Compiled from the surviving pages of The Diary of Edwald Fenn (1838–1843), recovered partially burned among the ruins of a cabin near the village of Marrowfen. Supplemented by transcripts from the inquest led by Priest Rowan Delling, emissary of the Diocese of Trewick.
Edwald and EdynaFenn arrived in Marrowfen five years before the tragedy.
They claimed to have fled the inland town of Brockenmere after a cruel winter. They brought only a cart, a few tools, and a newborn child — the son Edwald called "my little sun."
He was a woodcutter, soft-spoken and simple in faith. She was a healer.
She knew herbs, prayers, and ancient murmurs said to mend wounds that city doctors could not.
Villagers said she had "ears of the wind" — that she could hear what slept beneath the earth.
For two years they lived in peace, surrounded by forest and the sound of running water. Until the day the boy vanished.
They found the overturned cradle by the stream.
The clothes, snagged on the stones.
No body.
No sound.
Diary entry (1839):
"She still calls to him at night. Stands by the water's edge and whispers his name as if the wind might bring him back.
Sometimes I think I hear it too.
A small laugh, light and quick, behind the trees. But when I look, there is only the fog."
After the child's disappearance, the couple withdrew from the village.
People began to whisper — they said Edyna had made a blood pact, offering her son in exchange for wisdom.
Edwald defended his wife to the last man, but his faith began to rot as well.
Entry (1840):
"Edyna speaks with the earth. She says the boy did not die — that he's somewhere else, where the roots sing. I love her, but sometimes I fear what she hears."
Edyna studied old leaves and pagan symbols found in lost manuscripts.
She spoke of an ancient story — of a mother devoured by her own hope, and of a small thing that opens its mouth to pretend love.
The villagers laughed at it. But Edwald felt that she believed.
In 1843, new disappearances began.
First animals, then people.
A hunter. A maiden. A child.
With each missing body, the eyes of the village turned again to the Fenns' cabin.
Diary entry (June, 1843):
"Edyna does not sleep. She stands by the window, listening.
Said the boy has returned — that she heard him call to her.
But the voice was different. It was... hollow."
That same night, marks appeared on the cabin walls — claw-like scratches, and a symbol drawn in soot: a circle crossed by a line, with the outline of a hound at its center.
When fire destroyed part of the fence, Edwald decided to leave. But Edyna refused.
She said leaving would "break the bond," and that the child would be lost forever if she abandoned the place.
On the final night, she went to the cliffs carrying a lantern and a basket of herbs.
She did not return.
Entry (July 16th, 1843):
"I went there. Found her shawl tangled among the roots. The ground looked torn, as if something had been digging — or dragging itself.
And there was laughter.
Small laughter.
It sounded close, but it came from under the earth."
Edwald did not die soon after his wife's disappearance, as the popular version claims. For two months, he wandered neighboring villages searching for records.
He paid a scribe to copy ancient texts about spiritual substitutes and voices that rise from below the soil. He studied forgotten northern cults, where the hound was seen as guardian between worlds.
Entry (August, 1843):
"The priest said evil has no body. I say it does — and I saw it. I saw the shadow of a boy with red eyes. And behind him, a black hound watching in silence. It did not attack. It only waited."
The last reports of Edwald describe him as gaunt, covered in mud, hands bandaged, eyes hollow — as though he had tried to dig with his nails and despair alone.
Priest Rowan wrote:
"Faith had left him. And when faith departs, something takes its place."
On the night of September 3rd, Edwald's lantern was last seen crossing the marsh.
The priest followed him to the cliffs but lost the trail in the fog.
Three days later, they found the body.
He was kneeling, hands buried in the mud, as if still trying to dig.
The bones of his fingers were shattered.
The face, partially devoured and smiling.
And inside his mouth, carefully folded, a piece of the diary.
The last legible line read:
"She called to me. And it wasn't her voice. But it was enough."
The next morning, the Fenns' black hound was found standing at the cabin's door.
Soaked, covered in dirt.
Between its paws, it held a fragment of Edyna's shawl.
They say that on fogbound nights, one can still hear a woman singing among the trees — and the brief laughter of a child replying like an echo.
Others claim to see the hound upon the cliff, watching in silence.
It never attacks.It only follows those who dare to look back.
Date: November 12th, 1891
Author:A. R. Veyl
The Fenn Case is the earliest known record of the phenomenon we have designated The Spiritual Call — in which unknown entities assume the voice or likeness of lost loved ones.
The symbol found among Edwald's writings suggests a connection with pre-Christian cults that mention "the hound who guards the borders of death."
The same animal was sighted decades later in neighboring counties.
Always with the same eyes.
Always with the same silence.
Among the burned documents was an older fragment, dated before the Imperial Calendar. It spoke first of a woman and her child lost in the forests of Gaia — the earliest record of what we now call the Reports. Centuries later, another account told of a mother who vanished after hearing her dead child's voice beneath the moon.
Her name was Edyna. His, Edwald.
Perhaps mere coincidence.
Or perhaps the void only repeats the same stories — always waiting for someone to listen first.