The Hourglass of Hollow Earth

Chapter 1: The Descent That Shouldn’t Have Happened

Hunedoara, Romania – April 3, 2024

The earthquake was soft...too soft to warrant panic. It barely nudged the antique chandeliers in Corvin Castle, caused only the gentlest ripple in the moat below. Tourists paused their photos. Locals exchanged uneasy glances, then carried on sipping their țuică and talking about politics.

But beneath the limestone foundations of that ancient Gothic marvel, a crevice tore open, silently and with purpose.

Government officials scrambled to investigate. When initial drone feeds failed, shorting out within seconds inside the newly formed void, they called in the specialists. That was how Dr. Mara Ciobanu, a 42-year-old geologist known more for debunking conspiracy theories than chasing them, found herself standing before the mouth of an abyss where the castle’s foundations used to be.

She wasn’t alone.

With her were three others:

• Vasile Petrescu, a structural engineer with a war-scarred face and a quiet obsession with underground architecture.

• Andrei Iliescu, a government-assigned historian with more degrees than social skills.

• And Evelyn Hale, a British expat and linguistic anthropologist whose doctoral thesis involved translating pre-Christian Balkan funerary chants by heart.

The four descended into the newly ruptured crevice by secured elevator cage, their descent illuminated by industrial floodlights mounted on the steel frame. The deeper they went, the more oxygen seemed to vanish.

“Why does it feel like we’re sinking into cloth?” Evelyn asked, rubbing her arms. “Everything’s muffled.”

Mara looked around. “There’s no echo.”

Indeed, even their boots made no sound on the ancient stone.

The chamber they landed in was massive. The walls, neither rock nor masonry, appeared to be composed of black bricks slick with condensation. They pulsed faintly, as if alive. Strange circular carvings marked every surface.

Evelyn knelt, running her fingers across a symbol etched into the floor. “This isn’t Dacian... or Latin. These aren’t even glyphs. They’re... concepts.”

“What does that even mean?” Andrei asked.

Evelyn’s face went pale. “It means they’re not written on the wall, they’re written into it.”

Before Mara could reply, the ground beneath them breathed. Not metaphorically, actually breathed. A slow inhale that pulled dust inward. Then, in the chamber's center, something appeared.

An object, suspended midair by nothing....was floating. Twelve feet tall. Twisted black metal forming a skeletal frame. Encased in glass so aged it looked like it was crying.

Inside, instead of sand, teeth filled the top bulb.

And they were falling.

One.

By.

One.

Chapter 2: The Hourglass Was Breathing

The team froze.

The room had no wind. No power source. No wires or magnets. And yet the hourglass hung perfectly still, despite its impossible size and construction.

“Are those... teeth?” Vasile asked, stepping forward with the hesitation of a man approaching his own grave.

Thousands of them,molars, incisors, cracked canines...tumbled slowly from the upper chamber, vanishing into a dim fog inside the lower bulb. As they fell, they morphed...changing shape mid-air until they became miniature skulls, each no bigger than a walnut.

Vasile squinted. “It’s counting something.”

Evelyn shook her head. “No. It's harvesting.”

Mara moved closer, phone in hand, but her camera refused to focus. The screen showed only static.

Behind them, the way they came sealed.

Not with a crash. Not with rocks.

The tunnel walls folded inward like soft tissue, muscle layered over bone.

The hourglass exhaled.

Vasile cursed under his breath, reaching for his communicator. “Command, this is Alpha-One. We’ve lost our exit. Requesting immediate evac protocol—”

Silence.

Just static. And then, a sound no one could place. Not mechanical. Not biological.

It was clicking.

Hundreds of clicks, rhythmic and precise. Like a million teeth clattering in perfect unison.

And then the lights died.

The industrial floodlights flickered out, replaced by a pale blue glow that emanated from the hourglass itself.

Their breath clouded. The temperature had dropped ten degrees.

Mara whispered, “This isn’t a geological formation.”

Andrei scoffed. “What, then? A crypt?”

Evelyn didn’t answer. She was on her knees again, eyes wide, tracing a symbol in the dust. Her hands bled from carving lines into the stone.

“Do not read the hour,” she muttered. “Do not become the echo.”

The hallway behind them began to shift.

Not crumble. Shift.

Walls twisted sideways, realigning like clock gears. Staircases grew sideways out of nowhere. The map they had drawn digitally was already invalid.

Andrei stood too quickly, hitting his head on a low overhang. His blood splashed against the wall and sank into it, absorbed as though the stone was thirsty.

He turned to a reflective puddle that hadn’t been there moments ago and saw himself.

Except his reflection didn’t mimic him.

It smiled.

And reached out.

Andrei gasped. His reflection grabbed his throat and pulled.

There was no scream. Just a wet splash, a burst of blood, and silence.

He was gone.

Evelyn didn’t even react. Her eyes were milk-white now.

“I understand it,” she said. “The hourglass is not a timer.”

Mara helped Vasile pull her back. “What is it, then?”

“It’s the memory of forbidden time,” she whispered. “It’s the record keeper of realities that should not have been. And it's feeding.”

“On what?” Vasile asked.

Evelyn smiled, sadly.

“On us.”

Chapter 3: Teeth of the Forgotten

Corvin Castle Subterranean Zone

Vasile and Mara didn’t speak as they dragged Evelyn, her eyes still blank, away from the hourglass’s pulsing glow. They didn’t need to. A primal understanding had settled in: logic had no dominion here. The rules they had lived by gravity, time, life meant nothing.

They reached a corridor that wasn’t there before. Black stone, ribbed like cartilage, lined with sconces that lit themselves as they passed. The floor groaned with every step..not from their weight, but from memory. The stone remembered being stepped on. It whispered names beneath their soles.

“Mara,” Evelyn muttered. “The teeth are names.”

Mara turned. “What?”

“They don’t just fall. They select. Each one corresponds to someone who no longer exists in the timeline. The hourglass removes them. It’s... editing history.”

“Jesus Christ,” Vasile whispered.

They passed by another doorway, an open arch lined with ivory carvings that looked suspiciously like spinal columns. Inside, a single statue stood. Human. Faceless. Its hands were clocks.

“Don’t look at it,” Evelyn said. “The more you see it, the more it sees you.”

Suddenly, a loud dragging sound echoed behind them. They froze.

A silhouette appeared in the corridor.

Andrei.

But it wasn’t him anymore.

His body was bloated, limbs elongated. His mouth hung slack, endlessly whispering backwards syllables. His eyes were bleeding sand.

“Do not follow me,” he gurgled. “Do not echo your own shape.”

Mara tried to look away. Evelyn screamed and covered her ears. Vasile reached for his emergency flare and fired it directly into the thing’s face.

It burned. Andrei screamed. And so did the walls.

The stone pulsed red. Faces formed in the cracks, some ancient, some familiar.

They ran.

Chapter 4: The Architect of Echoes

After what felt like miles, the corridor opened into a great chamber. A cathedral-like expanse with no roof. Stars swirled above but they weren’t stars. They were keys.

Dozens of them, glowing, drifting, rearranging. Musical notes in an architecture of madness.

At the center: a man.

Or what used to be one.

Dressed in robes made of stitched parchment, skin pale and inked with moving text. His face was split vertically, two halves always slightly misaligned. A crown of hourglass sand circled above his head.

"Welcome," he said. His voice was many.

Evelyn collapsed to her knees.

"That’s him," she whispered. "The Architect of Echoes. The one who first recorded time that should never have existed."

He approached, hovering an inch above the ground.

"You opened the breach," he said to Mara. "You are the pivot point. The deviation."

“I didn’t open anything,” Mara protested.

“You descended. That is enough."

The Architect gestured. The floor rose, forming stone chairs. Against their will, Mara and Vasile sat.

Evelyn began chanting under her breath.

“You must witness,” said the Architect. “Before you are forgotten."

The walls became transparent.

Scenes from history unfolded around them. But something was wrong. In each vision, people were erased not killed. Removed. Others around them continued, altered slightly. Whole cities blinked into different architectural styles. Wars reversed or never began. Names vanished from books.

And Evelyn whispered: “It’s not just our world. He’s editing all of them.”

Vasile stood. “Why?”

The Architect turned to him. “To perfect the silence."

Suddenly, the Architect crumbled.

He fell, like dust collapsing into itself.

Behind him, a mirror full length flickered to life.

It showed Evelyn. But not as she was.

This Evelyn had no eyes. Her arms were clocks. And she smiled.

The real Evelyn screamed.

“It's me. I become the next one.”

Chapter 5: To Be Removed Is To Be Known

Time lost meaning.

For days or seconds they wandered deeper into the abyss. Vasile began to forget his sister’s name. Mara couldn't remember her parents’ faces. Evelyn aged and un-aged depending on which corridor she stood in.

They encountered echoes of themselves. One version of Mara slit her own throat in a mirror and smiled as she bled. A version of Vasile was a child, crying into a bone cradle. One Evelyn was made entirely of sand.

Then they found the room.

Circular. Carved with glyphs.

At its center: the original hourglass.

This one wasn’t suspended.

It was built into a living body massive, grotesque, bound in chains of language. Eyes sewn shut. Mouth locked with glyphs.

Evelyn approached it.

“Don’t,” Mara warned.

“It called me,” Evelyn said. “This is the Memory That Consumes. The mother hourglass. The one that remembers before time.”

As she touched it, her body fractured.

Not broke. Fractured. Her image split like a prism, each version of her hovering separately.

She was Evelyn the linguist. She was Evelyn the unborn. She was Evelyn the sacrifice.

“I’m becoming a root variable,” she said calmly.

“What the hell does that mean?” Vasile shouted.

“I’m the pivot now. Time will center on me.”

And with that, she walked into the hourglass.

Not was absorbed.

Walked.

It pulsed once, hard enough to throw Mara and Vasile back.

Then silence.

Chapter 6: The Seal That Wasn't Meant to Break

Aboveground, Corvin Castle trembled.

All tourists were gone. Soldiers surrounded the site. Yet no sound came from below.

Until a single grain of sand rose up from the earth.

It hovered midair. Spinning. Emitting clicks.

Then the soil cracked open.

From it, Evelyn emerged. Or what wore her face.

Her eyes were hourglasses. Her teeth were names.

Behind her, the Architect reformed.

Not as a man.

As a structure.

A cathedral of memory, pulsing, birthing new realities with each breath.

Mara and Vasile below stood at the newly formed exit tunnel. Behind them, everything shifted.

They were given one choice: ascend and forget, or remain and be catalogued.

Mara whispered: “We have to seal it. Not just the tunnel. The memory.”

But the hourglass had already breathed them into the story.

They weren’t escaping.

They were being written.

Chapter 7: Escape That Isn’t

Mara and Vasile escaped sort of. They emerged days later, covered in ink and dust, their watches ticking backward. The entrance collapsed behind them, and Corvin Castle now stood two centuries older than before, with vines and rot suggesting it had never been maintained.

No one believed them. Evelyn was declared missing. Mara quit geology. Vasile never spoke again.

But when they looked at photos of the castle from before the quake, Evelyn was always there, in every image distant, unaged, watching. Even in photos taken before she was born.

And somewhere, beneath the Carpathians, a third hourglass begins to tick

And Season 1 Ends.

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This story is inspired by real subterranean myths beneath the Carpathian Mountains and ancient Dacian legends. The glyphs and symbols are derived from forgotten Balkan scripts thought to predate recorded history. “The Hourglass of Hollow Earth” is a work of speculative horror fiction designed to unnerve, distort your sense of time, and remind you that some truths were never meant to be found.

Stay tuned for Season 2

Arriving this Thursday.

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If this story chilled your spine and made you question the reality you're in, follow Tales That Breathe At Night for more terrifying tales inspired by real-world anomalies.

Comment below:

What year would you sacrifice to escape a doomed timeline?