In Between Worlds

Chapter 1 ......... Meeting My Nemesis

Just like yesterday, I remember it with a clarity that burns.

I remember the singing of birds. Not the cheerful morning chorus you hear outside a bedroom window, but something older, something wrong. Their notes were too sharp, too deliberate, as if they were heralds announcing a funeral that hadn’t happened yet. Each trill cut through the humid air and lodged itself in my chest like a splinter of glass.

I remember the howling of wolves. They were not distant. They were close — so close I could feel the vibration of their voices in the soles of my feet. The sound wasn’t hunger. It was rage. It was grief. It was a warning spoken in a language my bones understood before my mind did. The howls wove through the trees, braiding with the bird song, creating a symphony that belonged to a world older than ours.

I remember the wailing of banshees. Or maybe it was the wind. But no wind I’d ever known sounded like that — like a thousand mothers crying for children they would never hold again. It dragged itself across the rooftops, slipped under the doors, and whispered my name with a voice that wasn’t mine. The sound sank into the walls of our house and made the wood groan as if the house itself wanted to run.

And then there was the sudden _knock_.

Not a polite tap. Not the familiar three beats of my father coming home late. This was a single, decisive impact against the front door. It was the sound of something that did not ask permission. The entire house shuddered. Dust fell from the ceiling beams like dead skin. The candle flames in the living room bowed, then went out all at once, and the darkness that rushed in was heavier than night. It had weight. It had intent.

It was something I had never felt, not in my ten short years of living. A pull, deep in my marrow, as if invisible hooks had been set behind my ribs. It was not fear — not yet. It was compulsion. It was the tide, and I was nothing but a leaf. Controlled by worldly forces I could neither name nor fight, I moved without direction. My legs carried me forward while my mind screamed to stop.

The door opened on its own. The night beyond was not black. It was blue, and silver, and wrong. The moon hung too low, too large, swollen like a bruise. The trees at the edge of our yard leaned inward, their branches forming ribs, as if the whole world had become the belly of some vast creature.

The next thing I knew, I was deep inside the woods.

I do not remember running. I do not remember the cold bite of grass against my bare feet. One moment I was at the threshold of my home, the next I was swallowed by trees that had no business growing so close together. Their trunks were slick and black, like they had been burned from the inside out. The canopy above was a knot of limbs that blocked the moon, but somehow I could still see. The light came from nowhere and everywhere — a dim, pulsing glow that made the shadows seem alive.

Before I could say _JACK_, they were around me.

Shadowy figures. Tall, thin, and wrong in their proportions. They had no faces, but I felt their attention like ice water poured down my spine. They did not move. They did not breathe. They simply _were_, forming a circle so tight that the air grew thick. The scent of damp earth and old blood filled my lungs. My heart, which had never known terror, suddenly learned the word. It hammered against my ribs with such violence I thought it would break through.

I felt fear for the first time in my life.

Real fear. Not the kind you get from a nightmare you can wake up from. This was the fear of knowing you were small, and the world was vast, and that vastness had just noticed you. My hands shook. My knees wanted to fold. A whimper escaped my throat, and I hated myself for it.

Today marks my 10th birthday. Ten years of scraped knees, of my mother’s lullabies, of stealing meat from the pot before dinner. Ten years of believing monsters lived only in stories adults told to make children obey. Not once in those ten years had I ever felt like this — like prey, like an offering, like something already lost.

And then, amongst all the others, a shadow stood up.

It did not rise. It _unfolded_. The others were tall, but this one was a king among ghosts. The circle parted for it without a sound. It moved like smoke given purpose, like midnight given bones. With every step it took toward me, the temperature dropped until my breath came out in clouds. The other shadows bowed. Not with respect. With worship.

What I saw was beyond imagination or expectation. Beyond anything the village elders whispered about when they thought children weren’t listening.

I saw the darkest of all creatures. My own nemesis, though I did not know how I knew that word, or why it fit so perfectly. It had a shape that mocked the idea of a man — too many angles, too many joints. Its skin was the absence of light, a void that drank the dim glow of the woods and gave nothing back. And its eyes—

Crimson eyes, glowing like the sun itself, but a sun that brought no warmth. A sun that burned cold. They were not just looking at me. They were looking _through_ me, cataloging every secret, every dream, every fragile piece of my ten-year-old soul. When those eyes met mine, the howling of the wolves stopped. The birds went silent. Even the banshees held their breath.

The king-shadow tilted its head. And it smiled. I could not see a mouth, but I felt the smile like a knife dragged across my mind.

It raised a hand. It had too many fingers.

The next thing I could see was blurriness.

The world smeared like wet paint. The crimson eyes became two bleeding suns, then two pinpricks, then nothing. The circle of shadows collapsed inward, and sound vanished. My legs gave out. I could not feel the ground when I hit it. I could not feel my own hands. It was like being poured out of my body, like falling asleep without the promise of waking.

Unconscious. But not peace. Not rest. Even in the darkness, I could feel it standing over me. I could feel those eyes, still watching, still _knowing_.

That was the beginning of all.

The beginning of the dreams that were not dreams. The beginning of the voice that now lives behind my eyes. The beginning of the mark I found on my chest the next morning — a spiral of black veins that pulsed when I was afraid.

I turned ten that day. The day I stopped being a child. The day the world proved that monsters were real, and that I belonged to the darkest one of all.