The wind carried the smell of pine, cold soil, and blood as they emerged from the treeline five hunters, one chained man, and twelve small bodies wrapped in torn blankets darkened with death. No one spoke. No one dared. It felt sacrilegious to breathe too loudly.
Francisco walked with his head lowered, shoulders shaking with every step. Isa stayed close to him, her eyes swollen and red but dry now she had run out of tears somewhere between the ravine and the village gates. Matteo kept his gaze fixed on the ground, avoiding the blankets, avoiding the faces of the others. They had all tried to keep pace with Manuel, Bruno, and Ivan, but shame weighed heavier than exhaustion.
Theo's chains clinked softly with each motion. He stumbled more than he walked, dragged into town like a criminal through a silent warzone. His head hung forward, chin against his chest, his face pale and slack with unconsciousness. The mark on his hands, dark, twisted, branching like black veins seemed even more sinister under the moonlight.
A few steps ahead, Bruno's jaw clenched with such force that the muscles along his neck twitched. His daughter walked behind him. His fury barely contained. His grief blistering just beneath the surface.
He carried one small body over her shoulder. A girl maybe eight, maybe nine her curls sticking out from the cloth, one shoe missing. He didn't blink much anymore. He only lifted her head every time he heard a scream from far off, anywhere in the town, as if still expecting more to come.
A Coruña looked nothing like the place they had left hours ago. Smoke from overturned fire pits hung low over the cobblestones. A crowd swarmed the village square like a living beast shouting, pushing, crying, trembling. Someone must have seen them coming, because as soon as the first blanket-covered body appeared at the edge of the torchlight, a tidal wave of screams erupted.
Mothers surged forward, clawing for a glimpse. Fathers rushed with frantic eyes and broken voices. Some collapsed the moment they recognized a shoe, a strand of hair, a bruise, or a torn ribbon.
The hunters didn't have to announce anything. Grief spoke for them.
"Dios mío… Jesús no… no…"
"My baby, mi bebé!"
"Who did this? Who did this?!"
The shouting shifted one voice, then ten, then fifty.
"Él!"
"Theo!"
"That man, kill him!"
"Monster!"
"String him up before he wakes!"
Bruno didn't tell them to stop. He didn't raise a hand or a voice. In that moment, he didn't have to. Grief did the talking for him.
I stepped forward, hands raised, trying to push the crowd back.
"Atrás! Let us through
MOVE! We can't help anyone if you trample each other!"
The crowd didn't listen.
Fear had turned them into a mob.
It didn't help that news had already spread. Somehow through rumor, messengers, or terrified whispers running ahead of the hunters word of the massacre had reached every corner of town before they did. By the time the bodies arrived, the only thing the people wanted was a target.
A scapegoat.
A body to feed their rage.
And Theo, unconscious and marked, fit too perfectly.
A rock flew from the crowd, striking Theo's shoulder. His head lolled but he didn't wake. Another rock followed, then a metal cup, then spit.
"STOP!" Bruno finally barked, voice thunder crack.
But it wasn't mercy.
It was control.
"Not here. Not like this," he growled. "He dies when we say so."
Ivan's jaw tightened.
Isa closed her eyes.
I looked like a man being ripped in two.
Light from the torches flickered across the hunters' faces turning grief into ghosts and anger into demons.
And above all, A Coruña felt on the precipice of something worse than fear.
It felt ready to burn.
Inside the small infirmary on the edge of town, Ana sat between two beds Marie standing beside her, they had heard the news that the hunters had arrived…. Failed to be more accurate.
They didn't shift, not because they didn't care but because death and grief had already surrounded them in the infantry, why add more grief by seeing a dozen children dead.
But Maria wasn't ready to stay still,
"I have to communicate with the hunters, find out what information they had gotten" The words fell to deaf ears as Ana was guilt ridden and grief stricken, a gentle nod was passed to Maria.
Her face was pale and cold and her mind running with thoughts, would this be their future….
Fearful every time the sun set….
Knowing one day it would be her child who would be next on the monster's list.
It didn't help that on one bed, Jorge laid pale and bruised but breathing more easily.
On the other, Matteo slept curled into himself, exhausted, his face blotched red from the attack he survived.
The attack in which she had a killed a child.
Ana's hands pressed against her mouth.
Tears streamed down her cheeks though she tried to hide them.
Not grief—
But guilt.
Francisco entered into the infantry to witness his mother sobbing, grief stricken.
He tried to comfort her…..
Francisco knelt beside her, voice barely audible.
"Madre… madre, it wasn't your fault."
Ana shook her head violently.
"I swung the wood," she whispered. "I chose one child over another. Dios mío… what kind of mother does that make me?"
"The kind who saves people," Francisco said, almost begging her to believe him. "The kind who saved Matteo so I hear. The kind who…."
But his voice cracked.
He looked down, shoulders curling inward, ashamed.
"I should have sensed it sooner," he whispered. "The monster. Tomas. I led everyone into the woods. I put Jorge there. I…."
Ana pulled him into her arms before he could finish.
"My sweet boy," she whispered. "This is not on you. None of it is."
Her voice trembled, but her embrace was fierce.
A mother's love, even in war.
Hundreds of miles south, across the dusty stretches of post-war Spain, a man stood on a balcony overlooking a camp of restless soldiers. Letters scattered across his desk behind him, each reporting the same horror:
"Children slaughtered in A Coruña."
"Possession."
"An unknown force."
The general; tall, greying, face carved with years of conflict, read one sentence over and over:
"The hunters cannot control the town."
He tapped a gloved finger against the railing.
"So it has begun," he murmured.
A soldier approached behind him.
"General… orders?"
The man didn't turn.
"None yet."
A pause.
The wind shifted.
"Not until I know what hunts them."
He dismissed the soldier with a nod and returned to the letters, his eyes narrowing.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Back in A Coruña, the mob circled the hunters slowly, demanding answers the hunters did not have. The twelve small bodies laid in a straight row on the cold stone of the square like a line of fallen sparrows. The blankets were pulled back only enough for the parents to identify them no more. What lay beneath the cloth was not something even the strongest hunter wanted to remember.
Francisco stood among the chaos, numb. He could still hear the echo of their screams from the town hall, the ripping of flesh, the wet thud of bodies falling. The way the creature whatever it was had torn reality apart the moment it appeared in its true form. He had been useless. His senses had led them wrong, cost them time, cost children their lives.
He felt that guilt like a hook sunk deep into his ribs.
Isa stood beside him, trembling but trying not to show it. She had become frighteningly quiet…
quiet in the way grief sometimes made people calm enough to break.
When the crowd surged again, Bruno pushed into their path with a rage that bordered on feral.
"You get near my daughter, and I'll gut you before the monster does!" he barked at a man who had shoved Isa aside in his desperation to see the bodies.
Francisco moved Isa behind him instantly. His protective reflex caught Bruno's eye.
For the first time in hours, Bruno softened, just a fraction.
"Good," he muttered hoarsely. "At least someone is thinking."
But just as quickly, his gaze found Theo again, and whatever softness had been there evaporated.
"Put him in a cell," Ivan said quietly. "And lock it from the outside."
"Lock it?" Bruno spat. "We should tear him apart!"
"We don't know anything yet…" Maria began.
"We know enough!...
You weren't there Maria, he stood over their bodies" Bruno snapped. "Twelve dead children aren't enough! What more do you need, María? A thirteenth? My daughter?!"
" Don't you get it, he…. No, it won't stop until he wipes out our offspring from this world, I'm trying to protect the children…..
My child, something you can't understand because you don't have a family to protect"
Maria's jaw clenched and her gaze flickered downward. The pain in her eyes wasn't visible often, but when it surfaced, it was raw.
"I lost my entire family in the war," she said softly. "Everything. Every last one. But that doesn't mean we kill blindly."
Bruno's face stiffened.
"Good argument."
"But I still have a family to protect," he growled. "You don't."
Ivan stepped between them before the words could scar deeper.
"Enough," he said, voice low but firm. "This isn't helping."
But the truth was unavoidable:
The hunting squad was fracturing.
A Coruña was fracturing.
One spark away from bloodshed.
And Theo slept through it all, chained, limp, and silent.
Not dead.
Not awake.
Not innocent.
Not proven guilty.
Just there.
A question no one could answer.
A threat no one could measure.
A reason for the town to tear itself apart.
I stared at the chaos and felt something inside them bend, bend toward breaking, bend toward surrender, bend toward action they didn't want to take, not really….
They didn't want a war, not after the one they survived but fear had overcome every sense.
They didn't know which side was right.
They didn't know which choice would save the town.
They didn't know whether killing Theo would stop anything… or doom them all.
All they knew was that they wished the man would just…..
Wake up.
Because silence had become the most dangerous thing in A Coruña.
And Theo's silence was deafening.
I noticed Francisco and Isa heading towards Theo's cell, it seemed they wanted answers.
I followed them because they alone seemed grounded, not consumed by anger or guilt, not yet at least.
They seemed just… determined to get answers.
I lowered my voice.
"You two seem to be the only ones thinking clearly, not shouting at each other looking for who to blame for your own fears."
I asked Francisco, knowing he was the only one who could sense the creature.
"Even if you doubt yourself now… tell me honestly. When you look at Theo, do you feel anything?"
Francisco hesitated.
Isa put a steadying hand on his arm small, instinctive, intimate.
He didn't pull away.
He exhaled shakily.
"When I look at him…"
He swallowed.
"It feels like standing near the edge of a cliff. There's… darkness. Not in him. Around him, I think.
Like something's watching him. Or using him. I don't know how to explain it. But it's there."
I felt the air shift around us.
Isa's fingers tightened on Francisco's sleeve.
Then….
A sound vibrated through the floorboards:
Clink.
We froze.
Clink.
Drag.
Clink.
Chains.
Coming from his cell.
Theo.
Francisco's breath hitched.
"He's waking…" he whispered.
A whisper from ahead,
"…Manuel."
It was groggy, confused.
My heart slammed against my ribs, It was him, It was ....
Theo …..
He was finally awake.