Kliwon couldn't move.
He had awoken in the guest house, the crow carving pressed to his chest, the carved message *"Night falls. Prepare the fire."* still etched into the floorboards—but something held him down.
Not ropes.
Not hands.
Something older than restraint.
Memory.
His own mind had turned against him, pulling him downward into a darkness that was not sleep, not trance, but a place in-between. A slit in time, just wide enough for him to fall through.
He saw his own body lying on the floor.
Then he sank.
---
There was no light.
There was no sound.
But there was smell.
Smoke. Blood. Burnt feathers. Wet earth.
Then, light returned—but not from the sun.
From fire.
He stood, barefoot, in the center of an enormous circular clearing. Trees ringed the perimeter, blackened and leafless, their branches twisted upward like grasping fingers. In the center, a massive altar stood, made of stone and bone, surrounded by torches that did not flicker, though no wind stirred.
And all around him—**people**.
Hundreds. Perhaps thousands.
But none with faces.
Each wore a carved mask—some shaped like crows, others like beaks, others blank as egg shells. Their bodies were clothed in white robes stained with soot and blood. They moved without sound, circling the altar in slow rhythm, their hands outstretched, palms dripping something dark.
A ritual had already begun.
Kliwon tried to speak, to cry out, but his throat was filled with ash. He turned and saw behind him—a long path of scorched earth.
And at its beginning, his **mother**, holding him as a child.
She did not speak. She did not cry.
She only whispered something to the infant in her arms:
> "If they burn your soul, you belong to them.
> If you scream, they will bind you.
> But if you sleep, you might wake free."
Suddenly, her body convulsed.
She screamed.
Flames erupted around her.
The masked figures turned.
But the infant in her arms—**he**—did not cry.
Kliwon watched himself stare silently as the fire took her.
He fell to his knees. "I didn't know\... I didn't remember…"
The masked procession parted.
The altar grew brighter.
And from it descended **the Watcher**.
Not walking. Not flying.
Falling.
A figure wrapped in wings, its face a void behind a cage of crow bones, its voice no longer a whisper but a command inside his skull.
> "Blood betrayed is blood bound."
The Watcher lifted its hand. From the altar, a long iron skewer rose—charred black, glowing faintly at the tip.
> "The first feast was interrupted.
> The second must not be.
> You were spared.
> You must repay."
Kliwon backed away. "I won't. I won't feed you. I'm not part of this."
The masked crowd spoke in one voice, not a chant, but a sentence older than the trees:
> **"Then we will feed on your dreams. Until only the hunger remains."**
The sky cracked.
Feathers rained down like ash.
And from the trees came **figures**—half-formed, their bodies made of smoke and twisted limbs, their faces nothing but stretched mouths.
Every one of them looked like **him**.
Screaming versions of himself—burned, drowned, eaten, hanged—different deaths, all Kliwon.
The Watcher spread its wings.
And the fire began to consume the earth again.
---
He awoke with a scream.
Back in the guest house. The carving now gone.
Outside, night had truly fallen.
But not the soft, blue-black of a normal village dusk.
The sky was red.
Not a sunset—but a wound.
The villagers had gathered. Silent. Holding torches.
Waiting.
Not for a signal.
But for **him**.
They stood in rows, forming a path from the guest house to the tree with the altar.
And at the end of that path—stood the **Watcher**.
No longer in vision.
No longer just in dreams.
Its wings were real.
Its face covered in the same crow-bone mask.
Its hand raised, pointing to him.
Not to kill.
Not to drag.
But to **welcome**.
Because the ritual had never ended.
It had only waited for him to remember.
And now—
**He had.**