Because no human in their right mind would say something like that. Not likethat. Not with that confident and terrifyingly sure tone.
I wiped my tears with the back of my hand, staggered to my feet with my other still pressed to my aching belly, and wordlesslydragged myself towards the stairs. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t even if I tried. Because I knew the moment I opened my mouth, I’d only choke on laughter.
He said nothing either.
Just stood there, still as stone, arms folded, watching me silently as I disappeared up the stairs like a madwoman on the verge of collapse.
I wiped the steam off the mirror with the side of my hand, smearing a half-moon across the glass. A white towel wrapped around my chest, another cradling my wet hair. My eyes met mine in the mirror, and I realised I wore the kind of look that told on me before I could speak.
I leaned closer, fingers braced on the sink’s cold edge. “No wonder he could tell that I didn’t sleep. My eyes are so puffy.” I sighed.
My gaze dropped from my swollen eyes to the faint bump of my nose, to my lips, to the curve of my collarbone, until it landed on the scar that lived just above my shoulder. It was a pale, jagged line, like a faded bolt of lightning. One side of it was slightly raised, as if the knife had paused there before dragging down in a cruel, curved stroke. Although the pain was gone, the memory still remained, crashing through me every time I saw the scar.
I was seven.
We’d been playing outside when one of the boys ran past, screaming that Lent’s uncle was drunk again and was chasing him with a knife. We ran, stupid and brave, the lot of us, thinking we could save Lent.
While we actually helped him escape and distracted his uncle, I was the only one who got caught. He was so fast that I didn’t even see the blade until it pierced my skin, and then there was blood. I must have blacked out because I woke up in the hospital, my mother raging at me through her tears.
She grounded me for a month when we got home.
Slapping my cheeks lightly, I exhaled and picked up the pocket knife from the sink.
Cracking the bathroom door open, I listened to his footsteps. It was not too close, and it was coming just faintly from his room. Cautiously, I slipped into my bedroom like a thief, locking the door behind me hastily, my heart racing.
How much longer would I live like this?
I dressed quickly and threw myself onto the bed, towel clinging to my head as I stared out the window, mentally scanning my brain for any creature in human form that had no shadow. I had probably read a book about it and forgotten.
Dropping the damp towel from my head, I picked up my laptop from the floor and curled my legs beneath me. There had to be something somewhere. I just needed to find the right thread to pull.
I opened my laptop and logged onto the only site I trusted for historical anomalies—one that didn’t sugar-coat legends into bedtime tales or water down theories with scepticism. If there was anything close to the truth, it would be there.
I stared at the blinking cursor in the search bar for a moment before typing:The Shadowless Man.
Dozens of results flooded the screen, from folklore forums to articles written by dead scholars. My eyes skimmed one particular story about a town where no one cast a shadow. According to the article, the townspeople had been slaughtered in what was described as a mass possession, then mysteriously revived ten years later, carrying on as if nothing had happened.
But none of them had shadows.
My stomach turned slightly. Could he be one of them?
A thread of hope lit up in me, and I searched the text again, this time for anything that hinted at immortality. That would explain the unnatural stillness in his eyes and how he was alive. Not only him, maybe his townspeople were still alive, too.
But then I read the next line:“...they all died five years later. At once.”
A cold sigh escaped my lips. No immortality then.
I returned to the search bar, fingers flying across the keys:Creature in Human Form with No Shadow + The Crater.
The results that came up were older. There were several scans of academic papers and forum posts with barely any comments. Most of them focused on The Crater itself, dissecting its depth and geological inconsistencies.
There were mentions of beings that could take on a human form but they were said to only last a few hours. Only temporarily. They couldn’t stay long in a stolen skin before returning to their real form. No mention of a shadowless man who could maintain it indefinitely. No links between him and The Crater. No connections. No creature in human form with no shadow. No Crater guardian. No...him.
If only I knew his name. Maybe that could unlock a reference I didn’t know I’d read before. I’d consumed so many books over the years, listened to so many lectures, but my brain offered me nothing useful now.
But I kept going through different sites nonstop, not even when my legs started to ache from sitting too long. My hair had air-dried completely, and my back was beginning to throb from the way I hunched over the screen.
Frustrated, I shut the laptop and crouched by the corner of the room where I’d shoved the box that held all the books I’d broughtwith me—textbooks, myth anthologies, collections, borrowed books, and even all the journals I’d filled during classes from my first year.
