𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐢𝐥: 𝐇𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬 #1 | 18+

9 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐠𝐨...

❝They met like storms brushing skin, Too brief to see the ruin within. Fate carved their names in quiet breath—They just hadn’t heard it whisper death....❞

· · • • •  • • • · ·

The sky was hemorrhaging, dark, unyielding.

Crimson streaks bled into the bruised gray clouds, sagging low as if the heavens themselves flinched from the desolation below.

The fourteen year old boy ran—barefoot, his soles shredded by jagged cobblestones, his body a map of bruises and scars, each bruise a testament to a life unwanted. His torn clothes clung to him, sodden with dirt, sweat, and the coppery tang of blood. Every breath was a knife in his chest, each gasp a desperate plea for his lungs to hold on, to not collapse under the weight of his terror.

Behind him, the monsters roared.

Their laughter was a jagged blade, slicing through the air—cruel, guttural, and relentless. Their mockery echoed like a pack of hyenas circling a dying thing. Their footsteps didn’t hurry. They didn’t need to chase. They knew he was already broken, a husk of a boy, his spirit ground to dust long before this moment. They were the hunters, and he was prey too shattered to fight.

He was nothing. A ghost in human skin. A thing locked in dank cellars, beaten until his cries became silence, hidden away like a shameful secret.

No name. No dreams.

Just a fragile cage of bones wrapped in battered flesh, carrying bruises like badges of survival.

The streets were alive with people, but they were no salvation. Faces blurred into a faceless mass—eyes darting away, lips curling in disgust, or worse, indifferent. Hands clutched purses tighter. Feet quickened to pass him by.

No one stopped. No one reached out.

Why would they?

He was the filth they scrubbed from their shoes, the shadow they refused to see. A child born of darkness, less than human in their eyes. Even stray dogs got scraps and pity; he got nothing but scorn.

So he ran.

His legs burned, his vision swam, but he ran—through alleys reeking of rot, over stones slick with filth, until the world shifted.

A burst of color. A pulse of sound. A flicker of light.

Ahead, a carnival bloomed like a fever dream in the gloom. Music swirled, bright and molten, like laughter forged in gold. Stalls glowed with vibrant reds, pinks, and blues, their painted facades defiant against the gray despair. Balloons bobbed in sky, vivid and free, like dreams clawing their way out of a nightmare.

He didn’t belong here. He knew that. But the monsters wouldn’t look for him in a place so alive, so radiant. Evil didn’t wear smiles or hide in sunlight. It lurked in shadows, in the places he’d escaped.

He stumbled to the carnival’s edge, his body screaming with every step. He dropped to his knees and crawled beneath a cart, pressing himself into the cold, gritty dirt. His scraped knees bled, his trembling hands clawed at the earth, seeking something—anything—solid to hold onto.

And then… he looked up.

The world stopped.

There she was.

A girl, no older than seven or eight, stood bathed in the carnival’s glow. Her yellow dress was soft as sunlight, her hair bound in twin ribbons that danced in the breeze. She held a doll in her little hands and balloons with smiley faces, no candy, no trinket. She was still, her gaze locked on him.