The Old Pedant's disappearance was like a drop of ink in clear water—silent, seamless, yet changing the village's very color. Erika felt the shift in the air as he walked familiar paths. People still rose with the sun, but now they returned from the fields earlier each day. Conversations still occurred by the well, but they started abruptly and ended just as suddenly. An invisible barrier, thin as the first winter ice, was quietly forming between them all.
Priest Balthasar's sermons grew more frequent. Standing atop the new altar with the rising framework of the Purification Ring behind him, his voice remained measured, yet carried undeniable finality. "Darkness never sleeps, my children," his eyes sweeping across every face in the crowd. "It only festers where light temporarily fails to reach. One man's straying is a breach in the village's entire defense." Most villagers, driven by fear, bowed their heads and tightened their grips on newly acquired holy vials.
Yet other voices persisted—muffled, stubborn—in the moss between well stones, in the market's silence after packing up, behind low courtyard walls in the deep of night.
"They know the paths, the scents. They never take more than their due, never cross the line..." Old Sackman muttered when only Erika was near, his clouded eyes fixed on his reflection in the well water. "Rules are rules. Now... Hmph. Outside fires are burning the old maps." He finished by violently dropping the bucket into the well, the splash like a wordless protest.
The herb-seller's stall grew quieter, but the looks she exchanged with certain regulars grew heavier. Erika once saw an old stonemason buying wormwood tap three fingers rapidly against the rough stall cloth as he paid. Without looking up, the woman pushed his change—a small coin stamped with a golden symbol—back toward him, her nail scoring a faint line across its face. These fragmented signals were like embers after a grassland fire, unable to illuminate the night, yet stubbornly testifying that not everything had been consumed.
They did not believe the Deathbirds had suddenly gone mad. They believed something new had shattered an ancient understanding and framed the silent original keepers. This quiet conviction resonated with Erika more deeply than any open doubt.
The change was not only in people's hearts, but etched upon the land itself.
The Auric Guard patrols increased noticeably. Their heavy, metallic tread now sounded not just on main paths, but along the village fringes, near the woods and the trails leading toward the old Feather-Gone Grounds. The noise was no longer mere background; it felt like a constant, invisible measuring, reminding everyone how the boundaries of order were tightening. Leaf, the once merely impressionable youth, now wore a church-issued shortsword with gold inlay at his belt. He stood straighter, his gaze acquiring a new, inspecting quality, sometimes following the patrols as if studying their ways. Some villagers began currying favor with him; most, including Erika, simply chose to walk the other way.
Trust, the bedrock the village had long relied on, was visibly eroding, cracking apart. The air grew thick with a mixture of fear, suspicion, and silent fury—more suffocating than the wails of the Deathbirds.
Erika still tended his flock each day, but he deliberately drove the sheep to more remote, open hillsides. From there, he could see both the glinting foundations of the new Purification Ring within the village and the pale outline of the old Feather-Gone Grounds in the distance, beyond which lay the blurred mountain shadows of the cursed Fugē Àoníng.
The packet of Moanweed root and the bark-scrap map pressed against his chest felt like hot coals searing his skin. The arrow pointed deep into Echo Canyon, and the bird symbol—he'd seen something like it in the Old Pedant's drunken sketches once. The old man had called it "the messenger's mark."
The village was being torn by unseen forces—on one side, the ordered, shackled safety promised by the Auric Creed; on the other, the faint, stubborn pulse of truth beating beneath the silence and doubt. The wind swept across the hillside, tugging at Erika's clothes and the golden banners atop the distant altar. He stood between them, the land silent and solid beneath his feet. And he knew, eventually, he would have to step toward one horizon or the other—whether into the light, or the shadow.
While most of the village retreated into wary silence, Leaf's fervent transformation burned brighter than ever. He was no longer content to trail the patrols; he now sought out Priest Balthasar himself, his words earnest, his eyes alight with a desperate hunger for approval. While helping unload newly arrived stone for the church, Erika caught fragments of their exchange.
"...Your Grace, I know they still gather in the Ravine of Broken Bones... where the village used to dump sick animals... They must still be active there! We could purify the place..." Leaf's voice trembled with excitement.
Balthasar's tone was placid, approving. "Your devotion and courage are seen by the Light. Go then. Lead the God's warriors and bring order to that forgotten corner. This will be a significant step on your path of service."
Erika's heart sank. The Ravine of Broken Bones—a hidden fissure southwest of the village—was indeed one of the traditional gathering points for the Deathbirds. He could almost foresee what was coming: a one-sided "purification" of the silent gatherers.
A powerful impulse seized him. He couldn't just wait. He had to see for himself.
Before dawn the next day, while darkness still clung to the land, Erika slipped from his house. He carried no shepherd's crook, only a skinning knife, some dried provisions, and the heavy packet of Moanweed root and the bark map. He knew every hidden trail to the ravine. Choosing the most treacherous and concealed path, he scaled the towering cliff face ahead of Leaf and the Auric Guard, concealing himself among jagged rocks and dead scrub.
In the weak morning light, the sight in the ravine made his scalp prickle. The floor was littered with bones—beast and livestock—mostly old, but some disturbingly fresh. Yet, unlike his memories, these newer bones lay picked clean, gleaming, with no trace of flesh or sinew. The air hung heavy with a mix of decay and a strange, acidic tang.
Soon, the clank of metal rose from below. Leaf entered the gully with a small squad of Guards, his face flushed with a mix of excitement and nerves, pointing deeper into the ravine as he spoke to the soldiers.
Suddenly, a faint, grating scrape echoed from the shadows of the cliff wall. Several Scavenger-Bone Sparrows materialized like ghosts. Assembled from various bleached bones, their joints bound by dark energy, they moved with cold purpose, their eye sockets flickering with icy soul-fire. They seemed unaware of Erika above, nor did they immediately attack the intruders. They simply halted their bone-gathering and turned their hollow gazes toward Leaf and the soldiers.
"Look! Those are the monsters!" Leaf shouted, his voice echoing in the canyon.
The Guard captain sneered, raising his shield inscribed with the golden Mark. It flared with a blinding, golden radiance. "In the name of the Golden Father, purify this place!"
The light surged forward like a solid wall. Where it touched the Bone Sparrows, their forms sizzled as if scalded. They let out those same bone-grinding wails Erika heard at night, their movements becoming sluggish and pained.
But instead of retreating or fleeing as expected, one of the larger Sparrows threw back its spine-formed head in a silent shriek. The soul-fire in its eyes erupted from icy blue to a violent, bloody crimson!
It didn't charge the shield. With unnatural speed, it lunged past the golden barrier, straight for Leaf, who was still flushed with triumphant pride at the light's effect.
"Look out!" the captain yelled, too late.
The Sparrow's talons—formed from some bird of prey's toe bones—sliced through Leaf's chest like scythes. The triumph on his face froze, shattered into pure shock and agony. He looked down at the blood fountaining from his torso, mouth working soundlessly, before collapsing straight back.
Simultaneously, more Bone Sparrows poured from the shadows, their eye sockets now blazing with the same crimson fire. They were no longer passive defenders. They became an enraged swarm, hurling themselves at the Auric Guard with mindless fury. Their purpose had shifted from gathering ownerless bones to making them.
A brutal melee erupted. Golden light clashed with pale bone. Soldiers' roars mingled with the Sparrows' shrieks. The Guards were better armed, stronger individually, but the Sparrows outnumbered them wildly, and they fought with a complete disregard for their own dismemberment.
Erika held his breath, pressed flat against the rock, his heart hammering. He watched a soldier's sword shear off a Sparrow's wing, only for the creature to entangle his legs with its remaining bones, allowing another to strike. He saw another soldier's armor corrode under a spray of dark energy from a Sparrow's maw, his scream cut short.
This wasn't a purification. It was a bloody, brutal slaughter. The Auric Guard had fatally underestimated the ferocity of the cornered Deathbirds.
When the last soldier fell under a pile of bone and fury, a temporary silence returned to the ravine, thick with the stench of blood and the litter of fresh corpses—Leaf and all the Auric Guards. The remaining Sparrows, bearing their own wounds, began silently dragging the new bodies, adding them to the piles of old bones, as if preparing for something.
Erika felt frozen to his core. He had witnessed the Guard's defeat, Leaf's foolish sacrifice, and the terrifying transformation of the Deathbirds from docile gatherers to savage predators. Balthasar's words were a cruel joke—it wasn't disrespect that provoked the Deathbirds, but the Church's own actions that had forged a far more terrible enemy.
He began to creep back, needing to flee. But as he moved, a loose stone clattered from under his foot, the sound shockingly loud in the dead quiet.
Below, several Sparrows, the crimson in their eyes not yet faded, snapped their heads up. Their hollow gazes locked unerringly onto his hiding place.
Terror seized him. He scrambled back up the rugged cliff face. Behind him, the horrifying scrape of bone and enraged shrieks erupted again, closing fast.
Erika fled recklessly over the stones, the sound of grinding bone and killing cries at his back, a cold fist of fear squeezing his heart. He could almost feel the bone-talons about to rake his spine.
Then, a voice he never expected to hear again rang out from the ravine floor below—clear, steady, and tinged with a strange, metallic resonance:
"By pact of bone, by law of silence—cease!"
The sounds of pursuit cut off instantly.
Erika, panting, skidded to a halt and whirled around. Below, the crimson-eyed Sparrows had frozen mid-action like puppets with their strings cut. The violent red in their eyes guttered out like snuffed candles, cooling back to their usual icy blue. They stood rigid, then slowly dipped their heads in a gesture of submission.
The source of the voice was Leaf, who should have been lying dead in a pool of his own blood.
Leaf was pushing himself up from the ground. The grievous wound on his chest was still there, but it no longer bled freely. Instead, a faint,幽 blue glow, akin to the Sparrows' soul-fire, pulsed from within the torn flesh. All the earlier fanaticism and terror were gone from his face, replaced by a deep, weary calm Erika had never seen.
Leaf didn't look at Erika. He raised his voice, calling toward another patch of shadow on the cliff face. "Master Marco. They are quelled."
From the shadows stepped a familiar, stooped figure. His robes were worn but clean, his eyes, wise and now deeply solemn—it was the Old Pedant, Marco.
"Erika," the old man's voice was hoarse but clear. "Come down, boy. It seems this old man's little play has finally flushed out our cautious fish."
Stunned, Erika picked his way down the cliff face, his eyes darting between the unharmed Leaf and the "resurrected" Old Pedant, finally settling on the latter. "What... what is this? You're not... and Leaf, you..."
"I was not taken by the Deathbirds, nor did I embrace any darkness," the Old Pedant interrupted, a bitter twist to his lips. "I could no longer stay in that village, watched so closely by the Golden Light. My disappearance was necessary to continue my work here, and to... prepare a counterstroke."
He walked to one of the still Sparrows, his fingers gently brushing the cold bone. "They, these 'Deathbirds,' are not evil. They are tools, following the most ancient of directives—to gather energy, to sustain themselves. The power of the Golden Collective shares the same root as theirs, stemming from the same 'Source.' But the Golden system is more domineering, more efficient. It is stealing the 'sustenance'—the residual energy from the dead—that once belonged to the Deathbirds."
Leaf pulled aside his torn tunic, revealing the wound, now laced with faint, glowing blue filaments. "Those blessed by the Creed, like Balthasar, like I was... our bodies are saturated with refined golden energy. To them," he gestured at the Sparrows, "we are beacons in the dark, a more enticing 'power source' than any corpse. So they attack us on instinct."
The Old Pedant nodded, his gaze sharpening on Erika. "But those like you, with thin energy signatures, or those not fully 'marked,' they largely ignore. That is why you could follow safely."
"And you two..." Erika began to understand.
"We staged this attack," the Old Pedant stated plainly. "Leaf was my choice. His surface-level fanaticism was to gain trust. We used the Auric Guards as bait to enrage and direct the Deathbirds. This 'massacre' is to prove to Balthasar that the Deathbird threat is real, lethal, and requires him to commit more forces here."
"You want to lure more Auric Guards here?" Erika felt a fresh chill. "Why?"
"Because this place, the Ravine of Broken Bones, is a nexus for the Deathbirds' power in this region," the Old Pedant's eyes held a desperate fire. "We need more 'fuel'—the bodies of those golden-energy-filled soldiers. Their power can temporarily sate these hungry Sparrows, grant them greater strength, and perhaps... briefly disrupt the Golden system's energy draw from this area. It is the only form of resistance we can currently manage."
He looked intently at Erika. "We need your help. You must return to the village. Pretend to have found Leaf's 'effects,' or spread vague hints. Make Balthasar believe his squad was wiped out, and that a great threat lurks here... perhaps even an undiscovered 'treasure' from the old times. He is greedy and paranoid. He will send a stronger force."
Erika looked at the old man and the young one, at the silent, dangerous bone-constructs behind them. They were using monsters to fight monsters, buying this land a breath of freedom with the blood of the Golden Guard. The plan was mad and brutal, but it was a spark in the overwhelming darkness.
He thought of the symbol the Old Pedant had traced on his palm, the Moanweed, the bark map, the suffocating weight pressing down on the village.
He didn't speak. Instead, he bent down, picked up a torn strip of cloth from Leaf's ruined tunic, its golden thread edging stained with mud and blood, and clenched it tightly in his fist.
His action was answer enough.
Erika's fingers tightened around the bloodstained cloth. The golden threads woven through the fabric dug into his skin like tiny, cold needles. He didn't look back again at the two figures standing among the bones. He just turned and started picking his way down the treacherous path toward the village.
By the time he reached the final ridge, the sun was bleeding into the horizon. His own shadow stretched out long and thin, a dark road leading back toward the place he had to lie to. His hand found its way to his chest, to the cold, hard shape of the Auric Mark hidden beneath his clothes.
A sharp, sudden heat flared against his skin.
He stopped dead. Looked down. The badge looked the same. But the pain was real—a focused, burning point over his heart. And beneath the burn, something else. A low, steady pulse. It wasn't his own heartbeat. It was slower, deeper, and it was finding its rhythm, matching the beat in his chest.
It was alive.
Down in the gathering dark, the village looked peaceful. The church's golden light was already shining, a false dawn in the twilight.
But Erika knew. He wasn't just bringing back a lie and a piece of cloth soaked in someone else's blood.
He was bringing back the thing that had just woken up against his skin.