The sky was heavy, and the stench of smoke clung to the frozen pines. Black plumes rose from the charred, half-collapsed manor hidden among the towering, snow-laden trees. Burned corpses lay scattered everywhere. In each chest, a wooden stake tipped with silver had been driven deep. A section of the manor's stone walls crumbled, stirring a cloud of ash and soot into the air.
The attackers had long since abandoned the cursed estate. The harsh cawing of crows filled the gray, smoke-choked skies. Small fires flickered here and there, devouring what little remained. In the courtyard, the naked bodies of a man and woman had been nailed to crosses. Their flesh bore burns, brands, and the torn welts of a bladed whip.
Their chests had been ripped open—hearts torn away. Their severed heads lay on the ground, hair blackened with dirt and ash. A crow perched upon the woman's face, stabbing its beak into her eye. With a sickening pop, it pulled the eyeball from its socket. More crows gathered, circling warily in the twilight, tearing into what was left of the two corpses.
The savage cawing roused a pair of small, glowing eyes from the shadows. Crimson eyes, trembling with fear. A boy crept out from a hidden crevice in the stone wall of an old well. Water glistened just beneath his refuge, rising almost to its edge. He peered upward, his trembling voice calling for his mother and father—but no answer came, only the cruel chorus of crows.
His clothes were soaked and caked with mud. Shivering from both fear and the northern cold, he reached for the dangling rope and began to climb. Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself up. His long, tangled black hair clung to his pale face. At last, the frail boy's wounded hands grasped the rough stones at the rim of the well, and he dragged himself over the edge.
He collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath. His soaked white shirt was stained gray with ash. His crimson eyes widened, bulging as they fell upon the bodies of his kin. His irises quivered, unfocused. His lips trembled, opening and closing, spilling only hoarse whispers with no sound.
Staggering upright on thin, shaking legs, he stumbled forward. His brown shorts clung to his narrow frame, his long white socks blotched with dirt and grime. He swayed, the world splitting before him into only two colors: blackened gray, like the ashes of his stolen life, and crimson, like the blood that drenched the earth.
His knees buckled, scraping the ground. A puff of ash rose around him as the crows flapped away, only to settle again upon the corpses. He bit his lower lip until blood trickled down his chin, staining the small mole beneath. The sound of his ragged sniffles echoed through the ruins.
The boy could not close his eyes. His parents' severed heads, their lifeless gazes locked upon him, forced him to endure the nightmare. Droplets of blood dripped from his chin, vanishing beneath the ash—buried alongside the seed of vengeance.
And then, with no warning, a scream tore from his throat—raw, inhuman, filled with agony. The crows shrieked and burst into the air, scattering into the smoke-filled twilight above the pine forest. Their cries carried an omen of a grim and
blood-soaked future...