They say your life can change in a single moment. A heartbeat. A breath. They're wrong. It changes in the silence after the bang.
I was seven years old, and my world was a simple thing, built on two pillars: the dusty, sun-warmed stones of our London neighbourhood, and Melissa Frostvale. Her hair was the colour of wheat, and she had a laugh that could make you forget you'd skinned your knee. We were a team. Conquerors of backyard jungles, pirates on the pavement seas.
It was raining that evening. The kind of cold, needle-sharp rain that soaks you to the bone in seconds. We were running, hand in slippery hand, our breath coming in ragged clouds. Laughter, the nervous, terrified kind, bubbled in my throat.
We shouldn't have been in that part of town. We'd seen the man in the stark white robes—the symbol of a blazing sun on his lapel. The Order of the New Dawn. He'd been asking questions about "unnatural occurrences." About strange shadows that moved on their own. My shadows.
He'd seen us watching him. Seen the fear on my face. And he'd started following.
"Faster, Barry!" Melissa gasped, her small fingers squeezing mine.
The alley was a dead end. A tomb of wet brick and overflowing dumpsters. We skidded to a halt, our little hearts hammering against our ribs. The slow, deliberate footsteps behind us stopped.
"Children," the man's voice was calm, oily. "The abomination must be cleansed. Stand aside, girl."
He wasn't talking to me. He was talking to her. About me.
Melissa, my brave, stupid Melissa, stepped in front of me. "Leave him alone!"
The man sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. He raised his hand. Not a gun. Something worse. A glint of polished metal and a glowing, rune-engraved stone. Magic. Forbidden magic used by those who claimed to purge it. The irony was lost on my seven-year-old mind, which was screaming only one word: RUN.
But there was nowhere to run.
A beam of searing white light shot from the stone. Melissa, ever my shield, shove me backward. The light wasn't meant for her. It grazed her shoulder instead of piercing my heart.
The sound she made wasn't a scream. It was a soft, choked gasp. Her eyes went wide, not with pain, but with shock. Then she crumpled to the wet ground like a broken doll. A dark, terrifying stain began to spread across the shoulder of her yellow raincoat, mixing with the rainwater, pooling beneath her.
The world shrank. The drumming rain faded. The man's triumphant smirk vanished. There was only the silence, and the red pool growing under my best friend.
Dead. She's dead. Because of me.
Something inside me broke. No, not broke. Unraveled. It was a feeling of ancient, infinite darkness uncoiling from the very core of my soul. It was rage. It was grief. It was a power so vast and terrible it could taste the man's fear.
The shadows in the alley… they stopped being absences of light. They became things. Living, hungry things. They surged from the ground at my feet, not like smoke, but like liquid midnight, tendrils tipped with razor-sharp claws. They were my pain given form.
The man's smirk vanished. His eyes bulged. "By the Dawn... the blood-shadow manifestation! It's true!"
He didn't get to say another word.
The tendrils shot forward. There was a wet, tearing sound. A scream cut brutally short.
And then… warmth. A fine, crimson mist coated my face, my hands, my clothes. The coppery tang of blood filled the air, thick and cloying, overpowering the scent of rain and rot.
The silence returned, heavier than before.
And then… a whimper.
I looked down. Melissa's eyes were fluttering open. She was alive. The relief was so immense it was a physical pain. I took a step toward her, my hand outstretched. "Melissa... you're okay..."
She looked at me. Then her eyes traveled past me, to the thing that was no longer a man, to the shadows still dripping with his life, to my face, painted in a grotesque mask of red.
Her face contorted in pure, unadulterated terror. A scream ripped from her throat, high and piercing.
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" she scrambled backward, slipping in the bloodied water. "MONSTER! YOU MONSTER!"
The word was a physical blow. I stumbled back, my foot landing in a rain-filled puddle. I looked down.
The face staring back wasn't mine. My left eye was a blazing, hellish crimson set in a sclera of void black. Veins of darkness etched my skin like cracks in porcelain. I was a demon from a storybook. The kind parents warned their children about.
Melissa sobbed, turned, and ran. She never looked back.
I stared into the puddle at the monster. My shadow, the real one, stretched and writhed at my feet, no longer needing blood to give it form.
"So," I whispered, my voice raspy and unfamiliar. "I really am a monster."
The rain fell, washing the blood from the stones, but it could never wash it from me. And I was left all Alone. I was Barry Crimsonwood.