Silence had returned to the town of Happy, but it was no longer the silence of anticipation.
It was the heavier, suffocating quiet that follows a sacrifice.
We left the sheriff to his sobbing and his townsfolk, who were beginning to stir timidly behind their shutters now that the Calamity had “made its choice.”
Upon returning to our isolated building, the stench of blood and fog seemed to cling to our skin.
I tossed my coat onto a wooden chair and sat down heavily at the table, the single candle finishing its burn with a soft hiss of melting wax.
Alya stepped toward the window.
She placed both hands on the sill, her gaze piercing through the dusty glass toward the darkened alleyways and that unchanging sky of pitch-black clouds.
Her shoulders were tense.
Though she didn’t utter a word, I could read the immense frustration consuming her.
The fact that we hadn’t been able to intervene in time was gnawing at her.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said softly, pulling a notebook and a piece of charcoal from my satchel.
“There was nothing more we could have done tonight.
But now, we have an advantage: it left clues.”
Hearing this, she spun around abruptly, her eyes wide open, curious to see what I was about to draw.
She approached with silent, tiptoeing steps and leaned over my shoulder, her long hair lightly brushing against my cheek.
A faint scent of steel and travel drifted from her.
On the paper, I roughly sketched the outline of old Thomas’s rib cage, then marked three deep, parallel lines across it.
“Ordinary claws tear flesh apart.
These severed the ribs clean, without leaving excessive bone fragments on the outside.
That tells us two things.
First, the sharpness is absolute, like shattered glass or tempered steel.
Second, the pressure is downward.
The Calamity doesn’t charge head-on.
It drops from above…
from the rooftops.”
Alya tilted her head, lost in thought.
She raised her right hand, mimicking a downward striking motion with her own fingers, then tapped the wooden table softly with her index finger to simulate the impact.
Next, she pointed up toward the dilapidated ceiling of our room.
“Exactly,” I nodded in agreement.
“It utilizes height to maximize the force of its strike.
That’s why there wasn’t a single footprint in the mud around Thomas.
It descended upon him, executed him instantly, and left through the air or by leaping from one roof to another.”
“But why…
why, why?” I muttered.
Alya’s brow furrowed.
Her expression hardened, and she gripped the hilt of her black sword tightly.
Her lips parted, and with a visible effort, she let out a single, low word that carried a sharp, cutting clarity:
“Kill.”
A dark smile crept onto my lips.
It was rare for her to speak, and every word carried the weight of an ironclad oath.
“Oh, absolutely.
We are going to kill it,” I replied, snapping the notebook shut.
“But to do that, we have to force it down into the street.
Tomorrow, we inspect the rooftops of this town for impact marks or nesting remnants.
If it thinks it’s invisible up there, we’re going to prove it wrong.”
She nodded, a small, confident, and determined smile replacing her anxious look.
The hunt had officially begun, and in Happy, the hunter and the prey were about to swap places.