🌑 THE SHADOW WORLD
👁️ NARRATOR: FLAW
From the first time I saw Minus, he saw me back.
Across the ages, I have witnessed others being touched. I saw the mark form — the spiral burning itself into the skin of impure ones who never understood what they carried. I observed fifteen, perhaps twenty, over centuries, wandering through their world.
But none of them ever looked back.
Until Minus.
When it — this nameless force that even I cannot comprehend — touched him, something different happened. For a fraction of a second, so brief it could have been an illusion, he didn't just receive the mark.
He saw.
Not me. He saw something beyond. Something greater. Something that made his infant eyes widen in pure terror before returning to normal, before he began to cry like any newborn.
But I felt it.
I felt the moment when it realized it had been seen in return.
And that had never happened before.
My name is Flaw. I gave myself that name, because that is what I am — a flaw in the order of things, a penumbra wandering between worlds. Before finding Minus, I merely drifted through the world of the impure, observing, without purpose, without direction.
But then I saw him.
And he saw me back.
Perhaps — just perhaps — what he glimpsed in that infinitesimal second is the answer to what I am.
To why I exist.
And since that day, I have followed him.
🔥 NARRATOR: MINUSBefore
Mom smelled like vanilla.
I don't know why that's the first thing I remember when I think of her. Not her face. Not her voice — though I remember those too. But the scent comes first. Vanilla and something sweeter. Maybe honey.
I was four years old. Sitting in the kitchen, swinging my legs from a chair too tall for me. She was cooking something on the stove — soup, I think. Dad was at work. Afternoon sunlight poured through the window, golden and warm.
"Minus, my love, want to taste it?"
She crouched down with the spoon. Blew on it to cool it. Her eyes were brown, gentle. They smiled even when her mouth didn't.
I tasted it. It was good. I said it was good.
She kissed my forehead.
"You're my smart boy."
In that moment, I didn't see shadows.
I didn't see anything beyond the sunlit kitchen, my mother smiling, the smell of vanilla in the air.
In that moment, I was just a normal child.
It was only four years.
But they were good.
Until they weren't.
Now
I wake up with the tingling.
It always starts like that. Cold fingers at the nape of my neck. The air growing thick. The weight of being watched by things that should not exist.
Nine years old. Saint Michael's Orphanage. A dormitory with nineteen other children.
And the shadows are back.
I open my eyes slowly. The cracked ceiling stretches above me, stained with dampness. I turn my head — slow, controlled, as if silence might stop what is already happening.
They are at the edges.
They always start at the edges.
Five. Seven. Ten.
Multiplying like ink spilled into water. Dark forms writhing against the walls, translucent claws scratching at the air. Trying to reach the thin film around me.
That invisible shield separating me from them.
Wrong. Broken. Not meant to exist.
The whispers come from everywhere and nowhere.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My fingers clutch the threadbare blanket. I know this ritual. The shield will hold.
It always does.
But the price—
Mom smelled like vanilla.
Not now.
Not now.
Across the room, Sister Helena snores in her chair. Sixty years old, smells like soap, believes the shadows are "tests from God." She doesn't see the air vibrating with contained rage. She doesn't feel the storm building.
But I do.
And this time, something is different.
The shadows aren't just trying to touch me.
They are organizing.
Forming patterns.
A circle around my bed.
The mark on my left shoulder — that spiral scar that appeared the day I lost everything — begins to pulse.
Hot.
Hot like embers.
No. Please. Not again.
🌟 THE ILLUMINATED
He appears above the shadows.
Floating.
White and golden light so intense it hurts to look directly at it. A humanoid shape, but the edges flicker like candle flame. Something solid beneath. Something with will.
And he looks at me.
Not with protection.
Not with mercy.
With hatred.
As if my existence is a colossal mistake that must be erased. As if every breath I take insults the natural order.
Sister Helena said I saw demons. That I should pray more. When I told her about the Illuminated, her eyes shone with that certainty only religious adults have.
"A guardian angel, Minus! He came to protect you!"
She was wrong.
The Illuminated protects no one.
He orchestrates.
💔 BEFORE (AGAIN)
Three weeks earlier
"Hey, Minus! Look at this!"
Carlos. Seven years old. Messy hair always falling into his eyes. He ran up to my bed holding an open notebook, a huge smile on his face.
"I drew Captain America fighting Iron Man! See? I added lasers and everything!"
The drawing was crooked, disproportional, made with worn-down colored pencils.
Beautiful.
"It's really good," I said.
And it was.
Carlos beamed. Sat on the edge of my bed, explaining the entire battle he had imagined. His eyes danced as he spoke, hands gesturing, creating explosions in the air.
Marina walked past us, humming something from the shower. Twelve years old, always singing — in the shower, while washing dishes, before bed. Off-key but happy.
"You're going to wake Sister Helena," she said, smiling anyway.
Sofia — five years old — sucked her thumb while hugging a battered stuffed rabbit. She looked at me with those huge eyes and asked:
"Minus, do you think I'll be adopted someday?"
"You will," I said.
I lied.
But she smiled.
And in that moment, the lie was worth it.
It was only three weeks.
But they were good.
Until they weren't.
⚡ THE SHIELD CRACKS
The sound is like glass shattering in slow motion.
CRACK.
Sharp. Impossible. Only I hear it.
Then another.
And another.
Invisible shards of my shield falling like broken glass onto the floor.
The cracks were always there — hairline fractures growing millimeter by millimeter with every new night. Worse on the "special nights." Like the night Dad stopped breathing and Mom lost her mind forever. Like the night the Rodrigues' house caught fire, when they screamed and smiled as if it were a party.
Cracks never disappear.
They only grow.
But tonight, for the first time, one truly opens.
A gap. Small. Coin-sized.
But open.
The shadows see it.
They go mad.
Their forms compress, tear into each other in a desperate frenzy. Claws scraping claws. Ethereal bodies crushing together, all trying to pass first. The sound is like a thousand fingernails on a chalkboard.
I know — with the certainty of someone who has seen this before — that if one of them touches me through that gap, I won't die.
It will be worse.
They all stop at once.
Raise their deformed heads toward me.
Mouths that don't exist stretch into obscene smiles.
The Illuminated raises what should be an arm.
And the shadows disperse.
They don't vanish.
They don't flee.
They spread through the dormitory like ink in water.
Sliding under beds.
Climbing walls.
Wrapping around sleeping bodies.
Carlos, who drew heroes.
Marina, who sang.
Sofia, who asked if she'd be adopted.
No.
Not them. Please. Not them.
But what I want has never mattered.
💀 THE MASSACRE
The first scream comes from the bunk beside mine.
Carlos.
He wakes with a sound that isn't human. Sharp. Broken. Filled with a pain no child should ever know.
His hands claw at his own face. Nails carving red grooves. His eyes roll back, showing only white.
Something dark coils around his neck. Not solid. Condensed smoke, pulsing, tightening.
Carlos's skin turns purple.
Then black.
Then—
I can't keep watching.
Marina wakes next. She sits upright and starts laughing. Hysterical laughter as bloody tears stream from her eyes. Her hands move on their own, fingers bending at impossible angles.
They snap.
Lucas. Sofia. Pedro. Ana.
One by one.
Nineteen bodies begin to writhe.
Sister Helena jumps from her chair, runs to the dormitory, throws open the door and screams,
"What—? Children! What is—?"
Fire appears in the center of the room.
No source. No explanation — just like the Rodrigues' house.
It simply appears.
A column of red and black flames licking the ceiling. Curtains ignite. Walls groan.
But the fire is wrong.
It moves against gravity. Against the wind. As if alive. The patterns hurt to look at.
The smell of burning mixes with blood and flesh and something sweet and rotten.
Pedro stands on his bed, head hanging at an impossible angle. Arms twisted behind his back. Like a broken doll pulled by invisible strings.
His mouth opens — opens too wide — and he begins vomiting a black substance that burns holes in the floor.
Sofia is tearing out her own hair. Chunks of scalp come with it, revealing pale skull.
She laughs.
Everyone is laughing or screaming — or both.
A shadow finds Sister Helena.
Something pierces her chest. Not a blade. Worse. A claw of solidified darkness enters through her back and exits through her front.
Blood pours out, black under the flames.
She looks down, confused, before dropping to her knees.
😢 HIDING
I pull the blanket over my head.
Curl up. Knees to chest. Hands over my ears.
It doesn't help.
I still hear the wet sounds. Bones snapping. Flesh tearing. The dripping of things that should stay inside bodies.
I still feel the heat of the fire. The cold of the shadows. The weight of the Illuminated watching me through the thin blanket.
I still smell iron and burned meat and fear.
"No," I whisper in the dark. My voice small, broken, useless.
"Please, no. I don't want this. I didn't ask for this."
Mom smelled like vanilla.
Carlos drew heroes.
Marina sang.
Sofia asked if she'd be adopted.
Hell doesn't negotiate.
It doesn't apologize.
It doesn't ask permission.
It just comes.
Glass breaks. Wood splits. Someone starts praying out loud, words tripping over each other until they're just sounds.
And above it all, bathing the massacre in impassive golden light, the Illuminated floats.
Watching.
Always watching.
This is your fault.
The voice — not a voice, a feeling — whispers directly into my brain.
Every scream.
Every death.
Every piece of torn flesh.
All because of you.
It always was.
It always will be.
The mark on my shoulder burns like a brand. Tears soak the blanket that hides me from nothing.
Nineteen children slept in this dormitory when the night began.
Now there are fewer screams.
Less and less.
Until only the crackle of fire remains. The constant dripping on the floor. The heavy silence that follows.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to those who can no longer hear me.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
But apologies don't bring anyone back to life.
⚖️ DAWN
When the sun rises over Saint Michael's Orphanage, when firefighters and police arrive, when they find twisted bodies and burned walls and impossible blood patterns on the ceiling…
They have questions.
How did the fire start without a source?
How did children do this to one another?
How did you survive when nineteen died?
When they find me — alive, unharmed, hidden under a blanket at the center of the massacre — I see it in their faces.
Suspicion.
Fear.
Horror.
Hatred.
Pain.
All of it pointed at me like knives.
What did you do?
What are you?
The truth — that there are shadows and light, that there is a cracking shield, that something has been wrong with me since the day I was born — is something no one would believe.
And even if they did…
It wouldn't save anyone.
Under the ash-stained, tear-soaked blanket, I wait.
This was the third time.
And deep in my nine-year-old heart, I already know a truth heavier than any accusation:
It won't be the last.
Hell always finds me.
And it always brings company.
👁️ NARRATOR: FLAW
I continue to observe.
Even when the impure take him away. Even when they place him in a white room filled with questions he cannot answer. Even when they look at him like a monster.
I continue to observe.
Because fifteen, twenty — perhaps more — none of them ever looked back.
But Minus did.
And in the infinitesimal second when it touched him, when the mark formed, he saw something even I cannot see.
Something that might explain why I exist.
And while that mystery remains unanswered, while that question burns within my flawed, purposeless existence…
I continue to observe.
Because that is what I did.
Always.
END OF CHAPTER 1