Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

Of all the beings that haunt the rain-soaked archipelago of Chiloé, off the southern coast of Chile, none carries a horror quite like the Invunche — because his horror is not what he does. It is what was done to him. The Caleuche takes sailors; the sea-spirits take the drowned; but the Invunche took nothing from anyone. He was taken. Somewhere at the beginning of his legend there is always a human infant — a firstborn son, stolen from his cradle or, in the darkest tellings, sold by his own desperate family — and everything monstrous about him afterward is the workmanship of men. The old Chilotes said it plainly and said it low, because on Chiloé these things were not spoken of carelessly: the warlocks make him. And the warlocks, on Chiloé, were not a fairy tale. The Island at the Edge Chiloé is a world apart and has always known it. A great green island wrapped in mist and rain, fringed with smaller islands like a hen with chicks, it was for centuries among the most isolated outpo...