The Shadow Leech Pt.2

The first memories he had were of darkness. Of hunger.

Chicago's winter was brutal.

Not the kind you saw in movies, with families curled up by a fireplace or children building snowmen in cozy neighborhoods. No. The kind that killed. The kind that turned skin blue and filled alleyways with the frozen bodies of people nobody remembered.

The kind that made him realize he was going to die.

He was twelve. Nameless.

At least, nameless to the world. In the streets, they called him Kid. It was easier than a real name—easier to forget, easier to let go.

He had been running with a crew of street kids in Englewood, squatting in abandoned buildings, pulling small jobs for gangsters who didn't care that they were kids as long as they got the job done. It was a dangerous life, but it was better than starving alone.

Then, everything went to hell.

Marcus, the oldest and strongest, had fucked up a job. Instead of just delivering a package, he tried to skim a little off the top from the wrong people—the Roland Syndicate, one of the most brutal crime families in the city.

The punishment was swift.

The gangsters tracked them down, dragged them out of their hideout, and lined them up in a freezing alleyway behind a closed-down liquor store.

"You little rats think you can steal from us?" one of the men sneered, pacing in front of them. His breath came out in plumes of white steam, his face unreadable beneath the shadow of his wool trench coat.

Marcus tried to talk. Beg. The man didn't care.

Without hesitation, he pulled a gun from his coat and shot Marcus in the head.

The sound was deafening in the stillness of the winter night.

Marcus's body hit the ice-covered pavement like a ragdoll.

The others screamed. The boy stood frozen.

"Lesson number one," the man said, waving the gun casually. "There's no such thing as 'second chances' in our world."

Then he pointed the gun at the next kid.

The boy didn't think—his body moved.

He ran.

He didn't look back. He didn't know if the others followed. He just ran through the snow-covered streets, heart pounding, lungs burning. The city blurred past in streaks of neon and shadows, the towering buildings feeling more like prison walls than safety.

His feet carried him into an old industrial park near South Halsted, where factories had long been abandoned, left to rust and decay. He squeezed through a broken chain-link fence, ignoring the sharp metal tearing into his jacket. He could still hear the gunshots in his mind, Marcus's body crumpling in the snow, and the laughter of the men who had pulled the trigger.

His legs gave out, and he collapsed inside one of the abandoned buildings.

It was freezing. The wind howled through shattered windows, biting at his exposed skin. His breath came out in ragged clouds, his limbs trembling from exhaustion and cold.

He was going to die.

Not from a bullet, not from a beating—just from the cold.

That was what broke him.

That was what made rage boil inside him like something alive, something clawing its way out of his chest.

He hated the world.

Hated Marcus for being so stupid. Hated the men who killed him. Hated that he was so weak.

"You think you matter?"

The words from the security guard all those years ago came back to him.

"You're nothing. A rat in the dark."

His head pounded. His skin burned. A deep, gnawing pain started in his stomach—deeper than hunger, deeper than anything he'd ever felt.

It spread through his body like his veins were catching fire from the inside.

Then something snapped.

The air around him shifted.

The shadows in the room seemed to stretch, bending unnaturally. The silence became thick, almost oppressive as if the world itself was holding its breath.

And then, he felt it.

A pull, like something deep inside him, was reaching out, desperate to be fed.

At first, he thought it was just delirium from the cold. But then he realized—it was real.

He could feel it in the air, something unseen, something hungry.

The rats in the corner of the room froze, their tiny bodies convulsing, their squeaks turning into sharp, ragged gasps.

Then, one by one, they went still.

The boy gasped as a wave of warmth flooded his body, chasing away the cold. His limbs stopped trembling, his breath evened out, and for the first time in days, he didn't feel weak.

The rats lay around him, lifeless.

And he felt full.

He didn't know how he knew, but he did—he had taken something from them.

Their energy.

Their life force.

His hands shook as he stared at them.

It wasn't normal hunger he had felt.

It was this.

Whatever had awakened inside him that night, was something else entirely.

He was different now. He knew it in his bones.

And as he sat there, surrounded by the lifeless bodies of the rats, he realized something.

He had power.

For the first time in his life, he wasn't the one being taken from.

He was the one taking.

It was terrifying.

And exhilarating.

By morning, the boy who had collapsed in the factory was gone.

In his place was something else.

Something hungry.

Over the next year, he tested it.

At first, he did it on animals. A stray dog here, a pigeon there. Each time, the warmth filled him, stronger, sharper.

Then, one day, he tried it on a person.

A man—some drunk in an alley, too far gone to fight back. The boy didn't even touch him, just focused.

The man gasped. Shuddered. Fell limp.

And the boy?

He felt unstoppable.

By sixteen, he wasn't just another street kid anymore.

He was a predator.

And in a world where only the strong survive?

He was going to make sure he was the strongest.

That winter, a boy died in an abandoned warehouse in Chicago.

And in his place, Vesper was born.