Morning broke heavy over the village, as though the storm itself had crawled into their bones.
Varo's body had not yet cooled before his absence was louder than any bell. The dogs whined by his door, unwilling to leave, their muzzles wet with confusion. Coins still sat in their neat heap on his table, mocking the greed that had gathered them. And in his hand, stiff and pale, the faded ribbon.
By dawn, every voice in the square bent itself into story.
"His blood was gone," someone whispered.
"Pale as snow, with no wound but the throat," another insisted.
"No man could do such a thing. It was a beast."
"No," said a trembling woman. "It was a curse. The devil himself walks among us."
Fear grew legs. It walked the alleys. It sat at tables. It passed from lip to lip until it became scripture.
Akuma stood among them.
He was only a traveler in their eyes—pale with fever, wrapped in borrowed cloth, face solemn as a mourner's. He had scrubbed the blood from his hands, and though the hunger in his veins pulsed louder than their voices, not one of them looked at him with suspicion. He had learned quickly: keep the shoulders bowed, the eyes lowered, the mouth soft, and they would not see the wolf.
They looked at him and saw themselves. That was enough.
But Mira looked differently.
She stood near her mother's door, braid undone, hair dark with mist. Her eyes followed him—not with fear, but with thought. She was too young to know silence as safety, too clever to mistake coincidence for chance. Where the others saw a stranger, she saw something that did not fit.
Their gazes touched across the square. Akuma turned away first.
The chapel bell tolled midday, and Brother Elias stood before the frightened crowd. His voice cracked, but he made it iron anyway.
"Back to your homes," he commanded. "Back to your work. Fear fattens shadows—do not feed them. Pray. Watch. But do not give your terror a crown."
The villagers obeyed, but their eyes darted. Their hands twitched toward charms, salt, iron, and old prayers. Akuma watched them scatter and thought: They are already sheep without a shepherd. Wolves are not their worst enemy. They will devour themselves.
The thought lingered, strange and sour. For the first time, he wondered whether hunger was the only truth he carried.
That night, the storm returned. The tavern filled with smoke, firelight, and frightened voices. Akuma sat in a corner, cloaked by shadow, listening as the villagers tried to name the thing that stalked them.
One man swore he had seen red eyes at the treeline. Another spoke of wings, vast and leathery, darkening the moon. A woman wept, claiming she dreamed of teeth that stretched across the sky.
Every story contradicted the next. None of them touched the truth. But together they formed something more powerful than truth: legend.
"The devil walks in man's skin," someone whispered. The words froze the tavern.
Akuma's lips curved in shadow. Already they had given him a shape greater than his own. Already they were worshiping with fear. He did not need to bare his teeth; their own imaginations would carve them sharper than he ever could.
When the tavern emptied and rain thinned to mist, Mira found him waiting beneath the eaves.
"You don't drink," she said. Her voice was calm, sharper than the storm's wind.
"No."
"You don't eat, either. Elias gave you bread. You only chewed it."
He said nothing.
"The dogs don't bark at you," she pressed. "They hide."
The air thickened between them. For a moment Akuma saw what the future might be: her scream, the rush of villagers, torches blazing, pitchforks shaking. He could slaughter them, silence her, burn the square red.
But she did not scream. Her eyes did not hold superstition—only curiosity, a hunger of her own.
"What are you?" she whispered.
Akuma studied her. She was the first to ask, the first to stare into the wool and see the shape beneath. He could kill her. He could terrify her into silence. Or he could let her carry the seed of truth.
He leaned close, so his voice was almost the storm's breath in her ear.
"I am the first."
Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth, but no sound left. He stepped past her into the night, leaving her with a truth too sharp to hold.
In the chapel, Brother Elias knelt before the altar. His prayers stumbled. He could feel the shadow that lingered in the village, not beast nor bandit, not witch nor curse. Something older. Something that walked like a man and breathed like hunger.
He lifted his eyes to the painted Madonna, whose flaking robe stared back in silence.
"Lord," he whispered, "what do I do when the devil does not knock but sits at my table as a guest?"
The Madonna gave no answer.
But outside, the rain whispered a name that would not be forgotten.
Akuma.
The first to bleed.
The wolf in wool.
The hunger that learned to smile.