The village of Oakhaven didn't just feel silent; it felt hollowed. It was the silence of a lung that had forgotten how to draw breath.
As they crossed the threshold of the gates, the first crow fell.
It didn't drop because of an arrow or a stone. It simply tilted off its perch on the palisade and hit the mud with a wet, heavy thud. Then another fell. And another. As Ashaf walked, the birds began to systematically tear at their own breast-feathers with their beaks, stripping themselves bare in a frantic, silent ritual of self-mutilation.
They weren't dying; they were uncovering themselves for him.
"Don't look at them," Ashaf said. His voice was a thin wire of steel. "They're just meat. Keep walking."
"They're not just meat, Ashaf," Kai whispered. The scout was walking backward, his eyes fixed on the trail of featherless, bleeding birds. "They're trying to show you their hearts. They think you want to see what's inside."
In the village square, the horror shifted from the animal to the human.
A group of villagers stood around the communal well, but they weren't drawing water. They were staring at a young girl—no older than ten—who was kneeling in the dirt. She was holding a shard of jagged slate, and with slow, rhythmic precision, she was carving a circle into the palm of her hand.
When Ashaf stepped into the torchlight, the girl stopped. She looked up, her face a mask of ecstatic, tear-streaked terror.
"The Vessel is open," she whispered. The crowd behind her moved in unison, a slow, swaying motion like wheat in a foul wind. "We heard the laughter in the well, My Lord. It said you were coming to collect the debt."
"I am not your lord," Ashaf said, his stomach turning. "And I have no debt to collect."
An old man stepped forward. His eyes were milky with cataracts, but he turned his head as if following a scent—the scent of Ashaf's "untouched" soul. He reached into a burlap sack at his feet and pulled out a struggling, screaming piglet. With a sudden, violent twist of his aged hands, he snapped the animal's neck and held the limp body toward Ashaf.
"Accept the tithe," the old man croaked. "Before the Blooming God decides that we are the crop."
"We aren't staying," Ashaf snapped, the "clean" air of the village now tasting like rot and copper. "Reina, find the inn. Morrigan, if anyone touches him, break them."
The cellar of the 'Hollowed Oak' was a cramped, damp space that felt more like a cage than a sanctuary. The smell of fermenting grain was thick enough to gag on, but it was better than the smell of the village square.
In the corner, Morrigan was unraveling.
She had stripped off her heavy coat, revealing the iron chains wrapped tightly around her torso. The metal was glowing—a faint, sickly orange. Her skin was steaming where the iron met her flesh, the scent of singed hair and ozone filling the room.
"It's too loud," she growled, her teeth elongated, her jaw unhinging slightly. "The God... he's scratching at the inside of the walls, Ashaf. He's calling for his 'pet.' He wants me to show you how I bleed."
"Stay in the chains, Morrigan," Ashaf commanded, though he felt a pang of guilt. He was using her as a shield while her own divinity tried to eat her from the inside out.
He turned to Guideau. She was sitting on a pile of moldy straw, her hands moving in a blur.
She wasn't sewing her sleeve anymore. She had taken a small, discarded sewing needle from the floor and was threading it with a strand of her own hair—hair that had turned a vibrant, pulsing crimson. She was stitching something into the skin of her own thigh.
"Guideau, stop," Ashaf said, reaching for her.
She looked up, and the flirtatious girl was gone. Her eyes were wide, the pupils blown out until there was no color left.
"I'm making a map, Ashaf," she whispered, her voice a sing-song lilt that made his skin crawl. "The threads... they go so deep. If I stitch the patterns now, I won't get lost when the world turns inside out. Look. See how pretty?"
She moved her hand to reveal a series of jagged, geometric patterns sewn directly into her flesh. There was no blood. The threads of hair seemed to have fused with her skin, glowing with a faint, malevolent light.
"It doesn't hurt," she said, a terrifying, glassy smile stretching across her face. "Nothing hurts when He's watching. You should try it. You're so empty, Ashaf. So lonely."
Ashaf backed away, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He moved to the small, cracked mirror hanging above a washbasin. He needed to see his own face. He needed to remember he was still human.
But as he leaned in, the reflection didn't mimic him.
The Ashaf in the mirror was standing perfectly still, even as the real Ashaf leaned forward. The mirror-Ashaf was smiling—a wide, predatory grin that reached from ear to ear. His eyes weren't eyes; they were two black holes through which the stars of a dead galaxy were visible.
The reflection raised a finger to its lips. Shhh.
Then, it reached out and pressed its hand against the glass from the other side.
The glass didn't just crack. It wept. A thick, black ichor began to leak from the fissures, smelling of ancient soil and forgotten graves.
"The game is noticing its players," Kai's voice drifted from the shadows, devoid of all humor. "And it thinks you're the most interesting toy of all."
Ashaf looked down at his own hand. There was no blood. No mark. But he could feel it now—a cold, heavy weight behind his eyes, as if something massive and unseen had just sat down inside his skull.
"We leave at dawn," Ashaf whispered to the weeping mirror.
Outside, a hundred featherless crows began to scream in unison. It sounded like laughter.