Ruin of Souls

A solitary child at the edge of the universe faces an eternal enemy.

Feb 11, 2025

Written by S. Kirk Pierzchala

Edited by Yuval Kordov

Never, ever turn your back on the dark.

These words sounded again in the boy’s ears, even now, after so many months of solitude. His parents had drummed this message into him, day and night. Days that were spent in the cold, feeble light that seeped from a bloated, dying sun. Nights spent huddled together for warmth in the endless, icy blackness.

Never listen to the voices in the wind, they also warned him.

Over and over again he had heard this warning, from the time when he could barely stagger about in his ad-hoc insulated boots, handcrafted by his mother from scraps of old flight suits. His earliest memories were of tripping in these boots, desperately stumbling through the door of the ramshackle pod, to squeal “goodbye” to Dad. Then feeling Mom’s grasp on the back of his collar, pulling him back to safety before he could escape to the narrow trail that wound upwards into the foothills. His father dwindling to a distant shadow, advancing into the wind-lashed mountains, dragging their battered ore hopper. There was always the unspoken question of when he’d return—would he beat the darkfall, or would he leave the mine too late and be forced to spend the night out there, alone and vulnerable?

So the three of them had lived their scant, terror-stunted lives, with their backs always to the light, always staring into the hostile dark. One day when Dad failed to return, Mom retrieved his body, then slowly crumbled away over the following months. At first, she made a faint effort to battle her grief, by rediscovering and sharing a few of the oldest, happiest stories and songs that had been passed down through the ages from the First Home. These brought a little distraction, some comfort to the boy’s dreary days, but soon Mom, too, followed Dad into the silence and dark.

Afterward, the child tried to remember those songs and tales, retelling them to himself to brighten the lonely, empty hours. The words and images became garbled in his mind, but still he clung to their fragments of sweet beauty. But they barely kept the shadows at bay. He spent more and more of his time watching the dark, waiting for the shades to grow larger and finally engulf him.

But they hadn't yet.

Now, as he did most evenings, he squatted alone outside the door of the only home he had ever known, the last standing hovel of the failed mining outpost. The pale orange of the closest setting star was a mockery of any meaningful sun, offering little heat and light. He tuned out the whisperings in the wind, instead focusing on the click, click, click of the large, dull-gray beetles that scuttled near his feet. Having long since outgrown his old toddler-size boots, this footgear was salvaged off his father's corpse and was much too large. At the time, he hadn’t thought much about having to do it—what choice was there? And anyway, these made him feel a little safer. As did the low humps of his parent’s graves, nothing more than piled stones, looming in the baleful evening a few yards distant.

Drawn by the meager warmth of the boy's body, the beetles careened nearer. One of them clacked over the toe of his boot. Swiftly, his skeletal hand darted out and engulfed the creature.

Soon he was crunching through its foul-tasting guts, the protein of the shell slivering on his dry tongue. The insides of his cheeks stung as his saliva jolted to attention, but his mouth was still parched and he choked on the dry bits of insect. He forced himself to slow down and swallow more carefully. He dimly supposed the energy required to chew and digest the hideous thing was probably more than what his body would gain, but still, his survival instinct was too strong to ignore the passing morsel. As his jaws worked, he watched the nearby shadows lengthen, merging with the washed-out indigo gray of the far eastern horizon.

Another shadow had joined the motionless streaks leaking across the landscape. Without comprehension, the child watched it waver and thrum. It thickened, as whatever cast it drew steadily nearer. He blinked his scratchy, red-rimmed eyes as he continued to stare. Slowly, he turned his head and squinted at the grotesquely attenuated blot quivering against the dying rind of red at the horizon.

A rusty squeak of terror escaped him as he scrambled to his hands and knees, snatching up his father's longbeamer from the ground beside him. He dashed inside the sand-blasted hut; inside, his chilled, almost numb hands grabbed crates and empty oxygen cylinders with hands gone numb, shoving them in front of the flapping door. It was slightly off its hinges and wouldn’t latch securely; he should have fixed it ages ago.

But now it was too late.

Fleeing to the farthest corner of the shelter, the child squeezed behind the cot, his back against the cold metal wall. This was it. This was what they had always told him would happen. The moments creaked by, relentless and unfeeling. The boy strained his ears listening to the night—despite the warnings, he could not stop. The foretold moment was upon him, and he could no longer outrun the mutterings and shrieks in the air.

As it grew louder, it became more like a steady hum. Almost musical. Almost singing. But not quite.

Holding his breath, he crouched ever lower behind the cot, eyes riveted on the door, even as he warned himself: don’t look at it, don’t look at it, don’t look at it.

But there was no need to look at it directly; it had lived so clearly in his every waking thought since infancy. He screwed his eyes shut tight and bit his lip at the sound of what was approaching. His unwashed, scabby skin pricked with icy sweat. His hands trembled on the longbeamer's grip. One eye involuntarily cracked open when he heard scratching just outside the door.

He tasted salt blood on his lip as he shunted his rising scream of terror back into his own flesh. A weak orange glow widened as the door pushed inwards. Gently, the piled crates and canisters were nudged aside. The boy’s trousers grew warm as he wet himself with distress.

Don’t look, he commanded himself. Then, he looked.

Silhouetted in the open space, the tall creature lowered its head to enter. It moved forward with a slow, intelligent, graceful deliberation. In the dark interior of the shelter, the boy could not make out the visage easily, his eyes sliding continually past the face to focus on a point beyond the apparition’s shoulder. Even so, he gathered a fragmented impression of golden hair and light eyes, of sharp, hypnotic features exquisite enough to cut the beholder, like a blade severing muscle from bone. The stranger’s lips were a glorious, sympathetic curve of a scythe. Just seeing a semblance of another human face reminded the boy of his father; the visitor's long, delicate hands recalled his mother.

The being advanced to the center of the shelter and straightened, becoming tall, muscular, perfectly balanced. The weak light touched his garments in places, revealing hints of red-gold fabric, flickering in the thick shadows. There was a listening tilt to his head as he looked about the space: attentive, almost imploring.

His head turned with a slow oscillating motion, his gaze scraping the interior and finally latching onto the boy. The target of this glance shut his eyes and buried his face in the cot’s dirty blankets.

“Ah, there you are, little lad. At last…there you are.”

The words assailed the child's ears like tossed stones. Perhaps the visitor's voice was gentle and winning, but it was so long since the boy had heard any human sounds other than his own grunts, that he flinched at the noise. Lifting his head a fraction, he slid the barrel of the longbeamer further up over the edge of the cot, finger tightening on the trigger.

The man chuckled at this feeble show of defiance. “Not very welcoming! And you all on your own for so long. You should be happy I’ve finally caught up with you.” He glided across the chamber to where a dusty, long-disused cooker stood near the table and one lone chair. “I suppose you know you're the last. I've roamed the entire surface, searching for survivors, and found no one.” His tone dripped with mournful sympathy.

He began opening lids and peering in long-emptied food canisters. “It’s a terrible misfortune, that your parents didn’t leave you better prepared to be on your own. Did they spend all their time teaching you to fear me, filling you with lies?”

As the boy watched the being poke about his precious supplies, his fear turned to anger. How dare it touch their things, how dare it speak of Mom and Dad so off-handedly?

With an unexpected cry of triumph, the newcomer held aloft a small storage container. “Flour!” he announced. “We’ll share bread tonight. I’ll make it for you.”

The boy’s anger fizzled into confusion. Having anticipated nothing like this personable monologue, he struggled to process what was happening before him. He watched, mesmerized, as the figure located a miner’s helmet and upturned it on the table. The visitor showered the meager portion of flour into the headgear, then added a trickle of water from the rusty cistern in the corner.

The boy could not understand what he saw, but could not look away from the white, sticky mass, a droplet of drool forming on his lips as it was shaped into a small loaf and placed in the cooker. Having scraped every last bit of food out of the shelter, he knew there was no more flour, or fuel to heat the cooker. Yet his starved stomach shrieked and twisted in an agony of longing, as an unspeakably delectable aroma began to drift through the chamber. He longed to be nearer the warmth and the scent; his legs ached from squatting, but he did not dare move from his position.

From his seat at the table, the visitor said lightly, “You should come out from there now. You can keep the rifle, if that makes you feel better. I’m not offended—you can’t help what you were taught. Besides, it’s wise to be cautious.”

It all sounded so reasonable. What was the point of remaining wedged between the cot and the wall? If he kept his distance, surely there was no way for the apparition to pounce. Inch by inch, the boy emerged from his safe hole. Eventually, he stood and managed two slow steps across the floor. Distrust cramped his thin form into a wary crescent. The longbeamer was clutched before him, its muzzle still trained on the form seated at the table.

“But too much caution in turn becomes foolish.” The man smiled. A luminous glint appeared in his glistening saliva, a glow in the corners of his mouth beside his perfect teeth. “You’re not thinking clearly, are you? Still crazed with fear and hunger, I suppose. I forgive you, and I’m here to take you away from all that. Once you’ve eaten, you’ll feel so much better. And then we shall be on our way.”

The boy was motionless; both figures remained regarding each other for many tense minutes.

When the loaf was finished, the man-shaped being set it on the table to rest.

The boy could not take his eyes off it, the deep brown crust seemed to fill the dark of the room. He knew better than to touch it: this was how his parents had told him it always played out. Yet the bread called him, summoned him closer. He was trapped, each second dragged him along against his will.

“Yes, there’s plenty,” the man said. “But don’t eat too quickly. And when you’re finished, I’ll take you home.”

The boy wrenched his gaze from the fresh bread to the speaker’s face, to regard him directly. Home? shouted his heart, while an inarticulate gurgle sounded in his throat. Whose home? No, I won’t go with you! Not ever!

But his eyes, obsessed, returned to the bread.

The man took it in his hand, rolled his eyes to the ceiling in a slow, almost beseeching glance, then tore the loaf in half. A gush of fragrant steam filled the hut. He extended one half in his elegant, muscular fingers. “I know you’ve waited a long time for something this good. You’ve earned it. Take it and eat.”

The boy’s hands clenched the weapon more tightly, but he did not step forward.

Disappointment shadowed the visitor’s bright eyes. “I know you’ve heard some terrible things about me, but I promise they aren’t true. If I was going to harm you, would I feed you first? And in any case, what choice do you have? You’re the only one left. You’re the only one left anywhere. It’s foolish to not take my help.”

The boy shuddered. No, it couldn’t be true. It was impossible, too horrible to believe. Of course, his parents had told him from his earliest moments that their homeworld was long since cold and dead, and that one by one, each asteroid base and colony had succumbed to dark despair and winked out. But fueled by his mother’s dying songs, some small defiant ember within him had clung to the hope that this wasn’t so. That others had made it.

“It’s true,” said the man kindly, patiently. “You’ve been so brave, so strong, so alone, for such a long time. But it’s over now, you can rest.”

Was it an illusion in the dim light, or had the man's fingers steadily lengthened into tentacles as he extended the enticing half-loaf? The bread almost took on a life of its own, floating in the darkness between the two of them, pulsing. The boy’s wavering defenses dissolved at last; his hunger became the only real thing about him. Stepping forward, he snatched the warm, spongy chunk from the man’s hand, stuffing it into his mouth without a conscious thought.

He choked as he encountered the hardness, the dry rock, the dirty acid taste filling his mouth. The sharp pain. The bloody scrapes, the shattering of his teeth. He spat out the gravel in horror, hunger still wringing his shriveled gut.

The smell of baked bread disappeared. The other half of the loaf became stone and fell to the table with a loud thunk, then rolled off and hit the floor.

“I am so, so sorry about that,” the man said with a slow shake of his head. “This keeps happening. I never got the trick of how to do it properly. I offered it to him once, but he saw through it. Even starving for forty days in the waste, he would not lift a hand to take it! Him, I can understand. But the others, they were greedy enough to snatch at it. They never learned to not take it. But I couldn’t really keep them fed, so they ran away. And now all of them are gone.”

He rose from the table and stood, slightly hunched, towards the boy.

Even as he sensed he was about to be engulfed, the boy could not resist. His faltering heart objected, but he had no strength. His narrow little shoulders shook as he sobbed pointlessly, in silence, eyes too dry for tears.

Instead of drawing nearer, the man crept to the far corner of the kitchen area and folded himself downward, to crouch in the dark beside the ice-cold cooker. An imbecile grin spread across his pale face, becoming the only part of him the boy could see clearly.

With a dull whimper, the child returned to the cot and seated himself slowly, his mind empty, the longbeamer resting loosely across his knees. It didn’t matter if he kept it or not. It didn’t matter if he slept or not. It was an impasse, but he knew he was doomed to lose. The meaning of what he did, or where he was, all collapsed in a dry, dusty awareness of nothingness.

He could not look away from the gleaming crescent of teeth across the cabin. The boy began to struggle for breath. It seemed there was less air in the hovel. A great rancid, sour twist of decay filled the room. The crouching figure drew a vortex of air toward itself. The breath jerked from the boy’s lungs, but he felt no panic. His capacity for terror was empty, his instinct for survival broken.

The atmosphere scintillated around him as the vortex quickened, swirling from all corners of the cabin to stream into the still-grinning mouth. The air vibrated and squealed; when the pitch changed, the boy’s ears throbbed with pain, his heart beat faster.

Beyond the edges of this obnoxious thrumming and whining came the sound of advancing footsteps. The door flung open and the boy numbly turned to behold another shape.

It was much too large for the entrance, much too large for the cabin, and yet there he stood—easily both inside and outside at once, standing astride dimensions. Galaxies themselves were contained in his vast outline, stars burned blindingly at his belt and his shoulder.

Without a word, the newcomer drew a sword brighter than the heart of the merriest star and raised it higher than the atmosphere. He reached for the crouching apparition. A wail of fury and despair escaped the thing as it bolted away from the cooker. But the new being grasped its prey’s scalp and brought his blade down with an impact that blazed with the clash of galaxies. His face joyfully serene, he whipped a black chain from his robes and twisted it about the captive, pulling it tight around its neck.

The creature shuddered, shook, then collapsed in upon itself, shrinking smaller and smaller, its remaining glimmers of light now dark as pitch as it convulsed and lurched and flopped at the end of the chain, smashing the chair and scattering the empty crates about the cabin in throes of desperate resistance.

The boy’s head split in agony as its wails shredded the air. The being shrank rapidly and in moments, was as small as a lizard. Then a beetle. Its captor squeezed his vast hand about it, and it disappeared.

Sheathing his blade, the towering newcomer glanced down at the boy with eyes and a smile so true and beautiful that the child wept real tears, but he could not move. He sat shivering in dazed bewilderment.

“He was only ever a shadow,” the man thundered gently. “The more attention you paid him, the more powerful he became.”

Trembling uncontrollably, the boy stared without understanding.

The man said, “Now you must come with me, because time is no more. All things are about to be made new, so you cannot stay here. And the others are waiting for you.”

Tilting his head back, the boy gazed upon the figure’s colossal strength, his gleaming hair waving in an unseen wind, his infinitely welcoming expression. Here was truth, here was fidelity. Here was love. Here was the meaning behind the scraps of legends his mother had shared.

Dropping the longbeamer, the child jumped to his feet and sprang forward into an embrace that felt as endless as all Creation. The swirling clouds of nebula, stars, and entire galaxies within the man were as warm and intimate as the boy remembered from his own parents’ arms.

As he settled his wan face against the being’s vast shoulder, he knew beyond all doubt, beyond all fear, that somehow they were all contained in that hug, and that he would be reunited with them in the blink of an eye.

Ruin of Souls originally appeared in Powers and Principalities: Short Fiction.

A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, S. Kirk Pierzchala is no stranger to moss and damp. She has spent decades crafting fine art, weaving stories, and creating children. Her acclaimed short stories have appeared in Fellowship & Fairydust, Silence & Starsong, and Incarnation Journal. Her third novel, Solitude of Light, won a Catholic Media Association Book Award in 2023. Her non-fiction essays have appeared in both regional and national publications such as Catholic World Report. Her Beyond Cascadia techno-thriller series showcases her love for the Northwest and her concerns about mankind's future, as well as her drive to tell stories that resonate with relatable themes both intimate and universal.

www.skirkpierzchala.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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