A group of Purifiers walked over the ashes of what had been the perfume shop. Smoke still rose from the debris of the adjacent houses.
They swung their silver censers in a slow, steady rhythm. The thick smoke crept into every corner of the ground. In the backyard, the charred body of the small goat lay on its side.
One of the men crouched down. He took the animal by its hind legs and placed it on one of the carts loaded with remains. He straightened up, looking at the companion who swung the censer near his face.
"Let's go," he said, waving the smoke away with his hand. "What else is missing? You're just choking me with that stuff."
"No," the other replied, without stopping the swing. "I still feel a terrifying presence."
The first one snorted.
"The terrifying thing is watching you walk in circles."
The censer stopped abruptly. The metal clinked.
"Here. There's something here."
"You mean the manure from that little animal?"
"Stop bothering me. Give me a shovel."
He threw the tool at him. The man began to dig in the disturbed earth under the woodshed. The shovel went in several times until it hit something. He stopped.
"It feels soft," he murmured.
"Could it be a root?"
He removed some dark mass. A white fabric peeked out from the earth. A shirt. The two Purifiers looked at each other in silence. They set the shovel aside and began to clear the dirt with their hands.
One of them didn't wait. He grabbed the fabric and pulled hard, extracting the body.
"Damn it," said the first one, covering his nose. "How can you touch it? What a stench."
"Who could it be? The shop owner?"
"That would make our job easier to identify him," the other replied, wiping his hands on his pants. "Poor man. They must have sacrificed him."
They wrapped him in a coarse blanket and loaded him onto the cart.
Once the loading was finished, one of the men turned toward the closed houses of the neighborhood. No one was visible behind the glass, but the silence was heavy.
"Hey!" he shouted toward the facades. "We've finished cleaning. In a few days, you'll be able to go out normally again."
No one answered. Not a single curtain moved.
The Purifiers climbed onto the carts and set out on the journey out of the capital.
On the road, one of them let out a dry laugh. The driver looked at him, waiting.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Don't you find it exciting?"
"What?"
"This," he said, pointing at the bundles on the cart. "If all these deeds were really done by the same entity, then I was one of the few who saw this Lady Edyth from the beginning."
The driver frowned.
"What? How?"
"The leader of the Purifiers saw her entering Lord Profot's lands. But no one believed us. They called us crazy and imprisoned us. But no one's going to laugh now."
"It's still too serious to take as a joke," said the driver, looking at the road. "She killed a lot of people. Who knows how many of our own we don't know about who've fallen."
"Yes. The royal guard..."
The man looked at the cart floor. A crossbow rested by his feet.
"There's still a long way to go," he continued. "I just hope we can stop her."
He stroked the wooden bow. Since that day in the Tonal Kingdom, the silver arrow remained pending against its target.
Night caught up with them outside the city walls.
On a stretch of road, they veered off, entering the thick of the forest. Between the tree trunks, the light of many torches began to glow.
It was the rest of the group. They were formed in a wide circle in a clearing. The leader of the Purifiers stood in the center, leaning on his spear. He tilted his head upon seeing the carts arrive.
"I see you're bringing more than I expected," said the leader.
He turned to the other men who were waiting.
"Help them unload the things."
Together, they placed the objects in the center of the clearing. Letters, recovered documents, perfume bottles, the goat's carcass, and finally, the perfumer's body. They piled everything on top of a pyre of dry firewood, still unlit.
The leader took a torch. He looked up toward the treetops, staring at an empty point in the darkness.
"Boys," he said, and his voice traveled around the circle. "This day is special. Those who should be our allies, the King, the Church, the people... they always despised us. They called us fanatics. Stupid. Delusional."
The leader turned his head toward another section of the forest.
"When everyone was living their lives, we pursued the vestiges of evil hiding in the world. I always knew that when I was blessed with the power to see the beings of the underworld, I should use it to protect my friends. But even they turned their backs on me."
He looked at his men. The flames of the torches reflected in their eyes.
"Now the Kingdom trembles because of what was always there. It falls to us to put an end to evil, even if it costs us our lives."
The leader turned his back on the group. He fixed his gaze on the absolute darkness of the forest.
Everyone was confused. They stepped forward a few paces, illuminating the direction he was looking with their torches.
A sudden chill ran down their spines.
A black silhouette stood before them, a few meters away, right at the edge of the light.
Several men grasped the hilts of their sabers. Others raised their crossbows.
The figure began to walk toward the circle. Slowly.
"That's a charming speech."
The leader watched, puzzled. It wasn't the same voice. It wasn't the same appearance as the Lady Edyth he had seen in the carriage that time.
It was something more ethereal. Its eyes were red crystals that glowed with their own light. Though they formed a face, they felt floating, as if the figure itself wasn't truly occupying that space.
"Pity," said the figure, looking at Eugenio's remains. "If you hadn't interfered with my plan, I wouldn't have followed you."