The Hollow Brother

Ketu survived becoming something his people had almost forgotten.

He learned to walk between worlds, carrying the pieces of animals and taking their shapes into his own flesh. Bear. Wolf. Eagle. He learned that the old power was never meant to belong to him. It was borrowed. Sacred. Something that demanded respect.

But power leaves scars.

And some enemies would rather corrupt a man than kill him.

When Nikan, the older brother of the corrupted shapeshifter Ketu once faced, comes looking for revenge, he does not bring an army. He brings patience. He brings understanding. He brings exactly the words Ketu needs to hear.

Nikan's plan is simple.

Make Ketu doubt.

Make him angry.

Make him cross one boundary.

Then another.

Until the young man who once fought against corruption begins to believe that perhaps the only thing wrong with power is being afraid to use it.

With the mysterious old teacher who helped create the corruption in the first place quietly feeding the darkness, Ketu begins descending into something far more dangerous than either man anticipated. Animal pieces once allowed him to borrow form and instinct, but human pieces carry something else.

Memory.

Identity.

Pieces of the people they once belonged to.

And Ketu begins taking them.

As love becomes leverage, protection becomes control, and disagreement becomes betrayal, the people closest to Ketu are forced to confront a terrible truth. The boy who once fought monsters is becoming one.

Then Ketu commits an act that can never be undone.

The woman who taught him the old ways dies by his hand.

Instead of turning back, Ketu lies.

And keeps walking.

Soon even Nikan begins to understand the horror of what he has created. Ketu is no longer simply being corrupted.

He is learning how to corrupt others.

But every piece Ketu carries leaves something behind inside him. Every animal. Every stolen memory. Every person whose mind he has touched. And hidden among them is something particularly dangerous: a fragment belonging to a shapeshifter who died trapped between human and animal form.

Something unfinished.

Something that has been waiting.

The Hollow Brother is a dark story of revenge, grief, power, manipulation, and the terrible distance between protecting someone and believing you have the right to control them. It asks what remains of a man after he has crossed every boundary he once swore he would defend, and whether recognizing the monster you have become is enough to keep it from taking your place.

Because by the time Ketu finally understands what has been growing inside him, the forest has already begun to run.

And Ketu is about to shift.