The steady, relentless roar of the rain against the roof fills the small room.
Nobody moves.
The weight of the girl's words lingers in the air, thick and suffocating, until Leonard pushes his stool back. The wood scrapes loudly against the floor.
"The boy saw something in the trees,"
Leonard says, his voice low as he fixes his gaze on the dark window.
"Everything went wrong after that. Whatever is doing this, it's probably out there in the woods." He turns to Henry, his expression hardening into the stern mask of a commander.
"You stay here. Watch the perimeter and protect Lady Elsbeth and Grace. I'm heading out to find a trail."
Henry shifts his weight, his hand falling automatically to the grip of his sword. "Just be careful, sir. We don't know what's waiting out there."
Leonard nods once, pulls his cloak over his shoulders, and steps out into the grey downpour.
The door clicks shut behind him.
The air in the empty street carries a strange, greasy chill that has nothing to do with the mountain wind.
Rain lashes Leonard's face as he walks, his boots churning the thick mud.
His mind works through the details of the diary.
The girl who wrote those pages never mentioned hearing the voices herself—only her brother did. Why??
How did she manage to keep her mind intact long enough to reach the end? And if the blood means she took her own life from the sheer terror, where is her body?
A grim realization settles in his chest.
Whatever it is it didn't just hunt them for meat.
It watched her. It enjoyed the spectacle of her mind fracturing day by day until she broke herself.
We are dealing with something cruel, patient, and thoroughly cunning.
Lost in the dark spiral of his thoughts, Leonard's shoulder violently strikes a thick, rough trunk.
He blinks away the water streaming into his eyes and looks up. Without realizing it, his feet have carried him straight into the birthplace of the town's nightmare.
The pressure in the air shifts, heavy enough to make his ears pop. Leonard scoffs under his breath, drawing his steel with a sharp ring. "The woods it is, then."
He forces his way into the thicket. The branches are dense, interlocking like rib bones above his head, shutting out what little daytime gray remains in the sky.
He slashes through heavy briars and rotting vines, stepping over slick moss and exposed roots, pushing deeper into the gloom.
But the layout of the forest makes no sense. The paths seem to shift behind his back.
He quickens his pace, breaking into a heavy jog, cutting down every obstacle in his path with wide, desperate arcs of his blade.
He hacks through thorn bushes until his shoulders burn. Minutes pass.
Then more.
The rain never stops. Leonard bursts through another wall of undergrowth—and freezes.
The scarred pine tree stands before him.
The same tree.
The same wound in the bark. The same patch of exposed roots.
He hasn't gone anywhere.
The forest hasn't moved an inch. He is trapped in a perfect, suffocating loop. Leonard lowers his sword, the tip dragging in the wet dirt, and sinks his back against the bark.
"So there's no way out by foot either," he mutters to the empty trees.
As if on cue, a sharp, hollow ache twists in his stomach. He presses a hand against his ribs, a dark grin touching his lips.
"Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Starving to death in a cage."
Back in the house, the stillness is absolute.
Henry sits on a low crate near the front entrance, his eyes fixed on the rain streaming down the door frame.
Across the room, Grace checks the cupboards, sliding her fingers along the dusty shelves, looking for anything—a tool, a hidden latch, an old iron key—that might offer an advantage.
On bed in the corner, Elsbeth sits perfectly still.
She lifts the black book from her lap and presses her cheek against the cold, dark leather binding.
She closes her eyes, holding her breath, blocking out the sound of the storm outside.
Thump... thump... thump.
It is incredibly faint, barely more than a vibration, but it is there. A distinct, rhythmic pulse beneath the cover.
"Mercy," she whispers, her voice a fragile breath against the page. "You're still there, aren't you? Please... I hope you're not suffering because of me."
Henry rises from his crate. He walks over to the window, peering through the cracked glass into the gray fog.
"Sir Leonard has been gone too long. The sun is going to start dipping in a few hours."
Grace stops her searching and turns around, wiping a layer of grey dust from her palms. "He knows how to survive, Henry. He will not do anything reckless.
Right now, our immediate problem is the rations. We need to scavenge whatever we can find from the houses before darkness sets in."
"Everything we saw in the kitchens earlier was rotted through," Henry says, shaking his head. "It's all mold and maggots my lady."
"You checked the main floors," Grace counters, her voice shifting into a practical, commanding tone. "You didn't look in the cellars right?. The cold ground might have preserved some dried goods or salted meat."
Henry hesitates, looking back at the door. "Sir Leonard told me to stand guard right here. I shouldn't leave you two alone."
"According to what's written in the diary nothing happens during the day," Grace says, stepping closer.
"The townspeople only disappeared after dark. We have a few hours of light left, and we can't afford to starve. Go check the cellars. I'll stay with the Princess and clear out the storage beneath this floor."
Henry looks at Elsbeth, then back to Grace. He lets out a sharp breath. "Fine. But bolt the door the second I step out. If you hear anything—anything at all—you scream."
Grace nods tightly. Henry pulls his cloak tight, slips out into the downpour, and the heavy iron bolt slides into place behind him with a dull thud.
Grace turns toward the corner of the room. "Your Highness? Do you want to help me look down here? It's better than sitting here."
Elsbeth pulls her coat tighter around her shoulders, tucks the black book securely under her arm, and takes Grace's outstretched hand.
Together, they approach the heavy wooden trapdoor in the corner of the kitchen floor.
Grace tugs the iron ring, and the door groans open, revealing a steep set of stone steps leading into the darkness below.
The temperature drops instantly. The air rising from the depths carries a heavy, damp chill, but as they descend the first three steps, a different sensation hits them.
It is a thick, oily stench—the unmistakable, smell of rotting meat, old and heavy.
Elsbeth doubles over, a violent cough tearing through her throat. She gasps for air, her face turning pale as the odor fills her lungs.
"Get back up," Grace says, her voice turning sharp as she pushes Elsbeth back toward the door. "Get into the fresh air Your Highness."
They scramble back into the kitchen, Elsbeth leaning against the table, drawing in deep breaths of the damp room air. "I'm sorry," the princess murmurs, her eyes watering from the irritation. "It's... it's like iron and rot."
"I should be the one apologizing. I didn't realize the drainage down there would be so foul,"
Grace says. She coaxes Elsbeth back to the bed. "Stay here. I'm going to see what's causing that smell."
Grace pulls a linen handkerchief from her pouch, tying it tightly over her nose and mouth.
She takes the single iron lantern from the kitchen wall, tests the flame, and steps back down into the dark cellar alone.
The amber light sways, casting long, dancing shadows against the rough stone walls.
The stench is even worse now, thick enough to taste through the fabric of her mask.
She forces her feet forward. In the center of the cellar, several rusted iron hooks hang from the low ceiling beams.
Strips of dried, salted fish dangle from the metal—perfectly preserved, untouched by mold.
If the food is perfect fine here, Grace thinks, her brow furrowing, then what is that smell?
She shifts the lantern to the far corner of the room, where the shadows are thickest.
The light catches something small on the dirt floor. A little girl's leather shoe, stiffened and darkened with dried fluid.
Grace takes three slow steps forward, lowering the lantern.
The light illuminates a small, a ribcage resting against the stone foundation. It is a child's skeleton
The ribs are still there.
The arms.
The skull.
Not broken.
Not scattered.
Eaten.
The entire lower half of the remains is completely missing—the bone sheared through by something with terrifying jaw strength.
Grace's fingers lose their grip. The iron lantern strikes the stone floor with a sharp, metallic clang, the flame sputtering but remaining lit.
She freezes in place, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps through the linen cloth, her eyes locked on the skull.
"Grace?" Elsbeth's voice echoes down the stone stairwell, muffled by the distance. "A-are you alright down there...?"
The sound of the princess's voice breaks the paralysis.
Grace forces her limbs to move, lunging forward to snatch the lantern from the ground.
She sprints back to the stairs, her boots skidding on the damp stone, and meets Elsbeth just as the princess reaches the third step down.
Grace catches her by the shoulders, her grip tight enough to bruise. "You can't go down there, Your Highness. We're going back up right now."
Elsbeth looks past Grace's shoulder into the darkness, her nose wrinkling at the stench. "W-what happened?"
Grace swallows the lump of bile in her throat, forcing her voice into a flat, steady lie.
"A dead animal. A large forest badger must have crawled down here through a gap in the stone to die. It's completely decomposed.
We'll wait for Leonard and Henry to clear it out."
Elsbeth looks at her for a long moment, noting the slight tremor in Grace's hands, but she nods silently and climbs back into the kitchen, returning to the bed.
Grace walks straight to the front door, sliding the bolt back with a loud clatter.
She steps onto the covered porch, her chest heaving as she pulls the damp air into her lungs.
Through the veil of gray rain, she spots a dark silhouette emerging from the treeline at the edge of the square.
It's Leonard, his cloak drenched, his sword back in its sheath.
"Leonard!" Grace calls out, her voice sharp with an urgency she can no longer hide.
"Hurry! Come here!"
Leonard hears the shout and breaks into a heavy run, his boots kicking up sheets of muddy water as he crosses the road.
He bounds onto the porch, his eyes noticing her trembling. "What happened? Where the hell is Henry? I told him to stay on guard."
Grace steps closer to him, keeping her back to the window so her voice won't carry inside the house where Elsbeth is waiting.
"I sent him to check the other cellars for food," she says, her voice dropping into a tense whisper.
She crosses her arms over her chest, her fingers digging into her dress to stop the shaking. "But that doesn't matter right now. I went down into the cellar of this house, Leonard."
Leonard wipes the rain from his eyes, his gaze narrowing. "What did you find?"
"There's a skeleton down there," Grace says, her voice cold and flat. "A child's remains.
The walls are painted in old blood, and the entire lower half of the body has been bitten clean off."
She looks up at leonard, the dread finally breaking through her composure. "I think it's the girl who wrote the diary. Grace swallows She never left the house leonard..."