Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The Songbird in the Void
Erevos
Erevos noticed that he was unusually warm.
It was not a sensation he typically experienced.
Demons, by nature, did not grow warm on their own.
Warmth was for blood and breath and beating hearts, for creatures made of flesh, not for beings like him.
In his world, the place mortals called The Void, warmth was an anomaly.
Creatures who dwelled there were always cool.
The Void itself was a strange place, especially to human eyes, a near mimicry of Earth, but not quite.
There were trees the color of wine, and their bark was darker than midnight.
There were rivers and ponds, but they ran black as ink, and anyone looking to seek their reflection would find only more endless black.
There was no sun in The Void, no stars to catch the edge of light, no breeze to stir the air, no oxygen to fill human lungs.
Nothing lived in The Void as mortals understood life.
It was a realm of darkness and silence so deep it could become sound.
To most humans, The Void would seem deathless and strange, but to Erevos, it was home.
And now, he intended to make it hers as well.
So he walked through the silence while his warmth cooled off, toward a place few ever dared to approach, for the demon that resided there was unpleasant in both form and temperament, known to twist truths into poisons and smile while doing it. It was said he was cruel without reason.
That did not concern Erevos.
He did not flinch from cruelty, nor beauty, nor the in-between. He had come with a purpose. And he intended to feed his little mortal songbird. To nourish her, to provide her with anything she would ever need.
Erevos approached the mouth of a cave, one far beyond the reaches of where only a few demons of his kind chose to roam. It lay at the outer edges of The Void, where the land curled in on itself, and the shadows grew thick enough to muffle sound: a place rarely visited, and seldom without reason.
In The Void, a demon would take residence in a cave only for a few reasons.
The first: the demon was sick and could no longer fend for itself.
The second: the demon had adopted an animal—rare, but not unheard of—and the creature was either unwell or birthing.
The third: trade.
Unlike the human world, The Void did not deal in coin or cloth or the glittering trifles mortals seemed to prize.
There was no currency in silk, no market for gold.
In The Void, demons bartered in emotions.
Feelings harvested, shaped, and distilled into items that carried weight and taste and memory.
Traders would travel to the human world to collect such offerings—tears, laughter, longing—drawn into vials, pearls, and strange, shimmering fragments of light or dark.
For demons, visiting the human realm was a task few enjoyed.
Mortals were rarely of interest outside of their use as nourishment, and fewer still were the demons willing to linger among the noise and rituals of their kind.
Why attend a funeral to collect grief when one could simply trade for a weeping eye, still warm with sorrow?
Why chase a grieving widow through her crumbling home when the ache of her loss could be traded, neatly packaged at the market?
Demons preferred simplicity.
But Erevos was not heading to the market. He was going farther. Beyond the trading circles. Beyond the more palatable vendors.
He was headed to the cave of a different kind of trader.
Rolam.
A name spoken only in private, if at all.
A demon who dealt in rarer goods, stranger things.
And while most void-born had little interest in the human world beyond what could be consumed, Rolam was different.
He collected. And though Erevos had never lingered long in Rolam’s presence, he had once seen some of what the strange demon had gathered—spices from distant earth markets, preserved organs, strands of human hair, and other things Erevos had never bothered to understand or value until now.
Because now he had a little songbird to care for. A mortal. And Erevos had seen her eat, watched her choose food with warmth and sweetness, watched her avoid sorrow and fear as though she could taste them just like he could.
She would not eat tears of grief. She would not chew the bubbles of fear demons loved. She needed something else. And Rolam, he hoped, would have it.
“Greetings, Erevos,” Rolam mused, lounging in a chair that looked like it had been taken from a human tavern.
All demons knew one another. There weren’t many of them to begin with. None remembered where they had come from, and none had seen new demons born. They simply existed—always had—and no more ever appeared.
Erevos nodded to the demon across from him. Rolam was a creature as dark as he was, though his eyes were larger, purple orbs that glimmered faintly in the half-light.
Beside Rolam, a herta stretched its long limbs, extending its fuzzy paws with a kind of lazy grace. It was a Void-creature, catlike but not quite, its fur rippling with shadow. As Erevos crossed the threshold of the cave, the herta rolled onto its side and exposed its belly.
“Got interested in humans, have you?” Rolam asked, his voice a rasping purr, his gaze following Erevos as he moved deeper into the cavernous store.
The place was dark, as most corners of The Void were, lit only by orbs of suspended light.
Each one pulsed softly with contained emotion.
Some glowed red with rage, some blue with sorrow, some pulsed gold with longing.
Erevos passed one strange orb and paused.
Within it shimmered a translucent-white liquid; the scent was rather sweet.
Erevos stilled, and that strange warmth returned, rising deep in his chest. He turned his gaze briefly toward the orb, then looked away.
“I want to feed a human,” he said at last.
Rolam tilted his head, “A human?”
Erevos knew it sounded odd, even for a collector like Rolam, but he did not flinch or offer an explanation either.
No one knew he was keeping a human, and no one would believe it was even possible. Mortals did not survive in The Void. There was no oxygen for them to breathe, and even if there were, demons did not protect humans—they fed on their emotions. That was the order of things.
And yet.
He nodded once more to the puzzled trader, who studied him with hollow eyes. Rolam turned away without further comment and wandered through his collection, running long fingers over vials and jars and shadow-wrapped containers, until his gaze landed on a small, bone-colored box.
Erevos noticed traces of another presence near the cave he had chosen for his human, traces that were not his own, which made them all the more troubling.
He had made certain to leave no evidence of his passage, not even a whisper of scent that might linger in the dark.
There should have been no reason for another demon to follow him, no cause for any creature to inspect a cave that bore the scent of ownership.
In The Void, there were many caves, each available to whoever had the power to keep them, so the fact that someone had come near this one made no sense at all.
And so, he rushed.
He descended deep into the winding corridors of shadow, navigating through countless entrances branching in different directions, until he finally arrived at the chamber he had shaped where his little songbird waited.
The bone-colored box was cradled in his shadow as he stepped into the perimeter of his crafted haven, and without hesitation, he merged with the shadowed walls.
“Lyssena?” he called, echoing through the dim chamber.
He did not see her, but he felt her scent that was laced with fear. He followed the pull of her presence and paused when his gaze landed on the bed, but something was wrong.
Erevos detached from the walls, allowing his form to build itself piece by piece—legs forming first, long and stable, then his torso, arms, shoulders, and at last, his head.
He placed the box upon the desk, though even that looked wrong now—different from the one he had crafted for her.
He turned to the bed, which no longer looked quite like the bed he had shaped, and when he lifted it, he found her.
His little human was curled beneath it, trembling, her breath uneven. She had surrounded herself with items, shadows, and remnants twisted into weapons, and on her head sat a crown made of his shadow.
Erevos had not expected this.
Not the fear or the fortress, which was a surprise as well, but the armored queen beneath the bed.