Conus stood by the window in his night robe, staring toward the horizon. His dark hair fluttered in the evening breeze, strands flicking against his pale face. The air was sharp and cold, needling his skin until his body shivered. Night was coming. Even after seventeen years, that simple truth chilled him more than the wind ever could.
Seventeen years of pain. Seventeen years of tearing flesh, of bones grinding as if they wanted to splinter free. The doctors had once told his parents he wouldn't live past his tenth birthday. Yet here he was, seven years older, still alive. They called it a miracle. Conus knew better. Miracles were not this cruel.
Night Terror disease had no survivors. None but him. And survival was no gift. Death would have been kinder than the endless cycle of weakness, torment, and sleepless agony.
When he turned sixteen, he had prayed for The Dream. If it came, he would become a Pugnator, free of the sickness forever. Instead, the world mocked him. He remained a Normie, like his mother. He could still see her quiet grief when she realized it. Worse was the smile his father forced across his face, thin and brittle, unable to hide the disappointment in his eyes.
The door opened softly. His mother stepped in, carrying a tray of clinking vials. Alora moved like someone unhurried by time. Crimson hair spilled across her shoulders, framing brown eyes warm and steady. Her pale skin seemed untouched by years, the gift of the potions she brewed. She looked barely twenty-eight, though she was nearing forty.
"Come, Conus," she said gently, setting the tray on the nightstand. "Darkness is almost here."
Reluctantly, he left the window and sat on the bed. His gaze fixed on the vials. He hated them. The taste was always the same: bitter, thick, like bark ground into sludge.
"What's the point?" he muttered.
Alora brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, her tone calm. "Because it helps. Not as much as I wish it did, but it eases the worst of it."
He said nothing. With a slow breath, he lifted the smallest cup and drained it. Cold and bitter, it clawed down his throat and made his stomach churn. He forced it down, setting the cup aside with a faint grimace.
She reached out, fingertips light on his cheek. "My little boy," she whispered. "One day, the goddess will answer my prayers. One day, your suffering will end."
Conus only looked at her. Her faith in Maldan, goddess of the Church, was unshakable. His was gone. Logic and science made more sense to him, even in a world where reason bent every day. A world where people walked through rifts in reality to fight creatures from another existence.
His reflection in the mirror caught his eye. The boy staring back was thin, his dark-brown skin oddly out of place between his pale parents. The doctors said it was the disease. His black hair was heavier still, as if it swallowed the lamplight instead of reflecting it.
"Your father called," Alora said suddenly, breaking his thoughts. "He and his team just returned from a portal. He'll be home tomorrow."
Conus nodded. Ishira Aromane, D-rank Pugnator. A man who risked his life inside the Otherworld, member of the Aurefilia Order. Only a fraction of humanity was chosen for such things. One in fifty received The Dream, awakening abilities that changed everything.
Conus was not one of them.
Even the lowest of them, the F-rank, could move faster, strike harder, survive longer than any Normie. Conus remembered once seeing an F-rank disarm a gang of armed men with only his fists. The sight had burned into his mind.
His father stood two ranks higher than that. Conus was proud, but also distant, as though Ishira's world was one he could never touch.
Most Pugnators served in Orders, groups sworn to raid portals and bring back crystals, wealth, and knowledge. The work was dangerous, always dangerous, no matter how glamorized the stories. Otherworlders were not simple beasts. They were things born of another reality, nightmares with teeth and claws.
The first portal had torn open fifty years ago, five years after people began collapsing into dreams that awakened power. The world had changed overnight. At first, scientists could only stare. The first squad they sent inside was thirty armed soldiers and a single awakened man. Only the awakened man returned. Broken. But he carried knowledge, and humanity began to learn. The second raid brought victory. The war with the unknown had begun, and the world was remade by it.
But none of that mattered as the sun sank and shadows stretched long across the floor. Conus sat beside his mother, silent, until she kissed his forehead and left. The door closed gently.
Then darkness fell.
Pain followed.
It came like fire under the skin, like knives twisting in muscle and bone. His body arched against the mattress, tendons straining, joints cracking. Blood pricked the corners of his eyes, turning the whites crimson. Sweat poured from him, soaking the sheets. His groans grew louder, then broke into cries until his throat gave out. Mercifully, unconsciousness came.
When his eyes opened again, night still reigned outside. That was unusual. He rarely woke before dawn. Slowly, he sat upright, body trembling, back pressed to the headboard.
"You look surprised."
The voice rolled out of the corner of the room, deep and steady. Conus jolted.
A figure stepped into the pale slice of moonlight. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned. Bare feet. Hair in thick dreadlocks. The weight of his presence pressed down like a storm.
"Who are you?" Conus whispered.
The man crossed the room in a heartbeat, silent. His presence filled the space.
"Conus Aromane," he said. His voice was calm, unyielding. "I have come to offer you a deal."
Fear clutched Conus's chest. He pressed back against the headboard. "What deal?"
The man lowered himself to the edge of the bed, posture stiff, gaze fixed on the door.
"I will take away your disease," he said. "And I will give you power."
Conus's mind reeled. No one could cure Night Terror. Not even the most brilliant healers, not even the miracle workers of Utopia. Power? This could not be real.
"You'd take the sickness away?"
"Yes. And I will grant you strength."
"Like a Pugnator's?"
"Something like it." He turned at last. His dark eyes seemed endless.
Conus's thoughts spun. Could this be The Dream? Impossible. No one Awakened after sixteen. None, not since the Elders.
"Am I dreaming The Dream?"
A low sound escaped the man, something close to a laugh. "Do not speak that name. I am not what you think. My question is simple. Will you take my deal?"
"You haven't said what you want."
The man's stare deepened. "Your soul. It is different. I want it."
Conus froze. His voice cracked. "Are you the Devil?"
A thin smile curved the man's mouth. "The Devil is a child. I am older."
Older than that? The words unsettled Conus to his bones.
"I can't give my soul," he said finally.
The man nodded slightly. "Then serve me. Become my Herald for ten thousand years. In return, I will take your pain."
Conus nearly laughed. "A hundred years is long for a man. Seven centuries for the strongest. Ten thousand? That is no life. That is a sentence."
The man's voice stayed calm. "Then we add clauses. If you die, the contract breaks. You will keep your free will. But once every five years, I will call upon you. And you will answer. Is that enough?"
Conus swallowed. The promise burned in his chest. To be free. To have strength.
"Will my pain truly end?"
"Yes."
The word landed heavy as stone.
He closed his eyes, then opened them. "I agree. On one condition. Tell me who you are."
The man stood and crossed to the window. Moonlight spilled across the room, yet the light curved away from him.
"I have been called many things," he said, voice resonant. "I was before creation, before time, before light. I stood with the Creator and I will stand at the end. Every shadow is my domain. Every silence is mine. I am the place light cannot reach.
"In the tongues of men they called me Nox, Tenebrae, Nyx. In the songs of the ancients, I was the Eternal Shade. To dying kings, I was the Hidden Watcher. To the lost, I was the Last Breath."
The air in the room grew colder. Frost edged the corners of the window.
The man turned, eyes glimmering like an abyss without end.
"I am," he said, each word deliberate, "Darkness."