Dulcis was shivering greatly from the icy cold that passed through his clothes. If she didn’t get him inside soon, he would freeze. Lumen slowly opened to heavy wooden door to find that the hall was completely deserted. The fire was crackling in the room far up in the hall to the right; climbing the bricks trying to escape the eerie aura that chilled the house.

This feeling was all around her, but she tried to withstand the sentiment of uneasiness that shook inside her.

Turning to her right Lumen went down a different hall and through an opened door at its very end. The room was lit only by small dark blue candles which cast deep yellows and golds around the black room. Sleek foreboding shadows whipped back and forth through the room as the candlelight flickered, sensing the presence of malice. This was the only place Lumen had ever called home; since nowhere else she went did she ever belong—not even her own family seemed to her like a place that she felt understood and safe.

In this world, she always knew she was an outcast. She always knew that there was never going to be a place where she belonged—ever in her entire life. Lumen also knew that was how the boy, Dulcis, felt too. Though, his reason as an outcast was more pronounced than hers. He was obviously abandoned because of how he looked.

A devil’s child.

Lumen went over to her dresser, opened it, and took out a wad of clothes. All of them were black, of course, since they use to be her little brother’s. The little brother of hers who had once lived and breathed in this room and whom had been the only one to actually understand Lumen. Of course, when he turned eight, something tragic happened to him. He was killed by a mysterious fire that had erupted in his elementary school. Her little brother, Gauisis, was the only fatality—everyone else came out unscathed.