Demons—wretched, contemptible things.

Long ago, people believed that demons were the restless spirits of the dead, clinging to the margins of existence and tormenting those who still lived out of jealousy or spite. They might try to assuage these spirits, to make right whatever wrong birthed them, but the truth was worse than they knew. It didn’t help that Demons would seep into spaces most often when they were rife with negative energy… often following the death of a loved one.

How terrible. To torment a grieving family, wearing their loved one’s death as a cloak. I wonder how many came to believe that their loved ones hated them in death, to believe that they bore such a horrible undisclosed weight that it kept them pinned to the mortal world even when their body no longer could.

As I said, though, the truth is worse. Demons are nothing like us. They are nothing human, no matter how their shadows appear when the light is just right. They are impostors, opportunistic imprints. Some are sapient, some are little more than animals; some try to be harmless and merely end up frightening, others seek to kill and devour the souls of those who tolerate them for too long. What binds them is their hunger for our souls—the vitality that seeps out of us and into our environment in the process of our every day lives.

They appear very much like us. They may even speak our language, though stilted and uncomfortably. Some can communicate through signs and spelling. I recognize even the capacity for good in them just as humans have, as it arises in Phantoms, but the Demons are only worse for their similarities. Their voices are wrong, their shapes long and unwieldy, their every attempt to seem like us only makes the distance between us appear wider.

These beings feed on us. Some merely feed on what we give off in the course of our lives: those may simply arrive to revel in our misery and then drift on as soon as it abates. Others, though, will stoke the fire as long as it warms them… and will go to drastic lengths to ensure that our misery abides.

Their human-esque form invites much interpretation. It is easy to mistake them for beings of power, given how much terror they may inspire in us, and seek to appease them and even worship them for that power. Just the same, they are just human enough, yet just enough unlike anyone at all that any number of traits can be read from their unclear forms. Traits like those your loved ones may have once worn.

Be wary of Demons. They slip into your life when you are at your weakest, and may do anything in their power to ensure that you remain trapped in your misery rather than escape it. And… the eldest among them may indeed bear a tremendous amount of power for that exact goal. Know that most do not have morals you can appeal to. Their ability to communicate with you is merely a poorly fashioned mask. They are nothing more than predators and parasites, the human silhouettes they cast on your walls little more than a horrid mimicry.