Megan Inky < 2025-2026 >

Over the following months, she learned to control it. Whatever she drew with sufficient focus—not just ink, but any dark, flowing medium—could wake up . Her sketches could move, breathe, and even climb off the page if she pushed hard enough. The catch? The more lifelike the drawing, the more energy it drained from her. A simple wiggling line cost nothing. A fully animated, three-inch ink squirrel left her dizzy for an hour.

Megan had nearly screamed in the middle of Mr. Henderson’s lecture on the Treaty of Versailles.

Megan took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to draw The Hollow . Not exactly. She had other plans. Midnight. The school was a tomb of shadows and humming fluorescent lights. Lucas was waiting in the art room with the notebook. Megan brought her best dip pen, a bottle of India ink so dark it seemed to drink the light, and a fresh sheet of heavyweight paper.

“Megan Inky.”

Lucas’s smile was thin. “Because I need you to draw something for me. Something specific.” He flipped to the last page. The drawing there was rough, almost childish, but unmistakable: a figure, human-shaped but wrong—too many joints, fingers like roots, a face that was mostly empty space with three too-large eyes. Underneath, in shaky letters: The Hollow.

“Draw it,” Lucas said, pointing to the page with The Hollow .

The Hollow tilted its head. Lucas took a step back. “What are you doing?” megan inky

“You should have remembered,” Megan said, wiping her pen clean on his letterman jacket. “I’m the one who draws the lines.”

Lucas stared at the mess. Then at Megan. His face cycled through shock, fury, and finally—something like respect.

The paper bulged. Ink dripped onto the table, then rose upward, defying gravity. The Hollow pulled itself free of the page, unfolding like a nightmare origami. It was seven feet tall, all sharp angles and liquid shadow. Its empty face turned toward Lucas. Over the following months, she learned to control it

“Save it.” He pulled something from his jacket: a small, leather-bound notebook. It was old, the pages yellowed and warped. He opened it to a page covered in diagrams and cramped handwriting. “My great-grandfather was an artist too. He left this behind. Notes about ‘lucid ink’—the ability to animate drawings. He could never do it himself. But you can.”

Today, however, Megan’s secret was about to become the least of her problems.

“You tricked me,” he said.

He strolled in, hands in his letterman jacket pockets. “I’ve been watching you. The way your pen moves. The way you stare at your paper like it owes you money.” He stopped at her table. “I know what you can do.”