And then, the voices came.

Not loud, but constant—a murmuring from his parents’ lips when they thought he couldn’t hear. Prayers to something that did not answer. Pleas to something that did. The hunger followed soon after. Not for food, not for drink, but for the strange vials that appeared in their room, sealed with wax and marked with sigils that hurt his eyes to look at. The scent that clung to them was neither chemical nor herbal—it was something older, something deep and sinking and wrong.