El Como sat cross-legged on the jagged stone that passed for his thinking seat, halfway up a hill no one sane ever bothered to climb. The stone was cold, but he liked that; it pressed through his thin trousers and reminded him he still had a body—lean, tall, wiry with muscle he rarely showed off but never failed to notice. The world thought him a lanky scarecrow of a boy. He thought himself an undiscovered colossus. Somewhere between the two lived the truth.
"Alright, El Como," he muttered, tapping his temple as though knocking on the door of an old friend, "today we're going to do something smart. Something clever. Something that won't result in people screaming about ghosts in their soup again."
Talking to himself was a habit he'd never shaken. It kept him company, and it was easier than waiting for anyone else to laugh at his jokes. At eighteen, he was still at that uncertain cusp where the world labeled him a man but his own reflection smirked with a boy's mischief. The smirk sat uneasily under the shadow of his cheekbones, sharp enough to slice bread, and under eyes the color of smudged charcoal, always flickering with thought.
Spirit Shaping.
The words curled through his mind like smoke.
That was his ability—or curse, depending on who you asked. El Como had the peculiar power to reach into the unseen essence of things, tug at them, twist them, and sometimes—if the wind was good—reshape them. A candle flame could be convinced into a flower, a whisper made solid enough to tie into a knot, a shadow persuaded to wear another's face.
Useful? Sometimes. Terrifying? Often. Dangerous? Always.
He lifted his long hand, flexing the fingers, watching how they quivered as if reluctant to obey him. "Hands, you traitors. Don't think I don't know you've been misbehaving. Yesterday you turned a sneeze into a swarm of silver moths. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain that to my aunt? 'Oh no, Auntie, they weren't moths, they were… spiritual lint!'" He groaned, tilting his head back against the stone.
The sky above him was swollen with clouds, the kind that promised rain or trouble. They seemed to listen as he went on, "And now I'm here, meditating, thinking… thinking too much. Everyone says too much thinking will rot your brain. Well, jokes on them—my brain already feels like cabbage."
He laughed at himself, a hollow chuckle that echoed down the hillside. But beneath the humor slithered a coil of unease. He had been feeling strange all week. Whenever he thought too long, his vision blurred, as though a fog gathered inside his own skull. It wasn't normal, even for someone like him.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until bright sparks bloomed behind them. He was supposed to be practicing control, not falling into fits of daydreaming that left him waking up in the wrong part of town. Once he'd come to lying in the neighbor's chicken coop, feathers glued to his hair, the birds looking at him as if he'd dropped from the moon.
"Focus, Como," he hissed. "Focus like a warrior monk… or at least like a drunk monk who hasn't lost his shoes yet."
The air grew colder.
He noticed it in the way the hairs prickled along his arms, in the silence that thickened around him. The usual chirping of insects, the distant rustle of branches—all gone. It was as if someone had thrown a blanket over the world.
He blinked. The hillside blurred, edges smudging. His stone perch seemed to drift under him, bobbing like a raft at sea.
"Oh no," he whispered. "Not again. I was just joking about the drunk monk thing—don't punish me."
But his sight kept clouding. He reached out, trying to anchor himself to the familiar jagged edge of the stone. His fingers met not stone, but something soft and cold, like mist with weight. He yanked his hand back, heart banging against his ribs.
"Right. This is fine. Perfectly fine. Just the usual brain cabbage acting up. Nothing to panic about." His voice cracked on the last word.
The fog swelled until it filled not only his sight but his chest, his ears, his mouth. He gasped, choking on nothingness. His thoughts grew slippery, tumbling one over the other. Somewhere in the chaos he heard whispers—not voices he recognized, but hundreds of them, each murmuring half a sentence, none of them making sense.
He tried to shape them, tried to will his ability into order. But the whispers slithered through his grasp. For every one he caught, three more wriggled free.
"I command you—!" His words fell flat, devoured by the fog.
And then the ground was gone.
He was falling, tumbling, flung through a void with no up or down. His lean body twisted helplessly, arms windmilling, as he shouted at himself: "This is not the proper way to travel! Feet first, Como, feet first! What are you, laundry in a storm?"
The void had no mercy. He plummeted faster, though there was no wind, no air. Only the sense of plunging deeper into something he did not understand.
Then—impact.
Not with earth, not with stone, but with silence. His body slammed into stillness, and suddenly he was standing upright, as though he'd been dropped neatly into place.
His breath rattled in his throat. He looked around, blinking against the dimness.
The world he stood in was not his own.
Black trees rose around him, their branches like gnarled claws scratching at a sky the color of bruises. A pale light seeped from nowhere in particular, too weak to banish the shadows that crowded the ground. The air smelled of wet iron and rotting leaves.
He muttered, "Well. This isn't the chicken coop."
A brittle laugh escaped him, though it didn't sound like his own. His voice seemed to break apart in the heavy air, each syllable stretching too long, echoing too far.
He turned in a slow circle. Behind him, the fog hung like a torn curtain, the last remnant of wherever he had come from. But it was receding, curling in on itself, until only thin strands clung to the trees before vanishing entirely.
"Oh, that's just wonderful. Exit closed. No refunds." He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the corded muscle beneath his skin. For all his complaints, he knew his body was strong—he could split logs in a single stroke, outrun half the hunters in town. But strength did not matter much when one was lost in a place that felt carved out of nightmares.
A low sound drifted between the trees.
Not quite a growl, not quite a moan—something in between. It slithered through the trunks, shivering across his spine.
Como froze.
"…Please be my stomach," he whispered.
The sound came again, closer this time.
He clenched his fists, steadying his breath. Spirit Shaping had never been reliable, but maybe—just maybe—it could keep whatever this was from chewing his bones. He reached for the air, trying to coax the invisible threads of essence to his hands.
Shapes flickered, faint and unsteady. A spark like a shard of glass. A curl of shadow like smoke. His ability wavered, as though the very air here resisted him.
"Come on," he gritted through his teeth. "I don't need fireworks. Just… give me something sharp. A dagger. Or even a very aggressive spoon. I'm not picky."
The air shuddered. A thin sliver of light coalesced in his palm, trembling like a nervous rabbit. It lengthened into the suggestion of a blade, translucent and quivering. He held it up, squinting at it.
"…You look like a popsicle stick. But fine. We'll work with what we have."
The trees rustled.
Between them, a figure moved.
At first, he thought it was a man. Tall, stooped, wrapped in tattered cloth. But as it shuffled closer, he saw its face—or what should have been a face. The skin was stretched too thin, the eyes absent, only hollows gaping like empty wells. Its mouth yawned open, spilling a hiss that sounded like thousands of insects whispering at once.
El Como's knees wobbled. "Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is definitely not covered in the Spirit Shaping instruction manual."
The creature staggered toward him, each step wet, as if dragging through unseen mud.
He raised his trembling popsicle blade. "Alright, Como. You're tall, you're strong, you're handsome—don't forget that part—you've got this. Just… don't let it notice you're screaming inside."
The creature lurched closer, hollows staring.
And as it reached out with a hand like a bundle of twigs wrapped in skin, El Como's cloudy vision returned, swirling faster than ever. The world shuddered, tilted—
..And vanished.