whisper in the dark

Whisper on the dark

Chapter One – Whispers in the Dark

The rain had not come in weeks, and the earth outside Elara’s window had begun to crack, as though it, too, was weary of waiting. The air smelled of dust and woodsmoke, heavy enough to choke, but she did not open the shutters. She preferred the candlelight. The night beyond her window was too wide, too empty.

Her pencil whispered across the paper. She had drawn the same figure a hundred times, though she had never seen him clearly—at least, not with waking eyes. Sometimes she dreamed of him, sometimes she felt him in the corners of the room, but always the image returned the same: a tall shape cloaked in shadow, with wings that did not look like they belonged to any bird or angel she had ever heard of.

Tonight, her hand betrayed her. She drew his face.

Her breath caught when she finished the lines: a strong jaw cut by scars, lips pressed in silence, and eyes—eyes that seemed to burn even in graphite, as though they could see her through the page. She stared at the drawing, trembling.

Her chest began to ache. The pain started small, like a fist pressing down from inside, and then sharpened. She dropped the pencil and pressed her hand over her sternum.

“Not now,” she whispered. She breathed shallowly, counting until the pain began to dull. “Please, not tonight.”

The doctors had told her she would not see old age. Some had not even been sure she would see twenty. She was seventeen now. She had learned to live with the shadow of death pressed against her, though some nights the thought of it nearly strangled her.

Tonight felt heavier than most.

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The candle flickered. The silence of the house pressed close. Her father was gone to the city, and she had no siblings, no companions save the restless woods. Loneliness settled in her chest heavier than the ache of her weak heart.

Then—

“Elara…”

Her eyes flew open.

The voice was soft, rasping, barely more than a breath in the air, but it carried her name like a secret. The candle’s flame wavered, guttered, almost went out.

She swallowed, every muscle tightening. “Who’s there?”

Silence. The kind of silence that feels alive, waiting.

She rose from her chair, moving to the window. The fields lay still beneath the half-moon, silver and empty. No one stood outside.

“Elara…”

This time the voice came from behind her.

Her breath hitched. She turned.

The corner of the room darkened—not as shadows usually darken, but as if the light itself recoiled. The darkness swelled, curling inward, shaping itself.

And from it, a figure emerged.

He stepped forward slowly, as though pulled against his will. Smoke clung to his form, shifting with every movement. He was tall, towering, with shoulders that seemed made to bear mountains, and wings—black, vast, ragged—that stretched outward and scraped against the air itself.

But it was his eyes that held her. They burned like coals left in ash, faint yet unquenchable.

Elara staggered back, nearly tripping over her chair. Her candle tipped, spilling wax over the wood, but she hardly noticed.

He stopped when he saw her fear, as though afraid to move closer. His voice rumbled low, trembling with something she did not expect.

“You… can see me.”

Her lips parted. She should have screamed, should have run, should have prayed—but her heart did not obey reason. She only stared, wide-eyed, whispering, “I’ve seen you before.”

The words shocked her. They slipped out like a confession. “In dreams. In shadows. In… sketches.”

The ember-eyes narrowed. “No mortal should see me. Not as I am.”

His wings shifted, the air groaning with them. He seemed made of storm and silence, and yet there was sorrow carved into his face so deep it rooted in her chest.

Her heart lurched, and she pressed her hand to it, gasping. The pain returned suddenly, sharp and merciless. She stumbled, collapsing back against the desk, her vision blurring.

The demon’s eyes widened. Before she could fall completely, he crossed the space between them in less than a heartbeat. A clawed hand—blackened, scarred—caught her wrist. His touch burned and froze all at once.

Something rushed into her veins.

Her chest loosened. The pain vanished. Her breath came back.

She blinked up at him, dazed, her pulse racing where his hand touched her skin.

“You—” her voice cracked. “You saved me.”

His expression twisted, grief cutting through him like a blade. He dropped her wrist as if she were fire.

“No,” he rasped, his voice breaking. “I doomed you.”

The candle died. Darkness swallowed them whole.

And yet, though she could not see, she felt his eyes still on her, burning in the silence.

For the first time in years, Elara did not feel alone.

Chapter One – Whispers in the Dark (Part Two)

The silence pressed heavy after the candle went out. For a moment Elara could hear nothing but the rush of her own blood in her ears, the frantic pounding of a heart that should not have been so strong.

His handprint still burned on her wrist, as if he had left fire inside her veins. She curled her fingers around the spot, shivering.

In the dark, his eyes glowed faintly—two embers suspended in shadow.

“Why?” Her voice was small, breaking in her throat. “Why would saving me doom me?”

He did not answer at once. His head bowed, the curve of his horns glinting faintly in what little light seeped from the moon outside. He looked less like a monster now and more like something broken—something that had forgotten how to stand in the light.

“Because my touch is corruption,” he said at last. His voice was not cruel, but hoarse, ragged with centuries of ash. “Every mortal I touch is bound to me. Their life lingers while mine bleeds away. And when the scales tip…”

He did not finish. He did not need to.

Elara’s stomach tightened. “You mean—I’m alive because of you. But you’ll die instead.”

He flinched. His wings curled closer, folding around him like a shield. “That is the curse. That is why I should not have touched you.”

Her heart twisted, not from pain this time, but from something sharper. Pity. Ache. The kind of ache she knew too well—the ache of waiting for death, knowing it would one day come sooner than it should.

She whispered, “I was dying anyway.”

His eyes snapped back to her, burning. For a heartbeat she thought he might lash out, or vanish, but instead he simply stared. There was no anger in his gaze—only something hollow, as though the words had pierced deeper than they should have.

“You should not say such things so easily,” he murmured.

Elara swallowed hard. “You asked why I can see you. Maybe that’s why. Because I’m already closer to death than life.”

The words sat heavy between them.

He turned his face away. The shadows clung to him, as if reluctant to release him into the moonlight that crept through the window. “Then your eyes see what others cannot. The broken. The condemned.”

Her chest ached, but not with sickness. With recognition. “And that’s what you are?”

He did not answer. But the silence was enough.

Elara sat slowly, her hand still over her heart. She should have been afraid—truly afraid. But the fear that rose in her was not of him. It was of the truth that had settled in her chest: he was not here to hurt her. He was here because pain had nowhere else to go.

She whispered his name, tasting it carefully. “Kael.”

He froze.

His whole body went still, wings tightening, eyes flaring brighter. For a moment she thought she had said something forbidden. Then, in a voice scarcely audible, he asked:

“Who told you that?”

Elara blinked. “You did. Before the candle went out. Didn’t you?”

His expression fractured. He pressed a hand against his mouth, as though the sound had been ripped from him without his consent. “I have not spoken that name in… lifetimes.”

She should not have known it. Yet the moment she said it aloud, she knew it belonged to him. It fit the sorrow in his face, the weight in his voice.

Her throat tightened. She wanted to ask a hundred questions—what he was, what he had done, why sorrow clung to him like a second skin. But instead, her voice cracked with something smaller, more human.

“Are you lonely?”

His wings stilled.

The question hung in the dark, trembling. His eyes dimmed, and for the first time, he looked away—not with pride, but with shame.

“Yes.”

Her breath shuddered out of her, tears pricking her eyes before she could stop them. She did not know why the word hurt so much. Maybe because it echoed her own heart too closely. Maybe because she saw in him a reflection of herself: a soul waiting for an ending no one else could see.

The tears slipped hot down her cheeks. She turned her face so he would not see, but the sound betrayed her—a soft, broken sniff.

Kael moved before she could stop him. He was beside her in an instant, his shadow stretching across her desk, his ember eyes searching her face. “Why are you crying?”

She shook her head quickly, pressing her hands over her eyes. “It’s stupid. I don’t even know you.”

Something strange moved through his gaze then, a flicker of confusion, almost tenderness. His clawed hand hovered above her shoulder, trembling as though torn between instinct and restraint.

At last, he let it fall back to his side. “Mortals do not cry for demons.”

Elara laughed weakly through her tears, though it was a broken sound. “Then maybe I’m not like other mortals.”

The silence that followed was fragile, trembling like a string pulled too tight.

Finally, Kael whispered, so softly it almost vanished into the dark:

“Maybe you are not.”