Prologue
The human mind is truly a terrible place. The mind of a monster is even worse. And then there’s the people who are both human and monster. The people like me. My name is Caedis Fallax, and this is my story.
It started with the happy moments. He would make me smile, laugh. Dance around the woods with the breeze caressing my cheeks and his hands running through my hair. Contented and in love, I felt safe. He was my happy place. We were lying side by side on the grass, watching the sun set over the distant mountains, when it happened.
He pulled me close, and as our lips brushed, I felt the needle enter my skin. Pushing him away, I stumbled backwards, gasping in horror at the shadows, little lines of gray and black running up and down my body, replacing the faint blue tinge of my veins with something darker.
Everything I had once hated – sin, hurt, pain, death, it all came rising up and claimed me, pushing away all that was good. I became a shell, my only purpose to be used as a weapon. A destroyer of humanity. Caedis, he named me, murderer.
Adrian became my master. War and famine swept over the planet, sparing no one. Children died, adults were drafted into armies, and so began the destruction of the human race. Adrian was not my happy place anymore. I didn’t have a happy place. Only the darkness in my head as the shadows drifted over me, responding to my call, devouring everything, everyone I commanded them to.
I was a mindless machine, obeying every order, until I saw him. The 16-year old boy, kneeling next to woman’s body, hands red and gripping a knife covered in blood. Death had touched him, and would stay with him forever. He would never regain his childhood. His innocence was lost. As mine had been, the day Adrian changed me. And as my hatred for Adrian sparked, the shadows began to unravel. His hold on me loosened, though I took care never to show it. I did his bidding, killed and murdered. And all the while, I plotted my revenge.
I lost count of the number of fantasies I conjured. Drowning, burning, stabbing, poisoning, every one ending with Adrian’s death. His blue eyes staring into my coal black ones, knowing this was his fault. His fault, not mine. He had come to this earth from the very depths of hell, and I intended to send him back there.
