The sound woke me before the sun did.
A cry---sharp, ragged---cutting through the fog like a blade. For a heartbeat I thought I was dreaming, but then it came again, nearer, raw with pain.
I was already on my feet, half-running down the lane before I could think. Other doors opened, neighbors spilling out, drawn the same way. Feet against stone, whispers darting between us like sparks.
We gathered in the square. At the center, a boy lay thrashing against the ground, his mother bent over him, arms wrapped too tightly around his shoulders as if she could hold him still through strength alone.
It was the blacksmith's son. I remembered him as a sturdy child, always chasing after his father's hammer. He looked nothing like that now. His skin was pale, his eyes wide with terror.
He clutched at his arm, at something I couldn't see clearly. A patch of skin beneath his sleeve---hidden, but wrong. His voice cracked as he sobbed, "It's moving---stop it---make it stop---"
The words turned my stomach cold.
Two men tried to hold him down, but he twisted against them, teeth clenched against screams. The crowd murmured in dread, and I saw faces turn away, unable to watch.
And then I heard it. A whisper, thin and carried from one villager to another, until the name reached me too:
"Collector."
I had heard it as a child. A story told to keep us inside at night. A figure who didn't kill but left marks---scars that never healed. I had laughed back then. Now, standing in the square, I couldn't laugh at all.
I felt someone beside me. When I turned, I saw him---the plain man. The same one from the day before. Ordinary in every way, yet somehow set apart from the crowd by his stillness.
"Best not to stare too long," he murmured, almost kindly. "It has a way of following you."
My breath caught. I wanted to ask what he meant, but a shift in the crowd pressed against my shoulder, and when I looked again, he was gone.
The boy's sobs echoed long after the square began to clear. And I felt it then---as if something unseen had opened its eyes, and would not close them again.