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 headsand 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 wormwoodtap 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 understandingand 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 soundednot just on main paths,but along the village fringes,near the woods and the trails leading towardthe 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 shortswordwith gold inlay at his belt.
He stood straighter,his gaze acquiring a new, inspecting quality,sometimes following the patrolsas 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 thickwith 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 sheepto more remote, open hillsides.
From there, he could see both:the glinting foundations of the new Purification Ringwithin the village,and the pale outline of the old Feather-Gone Groundsin the distance—beyond which lay the blurred mountain shadowsof the cursed Fugē Àoníng.
The packet of Moanweed rootand the bark-scrap map pressed against his chestfelt like hot coals searing his skin.
The arrow pointed deep into Echo Canyon,and the bird symbol—he'd seen something like itin 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 truthbeating beneath the silence and doubt.
The wind swept across the hillside,tugging at Erika's clothesand 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 warriorsand bring order to that forgotten corner.This will be a significant stepon 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 pointsfor 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 rootand the bark map.
He knew every hidden trail to the ravine.
Choosing the most treacherous and concealed path,he scaled the towering cliff faceahead of Leaf and the Auric Guard,concealing himself among jagged rocksand dead scrub.
In the weak morning light,the sight in the ravinemade 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 heavywith a mix of decayand a strange, acidic tang.
Soon, the clank of metal rose from below.
Leaf entered the gullywith a small squad of Guards,his face flushedwith a mix of excitement and nerves,pointing deeper into the ravineas he spoke to the soldiers.
Suddenly,a faint, grating scrapeechoed from the shadows of the cliff wall.
Several Scavenger-Bone Sparrowsmaterialized like ghosts.
Assembled from various bleached bones,their joints bound by dark energy,they moved with cold purpose,their eye sockets flickeringwith icy soul-fire.
They seemed unaware of Erika above,nor did they immediately attack the intruders.
They simply halted their bone-gatheringand turned their hollow gazestoward Leaf and the soldiers.
"Look!Those are the monsters!"
Leaf shouted,his voice echoing in the canyon.
The Guard captain sneered,raising his shieldinscribed with the golden Mark.
It flared with a blinding, golden radiance.
"In the name of the Golden Father,purify this place!"
The light surged forwardlike a solid wall.
Where it touched the Bone Sparrows,their forms sizzled as if scalded.
They let out those same bone-grinding wailsErika heard at night,their movements becoming sluggish and pained.
But instead of retreating or fleeing as expected,one of the larger Sparrowsthrew back its spine-formed headin a silent shriek.
The soul-fire in its eyes eruptedfrom icy blueto 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 flushedwith triumphant prideat 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 chestlike scythes.
The triumph on his face froze,shattered into pure shock and agony.
He looked downat 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 shiftedfrom gathering ownerless bonesto 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 disregardfor 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 legswith its remaining bones,allowing another to strike.
He saw another soldier's armor corrodeunder 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 underestimatedthe ferocity of the cornered Deathbirds.
When the last soldier fellunder a pile of bone and fury,a temporary silence returned to the ravine,thick with the stench of bloodand 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 Deathbirdsfrom docile gatherersto savage predators.
Balthasar's words were a cruel joke—it wasn't disrespect that provoked the Deathbirds,but the Church's own actionsthat 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 loudin the dead quiet.
Below,several Sparrows—the crimson in their eyes not yet faded—snapped their heads up.
Their hollow gazes locked unerringlyonto his hiding place.
Terror seized him.
He scrambled back up the rugged cliff face.Behind him,the horrifying scrape of boneand enraged shrieks erupted again,closing fast.
Erika fled recklessly over the stones,the sound of grinding boneand killing cries at his back,a cold fist of fear squeezing his heart.
He could almost feel the bone-talonsabout to rake his spine.
Then—
a voice he never expected to hear againrang 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 pursuitcut off instantly.
Erika, panting,skidded to a halt and whirled around.
Below,the crimson-eyed Sparrowshad frozen mid-actionlike puppets with their strings cut.
The violent red in their eyesguttered out like snuffed candles,cooling back to their usual icy blue.
They stood rigid,then slowly dipped their headsin a gesture of submission.
The source of the voice was Leaf.
Leaf—who should have been lying deadin a pool of his own blood.
Leaf was pushing himself up from the ground.
The grievous wound on his chestwas still there,but it no longer bled freely.
Instead,a faint, dark blue glow—akin to the Sparrows' soul-fire—pulsed from within the torn flesh.
All the earlier fanaticism and terrorwere gone from his face,replaced by a deep, weary calmErika had never seen.
Leaf didn't look at Erika.
He raised his voice,calling toward another patch of shadowon the cliff face.
"Master Marco.They are quelled."
From the shadowsstepped a familiar, stooped figure.
His robes were worn but clean,his eyes wiseand 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 playhas finally flushed outour cautious fish."
Stunned,Erika picked his way down the cliff face,his eyes dartingbetween the unharmed Leafand 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 necessaryto 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 Collectiveshares 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 saturatedwith 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 fanaticismwas to gain trust."
"We used the Auric Guards as baitto enrage and direct the Deathbirds."
"This 'massacre' is to prove to Balthasarthat 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' powerin this region,"
the Old Pedant's eyes held a desperate fire.
"We need more 'fuel'—the bodies of thosegolden-energy-filled soldiers."
"Their power can temporarily satethese hungry Sparrows,grant them greater strength,and perhaps...briefly disruptthe Golden system's energy drawfrom this area."
"It is the only form of resistancewe 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 believehis 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 monstersto fight monsters,buying this landa breath of freedomwith the blood of the Golden Guard.
The plan was mad and brutal,but it was a sparkin the overwhelming darkness.
He thought of the symbolthe Old Pedant had traced on his palm,the Moanweed,the bark map,the suffocating weightpressing down on the village.
He didn't speak.
Instead,he bent down,picked up a torn strip of clothfrom Leaf's ruined tunic—
its golden thread edgingstained with mud and blood—
and clenched it tightly in his fist.
His action was answer enough.
Erika's fingers tightenedaround the bloodstained cloth.
The golden threads woven through the fabricdug into his skinlike tiny, cold needles.
He didn't look back againat the two figures standing among the bones.
He just turnedand started picking his waydown the treacherous pathtoward the village.
By the time he reached the final ridge,the sun was bleeding into the horizon.
His own shadow stretched outlong and thin—a dark road leading backtoward the placehe had to lie to.
His hand found its way to his chest,to the cold, hard shapeof the Auric Markhidden beneath his clothes.
A sharp, sudden heatflared against his skin.
He stopped dead.
Looked down.
The badge looked the same.
But the pain was real—a focused, burning pointover 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 lightwas already shining—a false dawnin the twilight.
But Erika knew.
He wasn't just bringing back a lieand a piece of clothsoaked in someone else's blood.
He was bringing backthe thing that had just woken upagainst his skin.