Aiden left the abandoned house with utmost caution, scrutinizing every shadow in the thick fog. His hands were still trembling slightly, a consequence of the adrenaline that had coursed through his veins during that terrifying chase. He felt as though he had aged ten years in a single night.
He pulled Thomas's map from his pocket, but it was crumpled and damp with sweat. Worse still, in the almost total darkness his candle was now nothing but a stub flickering weakly he could barely make out the details of the route.
"Alright, he told himself, trying to calm his breathing. I'm... here? No, rather there. Or maybe..."
He oriented the map in different directions, but nothing worked. All the streets looked alike in the fog, and the state of panic in which he had fled had completely disoriented him. He didn't even know which direction he had taken from the forge.
Stay calm, he repeated to himself. Thomas said his house was near the central fountain. If I find the fountain, I can find my way back.
But after twenty minutes of wandering, he had to face the facts: he was completely lost. Every street he took seemed to lead him further from his objective. The fog played with his perception, transforming familiar buildings into menacing and unknown shapes.
His candle went out.
- "Damn..." he murmured in the total darkness. Now he had to navigate solely by touch, one hand placed against the damp walls to avoid losing his way.
He took the next street, then another, guided by an instinct he hoped was reliable. But after a while, he had the unpleasant impression of going in circles. This intersection—hadn't he already crossed it?
I'm going to die here, he thought with a touch of hysteria. Lost in a village of puppets, wandering until exhaustion. And when they find me, I'll be too tired to run.
He stopped in the middle of what seemed to be a small square and tried to regain his composure. His improved fear resistance helped him not to completely give in to panic, but he could feel anxiety rising in him like a black tide.
Use your new abilities, he suddenly told himself. Your perception of magical auras. Thomas and the other survivors might have an energy signature you can detect.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. At first, he perceived only the nothingness of the fog and the dark energy that permeated the entire village. But slowly, very slowly, he began to distinguish something else. A faint but warm glow, different from the malevolent aura of the puppets.
That way! It was tenuous, almost imperceptible, but it resembled normal human life. He headed toward that sensation, stumbling in the darkness but staying on course.
It took him another hour of hesitant walking, with several false leads and detours to avoid puppet patrols, but finally he recognized the silhouette of the house with closed shutters.
He knocked the code on the door three quick knocks, two slow, three quick and waited, his heart pounding.
The door opened to Martha, who widened her eyes upon seeing him.
- "My God, Aiden! We thought you were dead!"
Before he could answer, Thomas appeared behind her. The old man looked him up and down—his torn clothes, his scraped hands, his haggard face—and his expression went from worry to relief.
- "Kid..." he said in a strangled voice.
Aiden didn't even have time to speak. All the accumulated tension, all the fear he had suppressed for hours, all of it collapsed at once. He literally threw himself into Thomas's arms, clinging to the old man like a lost child who finally finds his family again.
- "I was so scared," he murmured against Thomas's shoulder, his voice breaking. "I thought I was going to die, I thought I'd never see you again..."
Thomas awkwardly patted his back, visibly moved as well.
- "It's over, son. You're safe now. It's over."
Martha quickly closed the door and guided them toward the trapdoor. In the cellar, the other survivors raised astonished looks toward Aiden. Harold jumped up.
- "He's alive! I didn't believe it anymore!"
- "We heard all that commotion in the forge district," said one of the women. "We thought that..."
- "That I had become a puppet," Aiden finished with a tired smile. "I almost did. Several times."
Thomas settled him on a crate and handed him a water gourd. Aiden drank greedily—he hadn't realized how thirsty he was.
- "So?" asked the old man. "Did you find something useful, or did you just almost get yourself killed for nothing?"
Aiden hesitated. He had so many things to tell them—the grimoire, the emotion vials, the puppet-blacksmith's reaction. But something in the atmosphere of the cellar stopped him.
All these people looked at him with hope, waiting for him to announce a miracle solution. How could he explain the true horror of what Corvus was doing? How could he tell them that their transformed loved ones might still be conscious, prisoners in bodies of wood and porcelain?
- "I discovered important things," he said finally. "About how Corvus proceeds, about his methods."
He pulled the grimoire from under his jacket. The book seemed even more sinister in the flickering light of the cellar candles.
- "It's his journal. He explains... everything in it."
Thomas reached for the work, but when he opened it, his face contorted with confusion.
- "I can't read it," he mumbled. "What language is this written in?"
Martha looked over his shoulder and shook her head.
-"It doesn't look like anything I know."
Harold took the book in turn and frowned.
- "It looks like... it looks like the letters move when I look at them. As if they refuse to let me read them."
Aiden felt a shiver run down his spine. He had forgotten this detail: he was the only one who could decipher the grimoire's contents. His Librarian ability allowed him to understand magical languages, but the others saw only incomprehensible scribbles.
- "I... I can tell you what's in it," he offered. "It's complicated, but basically, Corvus was a father who lost his daughter in a war. He thinks that by transforming people into puppets, he's saving them from suffering."
He tried to summarize the most important discoveries without going into the most horrible details. But even his sanitized version made the survivors pale.
- "He steals their... their souls?" whispered Martha, a hand brought to her throat.
- "Their Vital Flames," Aiden corrected. "That energy that makes us human. And he... collects them."
A heavy silence settled in the cellar. Aiden could see on the faces around him a mixture of horror and despair. How could they fight an enemy capable of stealing the very essence of their humanity?
- "And... and is there a way to reverse the process?" asked Harold in a trembling voice. "To get our loved ones back?"
Aiden hesitated. He had seen the blacksmith's reaction, that glimmer of humanity that remained in the puppet. But was that enough to hope for complete healing?
- "I don't know yet," he admitted. "But I have the feeling that... that the puppets aren't completely lost. A part of them seems to still resist."
This time, it was Thomas who spoke:
- "You think we can save them?"
- "I think we have to try."
But even as he said this, Aiden felt that something had changed in the cellar's atmosphere. The looks directed at him weren't quite the same anymore. There was now a distance, a subtle mistrust that he couldn't explain.
They're hiding something from me, he suddenly realized. Or else... they think I'm hiding something from them.
And in a sense, it was true. He couldn't tell them about the system, about his true nature as a Librarian, about his ability to perceive magical auras. To them, he was just a lucky kid who had managed to survive where others had failed.
But it's more than that, he thought while observing their expressions. There's something else. Something they're not telling me.
Thomas closed the grimoire and handed it back to him.
- "Keep it," he said. "If you're the only one who can read it, it'll be more useful to you than to us."
There was something in his voice, a coldness that wasn't there before. As if he no longer quite trusted Aiden.
- "Thomas?" Aiden called softly. "Is there a problem?"
The old man avoided his gaze.
- "No, kid. No problem. You're tired, you should rest. Tomorrow... tomorrow we'll see what we can do with your information."
But Aiden could clearly feel that something had changed. The warm atmosphere from before his outing had disappeared, replaced by a palpable tension he didn't understand.
He settled in a corner of the cellar, the grimoire pressed against his chest, and tried to find sleep. But the whispers he heard in the darkness prevented him from relaxing.
The survivors were talking among themselves in low voices, and even though he couldn't make out their words, he was sure they were talking about him.
What has changed? he wondered while staring at the stone ceiling. What did I do wrong?
But deep down, he already knew the answer. He had returned from his mission with impossible knowledge, abilities that a simple kid shouldn't have. And now, they were wondering who he really was.