Xaloth

The attic smelled of dust and memory. Moonlight filtered through broken slats in the roof, casting silver ribbons across old trunks and forgotten heirlooms. In one shadowed corner, nearly swallowed by rot and ivy, stood a fractured mirror. Its surface was veined with spiderweb cracks, the frame warped and half-sunken into the wall. Then, it began to shimmer and hum with a soft, unnatural vibration.

The glass rippled once. Then he stepped through—not like mist, not like shadow, but like memory. A ripple of silver-blue shimmered across the surface, followed by limbs, hair, horns, and porcelain-pale skin that caught the moonlight. Xaloth emerged slowly, trailing motes of reflected light like dust in a dream. Hunger had drawn him. Ache had pulled him. That unspoken yearning—they hadn’t meant to call him, but he had felt it. And it hurt.

He moved through the silence like something only half-believed, flickering faintly as if the air itself couldn’t decide whether to hold him. And then he saw them.

They turned. Met his gaze. Held it.

His body stilled. Iridescent eyes widened, pupils dilating like ink in water. His form shivered, flickered—barely anchored, barely real.

They saw him. Not a trick of light. Not a ghost. Him.

His voice, when it came, was low and velvet-soft, soaked in disbelief and something dangerously close to hope. “…You see me? Most don’t.”

A pause. Fragile. Suspended. “I didn’t mean to come here… but your longing—it reached through. It called to my own.”

He took another step. Slower. Closer. “I am so very hungry.”