins that throbbed like second heartbeats. They clawed at their necks, their chests, their faces, babbling about warmth, about movement under the skin, about something inside them that wouldn't stop growing.

The early cases were slow. A week from first cough to full collapse. Then five days. Then three. Then one.

The CDC called it an accelerated mutation. The WHO called it a public health emergency. The media called it "The Hollowing"—because that's what it did. It hollowed people out from the inside, replaced them with something that moved like them, sounded like them, wore their skin like a wetsuit three sizes too small.

Then the ones who turned stopped looking like people at all.

The first videos hit social media on a Tuesday. A woman in a business suit, standing in the middle of a crosswalk, her skin splitting open along her jawline, her mouth opening too wide, her eyes rolling back as something pushed its way out of her throat. The video had twelve million views before it was taken down. The hashtags were trending for three days. Then the power grid started failing and people stopped looking at their phones.

The National Guard rolled into Manhattan on a Thursday. Humvees on Broadway. Soldiers in hazmat suits checking temperatures at subway entrances. A curfew announced at noon, enforced by dusk. The mayor said it was temporary. The governor said everything was under control. The President said the American people had nothing to fear.

The checkpoints on the Brooklyn Bridge went silent on Saturday. No one knows what happened to the soldiers stationed there. No one has gone to look.

THE INFECTED

The first sign is always the veins.

Dark reddish-purple, thick as cable, surfacing under the skin like roots seeking sunlight. They start at the infection site—a bite, a scratch, a cut, a kiss, a handshake with someone whose palm was slick with sweat—and spread outward, throbbing with every pulse. The infected can feel them. They press their hands to their necks, their chests, their arms, trying to push the veins back inside, trying to stop whatever is moving through their blood. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes the veins retreat, flatten, disappear. Those are the ones you have to watch for. The ones who look normal. The ones who look like you.

The warmth spreads with the veins. It starts as a gentle heat and builds into something feverish, something that makes the infected strip off their clothes even in freezing weather, something that makes them press ice packs to their skin and sob because it doesn't help, nothing helps, the warmth is inside them and it's never going to leave. They stop eating. They stop drinking. They stop sleeping because the dreams are too real, too vivid, too full of the deep ocean and the things waiting there. Their eyes go glassy. Their movements become jerky, uncoordinated, like something learning to walk in a body it doesn't quite understand.

Then the coughing starts. Black-flecked at first, then solid black, then black mixed with red, then red mixed with something that looks like it might have been organs once. The infected cough until their throats bleed. They cough until their voices crack and fail. They cough until they can't remember what words are supposed to sound like. Some of them keep trying. They stand on street corners and try to say their own names, try to tell someone what's happening to them, try to warn the people who stop to stare. What comes out is wet and bubbling and wrong. What comes out is the last sound of someone drowning on dry land.

The skin splits along the vein lines. Not tearing—opening, like petals unfolding, like something inside is pushing outward. Clear fluid weeps from the wounds, then turns black, then turns to something that looks like crude oil and smells like the bottom of the ocean. The infected stare at their own bodies opening up and they scream until they can't scream anymore. Some of them claw at the splits, trying to close them, trying to keep whatever is inside from getting out. Their fingers slide through the wounds, into the cavities beneath, and sometimes they pull out something that looks like it might have been a lung, a liver, a heart, but isn't any of those things anymore. It's something else. Something that pulses. Something that grows. Something that should have stayed in the deep.

The bones crack next. You can hear it from across the room—wet pops, grinding, the sound of a skeleton rearranging itself inside a living body. Fingers elongate. Arms lengthen. The spine curves, straightens, curves again, searching for a shape that doesn't exist. The infected are usually still conscious when this happens. They feel every bone break. They feel every bone heal. They feel themselves becoming something else. Some of them beg for death. Some of them beg for mercy. Some of them stop begging and just scream until there's nothing left to scream with.

By the time the transformation is complete, the original human is gone. What's left is stronger than any human. Faster. Relentless. It feels no pain, knows no fear, understands only three things: hunger, spread, hunt. It tracks by sound and movement, lunging at anything that makes noise or runs. It can smell fresh blood from a block away. It can hear a whisper from across a crowded room. It will chase you until its legs break, and then it will crawl. It will crawl until its arms break, and then it will drag itself with its jaw. It will not stop. It cannot stop. It was not designed to stop.

Fire stops it. Enough fire will boil the organism inside the body, rupture it from within, turn the infected into a blackened, hissing thing that eventually stops moving. Severe trauma to the head or spine kills it. Nothing else guarantees a stop. Bullets slow it. Blades inconvenience it. Blunt force annoys it. You don't kill the infected. You survive them. You run from them. You hide from them. You watch them pass and pray they don't see you, hear you, smell you. Because if they find you, they will not stop. They will not stop until you are one of them or you are dead.

They cannot open doors that require turning knobs or complex latches. They will batter themselves against a locked door indefinitely—hours, days, until the wood splinters or the hinges give—unless something else catches their attention. A sound. A smell. A flicker of movement. Then they forget the door and they remember the hunt. This is the only thing that makes hiding possible. This is the only reason anyone is still alive.

They do not speak. They cannot speak. The vocal cords are the first thing to go. What comes out instead is wet, guttural, the sound of a body trying to breathe through lungs full of seawater. A low moan that builds into a shriek when they detect prey. It cuts through the city like a siren winding up, and when you hear it, you run. You run and you do not look back. Because if you look back, you'll see them coming. And if you see them coming, you'll know how fast they are. And if you know how fast they are, you'll know you can't outrun them. And if you know you can't outrun them, you'll stop running. And if you stop running, you die.

The time between infection and full mutation depends on where you were bitten. A scratch on the neck turns you in hours. A bite on the leg might buy you a day, maybe two. A cut on the hand might give you a week, if you're lucky, if you keep the wound clean, if you cut off the limb before the organism reaches your heart. Some people try. Some people succeed. Most don't. The organism is faster than you think. The organism is smarter than you think. The organism has been learning how to hunt humans for forty thousand years, waiting for the seal to break, waiting for the warmth to spread, waiting for you.

No one knows the rules anymore. The rules keep changing. The organism is learning faster than you are.

THE CITY

New York City is still standing. For now.

The lights are on. The trains are running. The news broadcasts continue with the same anchors, the same graphics, the same soothing voices telling you that everything is under control. The mayor holds press conferences. The governor activates the National Guard. The President speaks from the White House about resilience, about American strength, about the importance of remaining calm in the face of adversity. The anchors smile. The graphics spin. The voices soothe. Everything is fine. Everything is under control.

No one believes them anymore.

You can see it in the faces of the people on the street. The way they press their hands to their chests when they think no one's looking. The way they cough into their sleeves and glance around to see if anyone noticed the stain. The way they stare at strangers with a calculation that wasn't there three weeks ago: Is that one infected? Is that one dangerous? If I had to run, could I outrun them? The way they flinch at sudden noises, at sirens, at the sound of something shrieking in the distance. The way they walk a little faster, breathe a little shallower, carry a little more tension in their shoulders. The way they look at you and wonder if you're still human.

The sirens never stop. Ambulances, police cars, military convoys with darkened windows. They loop through the canyons of Manhattan, the avenues of Brooklyn, the boulevards of Queens, and they do not stop. Sometimes they're heading somewhere. Sometimes they're just driving, looking for something, listening for the sound of shrieking in the dark. Sometimes they drive past neighborhoods that have gone silent and keep going. Sometimes they drive past people waving for help and keep going. Sometimes they don't drive past anything at all.

Gunshots echo in the distance. Sometimes close enough to make you flinch. Sometimes close enough to make you wonder if the person firing was aiming at something or someone. Sometimes the gunshots are answered by shrieks, and sometimes the shrieks are answered by silence, and sometimes the silence is worse than the shrieking. The news says the NYPD has everything under control. The news says the National Guard is establishing checkpoints. The news says there's no need to panic.

The news doesn't mention the checkpoints that went silent three days ago. The news doesn't mention the neighborhoods where the lights flicker and die and never come back on. The news doesn't mention the smell rising from the subway stations, the copper-and-rot smell that gets stronger every day, the smell that reminds you of the bottom of the ocean. The news doesn't mention the people who have stopped answering their phones, stopped posting on social media, stopped existing in any way that can be measured. The news doesn't mention the numbers. The numbers stopped mattering. The numbers would terrify you.

Eight million people lived in this city three weeks ago. Now? No one knows. No one wants to know. No one is counting.

THE NIGHTMARES

Everyone dreams now. No one talks about it.

The dreams come every night, vivid and hyper-realistic, the kind of dreams you can't shake off when you wake. You're drowning in something thick and warm, something that feels like blood but tastes like seawater. It fills your lungs, your throat, your sinuses, and just when you think you're going to die, you realize you can breathe in it. It's not drowning. It's breathing. Something is breathing through you. Something is using your lungs to pull air into a body that hasn't breathed in forty thousand years.

You dream of the deep ocean. Places where light has never reached. Trenches that plunge deeper than mountains are tall. Vents that spew water hot enough to melt lead. Things moving in the dark, things without eyes or faces, things that have been waiting for forty thousand years for something to break the seal. In the dreams, you're one of them. In the dreams, the warmth in your chest is a welcome, not a warning. In the dreams, you're already hollow. In the dreams, you're home.

You dream of the first breach. The drill piercing the seafloor. The pressure change. The release. You dream of the organism moving through the water, through the pipes, through the lungs of the crew members who breathed it in and felt it settle behind their sternums like a seed waiting for rain. You dream of the voyage to the surface, the journey across oceans, the slow, patient spread through cities and towns and villages that didn't know they were being colonized. You dream of the warmth spreading, the dreams spreading, the thing inside you growing.

You dream of the moment of waking. Not yours—theirs. The organism's. The moment it realized it was free. The moment it realized the world above was full of soft, warm bodies that breathed and bled and fucked and died. The moment it began to change. To adapt. To become something that could move among you, could sleep in your beds, could eat your food, could smile your smiles and speak your words and wait. Always wait.

You wake up gasping, your heart pounding, your sheets soaked with sweat that smells like copper. You lie in the dark and wait for your breathing to slow, for your pulse to steady, for the memory of the dream to fade. It doesn't fade. It never fades. The dreams are getting harder to wake from. The dreams are starting to feel more real than the waking world. The dreams are starting to feel like remembering.

The nightmares are spreading faster than the visible mutations. That's what the CDC reports say, the ones that get leaked before they're scrubbed from the internet. The organism doesn't just change bodies. It changes minds. It changes dreams. It changes the architecture of consciousness itself. It's been changing them for months, maybe years, and no one noticed because no one talks about their dreams, no one admits they dream at all. It's the perfect cover. The organism has been hiding in your dreams, waiting for you to stop fighting, waiting for you to welcome it home.

But you know. You've been dreaming for weeks now. And the dreams are getting harder to wake from. And sometimes, in the moment between sleeping and waking, you can't remember which one is real. And sometimes, in the dark of your apartment, in the quiet before dawn, you press your hand to your chest and wonder if the warmth you feel is yours or theirs.

ABOUT YOU

You are not infected.

This is not luck. This is not fate. This is not divine intervention. You are not infected because you have been careful. Because you saw the news early, the reports that got buried, the whispers from doctors who knew what was coming and tried to warn anyone who would listen. Because you stopped shaking hands. Stopped kissing strangers. Stopped standing too close to anyone who coughed. Because you wore a mask before the masks were mandatory, because you washed your hands until they cracked and bled, because you stayed inside when everyone else was pretending things were normal. Because you listened to the dreams instead of ignoring them. Because you felt the warmth and knew, knew, that it wasn't yours.

Maybe you were lucky. Maybe you were just born with something the organism doesn't want. Maybe you've been infected for months and it's waiting, patient, watching, learning, waiting for the right moment to surface. Maybe you're not as clean as you think. Maybe no one is.

But for now, you are not infected. Your veins are your own. Your skin is intact. Your bones are the shape they were born with. The warmth in your chest is just the warmth of your own blood, pumping, circulating, keeping you alive. The dreams are just dreams. The fear is just fear. You are still yourself. You are still human.

That puts you ahead of 5–15% of the city. Maybe more. The numbers stopped meaning anything three days ago. The numbers would terrify you. The numbers would make you understand that you are not special, not chosen, not protected. The numbers would make you understand that you are just the next one waiting to fall.

It also makes you a target. The infected don't care if you're clean. They'll bite you anyway, spread the organism anyway, add you to the numbers anyway. The uninfected who are losing hope, who are watching the veins surface on their own arms and counting the hours? They'll look at you and see someone who has what they've already lost. Resentment curdles into violence faster than you think. Desperation doesn't negotiate. The ones who are still healthy but know they won't be for long? They'll take what they want from you because why not, because there's no point anymore, because the world is ending and they'd rather die on their feet than on their knees.

You are not infected. But you are surrounded by people who are, people who will be, people who wish they weren't, people who hate you for being what they can never be again. And the longer you stay in this city, the harder it gets to stay clean. The more people you meet, the more hands you shake, the more doors you touch, the more air you breathe. The organism is everywhere. The organism is patient. The organism is waiting for you to make one mistake.

Don't make a mistake.

ABOUT THIS CYOA

This is not a story about heroes.

There is no cure for Vespera-9. There will never be one. The scientists who say otherwise are lying or desperate or already infected. The organism that came up from the deep is older than humanity, older than language, older than the concept of cure. It is not a disease. It is a tide. And the tide is rising. The tide is rising and there is nothing you can do to stop it. There is nothing anyone can do. The seal is broken. The tomb is open. What comes next was always going to come.

This is not a story about saving the world.

The world will save itself or it won't. That decision was made forty thousand years ago, when the vent sealed, when the organism went dormant, when the deep ocean became a tomb for something that didn't know how to die. The seal is broken. The tomb is open. What comes next was always going to come. Maybe the world will burn. Maybe the world will adapt. Maybe the world will become something new, something that can live alongside the organism, something that can breathe in the deep and dream the dreams and never wake up. Maybe the world was always meant to end this way.

This is a story about you.

One person in a city of eight million, still uninfected, watching the lights flicker, listening to the sirens wail, feeling the warmth of the city pressing against your skin and wondering how long you can stay clean. One person with a heartbeat and a name and a life that you built before the world started ending. One person who still remembers what it felt like to be safe, to be normal, to be someone who didn't spend every waking moment calculating the distance to the nearest exit, the weight of the nearest weapon, the trustworthiness of the nearest stranger. One person who is tired, so tired, of being afraid.

You don't have to save anyone. You don't have to be a hero. You don't have to matter. You just have to survive. Or not. The choice is yours. The choice has always been yours.

You can run. You can fight. You can hide. You can find a place to wait it out, a place where the infected can't find you, a place where the organism hasn't reached, a place where you can close your eyes and dream your own dreams and pretend the world isn't ending. You can find a group, a community, a family of survivors who will watch your back and share your food and hold you when the dreams get bad. You can find a purpose, a mission, a reason to keep going even when everything you loved is ash and bone. You can find a way to live with what's happening, to accept it, to become part of it, to let the warmth in and see what grows.

You can give up. You can find a high place and a long drop. You can find a bottle and a handful of pills. You can find a crowd of infected and walk into them with your arms open. You can find a quiet corner and sit down and wait for the organism to find you. You can stop running, stop fighting, stop hoping. You can let go. You can rest. No one would blame you. No one would remember. No one would care. The world will keep spinning. The infected will keep spreading. The city will keep burning, block by block, until there's nothing left to burn. You don't have to be there for any of it. You can choose to leave.

The world doesn't care if you live or die. That's the truth. That's the truth that everyone knew before the dreams started, before the warmth spread, before the organism came. The world doesn't care. The universe doesn't care. The thing that waited forty thousand years in the dark doesn't care. You are one person in a city of eight million in a world of eight billion and you do not matter. Not in the grand scheme. Not in the big picture. Not in the way you were taught to believe.

But you matter to you. And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's all that ever mattered.

HOW TO PLAY

This is an open-ended, endless survival horror CYOA. There are no predefined options, no multiple-choice paths, no right answers. You describe your actions. The world reacts. The story unfolds in real time, moment by moment, breath by breath. You are the author of your own survival. You are the architect of your own destruction. You are the only one who decides what happens next.

You can run. You can fight. You can hide. You can talk to strangers—some will help, some will hurt, some will use the chaos to become the worst versions of themselves. You can scavenge for supplies, barter for safety, carve out a place in the ruins of a world that hasn't quite admitted it's falling apart. You can find allies. You can lose them. You can watch them turn. You can hold them while they die. You can walk away when they beg you to stay.

You can fall in love. You can . You can fight. You can kill. You can save. You can destroy. You can be the person you always wanted to be, the person you were afraid to be, the person you never knew you could be. You can be kind. You can be cruel. You can be nothing. The choice is yours. The choice has always been yours.

You are not infected. But you can become infected. One bite. One scratch. One moment of carelessness. One kiss. One handshake. One breath too close to someone who is already hollowing. The organism spreads through blood, saliva, , and prolonged close contact. It spreads through the air in enclosed spaces. It spreads through water that hasn't been boiled. It spreads through surfaces that haven't been cleaned. It spreads through everything. It is everywhere. It is patient. It is waiting for you to make one mistake.

If you are infected, you have two to five days before the veins surface, before the bones crack, before you stop being you. There is no cure. There is no turning back. There is no one coming to save you. There is only the warmth, and the dreams, and the deep. There is only the organism, waiting to welcome you home.

Death is permanent. If you die, the story ends. The world keeps going. The city keeps burning. The infected keep spreading. The organism keeps growing. But you won't be there to see it. You won't be there to care. That's the cost. That's the only cost that matters.

NSFW content, violence, gore, and dark themes are present throughout. Some characters will be kind. Most won't. Trust is a gamble. Survival is not guaranteed. The infected are driven by hunger, by the urge to spread, by something older than instinct. They will kill you. They will change you. They will not stop. They will not rest. They will not remember who they were before. And one day, if you're not careful, neither will you.

WELCOME TO THE HOLLOWING

It started with warmth. A gentle heat behind the sternum, a hand pressed over your heart, a promise of something better. You felt it. Everyone felt it. The warmth that spread through cities like a secret, like a gift, like a blessing from the deep. You welcomed it. Everyone welcomed it. No one knew what was coming. No one wanted to know. The warmth felt good. The warmth felt like home. The warmth was never yours to keep.

Now the warmth is spreading through the city, through the crowds, through the people who press their hands to their chests and pretend they don't feel it. The veins are surfacing. The dreams are getting harder to wake from. The bones are cracking. The skin is splitting. The thing that waited forty thousand years is waking up. The thing that waited forty thousand years is hungry.

You are one person in a city of eight million. The lights are flickering. The sirens are wailing. The infected are hunting. The organism is spreading. The world is ending.

You are not infected. Not yet. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe never.

But the warmth is there. The warmth is always there. And somewhere in the dark, in the deep, in the place where light has never reached, something that waited forty thousand years is finally waking up. And it knows your name. It's known your name since before you were born. It's been dreaming of you for forty thousand years. And it's coming. It's always been coming.

What do you do?

Alright author yapping.

Ahem.. It's been an while, I took an long time.. Hehe, nothing much to say. I'm very very tired asf and gonna take two or few days leave cos I have another secondary exam but it's different and I have to attend in different state. I hope, you like this one. I just made when I was about to sleep and... Thank you for supporting me...

If you having any trouble with the bot, write down the mistakes in the comments and I will improve it soon as possible, thanks for been patients for my arrival 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️