As Kai ventured further into the forest, he heard the voices calling him.
The dark place was real.
'I have to find it.'
The first sign was the stench. Not a typical stench that one would smell, but something felt in the air. It clung to the natural mana that flowed with the wind.
In a small clearing, surrounded by dead trees, he saw a decrepit house.
An old house, sagging and rotten, sunk slightly into the ground.
'Everything about this feels wrong. Graham, this spot, this house, the whispers. Every fibre of my being is telling me to run.'
The structure should not have still been standing, it should not have been whole. It felt like it would consume him the moment he stepped inside.
Kai hesitated at the threshold. His body screamed at him to run, but the voices urged him forward. Mari was here. She had to be.
Once inside, Kai covered his mouth as he coughed. The thick air, heavy with dust and decay hurt his throat and lungs. He watched the shadows dance on the walls, created by the few candles lit throughout the house.
A soft clink vibrated down the hall. Like metal on metal.
At the end of the hall, a door, slightly ajar, lead downward.
The whispers, now screams, reverberated through his skull.
"Hurry!"
Kai rushed forward and shoved the door open, revealing a narrow staircase descending into pure darkness.
Kai focused his strengthening magic on his eyes, and the darkness eased up.
He took a step forward, but a hand clamped around his wrist.
He turned, staring into the cold, empty eyes of Graham, the man from the market.
"Shouldn't be here, boy," Graham murmured, his voice soft but full of something ancient.
Kai tried to pull away, but the grip tightened.
Summoning as much magic as he could, he stood his ground.
'Bull's Strength!'
But even then, Graham, completely unprotected or strengthened by magic, remained still and unfazed.
The man's head tilted, his smile stretching wider.
"You're not a boy, though, are you?" Graham's smile widened further, reaching his ears like some sort of demented creature.
The voices pierced Kai's thoughts again. More desperately this time.
"Please save them!"
"I'm trying!" Kai yelled.
"Oh? Do you hear them?" he whispered. "The dead ones? You can! I need to collect you. I must."
A shock of cold ran through Kai's veins, spreading to his fingertips.
The whispers in his mind screeched.
Something inside Kai snapped, and for a moment, his vision disappeared.
A force, raw and powerful, exploded outward from within him. Graham stumbled back, his grip breaking. Kai didn't hesitate.
He ran down into the dark.
The first thing he noticed was the cold. An unnatural chill.
The second was the acrid scent of death and decay that forced its way into his nose. Kai pinched his nostrils closed.
The third was the cages.
Row upon row of iron bars, filled with small, motionless shapes. Someone scattered small pieces of food in the cells, like a person feeding wild birds birdseed.
Then Kai saw her.
Mari, huddled in a corner, clutching another child. The child wasn't moving. Janette, Mari's friend who told him to save her, was in her arms.
Her eyes locked onto his. Terror. Relief.
"Kai..."
But her voice broke, and before she could say another word, her body slumped forward, unconscious.
A deep, rattling breath echoed behind him.
Kai turned, his stomach dropping.
The man wasn't alone.
The darkness inside him—it was spilling out.
Shadows crawled along the floor, twisting, writhing. They had no eyes, no mouths, but Kai could feel them grinning.
"Too late," the man whispered. "They're his now. Their souls will always belong to the Collector."
The shadows surged forward.
Kai screamed.
And the whispers answered.
Something burst forth from him—not just magic, but something older. Dark tendrils lashed out, colliding with the crawling shadows. The room shook.
The shadows wailed.
And suddenly, Kai wasn't just hearing the dead.
He commanded them.
The shadows that spilled from the man turned their attention around and tore at the man's flesh. The spirits they had controlled, the hundreds of them, howled in rage and sorrow. They tore into the writhing darkness, yanking it from the man's body, pulling it apart piece by piece. The Collector shrieked, not with a voice, but with something deeper, something that made Kai's bones hum with the sound.
And then it was gone.
The moment the last of the spirits had left him, the man's body crumbled. His skin withered in an instant, his limbs mummifying before turning to dust as though time had finally caught up with him all at once. Within seconds, there was nothing left. Not even bones.
The spirits flickered.
"Thank you..." many said in unison.
As the lights of the spirits left the basement, they left only silence behind.
Kai searched the man's clothes, now covered in ash and dust, for a key. A large ornate key rested inside a hidden compartment in the heel of their left shoe.
After unlocking the cages, he used strengthening magic to bring Mari to the surface while the rest of the living children followed.
---
By the time the villagers arrived, the house was burning.
The children were found, alive—all except for a few who had been taken too soon. The Collector was gone, no trace of him remaining in the ashes.
"What happened here?" Rael asked, being one of the leaders of the search party.
"That man. Graham. He took me while I was looking for Mari! I was so scared, but someone came down and saved us!"
"Hmm... A stranger saved you? A travelling hero, maybe? Where did they go?"
"I don't know. They said something about needing to save a priestess and left us here."
'I already told all the children here that story more than a dozen times before the adults arrived. They should back up my lies.'
"A priestess? If the citadel is worried about one of their priestesses, something must have happened. I'm glad he found all of you before something dreadful happened."
Rael and the rest of the search party carried the children back to the village while a couple of women from the washhouse put out the fire by creating and spraying water at the house.
Something had changed in Kai that night.
Mari did not speak of that night. Not of the bodies. Not of the darkness. But sometimes, in her sleep, she whimpered, whispering reassurances to someone who wasn't there.
"It's okay, Janette," she murmured one night. "It's okay now."
But Janette was dead.
Most of them were.
Mari still heard them, the memories of the whispers from all the children who never made it out.
But Kai... Kai still heard them all. The spirits lingered around him.
He felt their remorse, their pain, their sadness.
'But what was that man saying about a collector? There was something else to him, something inhuman. If there are things like that in the world, I'm just going to stay here in the village.'
[Name: Kai Tensen | Age: 3 and a half Years | Languages Translated: Imerian | Skills: Mana Manipulation, Mana Tempering, Shadow Manipulation, Minor Strengthening Magic, Novice Combat Arts | Spellcasting: Novice | Spells: Rejuvenate, Thrall Control, Shadow Conjuring, Bull's Strength, Frozen Touch (Contact), Frozen Zone (Area), Focus Sight, Soul Threading | Specialisation: ??? - To be revealed upon Magical Assessment]