In Between Worlds

Chapter 3.................. AKUMA

Just like yesternight, I felt it again.

Another strong pull outside the house.

I was in bed this time. Wide awake. Pillow damp with sweat. Eyes locked on the ceiling like if I stared hard enough, the c***k shaped like lightning would keep the monsters away.

It didn’t.

The spiral mark on my chest was quiet. Too quiet. Like a predator holding its breath.

Then it started.

Not a noise. Not a whisper.

A _pull_.

It sank invisible hooks behind my ribs and _yanked_. Deep in my gut, in my bones, in the space between my thoughts. It was the same compulsion from my birthday night — older than words, heavier than gravity.

There was this strange urge calling unto me.

It didn’t speak English. Didn’t speak at all. But I understood it. The way a leaf understands the wind. The way prey understands the shadow of a hawk.

_Come._

_Outside._

_Now._

And then, once again, my leg moved on its own.

I watched it happen. I was in my body, but I wasn’t driving. My knee bent. My foot swung over the edge of the bed. My toes touched the cold floor and I _felt_ the chill, but I hadn’t told them to move.

Once again I just don’t understand. Like how?

How do you fight your own muscles? How do you argue with your own nervous system? I screamed inside my head — _STOP! DON’T WALK! WAKE UP MUM, WAKE UP DAD!_ — but my mouth stayed shut. My lungs kept breathing, slow and even, like I was sleepwalking.

But I wasn’t asleep.

I was screaming-awake and my body was a puppet.

One step. The floorboard creaked.

Another step. My pajama pants whispered against my legs.

My hand rose. My fingers, which should have been shaking, were steady as stone as they wrapped around the doorknob. The metal was ice. It bit into my palm, but I didn’t flinch. _He_ didn’t flinch.

Whoever was moving me now.

The door opened. No creak. No resistance. Like the house itself was helping.

The night outside was wrong again.

Blue. Silver. Too bright. The moon hung low and swollen, like a bruise on the sky. The air didn’t move. No crickets. No dogs. Even the streetlights seemed dimmer, like they were afraid to shine too hard.

Then I saw them once again.

Those scary shadowy figures.

They were waiting.

Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Lining the street, standing in our yard, perched on the neighbor’s fence like crows. Tall. Thin. Wrong. Their bodies bent in ways that made my eyes water. No faces. No features. Just voids in the shape of men.

The air smelled like damp earth and copper. Old blood.

My heart hammered, but my feet kept walking. Down the porch steps. Onto the grass. Each blade of grass I crushed felt like it screamed.

But this time around, the demon wasn’t there.

The king-shadow. The one with crimson eyes like cold suns. The one with too many fingers.

He was gone.

The space where he’d stood last night was empty, and for one stupid, desperate second, relief flooded me. Maybe it was over. Maybe he’d taken what he wanted and left. Maybe I was free.

I should have known better.

Because surprisingly, as if the shadows came to life, they moved.

Not like people. They didn’t have joints or bones. They _flowed_. Like ink spilled in water. Like smoke deciding to have a shape.

And then, all at once, they bowed.

Every single one.

Their featureless heads dipped toward me. Their long arms hung at their sides. The street, the yard, the whole world went still and silent and _reverent_.

And they said one thing.

One word.

“AKUMA.”

It didn’t come from throats. It didn’t need to. The word _happened_. It vibrated in the concrete. In the leaves. In my teeth. In the spiral mark on my chest.

“AKUMA.”

“AKUMA.”

“AKUMA.”

A word I have never heard over the ten years I have lived.

I didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t know what language. But my body did. My blood did. The mark did.

It flared.

Ice first. Then fire. Then something worse than both — _knowledge_. Pure, brutal understanding shoved straight into my brain like a spear.

I dropped to my knees. The grass died where I touched it, withering black in a perfect circle.

My mouth opened. A sound came out that wasn’t a scream. Wasn’t a word.

It was the sound of something breaking inside me.

Suddenly, a voice spoke in my head.

Not Mum. Not Dad. Not Mrs. Adeyemi. Not me.

This voice was old. It sounded like mountains learning to speak. Like every graveyard in the world exhaling at once. Like the moment before thunder.

It felt unbelievable. It felt unreal.

But it was louder than my thoughts. Deeper than my heartbeat.

_He is the harbinger of death._

The shadows bowed lower. The air got so cold my breath came out as fog.

_The undead itself. The immortal one._

My vision blurred. Behind my eyes, I saw things — a battlefield with no survivors. A city with black skies. A throne made of bones.

_And you, Alex... you are his host._

Host.

Like a house. Like a shell. Like I was just a room, and something ancient had moved all its furniture in.

I tried to shake my head. “No. I’m ten. I’m— I have math homework. I like football. I—”

_You now have the power to control life and death._

The words weren’t words. They were _truth_. They settled into my bones and changed me.

I saw it. I _felt_ it.

Me, kneeling beside a stray cat hit by a car, laying my hand on its matted fur, and watching its broken body knit itself back together.

Me, looking at David from Primary 4 — the one who pushed me down the stairs last term and laughed — and _willing_ his heart to stop. Watching him clutch his chest. Watching him fall.

Life. In my left hand.

Death. In my right.

“I don’t want it!” I screamed it this time. Out loud. My voice cracked and broke. “Take it back! I’m just a kid!”

The voice laughed.

God, the laugh.

It was the sound of crypts opening. Of funeral bells. Of the last breath leaving a million bodies.

_There is no taking back, little host. There is only price._

The mark pulsed. Hard. Like a second heart made of knives.

_For every life saved by you, you will feel pain equal to death itself._

Understanding crashed into me.

Save someone? I’d feel how they would have died.

Drowning? My lungs would fill with water I couldn’t cough up.

Burning? My skin would blister and peel while I was still alive to feel it.

Stabbed? I’d feel the blade, the blood, the cold.

Every nerve. Every second. Every ounce of agony.

And I’d live.

So I could do it again.

_For every life you end..._ the voice purred, _...a piece of him wakes inside you. And when he is fully awake, the world will remember the name Akuma._

I was too young for all this, I thought to myself.

Too young. Too small. Too human.

Why me?

Why not some soldier? Some king? Some adult who’d at least lived enough to have regrets?

_Why me?_ I screamed it in my head.

The voice answered.

_Because you were born under a dying star. Because your tenth year is the year the veil thins. Because he chose, and his choice is law._

And I was given a warning.

The temperature dropped twenty degrees in a second. The grass around me turned to frost.

_He threatened to kill all who try to bully his host._

The words weren’t angry. They were _fact_. Like saying water is wet.

_Raise a hand to you, and their heart will stop before it lands. Speak a word against you, and their tongue will turn to ash. This is his mercy. This is his protection._

I thought of David. Of Emmanuel. Of the older boys who took my lunch money last term.

Would they just... drop dead? Because of me?

I felt sick.

And I was finally told that all those figures were souls.

The voice was almost gentle now. Like a teacher explaining a lesson.

_They are the lingering. The almost-dead. The people who are about to die. Car crash victims who haven’t crashed yet. Cancer patients with hours left. Old men whose hearts are one beat from stopping._

The shadows around me raised their heads. And for the first time, I _saw_ them.

Not faces. But _moments_.

A woman clutching her chest in a kitchen. A man behind the wheel, eyes closing. A child in a hospital bed, monitors beeping slow.

_And you, host, will be responsible for them dying or not. You will control it._

The weight of it almost crushed me flat.

Hundreds of lives. Hundreds of deaths. All balancing on whether a ten-year-old boy said yes or no.

_And then I was told that I am the host to the king of the underworld, so I must carry myself._

Carry myself.

Like I was royalty. Like I was dangerous. Like I was no longer Alex from Primary 5B who cried when he got a C in English.

_You are Akuma’s vessel. You do not bow. You do not beg. You do not break._

And then, just like that, a voice spoke through me.

Not _to_ me. _Through_ me.

My jaw moved. My tongue moved. My vocal cords vibrated. But the voice that came out was not mine.

It was _his_.

It was the sound of tombs opening after a thousand years. Of the world holding its breath.

It said one word.

“Die.”

Not loud. Not shouted.

A command.

Absolute. Final.

I have never heard something like this. This voice is an otherworldly one.

It wasn’t sound. It was _law_.

And immediately, all shadows disappeared.

Not faded. Not walked away.

_Ceased_.

One second they were there, hundreds of almost-dead souls bowing in my yard.

The next second — nothing. Empty air. Normal night.

Like they never existed.

Because they didn’t anymore.

The horror of it hit me.

Did I... did I just kill them? All of them? With one word?

My legs gave out. I hit the grass hard. My hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t feel them.

I was going to be sick. I was going to scream. I was going to—

The next I would see was that I was on my bed the next morning.

Sunlight. Birds — real ones, this time. My ceiling. The lightning c***k. Ronaldo.

But this time around, I could swear that it wasn’t a dream.

I sat up. Slow.

My pajamas were damp with dew. My feet were dirty. Grass stains on my knees.

And on my chest, under my shirt, the spiral mark was bigger.

From palm-size to covering my whole heart. The black veins were thicker. And they were _moving_. Slow, like they were breathing.

I could swear on my life that it was real.

Because I could still taste the word in my mouth.

_Die._

And I could still feel him.

Akuma.

The harbinger of death. The immortal one.

Not gone. Not sleeping.

_Waiting_.

Inside me.

I put my head in my hands and did the only thing a ten-year-old host to the king of the underworld could do.

I cried.

Quiet, so Mum wouldn’t hear.

Because today was school again.

And Jessica would be there.

And I didn’t know if I was the boy who wanted to hold her hand...

...or the thing that had just told hundreds of souls to die.