My steps do not slow.
He follows beside me, silent as shadow, as though the night itself has taken form and chosen to walk at my side.
We stop at the first house. I know the shape of its roof, the way the wood splits near the latch, the small mark near the threshold where something heavy must have fallen long ago.
I stand before it, and for a breath, I do not move. The silence deepens, pressing in around us before my hand lifts.
The latch yields easily beneath my fingers, the door opening with a low, familiar sound that I have heard a thousand times. Darkness waits inside, unbroken.
I step across, turn back.
He stands where I left him, just beyond the threshold, his figure held in the thin silver of the moonlight. Waiting.
His gaze rests on me, patient, unyielding, as though this moment belongs to me alone.
The space between us holds, and I feel it—the boundary. Thin. Unseen. Absolute.
"Come."
The word leaves me softly, but it does not waver. It opens. Something shifts, a smile unraveling on his face before he moves. One foot, then the other. He crosses, and the threshold does not resist him. The darkness deepens. The house exhales, and the night steps inside with him.
They are already awake.
Huddled in the far corner, pressed against the wall as though they might sink into it if they try hard enough, Petru clutches a torch in one shaking hand, the flame guttering with every uneven breath he takes. His wife crouches beside him, her fingers tangled in his sleeve, her lips moving too fast, prayers breaking over one another until they lose all shape.
"Stay back," Petru rasps, though his voice does not carry strength enough to command anything. The torch lifts higher, trembling in his grip. "In God’s name—"
Lucian turns his head slightly, searching for my gaze. I do not need to speak—inclining my head is all it takes.
The space between them closes in an instant. Petru cries out, thrusting the torch forward, the flame licking toward Lucian’s chest, toward his face.
It only makes him laugh, almost fond.
"Fire does not claim what has already passed beyond it," he murmurs.
The words ring like something final.
The torch falls to the ground as the old man's arm is caught, twisted with a force that does not strain. A sound follows, wrong in its essence—the crack of bone giving way beneath something far stronger than it was ever meant to withstand.
He screams, but it does not last long.
The body breaks beneath Lucian's hands as though it were no more than fragile wood, joints turning where they should not, limbs folding intoshapes that cannot hold life within them. Blood spills, spreads across the floor in widening pools that catch the failing light.
Petru’s voice dissolves into something unrecognizable before it stops altogether, his body collapsing in on itself, emptied of anything that once made it human.
His wife screams. She tries to crawl away, her hands slipping in what remains, her breath tearing from her in ragged bursts that cannot carry her far enough, fast enough.
Lucian turns to her, but I move before he can touch her.
"Wait."
He stills.
The woman freezes where she is, her eyes snapping to me, something wild and desperate flaring within them, grasping at the shape of mercy before it has even been offered.
"Please—" she begins.
I do not answer. My hands reach for the small sack near the hearth, my fingers closing around the coarse fabric, feeling the weight of it shift. Fine white powder spills as I tilt it, dusting over her hair, her shoulders, her face, making her flinch. When she finally understands, it's too late.
