Since the day their world had crumbled, the nights had stretched into an endless, blurry expanse.
Eren moved through his days with a forced sense of normalcy – classes, the mind-numbing routine of his part-time job – but his nights dissolved into sleepless stretches, plagued by a relentless churn of regret.
The weeks that followed the revelation of the scam were a blur of despair. The Fischers, once a close-knit unit, were fractured by the weight of their loss. Sleep, when it came, was a battlefield of nightmares and anxieties.
Eren dreamt of endless mazes of paperwork, each document a mocking testament to their naivety. He'd wake in a cold sweat, the feeling of helplessness clinging to him like a shroud.
The family's once lively dinner conversations were replaced by a suffocating silence, punctuated only by the clatter of silverware and the occasional forced pleasantry.
The air in their home, once filled with warmth and laughter, now crackled with unspoken tension.
The breaking point came on a quiet Sunday afternoon. John, his eyes bloodshot from another sleepless night spent chasing shadows online, slammed his fist on the table.
"This is unbearable!" he roared, his voice raw with frustration. "We can't go on like this, living in this… this tomb of despair!"
Diana, startled, looked up from her knitting, tears welling in her eyes.
Sharon, who had been hunched over her laptop, slammed it shut, her expression a mix of anger and exhaustion.
Eren, who had been staring blankly out the window, turned to face his family, the weight of their collective pain pressing down on him.
In that moment, the Fischers acknowledged the truth: their lives had been irrevocably shattered, and the path to healing, if it existed at all, would be long and arduous.
---
One evening, hunched over his computer screen, a strange sensation washed over Eren.
His eyes scanned the endless stream of news articles, each a testament to the deceit that seemed to permeate the world. His body ached with fatigue, but his mind refused to shut down, trapped in a loop of anxious thoughts.
It was then, in that moment of exhaustion and despair, that something shifted. A prickle of awareness at the base of his skull, a tingling sensation that spread like a cool rush down his spine. He paused, confused, wondering if it was just a trick of his tired mind.
But the feeling persisted, growing stronger. As he continued reading, a specific article caught his attention. It was a local fraud case, seemingly mundane, yet something about it resonated with a dissonant energy within him.
He focused on the article, on the name of the primary suspect, and the prickling sensation intensified, morphing into a jolt that shot through him. It wasn't painful, but it was… different. Unfamiliar.
The screen blurred momentarily, and when it cleared, the name seemed to pulsate with a strange glow. Not a visible light, but rather a sense of… wrongness. An instinctive awareness that the name was a facade, a deception obscuring a darker truth.
He stared, eyes wide, his heart pounding against his ribs. Was he imagining it? Had the stress finally cracked his mind?
Or was this something more?
Then, like a sudden shift in focus, it was there - a ripple of energy jolting him upright.
His gaze snapped to a seemingly dry story, a local fraud case with a familiar pattern: vulnerable victims, stolen funds, and a plea for information, typical of hundreds of similar cases that plagued news feeds daily.
But his attention was caught not by the details themselves, but by the name of the primary suspect: Gerald Banks.
Yet, something about the name of the primary suspect, a slick businessman named Gerald Banks, sent a ripple of dissonant energy through Eren.
The name itself held no significance to him, but a sudden certainty settled in the depths of his mind: liar.
"Sharon," he spoke, the word catching in his throat from a mix of confusion and apprehension, "This Gerald Banks guy… something's not right about him."
She spared him a cursory glance, her skepticism a visible shadow on her face. "Really? And what, pray tell, makes you the expert on criminal fraud cases, Eren?"
The taunt, usually met with a lighthearted retort, hung unanswered in the air. The gnawing certainty within him was too insistent to ignore.
Without conscious thought, he reached out, the whisper in his mind urging him to touch the name on the screen.
As his fingers brushed against the cold glass, a jolt shot through him. It wasn't an electric shock, but a tremor that rippled through a part of him he didn't realize existed.
The screen blurred momentarily, and when it cleared, a strange glow seemed to emanate from the name 'Gerald Banks'.
Not a visible light, but rather a sense of… wrongness. An instinctive awareness that the name was a facade, a deception obscuring a darker truth.
Eren stared, eyes wide as he tried to process the bizarre phenomenon. Was he imagining it? Had the stress cracked his mind?
"Eren?" Sharon's voice snapped him out of his trance. "You've gone even paler than usual. Are you going to elaborate, or just zone out with a thousand-yard stare?"
He blinked, the glow fading as quickly as it had appeared, leaving only the mundane article behind. Self-doubt began to creep in, but it warred with the lingering certainty.
Cautiously, he repeated his claim. "I…I think this Banks guy, he's not who he seems to be. It's like…a feeling." He gestured helplessly at the screen, already regretting his words.
Sharon scoffed. "A feeling? Really, Eren? Now you're spouting psychic mumbo-jumbo? Maybe you should join mom in her spiritual cleansing sessions."
The sting of the jab would usually have sparked a defensive retort, but Eren was lost in his own whirlwind of thoughts. That flicker of something, however strange, had felt too real to dismiss.
To placate his sister, he muttered a half-hearted apology, but his mind was already moving in a different direction.
---
Over the next few days, Eren found himself inexplicably drawn to tales of fraud and deception.
He combed through news articles, fraud forums, even police reports, with an intensity that startled him.
It was like a hunger he couldn't explain, and with each piece of information, the whispers in his mind became more distinct.
Initially, the sensation was subtle, a nagging disharmony whenever he encountered the names or images of those involved in deception.
Gradually, it intensified, evolving into that same dissonant glow that pulsed with increasing clarity.
A sense of power flickered within him, a heady mix of fear and a strange, almost intoxicating thrill.
With each flicker of his uncanny ability, Eren felt a surge of righteous anger coursing through him. This wasn't some parlor trick; this was a weapon, a tool to unravel the web of lies that had crushed his family.
Yet, a lingering doubt tugged at him. Was this some manifestation of grief? A desperate desire for control in a chaotic world? Or had he touched something beyond his grasp, a power not meant for him?
His thoughts were a whirlwind, a constant debate between the potential of his ability and the fear of what it might reveal.
He needed guidance, an anchor in this storm of self-doubt. There was one person he knew of who might make sense of this strange turn of events.
Mia.
---
He'd met her during late shifts at the university computer lab, drawn to her quiet intensity and the rumors about her knack for unearthing hidden information.
She walked a thin line between the university network and the murkier underbelly of the internet, a figure whispered about but never fully understood.
He found her, as expected, perched on her usual stool in a dingy underground coffee shop, eyes glued to a flickering laptop screen.
Warily, Eren approached, her lack of surprise at his presence doing little to soothe his nerves. With a curt nod, she acknowledged him and gestured for him to sit.
Choosing his words with care, Eren began revealing his newfound ability. Mia listened intently, her expression unreadable.
When he finally confessed his fears and his growing thirst for vengeance, he waited for her dismissal, her cynicism. Instead, she surprised him.
"There are…things in this world, Eren. Forces that most don't perceive. Sometimes, those forces take an interest. Beings of light and ones… not so much."
Her voice lowered further, "Your little ability, your 'glow' as you call it... that's a nudge, maybe even a shove. Question now is, which way will you go with it?"
The flicker of understanding in Eren's eyes was something Mia barely registered. Over the years, she'd seen that same flicker in many - a mixture of terror and desperate hope that someone, something, could make sense of the fractured reality they were stumbling into.
It remained to be seen which path this boy would choose.
"Alright, Eren," she said, shutting her laptop with a decisive click. "Enough theorizing. This world, the forces at play – you won't grasp them through abstract warnings. But maybe," she shrugged, a touch of indifference in her voice, "this 'glow' of yours is more than just a grief-fueled delusion."
Eren tensed, a mix of apprehension and defiant pride flaring in his eyes. The fear was a familiar companion by now, but laced with something sharper – the sting of skepticism.
"What makes you think you know anything about what I'm going through, or seeing, or whatever this is?" He challenged, a flicker of frustration in his voice.
Mia merely arched an eyebrow. "I see the sleepless nights, the jumpiness, the way you stare at news articles like they'll reveal the secrets of the universe. I've seen the same pattern myself, long ago," she said flatly.
"Some break, some adapt. You seem like the stubborn type – likely to do something incredibly reckless if you're left to muddle through this alone."
Her blunt assessment was met with silence. Eren knew there was truth in her words, knew that his descent into this world of whispers and shadows was a dangerous one without guidance. Reluctantly, he spoke, "And you think you can help?"
Mia's response was a shrug that could be interpreted as disinterest or reluctant agreement. "Maybe. But this isn't some training montage. The forces you're brushing against, they're real. And they're not always picky about who they break."
Eren swallowed, the familiar fear coiling in his stomach. But beneath it, a stubborn resolve took root. "If I can use this – this ability – to protect others from what my family went through, then it's worth the risk," he replied.
A flicker of something akin to respect appeared in Mia's eyes. Maybe this boy wouldn't crumble so easily after all. "Brave words," she noted. "But heroism doesn't always save the day in this world. Take this man, for example."
Pulling her laptop open, she turned the screen towards him. It displayed the profile of a seemingly charismatic philanthropist, his face beaming with manufactured benevolence.
"I've been tracking him," Mia explained, "His rise is a little too clean, his charitable donations a little too perfect. Beneath the facade, there's something off."
"So you want me to…sense his evil?" Eren asked, a touch of skepticism lacing his voice.
"Something like that," Mia replied. "Focus on him. Tell me if that 'glow' of yours picks anything up."
Eren with a mix of curiosity and trepidation, he focused on the face on the screen.
The familiar sense of dissonance began as a hum, but it swiftly amplified, twisting into something darker, a cloying, insatiable hunger.
He gasped, the sensation so overwhelming that it almost drowned out his thoughts. This wasn't just deceit; it was a predatory hunger, insatiable, and reeking of calculated malevolence.
Struggling through the nausea, Eren tried to analyze the feeling, searching for a rational explanation, any explanation, besides the growing dread in the pit of his stomach.
"It's not just ambition," he choked out, his voice a strained whisper, "There's a…a cunning behind it. Like he's preying on something intangible, something…" Eren trailed off, the words failing him as the realization hit him with bone-chilling clarity.
"He's feeding off…misery. Despair. He seeks it out, creates more of it."
Mia stared at him, her usual stoic veneer cracking slightly. A flicker of both surprise and grim validation passed through her eyes. "Good," she murmured, a hint of satisfaction in her tone. "Your eyes are sharper than I anticipated."
She gestured for him to continue. "Tell me more. Is there anything else? A direction, a pattern to this… feeding?"
Eren closed his eyes, focusing not just on the image but on the twisting black tendrils of wrongness pulsating from it.
Gradually, a nauseating yet undeniable connection became clear. It felt sticky, manipulative, like a carefully woven web of promises and despair. This wasn't the cold exploitation of a con artist. This was something… systematic. Methodical.
"The donations…the foundation," he stammered, opening his eyes. "It's not just about the money. He's targeting the vulnerable, those desperate for hope. He…draws them in, promises them salvation, then exploits their desperation."
Eren shuddered, a horrifying image taking shape in his mind – that of a spider luring its prey into an intricately woven trap, ready to devour their faith and leave them husks of their former selves.
Mia nodded slowly, her eyes narrowed in contemplation. "Parasite was the right word," she said quietly. "This… philanthropist," she spat the word as if it were venom, "is something far more twisted. He's serving a darker master, feeding on the misery of his victims to appease a hunger not his own."
A chill of dread swept through Eren. He had stumbled, however unwittingly, into a reality far more sinister than he'd ever imagined.
And Mia, with her cryptic warnings and chilling demeanor, seemed intimately familiar with this darkness.