The night was alive with laughter. Fire crackled in the heart of Oryang tribe, shadows of dancers leaping against the huts as drums throbbed in rhythm with voices raised to Goddess Lakapati.
Children darted between the elders, their laughter piercing the hum of flutes. For two weeks the festival had filled the tribe with joy, and on this night, the air itself seemed drunk on song.
But shadows love joy. They drink it, the way they drink blood.
Thomas paused at the edge of the firelight, his smile thinning. Something stirred beyond the trees. A flicker. A shadow that did not move with the sway of branches.
He squinted into the darkness, chest tightening. It wasn't just a feeling of being watched—it was heavier, like the forest itself leaned closer.
He ran to the chief's hut. "Chief! Chief!" he hissed, too breathless to shout. "There's something on the east side. Not an animal. It—"
He stopped, catching his own breath. "It hides when I look. Like it knows I'm watching."
The old chief's face hardened, the wrinkles on his brow deepening. "Gather the men. If it is a beast, we'll drive it away before it tastes our cattle." His voice was steady, but his eyes darted toward the forest.
Moments later, a small band stood armed—torches, spears, knives, even a pickaxe gripped in John's trembling hands. Firelight flickered across their faces, turning sweat into beads of gold.
John's voice cracked as he spoke. "Is it wise to wander at night? The forest is thick… too dark. If it's more than one beast—"
"Then stay behind," Robert cut in, his tone sharp as the torch in his grip. "Guard the children like a nurse. We'll do man's work." His smirk glowed cruel in the light, though his grip on the torch was too tight to be bravery alone.
The chief raised a hand before tempers flared. "Enough. We go in groups. Three or four men each. If danger comes, shout."
Thomas nodded quickly, though his chest was tight. He knew what he had seen—or rather, what he had felt. It was no boar, no wandering cat. Something out there breathed differently.
One by one, the men vanished beneath the canopy, torches bobbing like fireflies swallowed by the dark.
John lingered at the edge, his knuckles white around the pickaxe. "I won't go," he muttered, eyes never leaving the huts where children still laughed. "I'll stay. If the beasts come, my family won't be alone."
The chief clapped his shoulder once. "Then watch with both eyes open. Keep the fire close. Darkness breeds in silence."
As the others vanished, John barred his door, shuttered the windows, and pressed his family close. The laughter of the village dulled, swallowed by the forest.
And on the east side, where torches burned weakly between trunks, something else moved.
It was not an animal.
It was not a man.
When it took its first prize—a child knocked senseless and carried into the black—it did so with silence, as though the festival itself had agreed to look away.
Screams tore through the music. A drum crashed to the ground, rolling into the fire as its skin split with a hiss. Blood sprayed across the torches, spattering the dirt with black-red drops that smoked in the heat.
A mother clutched her child, only to feel her arms wrenched open, the child's small body lifted away by a figure whose face gleamed pale in the firelight.
His teeth sank deep, the gush of blood dark and obscene, and when he dropped the child's limp form the earth drank greedily.
"Stand! Stand together!" the chief cried, though his voice shook. His spear wavered, its tip dripping not with blood but with fear.
But the shadows did not wait for bravery. They fell upon the living like wolves in a pen, and the Oryang's village laughter died with a wet, choking sound.
Women shrieked as their hair was torn back, throats offered to fangs that drank until their skin shriveled. Men struck blindly with spears and knives, but the shadows slipped through their blows, tearing their stomachs open, biting deep into veins and leaving them writhing in the dirt.
Children were plucked screaming from their mothers' arms, their cries silenced mid-breath as pale jaws closed around them. Some were taken whole into the forest.
Others were drained where they stood, their small bodies dropped in heaps like broken dolls.
The fire roared higher, feeding on spilled oil, on burning huts, on the screams themselves. The goddess Lakapati's shrine toppled, garlands of fruit and rice crushed beneath the weight of bodies.
The chief himself fell at last, his chest pierced by a hand that tore through ribs like reeds. His heart was lifted, still twitching, before being devoured. His blood sprayed across the stone idol of Lakapati, soaking its carved smile in crimson tears.
One by one, voices fell silent until only sobs, wet choking gasps, and the sucking sounds of feeding remained.
And then, as swiftly as it had begun, the shadows melted back into the trees—leaving behind a village that no longer lived, only bled.
The smoke still rose when Rafael and Carmellia arrived. Ash drifted through the night like pale snow. What had once been song and laughter was now ruined—bodies sprawled in mud, blood soaking into the earth, huts smoldering where torches had fallen.
Rafael's jaw tightened. His crimson eyes flickered over the carnage, and though he was no stranger to blood, there was something in the silence that made his chest hollow. "They left nothing."
"Not nothing," Carmellia whispered. Her voice trembled—not with fear, but with something colder. She moved among the corpses, her long hair dragging across the blood-slick ground, until she stopped before a broken hut.
A sound pierced the stillness. Thin. Fragile. A wail.
Rafael stiffened. His senses told him the village was lost—yet here was life, clinging on. No… nothing should remain. Nothing but ashes.
Carmellia pushed forward, her skirts brushing against splintered beams. Rafael followed close, every step heavy with unease.
And then they saw it—a baby, no more than a few months old, wailing between the still bodies of his mother and father. The woman's throat gaped open, emptied of warmth. The man's chest was crushed, his eyes frozen wide. Between them, the child's fists struck at the air as if to fight back the night itself.
Carmellia halted, breath catching. Rafael felt her hunger coil beside him, sharp and merciless. He had seen that hunger tear through whole villages; he had seen it take her to the edge of madness. His chest tightened. Not her… please, not again.
"Carmellia," he murmured, gentle but firm, as if a soft word might hold her back. "Stay with me. Don't step closer."
But the infant's hand lifted, small and trembling, curling around her finger.
Carmellia's shoulders shook. Her fangs dulled, her hunger twisting into something heavier, stranger. Rafael's heart clenched at the sight—her eyes shimmering, her face torn open with a sorrow he could not soothe.
"End it," he said, though the words scraped against his throat.
"Better mercy now than the hunger later. I beg you."
She turned to him, anguish in her gaze. "Mercy?" Her voice was raw. "You would call this mercy?"
Rafael swallowed hard. He wanted to gather her in his arms, to shield her from the choice. "I would call it love," he whispered.
"I Love you. You think only of him, but I think of you. This weight will break you, Carmellia. And I… I cannot bear to watch you break."
Her answer was a cry of defiance, though her hands trembled as she lifted the child into her shawl. "Then let it break me, Rafael. Better me than this poor child."
He stepped closer, torn between reaching for the child and holding her steady. "You don't see it. He will grow. He will look at you with his father's eyes, and he will know what we are. He may curse you for it."
Carmellia cradled the infant tighter, rocking him though his sobs still shook the night. "Then let the child curse me. I will carry it. I will carry every curse if it means he lives."
Rafael's chest ached. He longed to take her pain, to shoulder it for her, but he knew she would not yield. She has chosen. And if I fight her, I will only wound her more.
"Carmellia…" His voice dropped, a thread of love straining against fear. He reached to touch her cheek, trembling. "If you keep this child, then I keep you closer. Every step. Every breath and every day. I will not leave you to face this alone."
Her eyes met his—defiant, resolute, and yet brimming with tenderness. "Then we will watch this child together."
The baby's cries softened into hiccups; his tiny head pressed against her. "Hush… hush, little one. You're safe now."
But even as she spoke, Rafael heard the lie. It was in her voice, in her shaking hands. He knew it, and yet he loved her all the more for daring to speak it.
She drew her cloak around the baby, the dead village fading into silence. With one last look at the crimson-soaked shrine of goddess Lakapati, Carmellia vanished into the night—carrying the last heartbeat of the Oryang tribe in her arms, Rafael's shadow close beside her.
Rafael watched her shoulders curl protectively over the child, the faint tremor in her steps, the way her hunger fought against her heart. She carries life… and yet it may undo her.
He reached for her hand beneath the cloak, letting his fingers brush hers, grounding her in his touch. Though she has long since lost the power to create life, Carmellia's maternal instinct endures, binding her as she claims as fiercely as any mortal mothers do.
"Immortality denied her creating a life, yet love found her in the infant's gaze, and she became a mother in spirit. Embracing the child with timeless devotion."
"If this child is her ruin, then I will be her strength. If he is her curse, then I will bear it with her."
And in the silence between their footsteps, Rafael whispered only to her:
"I will not let the night take you, Carmellia. Not you."