The night the village died, the charms were still warm.
Not with heat—but with attention.
They hung from his neck in layers: bone discs etched with spirals, braided sinew knots, river stones drilled through and darkened by ash. Each charm had been placed by a different elder. Each whispered a different prayer. Together, they formed something that was never meant to be together.
The boy stood at the edge of the village, bare feet sinking into mud that should have been dry.
The air smelled wrong.
Not smoke. Not blood.
Something older. Like rain that had fallen before the sky learned how to open.
Behind him, the village screamed.
Not all at once. Not dramatically.
One scream would rise—cut short.
Then another, farther away.
Then silence that stretched too long before the next.
He did not turn around.
His father's final words echoed in his skull, not as sound but as pressure:
They will curse you to save themselves.
Do not resist.
If you resist, it will notice you sooner.
The charms began to vibrate.
At first, it felt like insects crawling under his skin. Then like a second heartbeat—slow, immense, patient. The symbols carved into bone darkened, lines bleeding inward as if the carvings were mouths learning how to close.
He dropped to his knees.
The ground breathed.
Mud rippled outward in circles, as though something far beneath the earth had shifted in its sleep. His reflection in the puddle before him fractured—too many eyes staring back, not aligned correctly with his face.
His own eyes burned.
Not pain. Expansion.
He could suddenly feel the village behind him—not hear it, but understand it. Each life flickered like a weak candle flame. Each fear tasted different. He knew who would die first before they did.
That knowledge made something inside him curl inward.
The charms had not summoned a guardian.
They had created a door.
And doors do not choose what passes through.
---
When the thing arrived, it did not arrive into the world.
The world bent around it.
The sky folded slightly inward, stars dragging like wet paint. The air thickened until breathing felt like swallowing water that resisted being swallowed. Sound dulled, as if reality itself had covered its ears.
The boy screamed then.
But it wasn't his voice that came out.
Something answered through him.
Not words. Not even language.
Recognition.
The entity did not speak. It pressed a thought against his existence so gently it nearly felt like mercy:
YOU ARE MARKED BY MANY HANDS.
YOU WERE OFFERED WITHOUT CONSENT.
THIS IS ACCEPTABLE.
His spine arched.
Something entered him—not possession, not control. Occupation. Like a vast shadow discovering it could stretch inside the shape of a child.
His bones did not break.
They remembered.
---
By morning, the village was gone.
Not burned. Not shattered.
Simply… emptied.
Houses stood intact, doors hanging open. Bowls of food lay untouched on tables. Footprints stopped abruptly, as if people had stepped out of existence mid-stride.
The boy stood at the center.
He no longer looked entirely like a boy.
His skin had darkened unevenly, not in color but in depth, as if parts of him receded into shadow no matter how the sun struck him. His eyes—once brown—now reflected light like polished obsidian, wide and unblinking, too aware.
The charms had fused into his flesh.
Bone half-sunken into skin. Sinew threading through veins. Symbols pulsing faintly, no longer carved but grown.
Villagers from neighboring lands would later say his silhouette was wrong.
Too symmetrical.
Too deliberate.
As if something that did not understand humanity had studied it carefully and produced a near-perfect imitation—missing only the warmth.
When the first survivors found him days later, they froze.
He did not attack.
He only looked at them.
And in that moment—surrounded by trembling people, staring at him as if he were a monster—the boy felt something unfamiliar rise from beneath the entity's vast stillness.
A tightness in his chest.
A pressure behind his eyes.
Grief.
The thing within him observed this reaction with interest.
THIS RESPONSE IS INEFFICIENT, it pressed calmly.
EXPLAIN.
The boy's mouth opened.
His voice emerged layered—his own, and something far beneath it.
"I…"
He swallowed. The motion felt practiced, rehearsed.
"…miss them."
The entity paused.
Not confusion.
Consideration.
And as the villagers slowly backed away in horror—seeing only the silhouette, the eyes, the wrongness—the boy understood something with a clarity that hurt more than the curse itself:
This was what it meant to be human.
To feel loss even when the world believed you were the cause.
To stand as a monster—
—and still mourn.