In the belly of the demon, I found the young Shadow Bringer.
He knelt in a shroud of mist, framed by a void of black. There wasn’t much to him, really. Just a tangle of skinny limbs and too-large clothes, eyes wide and sad under curls of raven hair. A far-cry from his future self—what he would one day become. His hands grasped at the mist, as if he wanted to squeeze it into submission. Or maybe it was simply to ground himself to something. Anything.
I approached him, surprised when his grey eyes lifted.
“I thought I was alone,” the boy whispered. He sounded distraught that I was there with him. “Did the demon devour you, too?”
“I think so,” I croaked. My voice was surprisingly raw and painful. Had I been screaming?
I took a moment to study the demon’s pit. It sloped up on all sides, globe-like, and at the very top, just beyond its limits, was a violent, churning sky. The sky hummed faintly, dripping down at the ends into the fog that trembled, crawling, over the ground. Time, light, and color didn’t exist.
There was only the young Shadow Bringer and me.
It was disturbing that I hadn’t woken up—that I was truly here , rotting inside a demon’s stomach. I let out a tense, frustrated breath. This was the Bringer’s childhood dream, but it also felt real. Present. Alive , somehow, and not just a memory.
Turning back to the boy, I asked, “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, frowning as he examined his arms and legs. “I don’t feel anything.” He didn’t appear to have any physical injuries, but his expression told of a different kind of pain. His real wounds were hidden, sharp, suffocating. He met my eyes again, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t quite sure how. “The demon said I would never feel pain or be lonely again. So why do I—” Suddenly, his face crumbled. He turned away. “I don’t know why—’
Without thinking, I put a hand to his back. It was how I comforted Elliot when he was sick or scared; a touch to remind him that he wasn’t alone. The boy flinched at first, hesitating, but a breath later and he relaxed, slumping forward to rest his chin atop his knees.
In an instant, the young Shadow Bringer had become what he truly was: a boy.
And I realized I didn’t even know his name.
“I’m Esmer,” I offered quietly after a few moments had passed. “I know you don’t know me, but I want to help you get through this. We will get through this.”
The boy lifted his head. “Esmer,” he echoed, testing the word. “We share something in common, for I have a unique name, too. My name is Erebus.”
Erebus.
Erebus watched me, gauging my reaction. Another tremor threatened to bite through my arms, but I held it back, forcing my limbs into stillness.
“I think your name is—”
“Did the demon promise you anything?” Erebus asked intently, interrupting me. His voice sounded colder. Lonelier. I had only meant to say that his name was interesting—poetic, even. I wanted to scrub away some of the ugliness his parents had surely told him. “It told me I would find where I belong. My purpose.”
I think I prefer you to the child inside me. A truth for one of your teeth.
I could almost feel the demon’s dry, rotting breath on my face.
“It seemed more interested in how I would taste,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “We didn’t get to the part where it promised me riches or a good fortune.”
“I hate demons.” Erebus made a face, an understanding beginning to dawn there. “You know, the demon said it knew me, but it never even said my name.”
Demons were wicked and powerful creatures, but they had a weakness, too. They craved what they didn’t—couldn’t—have. Humanity. A living, breathing soul and a life of freedom outside the confines of the Realm. To achieve this, they watched. They observed humanity’s most beautiful and painful moments, waiting in the shadows until the day the veil slipped. The day the elixir was forgotten, lost, stolen—or became impossible to afford.
They were parasites, desperate to become what they consumed.
“Demons are liars,” I answered, trying not to think about the demons that haunted Erebus’s castle. The demons who were released because of me. “They enjoy it—they lie for us to believe what they want us to believe. Maybe the demon had a few of your memories or guessed at what you were feeling. But it didn’t know you. They never truly do.”
I walked to the edge of the globe and placed a hand on its surface. It resisted my touch; something on the other side was pushing back. It didn’t feel like the inside of a stomach.
“I think this pit is one of their tricks. An illusion, maybe. We just need to figure out how to break it.”
Erebus watched me with a mixture of curiosity and dismay. “It’s rare to speak of demons like that.” He drew closer. “Are you from Citadel Evernight?” He must have seen the genuine confusion in my reaction, because he continued, adding quickly, “Never mind. Someone from Evernight wouldn’t be here. Weavers don’t care whether we live or die.”
A distrust in the Weavers, even five-hundred years in the past?
“Why won’t the Weavers come? Aren’t they supposed to be protecting the Realm?”
I thought back to the tales. The Seven prospered before the Shadow Bringer supposedly rose into power, gifting humanity with handcrafted, Maker-blessed dreams. It would be years until the first outbreak of Corruption. So why was Erebus left to face a demon by himself? Weavers protected the world from demons, hunting any that slipped through their veil. Would they not go after this one?
“You really think that?” Erebus spat, clenching his fists. “They never protected me. Not from this nightmare. Not from the demon. Not from anything. They abandoned me.” I began to hear the similarities between his voice and the Shadow Bringer’s. The hatred and the deep, burning sorrow. “Everyone else dreams like we’re meant to. Everyone else can fly and do magic and see things. My dreams turn into nightmares, and they end with my parents dying. And it’s always my fault. ”
Erebus placed his hands next to mine. Instead of pushing the globe, he pulled, and the substance melted into shadow as it stretched, clinging to his hands. Several handfuls later, the globe still held firm. Huffing from the effort, he turned to me.
“My mother and father thought I was special. Funny, isn’t it? They said that the Weavers would bring me to Evernight and they’d never go hungry again.” Shadows danced in his irises. His face, childish yet elegant despite his age, was caught between calculated fury and something more desperate. Colder. “But then they died. And no Weaver ever came.” Softly, he added, “The demon told me the dark was my purpose. You said it doesn’t know me, but I think you’re wrong.”
As if in response, the dark deepened around us, encroaching on the mist. It moved over the boy who would one day be the Shadow Bringer with shadows dancing on his fingers and sorrow swimming in his eyes.
An image of the Bringer flashed before me.
Was he still in the dream, crushed under the weight of the demon’s horn? Again, as if in response, the globe began to change. Water pooled at our feet, falling from its sky and seeping thick down its walls. The more I thought of the Bringer, bleeding and broken at the bottom of the pond, the faster the water rose.
I fought back the memory of him, fighting for control of the globe’s form, and the water stilled. But as the water stilled, the dark drew nearer. It tugged at my hair, crawled spider-like down my throat. And with the dark came unspeakable thoughts. Visions of sobbing mothers with their terrified, hollow-eyed children. A village armed with smoking torches and bloody mouths. Noblemen dreaming peacefully in their beds of gold and bones.
Erebus stood silent and wide-eyed beside me, seeing visions of his own.
“Erebus, look at me—”
Erebus worked his mouth open and shut, but no words came.
“No one is made for the dark. You might control the dark, but becoming it isn’t your purpose.”
Shadows burst in from all directions, swirling up in a thick, bubbling fog. They began to obscure Erebus from me, as though they were set on eating him alive.
“How isn’t it?” Erebus finally shouted, whirling to face me. “The dark listens—and I listen back. It knows me better than anyone.” He showed me his hand. Even as the dark obscured him, it danced around his fingertips. It was beautiful, in its own way, shimmering faintly. “It scares people,” he said, lowering his voice. “It scared my mother and father. It scares you, too. You’re afraid of me.”
Erebus held himself tall, daring me to tell him otherwise.
My heart broke for him—broke for him and his distorted view of himself. How could the dark be someone’s purpose? Why did it linger around Erebus—around a boy who should be safe in a Weaver-crafted dream and not rotting in a demon’s stomach?
I held myself as he did, bold and unwavering. “I’m not afraid,” I said, meeting his defiant glare. “I’ve seen the dark, too—I’ve lived in it.” As a child, I spent days adventuring in the Visstill. I enjoyed reading by the barn and loved delighting in the reckless joy of a season without Corruption. There were beautiful days in my childhood. But I also remembered when the days turned—when the shadows stretched and the sun dipped behind the trees it once smiled upon. I remembered the circle of torchlight, wavering in the long night. I remembered the shadows forming in my Father’s eyes. “Knowing the dark doesn’t make you a monster. It’s what you do in the darkness—and how you rise to overcome it—that matters.”
“You’re lying,” Erebus hissed, taking a step back. “No one knows what it’s like to live in the dark. Not like me.” His eyes brightened in the fog. “You’re not really here, are you? I imagined you to protect myself.”
I reached for his hand, just as he began to melt into the dark.
“Erebus, no —”
“If my purpose is evil, then what good am I?” At this point, he was nearly gone. His limbs were caught in the shadows, half-eaten. “Where do I belong if I’m a monster no one wants? Nobody loves or protects me. Perhaps my mother and father did, once, but they’re dead now.”
Lunging, I managed to grab his arm. The shadows retreated at the contact. As they overlapped, folding in and out, their light, just a handful of tiny shimmers a moment ago, grew strong. “Just because there’s darkness, that doesn’t mean all the light is gone. Look—see? And you do have somebody, Erebus. You have me.”
And I have you, too.
“I—”
Erebus began to whisper something but stopped, watching the light dance within the shadows. Together they radiated from his hands, blanketing the pit, and the violent sky—as well as the endless, hopeless darkness around it—disappeared, replaced by a sea of stars.
Together, we looked in awe at the transformation.
Soft, twinkling light came to rest upon Erebus’s face, reflecting the hesitant wonder in his gaze. Slowly, his desperation faded. Slowly, his breathing quieted.
“I never knew,” he whispered, lifting his arms. At his call, some shadows dropped, coiling elegantly around his shoulders and forming a cloak at his back. Others tangled in his hair, shaping into a loose crown. Power radiated from him, wild and true. “I thought the dark was a terrible thing. But this feels different. I can control it.” More firmly, he repeated, “I can control it.”
The sides of the globe began to splinter and crack.
“These walls aren’t going to last much longer,” I observed, side-stepping a piece of the globe as it fell. “I don’t know what will become of us if that happens—or if we can still escape. But we need to try.”
Erebus turned to me. His eyes were burning. “I’m going to rip us straight from the demon’s stomach. I swear it.”
From the ferocity in his expression, I believed him. “Good. Then it can’t hurt anyone ever again.”
Nor will it continue to hunt me, my family, and the Shadow Bringer.
Erebus nodded. A swathe of darkness pulled itself from the sky, moving to rest atop my shoulders, too. It felt warm. Comforting, even. I leaned into my new mantle, savoring its touch.
“I’m sorry for saying I imagined you.” He smiled, then. It held sorrow, but amazement, too. “It just seemed too good to be true, is all.”
Erebus held out his hand. I took it.
And the globe cracked in two, bursting with the light of a million stars.
