Page 17 of Taken to the Shadow Realm

The answer is… severely. I needed a companion; I just didn’t know how it had taken me so long to realize it.

My eyes kept wandering to her almost bare back. She kept on wearing the slip Madam had given her even after I had placed clothes in the closet in her room.

Maybe she doesn’t like them.

Or maybe she didn’t like the way I touched her the other day, and this is her rebellious phase.

I couldn’t believe that I had let my shadows wander across her skin like that.

Even just the memory of her warm skin was enough to cause my mind to go into a frenzy.

Never once had I been so overtaken with the urge to touch a human like I had in her room.

It was… distasteful.

I purchased her, but I wasn’t going to force her into anything. Especially of that nature.

Time. She needs time.

And in this instance, time meant staring at the souls for a long while. Walking back and forth, peering into the darkness as if she could make them out. I couldn’t understand what she was seeing.

They weren’t pretty. They were twisted, ugly things. Filled with a person’s fears and wasted hopes.

More often than not, whenever I let my shadows venture too close, all I saw was pain. Flashes of murder, assault, loss. All of it was forced into my head.

Never once had I found anything beautiful about the pained souls that lay beyond.

So, I ignored them for as long as I existed. Watched them from afar and only left my realm to go get souls from others.

Many parts of my realm were covered in shadows, making it almost impossible to travel. But here was this human, stepping into something she knew nothing about, and unafraid.

You need to protect your companion, a voice in the back of my head said. Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.

But the other part told me to wait and see.

She thinks they’re pretty. Maybe she could see something I couldn’t. Maybe, unlike my siblings, they would accept her.

Even so, I let my own shadows trail her feet, keeping them close enough so I could pull her back to safety if I needed to. Her gasp cut through the silent air as her fingers dipped into the shadow.

My shadows slithered up her bare ankle, ready to pull.

“That was a human,” she whispered.

“Most are,” I said. “It’s after that many of them change.”

She made a humming noise before forcing her hand further into the fog.

“After?” she asked, her eyes unfocused as she watched the memories run through their minds.

“We have to come from somewhere as well, little human?—”

“Oh,” she blurted out, a blush traveling up her neck. I had never seen such a breathtaking color before. “That’s what you mean by companion.”

“What did you see?” I asked and stepped closer to her.

Did she see them getting torn apart limb from limb while the demons feasted?

From the look on her face, the souls had decided to show her something much more… interesting and much less painful than they ever chose to show me.

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