It slipped through the wards like smoke through a keyhole.
The house behind it shimmered with warmth—laughter, light, love. Useless things. Poisonous things. It had no name, not in the way names were given. But it had hunger. And that was enough.
The streets were quiet. Snow muffled the world beneath its soft white skin, but beneath the surface, rot still festered. It could feel it—anger simmering, grief unspoken, shame buried deep in bedrooms and bars and broken minds.
It drifted.
It found a man slumped in his car outside a corner bar, breath fogging the windshield. He gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing tethering him to this world. He hadn't gone inside. Just sat there for hours, replaying a voicemail from his daughter. "I don't want to talk to you anymore. Not until you get help."
The entity pressed close. He didn't see it, but he shivered. His thoughts darkened. The silence turned into a scream only he could hear. Tears slid down his cheeks. It fed.
Then it moved on.
It slipped into a casino, where desperation bloomed like neon flowers under flickering lights. A woman whispered to a dealer, "Just one more hand," but she had no more money. Her hand trembled as she slid off her wedding ring.
The entity fed on her shame.
A man at the bar told himself it was just for the rush. That he didn't care if he won. But when he lost again—his fourth straight loss—his hand clenched into a fist that didn't strike the table, but shook from restraint. He wanted to disappear. He already had. The darkness welcomed him like an old friend.
It fed deeply here.
Then it left.
Across the city, shadows bent to its will. It slipped beneath locked doors and past security lights. A silent argument played out in a bedroom—two parents on opposite sides of the bed, backs turned, hearts colder than the air between them. One cried quietly. The other stared at the ceiling, wondering what had gone wrong.
The entity lingered here.
In a teen's room down the hall, the glow of a phone screen lit tear-streaked cheeks. A message went unread. "You okay?"
The entity fed on the silence between them.
On it moved—through apartments where secrets were kept, through shelters where hope flickered like dying candles, through hospitals and parking lots and the corners of the world where no one thought they were being watched.
By dawn, it had grown bloated with emotion. Not full—never full—but stronger. Coalescing.
It no longer slipped through cracks.
It walked.
The air grew colder in its presence. The snow around it melted, then refroze into black ice. Lights flickered even where no one stood. Car alarms chirped and died. Stray cats vanished into shadows they didn't understand.
It passed a church with locked gates and stained glass eyes that didn't see. The cross above the steeple trembled.
Inside the chapel, a man prayed, unaware of the thing just beyond the walls.
"Please help her," he whispered. "She's only eight. Please. Take me instead."
The entity paused—but didn't enter. Not yet.
It had no use for faith. Not while love still lived in it, before it was replaced by grief.
But it marked that place.
It marked them all.
Far across the city, a student stirred named Mira sat up in bed, heart still racing from dreams that weren't hers, nightmares of things she had never witnessed nor imagined.. She rolled over, murmured Malcolm's name, and drifted back into sleep.
The entity heard it.
It remembered the warmth that had driven it out, and it knew it would return.
But first, it would become something no spell could contain, no bonding could hold, No heart could resist.
Then it found Duncan DeWitt. A worthy vessel.
Everything Duncan touched today turned to crap. Even toast. At least school was cancelled. His friends had teased him relentlessly about holding hands with Mira So he'd blown her off. He was supposed to like girls like Kallee.
But he didn't.
Stupid. Weak. Pathetic.
He muttered a curse and sat down on the floor, back against his bed. The silence throbbed with unspoken secrets.
He heard a low, raspy laugh..It didn't come from the hallway. It came from everywhere. Inside his ears. Behind his eyes. A creepy sarcastic chuckle.
"Let me in. I can help you." The voice was rough like sandpaper and it grated on his mind.
He froze. "Hello?"
Nothing.
He shook his head, stood up, walked to the window. Was he dreaming? He must be. That voice was familiar somehow, though.
Outside, snow covered the lawn. The sky was dull and heavy. The kind of day where everything felt like it was wrapped in cold, wet cotton.
He opened the window to get some air, but instead of cold, a warm gust curled past his face, warm like breath. His skin began to crawl with invisible scorpions.
He turned quickly, heart pounding. The shadows in the corner of the room didn't move, but they felt deeper. Denser.
Then the shadows closed in.
He had no time to scream. To do anything. He felt nothing, a terrible nothing.
When Duncan's mother knocked on his door an hour later, he didn't answer. When she opened it, he was standing at the window, still as glass.
His eyes were open, but held an emptiness so deep it pulled at everything around him. .
The air around him was wrong. Unnaturally cold. His breath fogged the windowpane with slow, measured rhythm, the only sign of life coming from what looked like a statue.
"Duncan?" she whispered.
He turned to face her, and for just a moment, his shadow on the floor didn't match his body.
It moved first. A trick of the light, perhaps. "Hello, mother," he said, and she sensed something was off. The voice sounded like him, But the words weren't his own. They came from someplace…. Other.