"You're a monster."
"You're a calamity."
"An abomination."
"A curse."
The voices echoed into the world before the outlines did.
Kraghs gathered around a training ground. Beyond them stood the shapes of houses, walls, and the uneven road leading home. Sonya could not remember their faces or the colours of their clothes. She had never seen them.
Her memories held only the outlines her senses had given her. A body leaning away. A hand pulling another child back. Feet retreating whenever hers came closer. The words, however, remained painfully clear.
From the moment she was born, there had been something about Sonya that frightened even her own kind. Cruelty was hardly unusual among demons. They fought, killed, and took what they wanted from those too weak to resist.
What, then, could make demons call a newborn child a monster?
Sonya had heard the story of her birth so often that she knew it better than many things she actually remembered.
