THE LAST DAWN

Chapter 8: The Hunger

The man smiled.

It was not a kind smile.

His silver eyes gleamed in the torchlight, bright and cold and hungry. His black hair floated in a wind that did not exist. His robe of silver silk shimmered with every breath, as if it were made of liquid moonlight.

“You’re the hunger,” Rowan said.

The man tilted his head.

“I am the hunger. I am the wound. I am the end.”

“You’re a person.”

“I was a person. Once. A long time ago. Before the sacrifice. Before the opening. Before the hunger.”

“What happened to you?”

The man stepped closer.

His bare feet made no sound.

“I became this.”

---

Rowan raised his knife.

The man did not flinch.

“You cannot hurt me with that. I am not alive. I am not dead. I am between.”

“Then what can hurt you?”

The man was silent for a long moment.

“Nothing. Everything. The truth.”

“What truth?”

The man looked at the book.

At the table.

At the shadows.

“The truth that I am you. And you are me. And we are the same.”

---

Rowan’s blood went cold.

“I’m not you.”

“Not yet. But you will be. The hunger is inside you. It has always been inside you. It has been sleeping, waiting, growing.”

“Why?”

The man stepped closer.

His silver eyes were wet.

“Because you are the last. The last child of the first sacrifice. The last heir of the hunger. The last hope of the world.”

“I don’t want to be the last hope.”

The man smiled.

It was a sad smile, small and tired and full of years.

“No one wants to be the last hope. That’s what makes it a burden.”

---

The torches flickered.

The shadows danced.

The hunger stirred.

Rowan felt it.

Inside him.

Sleeping.

Waiting.

“How do I stop you?”

The man looked at the book.

At the table.

At the darkness.

“You don’t stop me. You become me.”

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