From the journals of Severus Jäger
It began the morning after Father Benedikt claimed the mark.
He rang the chapel bell not for mass, but for warning. The sound echoed like a cracked cry through Steinbruck, its toll brittle and sharp, like bone against stone.
By then, everyone had heard the laugh.
Not one of joy, but something cracked and boiling, like molten iron poured into a throat. It wasn't Father's voice. It came from him, but it wasn't him. It poured through the cracks of the chapel windows, through the air, into the soil. Yuri heard it. The Sturm couple, deaf in one ear each, heard it. I heard it in my spine.
Then he told us.
"The mark has chosen me," he said, pale and stiff like a dying birch. "I must quarantine. There is danger, but not to you yet."
He asked for herbs, salt, and a bowl of lamb's blood.
Said he needed them for ritual protection.
No one questioned him. Not openly. But I saw the way the others looked at him as he packed into the old Sturm household the way you'd look at a dog that's started growling at its shadow. Fear and pity, confused.
But something scratched at me deeper.
The laughter hadn't come after the mark. It came with it. And Father Benedikt, he wasn't sick. No fever, no bleeding, no shaking, no convulsions. Just calm. Too calm.
Too clean.
That afternoon, I entered the pinewood east of the ridge. The snow there had thinned where the forest thickened. I carried my bow, though I wasn't hunting game. Just fruits, perhaps dried mushrooms, anything for the quarantine supplies.
But then I saw it.
A bulge beneath the roots of a frost-split cedar. Covered in moss, like a grave unremembered. I felt drawn to it for no reason, no sense, just a pull, like gravity.
I knelt, scraped away the moss. It fought me.
Beneath it: stone. Carved. Ancient.
Letters, worn but not broken, arced around a spiral symbol. A sigil. And words.
They read:
"Beneath the flesh of the priest lies the tongue of the false."
"He speaks with voices not his own."
"The God he serves does not forgive."
The stone pulsed warmth, like breath on my fingers.
I wrapped it in cloth and took it home.
By dusk, the fog rolled in. Thicker than I'd seen all season clinging to clothes, pooling at boots, muting the world to gray. I sharpened my axe more out of ritual than need. That's when Faenlin arrived.
Old mountaineer. Knows the slope like his own spine. Lost his brother in the northern pass last winter.
"I've seen things," he said.
So had I.
We didn't speak more. Just nodded. Then we walked. Toward the chapel and behind it—to Father's quarters.
The door was unlocked.
Inside, it smelled of juniper and burnt wax. Everything... normal. No sigils. No blood. No fever-stained linens. Just books, parchment, a small altar. And a lamp flickering against the frost-stained window.
"Nothing," I whispered.
But Faenlin motioned. A cabinet. Half-open.
Inside: a book.
Black leather. No title. Clasps of bone.
He opened it.
The pages crackled with age. Each one scrawled in Latin dense, ornate, almost bleeding through the parchment. But the pictures... those we could understand.
On one page: a priest in robes like Benedikt's.
Beside him, a tall shadow with twisted horns, yellow eyes, a tongue like a serpent's, and hands tipped with claws. The two figures stood before a pyre, where children burned faces drawn in such agony it hurt to look. Another page showed hearts being placed on an altar of stone, a spiral carved into it, just like the mossed-over stone I had found.
My mouth dried.
Then…. darkness.
The lamp went out. All light is gone. Not snuffed. Swallowed.
We did not move. Not even breath dared to stir.
Five seconds. Ten.
A minute.
Then, light. The lamp flickered back to life.
And he was standing there.
Father Benedikt.
Not angry. Not even surprised.
"Gentlemen," he said, tone warm, flat. "What is it you seek?"
Faenlin fumbled for words. "We…. we came for a book. For medicine. For the Sturms. Anneliese is burning with fever and there's no more firewood."
Father did not blink.
"Of course. You'll find the vial in the drawer by the bed. That one," he said, pointing.
He gave us the bottle, something thick and greenish. No label. Just the smell of iron and burnt thyme.
We left in silence.
But as we stepped outside, Faenlin whispered:
"That wasn't him. That wasn't Benedikt."
And I believed him.
Later on that night….
After I have placed the stone beneath my floorboards.
I hear it now. At night. Humming. Breathing.
The words on it sometimes change when I dream.
they read:
"You should not have looked."
I am afraid to sleep.
But I'm more afraid to look in the mirror.
What if I have the mark now?
Or worse... What if he never did?