The Whisperer didn't hide in the shadows.
It hid in people.
Lee realized this when he walked through the Scavenger's Market the next morning. People were acting strangely arguing with neighbors they'd been friends with for years, hoarding food that should have been shared, looking at each other with suspicion and fear.
"It's already here," Inyocha said, his voice tight. "The Whisperer. It's infected the whole market."
"How do we find it?"
"We don't. It finds us."
A scream cut through the morning air. Lee ran toward it, Onyx Tempest in hand, his friends close behind.
The scream came from Mara's tent the scarred woman who had lost her family to Inyocha's engine. Lee pushed through the canvas and found her standing over her husband's grave, her hands bloody, her eyes wild.
"He's not dead," Mara whispered. "He's not dead. He's talking to me. Telling me things. Terrible things."
"Mara," Lee said carefully, "your husband is dead. I'm sorry. But whatever's talking to you it's not him."
Mara's head snapped toward Lee. Her eyes were wrong too dark, too deep, with something moving in their depths.
"You," she said, but her voice wasn't hers. It was layered, echoing, full of whispers within whispers. "The Light Bringer. I've been looking for you."
"The Whisperer," Lee said. "Show yourself."
Mara's body twisted not painfully, but wrongly, her joints bending in directions they shouldn't bend. Her skin rippled, and for a moment, Lee saw the thing beneath: a creature of shadow and teeth, with too many mouths and no face at all.
"I am already showing myself," the Whisperer said through Mara's lips. "I am in every angry word. Every jealous thought. Every fear that keeps you awake at night. I am the doubt in your heart and the poison on your tongue. I am humanity's true face."
"You're wrong," Lee said. "Humanity's true face is kindness. Compassion. Love. You're just a parasite that feeds on the exceptions."
The Whisperer laughed a sound that made the tent shudder and the ground tremble. "Pretty words from a pretty boy. But words won't save you. Words won't save him."
Its gaze shifted to Inyocha.
"The Shadow Weaver," the Whisperer crooned. "The Forgotten Son. The one who tasted darkness and found it sweet. You think six months of good behavior erases twelve years of sin? You think these people will ever truly accept you?"
Inyocha flinched. "I... I'm trying "
"Trying isn't enough," the Whisperer interrupted. "Trying doesn't bring back the dead. Trying doesn't fill the empty spaces in your soul. You know what does. You've always known."
The darkness in Inyocha's chest the quiet hunger that Lee had been helping him suppress stirred.
"Inyocha, don't listen to it," Lee said urgently.
But Inyocha's eyes were glazing over, the brown fading to something darker.
"Power," the Whisperer whispered. "Power fills the empty spaces. Power silences the doubts. Power makes you strong. Strong enough to never be thrown away again."
"Stop it!" Lee raised Onyx Tempest, golden light blazing.
But the Whisperer was already inside Inyocha's head.
And Inyocha was listening.