A silence heavy with horror fell over the room.
The sound made us all jump. A single, slow scraping. Like a claw testing the consistency of the wooden beams in the ceiling.
We froze, our hearts stopping mid-beat. More silence. Then, again and again and again. Slow, like when the hunter plays with its prey and savors every moment before sinking its claws into the poor victim's flesh.
Guillaume's terrified little eyes slowly rose toward the dark ceiling.
"It's on the roof!" he hissed, his voice barely a whisper of terror. "It heard us!"
We couldn't just stay there, waiting. Angelica had said to use our brains, not our instincts. But sometimes, instinct is all you've got. And mine was screaming at me to do the one thing I'd been forbidden to do.
"Cover me!" I yelled at Margot. Without waiting for an answer, I pulled the small leather pouch from my pocket and extracted the medallion.
The heat was instant, a familiar, earthly wave spreading through my hand. But this time it was a different sensation. It was like opening your eyes in a dark room and discovering you could see air currents. I could sense Guillaume's panic, a gray, trembling aura. I felt Margot's cold anger, her reddish aura taut and sharp. And outside, above us, I sensed... a void. An absence of warmth, an aura of obsession as cold as the feather we'd found.
"What... what are you doing?" Margot asked, seeing the faint green light pulsing from my fist.
"Listening," I replied. "It's not trying to get in. It's... waiting. It's looking for something." My gaze settled on Guillaume. "It's you, isn't it?"
The blacksmith stared at me, eyes wide. "What? No! I didn't..."
"The singer. The carpenter. The carver," I pressed, the perception given to me by the medallion transforming into a terrible certainty. "There's a piece missing, Guillaume. The iron is missing." I fixed my eyes on him. "You honored the Count too, didn't you?"
He crumbled. Fear won over secrecy. "A cross," he gasped, his face in his hands. "I forged an iron cross for his tomb. My finest work. But no one was supposed to know..."
"He knows," Margot said, gripping one of her stilettos. "And he's here for another piece of the collection."
The scratching stopped. In its place, a dull thud against the main door. And then another, louder. It was trying to break it down.
"The cellar!" Guillaume shouted, jumping to his feet. "There's an old ash chute. It leads to the river!"
We rushed down through a creaking trapdoor into a damp cellar that reeked of earth and spoiled wine. The pounding on the door above grew louder, more furious. The cellar was the dead heart of his old forge, a place abandoned to disuse. Against a soot-blackened wall rested a stone furnace, long cold. Nearby, the large leather bellows was torn and deflated, dead lungs that would never breathe life into fire again. It was right beneath those bellows that the ash disposal chute began, a blackened opening in the stone wall sealed by a rusted grate.
"It's stuck!" Margot gasped, pulling hard on the corroded bars. "It won't budge!"
The pounding above intensified, followed by the unmistakable sound of splintering wood. A boom. The forge door had given way. We heard a heavy thud on the floor above. Then, a chilling silence.
Guillaume was paralyzed, eyes fixed on the trapdoor we'd descended from, his face a mask of pure terror. He knew what was coming.
"Help me!" Margot yelled at me. I lunged toward her, and together we pried at the grate. The metal protested with a shrill groan, but didn't give.
Then, from the open trapdoor, a shadow began pouring into the cellar. It flowed down, a trickle of liquid darkness that pooled on the floor. It was black smoke, an enveloping darkness, a nightmare taking shape. As it rose, revealing its tall, unnatural figure, its empty eyes fixed not on us, but on Guillaume.
The blacksmith made a strangled sound, something between a sob and a prayer. He backed away, stumbling into a pile of old tools.
In that instant, with one last desperate yank, the grate gave way.
"Guillaume, let's go!" I shouted, pointing at the dark opening.
But it was too late. The Crow Man was upon him. It didn't spare us a glance. Its attention was all for its prey. I saw an appendage like a wing, sharp as obsidian, strike toward the blacksmith.
Without thinking, Margot threw herself sideways, placing herself between the creature and the terrified giant. The shadow claw hit her shoulder with a sharp crack that sent her sprawling to the ground with a cry of pain.
The creature turned toward her, irritated by the interruption. And it was the opening we needed.
"Now!" I yelled, grabbing Guillaume by the arm and pushing him hard toward the chute. "Get out!"
My shout only partially roused him. Guillaume staggered toward the chute, but his movements were slow, sluggish with terror. He was a strong man used to dominating iron, not fleeing from nightmares made of smoke.
Margot, despite her wound, had already gotten back up. With a growl that was more wounded beast than girl, she hurled herself at the Crow Man, her stilettos flashing in the gloom.
The clash was surreal. Her blades sank into the dark figure without finding resistance, passing through it like knives plunged into smoke. But it wasn't a ghost. When the creature counterattacked, its shadow wings materialized, becoming solid appendages as sharp as obsidian. Margot parried desperately, but each blow drove her back, leaving her with bruises and shallow cuts. It was like fighting a nightmare that could choose when to be real.
"Get out of here!" she yelled at me, barely dodging a slash that would have taken her head off.
I tried to push Guillaume into the chute, but it was too late. His will had broken. He collapsed to the ground, a giant reduced to a terrified child, too heavy and paralyzed by fear to be moved.
"Guillaume, get up!" I shouted, pulling at his tunic, but it was like trying to move a mountain.
I heard a sharp scream. I turned. With one last lightning thrust, the Crow Man had struck Margot's leg. She looked down, an expression of incredulous horror on her face. A single, rigid black feather was embedded in her thigh, deep. She screamed again, this time a cry of pure agony, and collapsed to the ground.
The monster ignored her, its secondary prize now out of commission. It turned and threw itself at the blacksmith. Its arrival was a shockwave of cold and despair that knocked me backward.
We had no chance left. It was over.
"Victor, go!" Margot shouted from the floor, dragging herself painfully toward the chute. "Leave him! We have to go!"
I looked at Guillaume, huddled on the ground as the shadow enveloped him. I looked at Margot, wounded and desperate. My heart was a hammer against my ribs. Run. Leave him behind. Instinct and guilt were tearing me apart.
"Protect her."
The promise I'd made to my brother. Angelica's voice. I did the only thing I could. I placed a hand on the ground, gripping the medallion.
"GROW!" I screamed.
A glow faintly lit the room with green reflections. A wall of black, twisted thorns, thick as my arm and covered with razor-like spines, erupted from the ground between us and the creature. It wasn't a barrier of life; it was a cage of pain, an interwoven wall of pure despair.
The Crow Man was wrapped around Guillaume, but the thorn wall forced it to stop, giving us one last, precious moment.
"Margot, now!"
I reached her, grabbed her, and we dove together into the darkness of the chute.
The escape was a nightmare of mud and darkness. Behind us, I heard the Crow Man throw itself at the blacksmith. A scream of desperate, unnatural rage. And then, silence.
We didn't stop. We crawled out of the chute, emerging not on the open bank but near a small stream flowing placidly in the darkness of the forest. The air was freezing, heavy with the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves.
"My leg..." Margot gasped, trying to stand. She immediately collapsed to the ground, her face twisted in a grimace of pain. The black feather was still embedded in her thigh, a horrible unnatural thorn. "I... I can't put weight on it."
I bent down and pulled her up, putting her arm around my shoulders. I felt her weight as if I were trying to lift the world. My head was spinning, my vision blurring at the edges. The energy I'd summoned to create that thorn wall hadn't come from nowhere. It had taken it from me.
"Victor? Can you see?" Margot asked, her voice tight with pain and worry. "You're staggering."
"I'm fine," I lied, blinking to try to focus. "We have to move. It'll follow us."
We began limping through the undergrowth, a single, desperate three-legged creature. The forest at night wasn't just dark; it was alive and hostile. Every twisted root seemed like a snake ready to trip us. Every low branch a claw scratching our faces. The rustle of leaves in the wind sounded like our enemies' whispers, and the distant call of an owl made us jump.
"Faster, Victor..." Margot urged me, even though every step was agony for her.
"I'm trying," I gasped. The world was swaying. I saw two trees where there was one, two blurred moons in the cloudy sky.
After what seemed like an eternity, we collapsed. I tripped over a root I hadn't seen and we both fell in an awkward heap of damp leaves and pain. We lay there, panting, covered in mud and terror, hidden at the base of an old oak.
Margot pressed her hands against her wounded leg, dark blood staining her pants. I struggled to breathe, each gulp of air like fire in my exhausted lungs.
"We... we're not going to make it," I stammered, my vision darkening.
Margot pressed a hand to her leg, blood filtering between her fingers.
"We... we couldn't do anything!" she stammered.
I didn't answer. The guilt was an icy vise on my chest. We'd left him behind.
With trembling hands, I pulled out the medallion again. "Stop," she told me.
I took her hand and pressed the cold metal against her wound. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the warmth of the earth, on the flow of life. I felt the power respond, a gentle warmth flowing from me to her.
But I also felt the price. The moss near us yellowed. A small spider weaving its web stopped moving.
When I opened my eyes, the bleeding had stopped. Under my hand, Margot's wound was closing, healing. But we were alone. Wounded. And in the distance, from the direction of the forge, no sound came. Only an unnatural silence, the silence of a completed collection.
I slumped backward, breath short, every muscle protesting. The price of my power had come to collect its debt. The darkness at the edges of my vision was closing in, swallowing everything.
"Victor!" Margot's voice was a tense, alarmed hiss.
In that moment, a dry rustle broke the forest's silence. It came from the trees, a few steps from us. It was the sound of something moving, something heavy.
It had followed us.
Margot was already on her feet, stiletto gripped in her fist, her body taut as a bowstring. She positioned herself between me and the sound.
"Who's there?" she shouted, her voice barely trembling.
I tried to get up, to stand at her side, but my legs wouldn't hold me. I fell to my knees again, my head spinning violently. The forest around me was a confused blur of dancing shadows.
Another shadow detached itself from the trees, low and squat.
"Victor, run..." I heard Margot say, her voice suddenly choked.
Then she lunged forward, a desperate battle cry that was lost in the darkness.
The last thing I saw before the world vanished completely was her silhouette clashing with that shadow. Then, only darkness.