The road to Gueule-du-Corbeau felt like crossing a wound that was festering.
The Alsatian countryside, usually a mosaic of neat vineyards and golden fields, was taut and uneasy.
We passed farmhouses with boarded windows, peasants working with pitchforks within arm's reach—not for hay, but for whatever shadows seemed to stretch even beneath the noonday sun.
The Revolution had thrown open the doors, but no one knew what might come through.
Gueule-du-Corbeau was worse.
The village crouched in a narrow, forested valley, as if trying to hide from the mountains themselves.
The houses, with their dark timber frames and steep, slanted roofs, seemed to bow under an invisible weight.
No smoke rose from the chimneys. No children played in the streets.
Only an unnatural silence, broken now and then by the whisper of the wind through the firs.
"Charming," murmured Margot beside me, her hood drawn low to hide her face. "Feels like they're waiting for a funeral."
"Maybe they are," I replied quietly.
The air was still, thick with pine and something stale—like old fear.
"Angelica said to start with the inn. It's the only place where people still talk."
The village's lone tavern—its faded sign ironically declaring The Singing Rooster—had all the vitality of a tomb.
The sign itself, a wooden rooster with half its comb missing, squealed mournfully with each breath of wind, a lonely sound in the general hush.
We pushed open the heavy oak door and stepped inside, leaving the chill of the Vosges for a stagnant warmth that smelled of spilled beer, stale smoke, and unspoken dread.
If there was silence outside, inside there was a dense void—thick enough to choke on.
The room was low and blackened by years of smoke, the beams so close that a tall man would have to stoop.
Daylight struggled through two greasy windows, leaving most of the space in shadow, lit only by a dying hearth fire and a few dripping candles.
The air was heavy, almost oily.
A handful of men sat scattered at the tables, each isolated from the next, bent over their mugs like monks over forbidden scriptures.
When we entered, every head turned in unison.
Half a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on us, all with the same wary, hostile stare.
We weren't welcome; we were an intrusion—a stone cast into the still pond of their shared dread.
Behind the counter—a block of dark wood polished by countless mugs—stood the innkeeper.
He was massive, a mountain of muscle and fat bound inside a stained leather apron.
His head was almost bald, but a rough, grizzled beard exploded from his jaw and cheeks, hiding his mouth.
It wasn't his size that struck me—it was his eyes: small, dark, and devoid of anything but deep, endless exhaustion.
He looked us over from head to toe, hands flat on the counter, still but ready.
A man who had seen too much, and learned never to speak of it.
We approached. The innkeeper was already watching us.
"What d'you want?" he grunted.
"Beer," said Margot, setting a coin on the greasy wood. "And information. We're looking for our cousin. He got lost around here."
The innkeeper took the coin without looking at it.
"No one gets lost in Gueule-du-Corbeau," he said, filling two mugs. "They get… taken."
We sat in a dark corner, ignored by everyone else.
The silence was broken only by the crackle of the fire and the dull thud of a mug set down too hard.
A man near the hearth—his face hollow, his eyes sunken—stared into the flames.
But I noticed his trembling fingers tracing the sign of the cross again and again into the wood of his table.
"There's a heavy air here," I said to Margot, loud enough to be heard, soft enough not to sound like a challenge. "Is it always this quiet in Gueule-du-Corbeau?"
A few heads turned slowly toward us.
There was no curiosity in their eyes—only a dull resentment.
"You're not from around here," the innkeeper said flatly. It wasn't a question.
"No, sir," replied Margot, her tone humble in a way that didn't fit her nature.
"We're just looking for our cousin. His name's Nicolas. He was supposed to meet us here."
The name Nicolas hung in the air.
I saw the man by the fire stiffen.
The innkeeper only shook his head slowly.
"No Mathis here. And this isn't a good time to be looking for anyone."
"Why?" I asked, pushing a little. "Is there some kind of trouble?"
He wiped his hands on his apron, a slow, deliberate motion.
"We've got trouble enough. Don't need more of it. Especially from outsiders."
His gaze was a locked door.
It was the man by the fire who spoke, still staring into the flames. His voice was a rasping croak.
"Those who get lost at night… don't come back."
"Mathis!" barked the innkeeper. "That's enough!"
The man—Mathis—rose unsteadily to his feet. His eyes, bloodshot and wild, fixed on us for a heartbeat, filled with almost insane terror.
"He takes them," he hissed, before the innkeeper took a threatening step forward.
Mathis recoiled, grabbed his mug, and vanished into an even darker corner of the tavern.
"Drink and go!" snapped the innkeeper, his tone stripped of any remaining civility.
"There's nothing for you here!"
We understood we'd get no more from them.
We finished our beer in silence and stepped back out into the cold October air.
"'He takes them,'" Margot muttered, mimicking Mathis's rasp. "Very helpful. Could be anyone—from the priest to the postman."
"But we have a name. Mathis," I said. "And confirmation that people disappear at night."
I looked down the empty streets. "We won't get anything else this way. They're too scared to talk to strangers."
"Then let's stop being strangers," said Margot, her practical mind already at work.
"Angelica gave us a contact, didn't she? The informant—the one who sent the parchment."
I pulled a small folded note from my pocket.
A name, and a rough sketch of the village. "Guillaume. A blacksmith. Lives on the edge of town, near the old manor."
Margot gave a tight smile. "Perfect. Toward the wolf's den, then. Let's go have a little chat with this Guillaume. Maybe he'll be less afraid to talk."
The shadows were lengthening, turning the silent village into a maze of threats.
That's when I saw her.
A girl, not much older than us, sat on the church steps, her face buried in her hands.
Her body was trembling with silent sobs.
We approached carefully.
"Are you all right?" Margot asked, with a gentleness I rarely heard from her.
The girl looked up. Her eyes were red and swollen.
"My brother…" she sobbed. "They took him. Last night. He was the best woodcarver in the village…"
I knelt before her. "Who took him?"
She shook her head, pointing with a trembling hand toward the wooded hills above the village.
"The shadow. I saw it. On our roof. It had no face—only…" She faltered, searching for the word.
"Only a song. A terrible, sorrowful sound… that empties you out. And then… it left this."
She opened her palm.
Resting there was a single black feather—identical to mine.
Rigid. Cold. Unnatural.
Margot met my gaze, and in her eyes I saw the same terrible certainty I felt.
We were in the right place.
But as I took the feather from the girl's shaking fingers to examine it, my eyes caught something else in her other hand: a small carved piece of wood, no larger than my thumb.
A rough figure of a crow.
"He… he left it too," she whispered, voice breaking. "My brother Nicolas was carving it. It was for me. He said it would keep us safe."
I looked at the carving, then at the feather.
A cold, impossible thought crept into my mind.
The Crow Man didn't just take people.
He took what they were—their gift—and made it his own.
The terrible song the girl spoke of wasn't merely a sound.
It was a creation.
And the artist… was the monster itself.