The Keeper

PROLOGUE It has been told that Prometheus, the creator of all creatures on earth, gave life to two types of being in the likeness of the gods. The first was the humans who he moulded from clay and earth. He gave them fire as a gift. This generosity infuriated Zeus. He bound Prometheus at Mount Caucasus where the latter’s punishment was to have his liver eaten every day by a giant eagle, another titan named Aetos. The liver would regrow every night, and the torturous cycle was to be for thirty thousand years. Prometheus, legend said, created a pair of second beings as his companions during his suffering. They were not just made in the image of the gods, but from its true essence. Prometheus added a piece of his liver to the soil and rocks he used to fashion the new creatures, thus bestowing them with superhuman strength, speed, slow aging, and super senses. He also gave them the power to shape shift into animals to enable them to hide from Zeus. However, he was unaware that the saliva of Aetos tainted a portion of the liver. And his second creation inherited the need to consume viscera. He called them Viscerebus, or viscera-eaters. Once Prometheus was free, he bid the Viscerebus to live among humans. Thus, begun the conflict between the two. The Viscerebus hunted the humans for their viscera, and the humans hunted them back for survival. For decades, they were locked in a fierce battle for supremacy. The Viscerebus were stronger, faster, and more powerful, but the humans had centuries of head start in population. They outnumbered the Viscerebus, and it shifted the balance of power. To protect their own, the Viscerebi formed a Tribunal and engineered a system that ensured the survival of their kind. They set up a process of procuring fresh viscera without the need to kill humans; the distribution of the victus to their kind to stop them from hunting humans; and the campaign to convince the humans that the Viscerebi were creatures of lore. They perfected the strategy for millennia, and the Viscerebi thrived, hidden in plain sight among human societies all over the world. Their success hinged on keeping the Veil of Secrecy intact—the hiding of their existence from the humans at all costs. But like air, secrets could only be contained through insulation. And like all insulation, it would never be permanent. When two different beings coexist, their imperfections could create either conflict or cohesion.