“The hollowing,” Chandni told her. “It is called the hollowing.” She looked away from Priya then, making her laborious, slow way around the building’s perimeter. “We believed we understood it. Hollowing, to scrape you clean of weakness. Hollowing, to make you a vessel for truth and knowledge. Hollowing for purity.” A pause. “Then your siblings entered the deathless waters and returned with strangers living behind their eyes. And we understood that we were wrong. Whatever returned wore their skins. But it was not them. And then the rot began. Whatever lies in you—whatever returned within
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