THE DEMON Inside Everyone A Story of Rise, Shattering, and Regrets

The Night We Boasted

The candle between them barely moved.

Four teenagers sat in a windowless room on the top floor of an old shop house in Kuala Lumpur’s oldest quarter. The walls, once white, were now stained by years of monsoon rain, cigarette smoke, and secrets. A single skylight showed a slice of stars, but no one looked up. They were too busy looking at themselves.

Veyran leaned forward, his shadow swallowing the candlelight. Seventeen, with a face that would have been handsome if it weren’t so hungry. His hair was perfect, his clothes pressed—even here, in a forgotten room where no one was supposed to see him.

“I could have been someone,” he said. A fact, not a hope. “Not in games. In life. Fame. A name people remember. When I walk into a room, I want them to stop talking. When I leave, I want them to keep talking about me.”

Kayal didn’t look up from her phone. The screen light hollowed her cheeks. Seventeen, but she carried herself like someone who had learned early that the world doesn’t give—you take. And if you can’t take, you build walls.

“You missed the bus yesterday because you were fixing your hair,” she said flatly.

“That’s different.”

“It’s not.” She finally looked at him—sharp eyes that had seen too much. She had found this room, climbed the broken stairs, pushed open the rusted door. She kept them together, even when they didn’t want to be kept. “You talk like someone who’s done things. You’re seventeen. You live with your parents. You eat their food.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“Good. Then stop acting like a god.”

Inniyan said nothing. He sat in the corner, knees to his chest, chin on his arms. He always watched. His silence was heavier than their words. His eyes moved slowly, taking everything in—Veyran’s tight jaw, Kayal’s scrolling thumb, Vennila’s fingers twisting in her grandmother’s shawl.

Inniyan saw things. That was why they kept him around.

Then Vennila spoke. She was the youngest in spirit—a softness the others had lost. She sat away from the candle, back against old newspapers, her grandmother’s faded green shawl with gold thread covering her shoulders. She wore it everywhere, even in heat. It was her armor.

“There’s an old story,” she said quietly. “About a man who thought he was the sun. Everyone told him he was just a lamp—bright, but borrowed light. He didn’t listen. He climbed higher, reaching for more, until he burned out. And when he fell, no one caught him.”

Veyran laughed—short, hard. “That’s just a story.”

“All stories are true,” Vennila said. “If you live long enough.”

The words hung there, heavier than Inniyan’s silence, sharper than Kayal’s wit.

Then they heard the footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Footsteps that knew exactly where they were going.

No one came here. The stairs were half-broken, the banister rotted, the floorboards creaking. The building had been abandoned so long even squatters had given up.

The footsteps stopped.

The door groaned open.

A shadow rose from the stairwell. Young—nineteen, maybe twenty. Dark jacket worn thin at the elbows, jeans faded. His face was unremarkable except for his eyes. They were not young. They were the eyes of someone who had watched a building fall—not of wood, but of dreams. Of pride.

He carried nothing but a small notebook, its cover folded and unfolded too many times, its spine cracked, its pages swollen with humidity.

He looked at each of them slowly, as if reading something written on the inside of their skin. His gaze lingered on Veyran the longest, and Veyran felt cold.

“May I sit?” he asked.

Veyran nodded.

The young man sat cross-legged near the candle, careful not to disturb the flame. He placed the notebook on the floor but didn’t open it. His hands rested on his knees, palms up.

“I heard you talking,” he said—quiet, almost gentle, like wind through dry leaves. “About fame. About being someone.”

Kayal narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”

“Someone who knows a story.” He touched the candle flame—not burning. “A true story. About a man who wanted what you want.”

“Is it scary?” Vennila asked.

“No. It’s sad. And it’s true. And it happened to someone I knew.”

He picked up the notebook and held it like something sacred. Like it could burn him.

“His name was Theepan. That means ‘lamp’ in an old language. But he forgot that. He thought he was the sun.”

Veyran shifted. The candle flickered.

“Theepan built something beautiful. A building with his name in neon—Tamil and Chinese characters. A digital portrait that glowed at midnight, half in light, half in shadow. People came from across the city to see him. To touch his light. They called him the Lamp of Lorong Pang gung.”

He paused.

“But lamps don’t burn forever. And the sun always sets.”

Inniyan spoke for the first time—low, almost a whisper. “What happened to him?”

The young man looked at the candle. The flame was small now, the wax nearly gone. He reached out and touched the melted wax.

“He became a shadow. Now he walks back to the ruins every night to remember what it felt like to burn.”

No one spoke.

Outside, a bus honked. Somewhere far away, a dog barked. The modern world continued. But in that room, time felt older. Heavier.

Vennila folded her hands in her lap. “Tell us,” she whispered.

The young man opened the notebook.

And so he began.