The Girl Who Felt the Dark

Dark Desire

 The Girl Who Felt the Dark

The rain over the city of Veridia wasn't merely water; it was a slow, grey solvent, leaching colour from the cobblestones and hope from the heart. It sluiced down the grimy windowpanes of Eva’s one-room attic, distorting the world below into a watercolour of misery. To Eva, it felt appropriate. The world was distorted, but only she could see the true warp and weft of its corruption.

At nineteen, Eva possessed a beauty that was a lonely, haunting thing. Her hair, the colour of tarnished silver, fell in heavy waves to her waist, framing a face of sharp, elegant bones and eyes of a violet so deep they seemed to hold twilight within them. But those eyes were perpetually shadowed, the skin beneath them bruised with a fatigue no sleep could cure. She stood motionless by the window, her palm pressed flat against the cold glass. With that contact, the city’s hidden pulse thrummed into her.

It wasn't sound, not quite. It was a cascade of wants.

From the baker's shop across the lane, a greasy, yeasty craving for the coin in a customer's purse. From the cramped apartment below, a sharp, metallic yearning for the neighbour's new gramophone. From the shadowed alleyway, a cold, serpentine desire for the oblivion found at the bottom of a bottle. These were the mundane hungers, the white noise of human existence. Eva had learned to let them flow through her like a foul river, a skill honed over a decade of desperate survival.

But beneath them, always, was the Deep Murmur. The true curse.

It slithered up from the very foundations of the city, from ancient sewers and forgotten crypts. It was the collective consciousness of her tormentors: the Legion of the Black Sylph. A congress of thirteen of the most potent and vicious sorcerers and witches ever to blaspheme against the natural order. She couldn't hear their thoughts, not clearly. She felt their attention. A focused, malignant weight upon her soul, like thirteen spiders resting on a single, trembling thread. And she felt their desires, not as human wants, but as cosmic appetites: a hunger for decay, a thirst for screams given form, a craving to unmake light and taste the void.

This was her damnation. Cursed not with boils or beastly transformation, but with an absolute, involuntary empathy for desire itself. And the stronger, the darker the desire, the louder its scream in her soul.

A particularly violent wave of craving—raw, red, and brutal—shot up from a street several blocks away. Eva gasped, wrenching her hand from the window as if burned. Her knees buckled and she stumbled back, knocking over a spindly chair. She clutched her head, the violet of her eyes swallowed by dilated black pools.

"Stop," she whispered to the empty room, her voice a ragged thread. "Please, just stop."

But it never did. The curse was a parasite that fed her a constant feast of hunger, and in turn, her sensitivity was a beacon for the Legion. They knew her location in a general, city-wide sense. They could taste the disturbance she caused in the fabric of craving, like a ripple in a black pond. Their agents—the Marked—were always searching, drawn by the subtle psychic spoor she left in her wake.

A softer, warmer desire brushed against her senses, a gentle yellow glow amidst the grime. Mrs. Gable, her elderly landlady, was thinking of the honey cakes she’d baked, hoping Eva would come down and have one. It was a simple, kind want, a balm on Eva’s ravaged nerves. This, too, was the curse’s cruelty: it denied her the simple pleasure of a gift freely given. She experienced Mrs. Gable’s hope before the offer was made, turning surprise into anticipation, generosity into a fulfilled echo.

Swallowing the metallic taste of pain, Eva righted the chair. She moved to her small washstand, its pitcher cracked, its mirror covered with a scrap of cloth. She never uncovered it. Her own reflection was a danger. What if she saw herself and felt a desire—for escape, for peace, for death? To experience her own longing with the curse’s amplified clarity would be a recursion of torture that would shatter her mind.

She splashed water on her face, the cold a temporary anchor. She had to go out. Her meagre savings, hidden under a loose floorboard, were gone. The lace cuffs and collars she painstakingly mended for the tailor on Hawker’s Street were finished and needed delivering. The thought of venturing into the rain-slicked, desire-saturated streets made her nauseous, but starvation was a quieter, more final hunter.

Wrapped in a patched grey cloak that did little to keep out the damp chill, Eva descended the narrow, groaning stairs. She passed Mrs. Gable’s door, pausing as the honey-cake desire pulsed warmly. She forced a knuckle to rap lightly.

The door opened a crack, revealing a face like a kindly apple, wrinkled and sweet. "Eva, child! You look peaky. Come in, I've just made—"

"Thank you, Mrs. Gable," Eva interrupted, her smile strained but genuine. "It smells wonderful. I… I have an errand. Perhaps later?"

The old woman’s desire flickered with disappointment, then re-solidified into concern. "Of course, dear. But you take care. The streets are strange these days. Bad feelings about."

You have no idea, Eva thought. "I will. Thank you."

---

The city outside was a symphony of wanting. Eva moved through it like a ghost, head down, shoulders hunched, mentally building the walls she’d been constructing since childhood. Not my hunger. Not my pain. She visualized a shell of smoked glass around her mind, a filter to mute the onslaught. It helped with the mundane stuff, but the sharper, darker desires pierced through like needles.

She delivered the mending to Mr. Harrow, the tailor, a man whose primary desire was for the young apprentice boy who swept his floors. Eva felt the secret, shameful heat of it as she collected her few coins, keeping her eyes on his worn countertop.

"Heard there was another one last night," Harrow said conversationally, his voice oily. "Down in the Smoke Alleys. Fellow torn apart, they say. Beast, maybe."

Eva froze, a coin slipping from her fingers to ring on the wood. A new, fresh strand of terror—not hers—wormed its way into the ambient noise of the street. Harrow’s own fear was a sour, green taste.

"Beast?" she managed.

"Or madman," Harrow shrugged, but his desire was for her to leave now, to take the bad news with her. "City's going to rot. Best be indoors by dark, girl."

She fled the shop, the coins clutched in her fist like talismans. The news explained the violent red craving she’d felt earlier. It hadn't been mere human malice. It was hunger of a different order. A Marked was nearby. The Legion’s hounds were closing in.

Her plan to buy bread and cheese evaporated. She had to get back to the attic, to her fragile sanctuary. But as she turned into the narrow, cobbled length of Cressida Lane, a new desire hit her, so potent it stole her breath.

It was a void. A perfect, echoing lack. Amidst the chaotic symphony of wants, this was a silence so profound it was deafening. It didn't push against her senses; it pulled, a psychic vortex of absolute indifference. Eva staggered, leaning against a wet brick wall, disoriented. She had never felt anything like it. Everyone wanted something—even the monks in the High Abbey wanted enlightenment, a desire that shone like polished silver. This was… nothing.

And it was moving. Towards her.

Panic, cold and clean, washed over her own terror. She pushed off the wall and ran, her boots slipping on the wet stones. She took a labyrinthine route, through courtyards hung with sodden laundry, under arches dripping with moss, her internal compass focused on the singular point of safety—her room.

She was two streets from home when the rain eased to a drizzle. The unnatural void-desire had faded, replaced by something else. A new presence. This one didn't broadcast desire either, but instead of emptiness, it radiated a quiet, solid containment. A sense of walls thicker than hers, of will forged into a shield. And with it, a sharp, directed query—not words, but an essence—that brushed against her mind: "Fleeing?"

Eva skidded to a halt in a deserted, dead-end courtyard. She was trapped. The high walls were slick with no purchase. The archway behind her was the only entrance. And now, two figures stood within it, blocking her retreat.

The first was the source of the void. A man, tall and skeletally thin, draped in clothes that seemed to absorb the faint light. His face was long, pallid, devoid of expression. His eyes were the colour of a winter sea, flat and dead. This was a Marked. His humanity had been scooped out and replaced with a single, focused command from the Legion: Find her. His desire was not his own; it was a borrowed, hollow thing, a vessel for their will.

The second figure was the containment. A woman, standing slightly apart from the Marked. She was perhaps in her late forties, with a stern, handsome face framed by streaks of grey in her dark hair. She wore practical, travel-stained leathers and a long coat. In her hand was not a weapon, but a staff of dark, polished wood, capped with a crystal that held a faint, inner smoulder. Her eyes, a flinty green, were fixed on Eva, not on the Marked.

"You feel it, don't you?" the woman said, her voice low and calm, cutting through the drizzle. "The emptiness that walks. And you feel me. You are the one they whisper about. The Desire-Sponge."

"Stay away from me!" Eva cried, her back pressing against the cold wall.

"I am not your enemy, Eva," the woman said, and the use of her name was a shock. "My name is Lysandra. I have been searching for you for a long time."

The Marked took a step forward, its movement fluid and utterly silent. Its mouth opened, and the voice that emerged was a rustle of dry leaves, a chorus of whispers speaking as one. "The Legion sees. The Legion claims its vessel."

Lysandra moved with startling speed. She didn't attack the Marked directly. Instead, she planted her staff on the wet cobbles. The crystal flashed, not with light, but with a deep, thrumming sound that Eva felt in her teeth. A ring of visible distortion, like heat haze, pulsed outwards.

The wave passed over Eva, a sensation of cool, clean water. But when it hit the Marked, the creature recoiled as if struck. The hollow desire emanating from it wavered, flickered with something new—a spark of confusion, of individual pain. It was a tiny crack in its programming.

"Run, Eva!" Lysandra commanded, her voice strained. "To the old church on the Hill of Whispers! Now!"

The Marked regained its focus, the void solidifying into a spear-point of intent aimed at Eva. It lunged, ignoring Lysandra. Eva screamed, not with her voice, but with every fibre of her cursed being. A torrent of the courtyard's latent desires—the rat’s hunger for garbage, the trapped rainwater’s desire for the sea, the stone’s ancient desire for stillness—erupted from her in a chaotic, psychic shockwave.

It was involuntary, a defensive spasm she had never learned to control. The wave hit the Marked. For a second, the hollow vessel was flooded with a million alien, petty wants. It staggered, clawing at its head, the chorus of its voice breaking into dissonant shrieks. "Too many! Too loud! Stop the song!"

Lysandra stared at Eva, her containment-field radiating sheer astonishment. "Gods above… you're not just a receptor. You're an amplifier."

Seizing the moment, Eva ducked under the Marked's flailing arm and sprinted back through the archway. She didn't look back. She ran until her lungs burned, guided by an instinct deeper than memory. The Hill of Whispers was on the city's old, affluent side, crowned by the ruin of a cathedral dedicated to a forgotten saint.

She didn't stop until she collapsed on the broken flagstones before the gaping, doorless entrance of the church. The rain had stopped. The moon broke through the clouds, illuminating the jagged outline of the roofless nave. The air here was different. The desires were older, slower: the moss’s thirst for sun, the ivy’s yearning for the steeple it once claimed, the quiet, patient desire of the graves for remembrance.

And then, the presence of containment approached. Lysandra walked up the hill, her staff tapping softly. She looked tired, but unharmed.

"The Marked?" Eva gasped, scrambling to her feet.

"Confused. Lost in the forest of wants you planted in its mind. It will recover, but it bought us time." Lysandra stopped a few paces away, studying Eva not with pity, but with a fierce, analytical intensity. "How long have you felt them? The Legion?"

"Since I was a child," Eva whispered, the admission pulled from her in the strange, quiet sanctuary of the ruin. "They… cursed me. At my birth. I don't know why."

"It wasn't a curse meant to torture a child, Eva," Lysandra said, stepping closer. Her own desire was now perceptible to Eva: a deep, complex weave of determination, guarded hope, and a profound, scholarly hunger for knowledge. It was the most intricate, purposeful desire Eva had ever sensed. "It was a ritual meant to create a weapon. You were born under a rare celestial alignment, to parents of latent, powerful lines. The Legion performed the Rite of the Unfilled Cup upon you. They intended to make you a vessel for their collective will, a living focus through which they could project their desires onto the world and make them manifest. No more spells, no more rituals. Just a thought, amplified by your innate power, and reality would bend."

Eva stared, her mind reeling. "A weapon? But… it went wrong?"

Lysandra gave a grim, humourless smile. "Your mother. She was a witch too, though she hid it. She interfered in the final moment of the rite. She couldn't stop it, but she… inverted it. Instead of making you a transmitter of their desires, she made you a receiver of all desire. She turned their weapon into a vulnerable, suffering girl. She hoped it would hide you, make you useless to them. And she died for that betrayal."

The world tilted. Eva saw not the ruins, but a faint, ghostly memory: a woman's face, blurred with love and terror, a scream, and then a flood of sensations so vast and terrible it had eclipsed everything. The first feeling of the curse.

"They've been searching for you ever since," Lysandra continued, her voice softening. "To correct the error. To finish the ritual. If they ever get you back, if they ever make you the transmitter they intended… no army could stop them. A whispered wish for a city to crumble, felt by you and projected by them, would become truth."

"Why are you telling me this?" Eva asked, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "Who are you?"

"I was your mother's mentor. I have spent eighteen years hunting the Legion's agents, studying their ways, and looking for you. I am a Warden of the Silent Accord. We believe magic should have limits. We believe weapons like the one you were meant to be should never exist." Lysandra extended a hand, not to touch, but in offering. "I cannot remove the curse, Eva. It is woven into your soul. But I can teach you. Not just to block the desires, as you’ve been doing. But to understand them. To sort the whispers from the screams. And maybe, in time, to use this not as a curse, but as a sense. To see the true hearts of men and monsters. And to fight back."

Eva looked at the offered hand. She felt the woman’s desire—for her safety, for her strength, for victory over the Legion. It was strong, but it was not consuming. It was an invitation, not a demand.

From the city below, a new wave of desire erupted. Not one void, but several. Cold, hollow, and converging on the hill. The Legion had recovered its hound, and sent more.

"They're coming," Eva said, her voice flat with exhaustion.

"I know," Lysandra said. "We cannot stay here. I have a safehold, a warded place outside the city. It is a long and dangerous journey. They will hunt us every step of the way." She paused. "You have a choice, Eva. You can come with me, and face the terrifying prospect of learning what you truly are. Or you can run, alone, and remain the girl who only feels the dark."

Eva stood at the precipice of her old life—a life of fear, isolation, and constant, gnawing pain. Before her was a path of greater danger, of facing the very source of her torment. But she also felt, for the first time, a desire that was wholly her own. It was small, a fragile green shoot in the cracked stone of her soul. A desire not just to hide, but to know. To understand the power that had broken her life. Maybe even to wield it.

She looked from Lysandra’s weathered face to the city below, a tapestry of countless glowing, screaming wants. In its centre, the cold, dead voids moved towards her.

She took Lysandra's hand. The touch was not a conduit for overwhelming desire, as all touch was. Lysandra’s wards held. It was just a hand, warm and strong.

"Teach me," Eva said.

And as they turned and vanished into the deeper shadows of the ruined church, the Girl Who Felt the Dark took her first step towards becoming something else. The hunt was on, but the prey had decided to learn how to hunt in return.