The fire crackled, sending shadows dancing across the walls, but the warmth didn’t reach the pit of unease settling in Ren’s stomach.
She sat stiffly, fingers curled against the rough fabric of her borrowed clothes, forcing herself to breathe slowly, evenly.
‘Why does this feel wrong?’
The house was solid.
The doors were locked.
The shutters were bolted tight.
The rain, relentless as it was, couldn’t reach them here.
And yet—
She glanced around, taking in the demons seated near her.
They weren’t talking.
They weren’t even moving much.
They just sat there, eyes fixed on the fire, shoulders stiff, hands twitching in small, repeated gestures.
At first, Ren thought it was just a habit, something subconscious.
But now that she was watching, really watching, she noticed the pattern—how their fingers drifted to the same places over and over.
Across the room, a demon rubbed at a scar on the inside of his wrist.
Another traced a faint, jagged line along his forearm.
One flexed his fingers, pressing his palm like there was an ache buried deep beneath the skin.
Ren swallowed.
‘They’re remembering something.’
A scrape of movement caught her eye.
Across from her, a younger demon—barely more than a boy—wasn’t watching the fire like the others.
His eyes darted upward, flicking back and forth, tracking something along the ceiling.
His breathing was shallow, his fingers digging into his own cheek, rubbing absentmindedly at a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw.
He was listening to the rain.
No, not just the rain—something in it.
Ren clenched her fists to keep them from shaking.
The boy’s reaction was doing something strange to her own senses.
Now that she was paying attention, the sound of the rain had changed—no longer just noise but pressing, pushing against the house like an unseen force.
The wind howled, and something in its wail sent a chill crawling up her spine.
It wasn’t just a trick of the storm.
There was a shape to the sound, something stretched thin and distant, like a voice trying to take form but never quite managing.
She shuddered.
‘This house is holding the rain at bay—but for how long?’
As if on cue, the old demon woman moved.
She rose from her seat, steady and unhurried, as if she had all the time in the world.
The firelight caught in the silver streaks of her hair as she stepped toward the cauldron, lifting the wooden ladle with slow, deliberate ease.
The room filled with the rich, grounding scent of whatever was simmering in it.
Thick, earthy, warm.
The kind of smell that clung to memory.
The kind that reminded Ren of something—not a place, not a person, but a feeling.
She exhaled without meaning to, realizing only then how long she had been holding her breath.
So did the others.
It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but the shift in the room was real.
The demons near the fire loosened, just a fraction, as if the tension in their shoulders had been momentarily knocked askew.
The sound of the ladle scraping against the cauldron filled the space, steady and rhythmic.
The relentless drum of the rain still clawed at the house, but the scraping sound pushed back against it—measured, constant, real.
Soft murmurs broke out.
Cautious, low voices, as if the storm might hear.
“The storms are getting worse.”
“We barely had any warning this time.”
“There was no warning.”
Ren felt the words settle inside her like stones.
She tried to piece them together, to make sense of them.
A storm, sudden and unnatural.
Demons who had clearly faced this before, who knew without being told what had to be done.
Their scars, their tension, their silence.
The bolted windows, the locked doors.
Thunder cracked outside, sharp as a blade striking stone.
Ren flinched, her body acting before she could think, instinctively drawing closer to the fire—and to the demons around her.
She wasn’t the only one.
A subtle movement rippled through the group.
Shoulders brushing, hands tightening around cloaks, bodies shifting inward—not in fear, exactly, but in something just as old.
The kind of closeness born from shared experience, from a danger that didn’t need to be named.
The ladle scraped against the cauldron.
Slow, methodical, unfazed.
Ren clenched her jaw.
‘Something is out there.’
The firelight flickered, casting fleeting shadows across the puncture marks on the wooden walls.
Ren stared at them, cold creeping into her chest.
The realization settled in her bones, sinking deep beneath skin and muscle.
‘Something has tried to get in before.’
She pressed her lips into a thin line and forced herself to breathe, to stay still.
For now, she didn’t ask questions.
For now, she just listened.
The rain raged.
The wind howled.
The demons whispered.
And the old woman kept stirring.
***
The storm pressed against the house like a living thing.
Rain pounded the roof in frantic waves, the wind clawing at the shutters as if it might rip them clean off.
Ren stared into the fire, but her ears strained beyond the howling wind.
At first, she thought it was her imagination—a trick of her fraying nerves, a mind desperate to weave patterns where none existed.
But the longer she listened, the harder it became to ignore.
Beneath the rain, beneath the wind, there was something else.
Whispers.
Low, desperate moans.
And then—
A scream?
Ren stiffened.
Her breath hitched in her throat, her fingers digging into the rough fabric of her borrowed clothes.
She looked up, scanning the faces around the fire.
Someone had to hear it.
Someone had to notice.
But no one reacted.
The demons sat as they had before—quiet, unmoving, their expressions unreadable.
The only movement was the rhythmic scraping of the ladle as the old woman stirred the cauldron.
Ren’s mouth went dry.
Was she losing it?
Was this just some trick of exhaustion, or worse—was something in this body, this new body, letting her hear things she shouldn’t?
She squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Ignore it.’
The thought was sharp, almost instinctive.
Whether it came from herself or something deeper, she didn’t know, but she obeyed it.
‘Ignore it, don’t acknowledge it, don’t give it shape.’
Instead, she focused on what was in front of her.
A hand entered her vision, knotted with age but steady. In it was a simple wooden bowl and a carved spoon.
Ren blinked in surprise.
The old woman was moving through the room, handing out bowls to the others.
None of them spoke; they simply accepted the offering, holding the bowls with the same quiet reverence as the fire.
Ren took hers hesitantly, her fingers brushing against the smooth, worn wood.
She looked down at its contents.
It was… unappealing.
A muted, greyish mush with a faint sheen to it, thick and slightly slimy, like overcooked oats left to sit too long.
She sniffed it.
And—
The scent was good.
Not just tolerable—good.
Warm, earthy, with a hint of sweetness that curled gently through the air, pushing against the stagnant tension in the room.
It was nothing like the wretched, barely edible meals Ozamas had been forcing on her.
There were no overwhelming colours, no strange rawness, no pungent, cloying fat.
Just something simple.
Something real.
Ren hesitated only a moment longer before taking a small spoonful.
The taste was unexpected.
Sweet, but not overly so.
Balanced.
Familiar in a way she couldn’t place, though no comparison came to mind.
It was a grain of some kind, boiled down with water and sugar, reduced to something thick and filling.
A meager dish, but a meal nonetheless.
Ren took another bite.
Then another.
The warmth of the porridge-like food seeped into her, grounding her in a way she hadn’t expected.
It didn’t erase the whispers outside, didn’t silence the paranoia curling at the edges of her mind, but—
It pushed back.
Just a little.
Just enough.
One spoonful at a time.
The old woman sat back down beside the fire with a bowl of her own, her weathered hands wrapped around it as if drawing strength from its warmth.
The demons followed suit, eating in silence, the tension in their shoulders easing—if only slightly.
The rain still raged.
The wind still howled.
And the whispers still lingered, just beyond the edge of hearing.
But inside the little house, there was something else.
A flicker of warmth.
A moment of quiet resistance.
A meal, shared among strangers, pushing back the dark in its own small way.