The basement was no longer just a nest of hunger and crying. As the days passed, the stench of despair was mixed with something else... something fetid, rancid, inhuman. Kael sensed it when the lights trembled, when the air became heavy and the shadows seemed to breathe.
Not all the children who shared his confinement were still there. Some disappeared quietly into the night. There was no screaming. There was no scuffling. Only the faint sound of a slimy, barely perceptible shuffling, followed by an icy emptiness settling where a warm body had once been.
-They're being taken away..." whispered one of the boys, a small, sunken-eyed boy sleeping next to Kael. No one answered. Everyone knew, but no one said it out loud. It was easier to blame the men who had locked them up, to think they were simply being taken to another place, another ritual, another punishment. But the truth was worse.
Kael began to notice the details. Deep scratches in the concrete walls. A dark, thick liquid that sometimes dripped from the ceiling grates. Eyes that weren't human peering from the cracks. They were not guards. They were not men.
One night, while the rest slept, Kael felt the air change. An unnatural silence enveloped the basement, as if the world held its breath. Then he heard it. A wet clicking. Distorted footsteps. Something shuffling.
He rose noiselessly. He hid among the sleeping bodies, covering himself with dirty blankets. He watched. And then he saw it.
A hunched figure, more shadow than flesh, slithered across the floor. Its limbs were thin and elongated like dry twigs, its skin looked like burnt flesh, and its mouth... a huge, jagged crack that opened from jaw to neck. Its eyes glowed with a murky, yellowish light, and its breath was a moist gurgle that made the skin prickle.
The monster approached a sleeping girl. It sniffed her. It licked at her with a tongue as black as coal. And without a sound, it wrapped its limbs around her and dragged her toward the floor grate. In seconds, the girl was gone. She did not scream. She did not wake up.
Kael could not move. Not out of fear, but out of a strange connection. Deep in his chest, something throbbed strongly. The same warmth he felt in his dreams. A familiar whisper coursed through him.
"They are not of this world... and neither are you."
The next morning, everyone pretended nothing had happened. But the stares were empty. One more had disappeared. Silence had become customary.
Kael never slept soundly again from then on. He stayed awake, vigilant, trying to figure out what those things were. The "Devourers." Because that's what they were. Creatures made of hunger, of hate, of darkness. And somehow he knew they were no ordinary beasts. They were something older. Deeper.
That was the day Kael understood that his world was much vaster than he thought. That the darkness had monsters. And that he... was destined to face them.