The Absence of the Beast

Kiran woke in darkness.

It was not the soft, restful kind but the choking, damp sort that clings to your lungs like mold. He coughed, tasting metal and mildew. Something warm trickled down his temple—blood.

The chamber where the Husk's door exploded was gone.

He lay in a new space now, smaller, colder. The walls pulsed. Flesh? Stone? It was hard to tell. His fingers brushed something alive—a surface that quivered like muscle beneath a thin membrane of slime.

He staggered upright.

No sign of Selena.

No sign of the corrupted Beast.

No light.

But even in this perfect dark, he knew it: his Beast was gone.

The absence roared inside him. A silence louder than any scream. The constant pressure of its presence—the dark heartbeat pulsing with his own—had vanished.

He was alone.

Kiran took a shaky breath.

What am I now?

In the world of Demon Tamer, everyone had a Beast.

That was the rule. The foundation.

The bond was everything—spiritual, emotional, even physical. It manifested at puberty, a creature tailored to each human's inner self. Some Beasts were majestic, others grotesque. But they were always there. An extension of the soul. To live without one was unthinkable.

And now, he—Kiran—was that impossible thing. Beastless.

The void inside him ached.

He climbed out of the hole he'd found himself in, pushing through tunnels of rot and memory, until he breached the surface.

Veridian was colder now.

A storm had rolled through while he was gone. The buildings were streaked with ice. The sky bled grey.

People avoided him.

They stared for half a heartbeat—then looked away, unsettled.

He moved like a ghost through the streets, his steps soundless, his shadow wrong. He began to hear whispers—not from others, but from beneath the ground, from behind walls, from reflections that rippled out of sync.

In a crumbling alley, he saw his first mirror since waking.

His face was the same—mostly. But now his pupils were hollow. Not black—just... empty. As if someone had scooped them out and filled the void with silence.

He touched the glass. It felt too warm.

"Who are you really?" he whispered.

And for a second—just a flicker—his reflection did not move with him.

He remembered the book.

Rayhan's memory—the one thing that still belonged to him without question. In his world, he had devoured Demon Tamer in days. Hundreds of pages. Dark prose. Grim logic.

The rules were clear:

Every human had a Beast.

A Beast reflected the soul.

Killing your Beast meant losing yourself.

But he had done something worse.

He had bound a thing that wasn't a Beast at all.

And now it was gone.

Or... hiding.

He looked over his shoulder.

The alley behind him was empty.

Still, something followed.

He began to see it in fragments.

A flicker of movement in a puddle. A shadow that didn't belong to any physical object. A second set of footsteps in the snow.

He tried to speak to it. To call it. No response.

He tried to remember the ritual. The cut. The promise.

No answer.

Then came the pain.

At first, subtle. A cold ache in the spine. A flicker behind the eyes. Then worse. Muscles cramping. Skin crawling. The sensation of worms burrowing under his flesh.

He collapsed in the alley, coughing black bile.

People passed. No one helped.

They didn't see him.

Or pretended not to.

He saw the Innkeeper again that night. The old man said nothing. Simply watched him from across the dining hall, a look of quiet fear in his one good eye.

Finally, the man spoke.

"You don't belong here anymore."

Kiran said nothing.

"You're walking in between. Beastless. Soulless. The world doesn't know what to make of you."

"I didn't choose this."

"No. But you invited it."

The innkeeper leaned forward. "There's something following you."

Kiran froze.

The old man nodded. "I saw it in your shadow. I've seen many horrors in this world, boy. But never one that smiled at me from under someone's feet."

He left the inn that night.

The streets were empty. Snow fell like ash.

He moved toward the old temple ruins—drawn by instinct, or perhaps by whatever had replaced it.

The door to the Husk was sealed again.

But his name was there.

Etched in the stone.

"Kiran."

Only that.

No titles. No fate. Just the name.

And beside it, scratched fresh into the stone, a question:

"Do you know what you've done?"

He didn't.

But he was about to find out.

A sound behind him.

He turned.

There it was.

The shadow.

Now no longer formless. Now no longer shy.

It took shape.

Tall. Cloaked. Hollow-eyed. A mirror of him—but made from smoke and hunger. Its mouth opened too wide.

And from it, a voice he recognized.

His own.

But wrong.

"Let me in again."