SEVEN BLACK NIGHTS
A tale by Yasha, daughter of Nial the Healer
First Night
The air smelled of copper and ash when they first arrived.
We didn’t see them. We only felt them: a chill down the back of our necks, like shadow fingers. The torches went out one by one, as if kissed by an icy breath. Then… the screams.
My mother was the first. She was sleeping next to me. I felt her body convulse, saw the darkness tear her from the cot and leave only blood behind. My father, Nial, the healer, ran with his staff of bone and fire, but found only silence.
The next morning, the camp was covered with remains. We didn’t know if they were ours. There were hands, eyes, shreds of flesh that didn’t fit together. Two bloodied bodies hung upside down from the sacred branches of the Old Tree, like cattle for a feast that did not belong to us.
The elders said they were spirits. The young people spoke of shadows that hunted. The dogs howled incessantly.
That night we lit fires throughout the camp. We prayed. To gods who no longer listen. To the bones. To the earth. To the stones.
It was useless.
Second Night
They returned hungry.
That night they did not hide. They emerged from the trees with elongated, deformed bodies, ashen skin, and large mouths full of fangs like stone blades. Some hovered above us with membranous wings, as silent as the fog. Others crawled like rabid dogs, with black claws that cut through the earth as if it were water.
They did not speak. They only panted. Their breath was like a suffocating fever in the darkness.
Old Tork tried to escape. One of them fell on him with an inhuman scream and dragged him into the undergrowth. We heard his skull burst like a ripe pumpkin. The sound still haunts me in my dreams.
My father coated the arrows with burning sap. The clan warriors fought like cornered beasts. Three of those creatures fell. Their bodies were light, dry, cold. They had no blood.
We burned them at dawn. The pyre smelled of rancid flesh and hatred.
Third Night
They brought something worse with them.
They were not like them. They were men. Or had been. They walked clumsily, their muscles trembling and their eyes rolled back. Their skin was pale, loose, and their flesh hung as if it were falling apart.
They did not speak, they did not think. They only sniffed. And when they found a body, they threw themselves on it with wet growls. Bone, skin, entrails. Everything was fair game. The feast was brutal, as if each bite brought back a memory they had never had.
One of them was Rhulan, the hunter. I recognized him by his claw necklace. They had taken him two nights earlier.
Our people were returning. And they were hungry. But they were no longer ours.
Fourth Night
The flames no longer protected us.
We saw them laugh. Laugh with mouths full of blood. Mocking our defenses, dancing among the trees like swift shadows. They moved with blasphemous grace, as if fear gave them wings.
That night it rained blood. The earth trembled with their footsteps. They entered from everywhere. Through the trees, through the cracks, from under the ground. As if they had already lived among us.
The shaman tried to contain them with ancient words. He fell with his throat torn and his eyes stolen from their sockets. Old Teya threw herself into the fire so as not to be devoured. The children no longer cried. They just stared with dry eyes, as if they had aged overnight.
My father hugged me. His hands were shaking, but his voice was firm.
“The soul does not die if you tie it to the right bone.”
He gave me an amulet: a human tooth painted with his blood. Then he pushed me under the stone altar. I hid like a rat. I saw him fall, struggling. He did not scream again.
Fifth Night
There were twenty of us. Now there were six.
We took refuge in the sacred cave, where the bones speak in dreams. There, the ancestors were supposed to protect us. But what came that night did not respect ancestors.
They did not bring new hunters. They brought our own. Mehel, the midwife, walked with her jaw dislocated. Her husband tried to speak to her. She ripped his face off.
Each of them was a familiar nightmare. Old friends, lovers, brothers… now turned into hungry flesh and dead eyes. And behind them, the fanged ones. Always smiling. Always thirsty.
One of ours stumbled. He fell to the ground. The devourers pounced on him, laughing, screaming like hyenas. They ate like animals. As if each bite brought them back to what they were no longer.
We didn’t know what was more terrible: those who came from outside… or those who were once like us.
Sixth Night
I was taken.
I didn’t scream. I ran. I ran with the desperation of a creature that no longer hopes to be saved, only to escape. But the wings were faster than my legs. They caught me among the branches. They tore my back with cold claws. They tied me with black tongues, slimy like swamp roots.
They lifted me up into the sky. I saw my village like a model in ruins. I saw the extinguished pyres. I saw the last ones praying under the rain of ash.
They threw me into a deep, damp crevice, where the earth stirred as if it were breathing. There were whispers. In the stone. In the blood. In my head.
They were waiting for me there.
A figure emerged. Tall, ancient, beautiful as death. He spoke to me. Not with words, but with memories.
From the beginning, they had known that I was special, the only one worthy. He offered me an end without death. A beginning without heat. An eternity without breath.
And I… I said yes.
Seventh Night
Now I fly.
My skin no longer breathes. My eyes see in the night. My fangs seek warm flesh. And my heart… no longer beats. It only remembers.
The others surround me. They watch me with respect. They say there is something in me that the others do not have. A spark. A will. A joy in hunger.
Tonight I return.
Not for revenge. Not for compassion.
I return out of hunger.
Under the dead light of the stars, my village still burns. Only two remain, perhaps three. They hide. They cry. They pray. It doesn’t matter.
I will find them.
The healer’s daughter has returned, and this time… she will not bleed alone.
