Book Five, Chapter 87: The Hunter
Back home, monsters were simple.
Ancient witches, sorcerers, and priests defeated beasts of unfathomable power using magic they didn’t understand. The magic was mostly lost to time, but the monsters were not, not really.
These creatures had their own ironic form of immortality. As the great beasts were scavenged and broken down, their genetic code worked its way through the food cycle.
The insects got their meal, then the birds, that sort of thing.
Every living thing feeds off something else, passing this invasive genetic material along. It eventually makes its way into humans or other animals, occasionally latching on and binding itself to human DNA—creating a ticking time bomb.
This process began eons ago.
That’s the theory, at least.
Vampires, werewolves, heck, even those putrid ghouls called zombies could all be explained by this phenomenon. There was a good chance that I myself was walking around with some combination of ancient genetic code that might one day result in a mutation in my descendants—growing fangs or claws, being able to see in the dark, breathing underwater, or even lusting for blood.
It was all in our DNA. My people were an interesting bunch. Our shadows had monsters in them.