As summer turned to autumn and the leaves browned and covered the village, a child went missing.
Kai's village, Orrinsby, was used to small misfortunes. Wolves and bears would take livestock, the odd traveler would get lost in their forests and be found dead by the village hunters. A missing child, though? Something that hadn't happened in the few years Kai had been in this world.
At first, the elders reassured the townsfolk and the parents of the child.
"He'll come home," they said when the first child went missing. "Children wander too far sometimes." But he never came back. And then another child disappeared.
And another.
And many more.
By the time winter's breath crept into Orrinsby, dozens of children had vanished.
Garrett and Lila did their best to keep their children inside at night, but it didn't help.
Mari disappeared while going to the market for bread and cheese.
Kai had always felt different, but never alone as long as Mari was there. She anchored and protected him in a world where he always felt like an outsider in the village, and even in his family.
Her absence was like an open wound.
Anxiety about the present and possible future crippled him without her there.
'If she never comes back... What do I do?'
Kai dreaded the thought.
That was when the dreams started. Whispers in a dream of darkness.
At first, the whispers were faint. Just murmurs on the edge of his consciousness, like a conversation happening just out of reach. Children's voices. He couldn't make out the words, only the urgency, the fear.
Then one night, a voice cut through the noise, clear as day.
"He keeps us in the dark place."
Kai jolted awake. Cold from being drenched in his own sweat, he attempted to catch his breath. He turned toward his window and when he saw something looking back; he froze.
A small, child-like shadowy figure stood beyond the glass. Still. Silent. Watching.
Kai blinked and rubbed his eye.
The figure disappeared.
'Was that still just part of my dream? I heard things about the mind creating hallucinations for people just after waking up. Waking dreams or something?'
The next morning, Kai wandered through the village in search of answers. The eerie whisper still echoed in his head.
'The dark place. But what does that even mean? Where's Mari? Where are the others?'
While mulling over the strange dream, Kai saw him.
A man stood at the centre of the market square, speaking with another villager. At first glance, he seemed ordinary—a simple coat, boots muddied with dirt, unremarkable features. With a longbow slung over his shoulders, he handed parcels of meat wrapped in leaves to a woman at Delilah's butcher's shop.
He had never once come to see Garrett or Lila about healing or mending anything, and just about everyone in the village had visited them since Kai was born.
As Kai approached, their gazes met, and something inside him twisted.
It was like looking into a void, wearing a man's skin. A thing that mimicked human life but was anything but. Something about the way he smiled... it was too broad, too deliberate. His eyes were like black stones reflecting no light.
Empty.
Wrong.
Kai's stomach churned and threatened to get rid of the ham, bread, and cheese from his lunch.
The man tilted his head, watching him.
And then he smiled.
A deep, insidious terror crept up Kai's spine. He could feel it. A darkness within the man, writhing like a trapped, starving thing. It wasn't just evil. It was hungry. Hungry for something vile, something that he could see in Kai.
Kai backed away from the man and turned. He walked briskly back towards his home, but he could still feel the man's gaze on his back. Watching. Waiting.
That night, Kai struggled to sleep. He walked down the hall to his parents' room and opened the door. Peter snored quietly whilst Garrett snored like a freight train. Lila remained quiet while he crawled between them.
Several minutes passed in the darkness before his dreams returned.
Kai stood in a space of ever-extending darkness. A speck of light appeared in the distance and flew closer.
"Please."
The whispers were louder.
"We're cold."
More numerous.
"The dark place."
Stronger.
A fresh voice grabbed his attention. One he recognised. A friend Mari would bring around to the house occasionally, a girl named Janette.
"Save Mari, Kai."
His blood turned to ice.
Mari...
The whispers weren't just dreams anymore. They followed him into the waking world.
And they were begging him to listen.
For two days, Kai searched for the man from his nightmares, the one whose very presence made his skin crawl. He started by asking questions around the village, careful not to raise too much suspicion. The last thing he needed was Father Aldric's priests sniffing around, twisting his inquiries into something sinister. His first stop was Delilah's shop. Before approaching the butcher, Kai looked up and down the streets in case the man was around. When he believed the coast was clear, he spoke to Delilah standing behind the counter.
Delilah was a tall, muscular woman with graying hair and blue eyes. She glanced up as he entered. The scent of raw meat and blood clung to the air. Something about it reminded him of sausages. "Excuse me," Kai said with a shaky voice. "I was wondering about a man, the man from yesterday that sold you some meat? Dirty, with a bow? A hunter, maybe?" Delilah's expression twisted slightly, her fingers tightening around a blood-covered cleaver that was wedged in a wooden chopping board.
'Uh... Lady?' "Not a customer? You're after Graham? Aye, I know 'im. Comes by every so often with fresh kills. Interesting cuts of meat sometimes. Strange fellow that keeps to 'imself. Why do you ask?" She turned around and slammed the cleaver into a piece of meat, slicing it in two with a single blow, bone and all. Kai tried to keep his face neutral, but his stomach churned at the thought of where that 'meat' might have truly come from.
Delilah looked at Kai with a worried expression. He swallowed before responding, trying to ease his stomach. "I think I saw him wandering near my house and don't know him." Delilah squinted at him but eventually shrugged. "Can't say I know much about him. He lives on the edge of town, near the old well. Comes in when he has something to trade, then vanishes again. Some say he's been in the village for years, but no one really knows where he came from. Just showed up one day. If you want to know more, you can go and ask him, but don't go into the forest alone." Kai thanked her and left, the unease in his chest growing. He spent the rest of the day quietly asking around.
By the end of the day, Kai determined that most townsfolk barely knew anything about Graham, and those who did only repeated what Delilah had said."He's a reclusive hunter who keeps to himself."
But there were rumours.
Kai spoke to Horrus, an old man that frequented his house for his failing knees.
"Ah, young Kai!" Horrus exclaimed as he saw Kai approach.
"Hi! I'm sorry to bother you, but I've been asking around about a hunter named Graham, and nobody can tell me anything."
"Oh, it's not a bother. Your mother and father have helped me out much more than I can help them. So, are you wanting to become a hunter like young Graham? Magician, warrior, and hunter?"
Horrus liked to watch Kai practice his magic and train with Rael from time to time, talking about how he was like Kai when he was younger.
'Doubtful that any four-year-old could do what I'm doing, though.'
"I think it's admirable to provide for myself and my family. Hunting would help me do that."
"That's wonderful! Just wonderful! But, perhaps, might I suggest something?"
"What's that?" Kai asked, sensing the worry in Horrus' voice.
"Ask another of the hunters in the village. Strange sounds come from the woods at night when Graham is out hunting, and sometimes livestock goes missing whenever he lingers in the village. Now, I'm not saying anything is wrong with the man, but you put all of that on top of the fact he looks like he's barely aged a day in ten years, and something's just not right."
Kai thanked Horrus for the information and promised to ask another hunter for training and left for home before it got too late.
--- By the second day, Kai grew restless. Mari had been missing for too long, and he hadn't seen Graham himself since that fleeting moment in the marketplace.
The voices in his head only became more insistent. They came not only in his sleep, but in waking hours. Faint, pleading cries which faded before he could fully grasp them. In the early evening of the third day, Kai finally spotted him.
Graham walked through the village, moving toward the forest with his longbow slung over his back.
Goosebumps spread over Kai's body.
The air around the hunter felt thick, oppressive, as though something unseen clung to him like a second skin. The shadows at his feet stretched unnaturally long in the fading light. Kai forced himself to move, trailing behind at a careful distance as Graham disappeared into the trees. The deeper they went into the woods, the quieter everything became. The usual sounds of birds and rustling leaves vanished, replaced by an eerie stillness that prickled at the back of Kai's neck.
'It's not normal to experience silence in a forest.'
Graham never once looked back. He moved with purpose, his steps confident.
'It's his home territory. I need to be careful.'
Kai kept to the shadows, his breathing shallow, his heart hammering against his ribs. Then, suddenly, Graham stopped. He tilted his head slightly, as though listening to something Kai couldn't hear.
'Has he caught me?'
Kai pressed his back against the trunk of a tree, trying to steady his breath.
When Kai peeked around the trunk of the tree, a translucent face with deep purple otherworldly eyes stared back at him. A silent scream escaped Kai's lips, and the face turned into a wisp of fog.
Beyond the dissipating fog, he saw Graham's back disappear into the growing darkness. Kai hesitated for a moment before pushing forward, stepping deeper into the unknown that awaited him.