Chapter 709: 709

Another home without a statue drew the thralls next, this one belonging to a woman who believed the godlings were pretending, tricking the village for unknown reasons. Her doubts ended in the dark, swallowed quickly by the sound of splintering wood.

A third home, this one held children. The thralls tore through the window, glass scattering across the street. Tiny footsteps pattered. A choked cry. Then nothing.

The screams began to wake the village.

Doors flew open. People stumbled into the streets, terrified, only to freeze as the thralls turned toward them—hungry, jerking, animalistic.

But the protected houses held.

Some statues flared bright enough to push thralls back like gusts of wind. Others created small circles of untouched ground around their homes. Families huddled inside, listening to the monsters claw at invisible barriers.

The thralls were confused.

They were starving.

And they grew frustrated.

But they could do nothing to those home protected by these glwoing sticks. The horde released a collective shriek, raw, furious, piercing. Scaring the people hding in their home.

Just as quietly they came, the horde left as nothing else could be gained from this town.

But scattered throughout the town, little wooden statues glowed like dim stars, standing between life and death.

And above the chaos, far in the distance, a single crow circled back just long enough to watch the first moments unfold.

Then, heart heavy, it turned away.

Morning came quietly, to the slepless town. They peered through their door as if they feared what the sunlight itself would illuminate.

One by one, doors creaked open. Villagers stepped onto their porches, trembling from the long night. Children clung to their parents’ legs. The older folk muttered prayers or simply stared, hollow-eyed, waiting for the next horror to reveal itself.

But the streets were empty.

No thralls.

No corpses.

No blood except for old stains already drying into the dirt.

And that was when the realization fell upon them

Those who had been attacked... were gone.

Their homes were broken into. Their beds overturned. Their clothing left behind. But the people themselves, the victims of the attack had vanished completely.

"They were taken," someone whispered.

"No..." another villager said, voice cracking. "No, they left."

A crowd slowly gathered at the main road leading out of the village. Tracks, hundreds of them scarred the mud. Some were clawed. Some were heavy and dragging. And among them were many... human-sized prints, barefoot, fresh, and unmistakably belonging to the missing villagers.

They had walked out of the village on their own.

Not as themselves.

As thralls.

A woman fell to her knees at the sight.

"That’s my son’s footprint... gods... he left with them..."

Her husband wrapped his arms around her, but his face was gray, his own eyes hollow.

Another family stared at the trail with horror.

"My father... he refused to make a statue... and now now he’s one of them..."

A silence heavier than grief fell over the village.

Every unprotected home had been emptied, its occupants absorbed into the horde. The protected ones were spared, untouched, sealed by belief and carved wood.

And now the horde had grown.

The people stared northward, where the footprints disappeared into the distance, like a river of shadows flowing toward the next town.

Yet even amid the sorrow, the villagers could not ignore one strange, unnerving fact.

The dozen travelers, those odd, soft-spoken strangers who had guided them, taught them, quietly answered their timid questions were gone.

Their assigned house stood empty.

Blankets folded. Room swept. No signs of struggle. No tracks leading away. Not even footprints in the dust.

Almost as if they had never existed.

"Did they flee before the attack?" one man asked.

"No," whispered an elder woman, touching the warm wood of her statue. "No human in this area is capable of that. They... they left as they came. Quietly. Suddenly."

A child tugged on her mother’s sleeve and pointed to the sky.

"Look, Mama. Birds."

Far above the village, a thin line of black shapes circled once, almost too high to see then turned away, flying east. A murmur rippled through the people. Some saw only crows. Others saw something more. A few bowed their heads instinctively, not fully knowing why.

One villager spoke what many were thinking:

"They saved us."

Another replied, softer, unsure "Did they? Or... did we save ourselves, with what they taught us?"

No one had an answer.

But one thing became clear as the morning light spread. Their faith was no longer a hopeful experiment, it was survival.

The statues remained warm to the touch, humming faintly like distant echoes of a divine heartbeat.

The druids continued their works, aving who they could, teaching what must be taught,but there were too few of them. Even when they split into lone travelers or pairs, hoping smaller groups might slip more easily into towns unnoticed, their success rate began to crumble.

People listened less, they questioned more. Their warnings were met with squinted eyes and folded arms.

Where once a dozen voices had been enough to stir curiosity, now a single voice was often drowned beneath fear, superstition, or pride. Some villagers mocked them. Others turned them away at their doors. Many simply ignored them entirely, too consumed by daily survival to pay heed to a stranger’s strange talk of statues and protection.

The druids felt the weight of every failure.

Some at the edge of tears when they left a stubborn settlement behind, knowing what fate awaited it once night returned. Others grew quiet, carrying their grief like a second skin. Alone or in pairs, they traveled on, hoping the next town might be different.

Often, it wasn’t.

And so, heavy-hearted, a small group of druids continued down a rutted forest path toward the next village. The morning air hung thick with dread and a growing sense of helplessness. Their earlier optimism, so bright when the twelve first set out had dimmed almost to an ember.

Until they reached the next town.

And froze.

There, in the central square, surrounded by curious onlookers, stood several figures the druids instantly recognized beneath their human disguises. The way they held themselves, the careful pacing of their explanations, the soft glow of magic flickering behind their eyes, they were unmistakably kin.

More druids and godlings kin disguised as mortals. Doing exactly what the first group had done.

Teaching, guiding. Persuading the humans with patience and quiet urgency.

A couple was helping a family carve crude statues. Another druid knelt beside a child, showing them how to tie a protective charm around their doorway. Yet another was engaged in heated debate with a skeptical farmer, who nevertheless held the half-finished carving with trembling hands.

The group of newcomers watched silently, stunned.

One of the disguised druids paused mid-lesson and lifted their gaze meeting the eyes of the approaching group for a fleeting second. A flash of recognition. A mixture of annoyance, pride, and stubborn affection crossed their expression.

Then they looked away, pretending they had never noticed at all.

It was such a small gesture, but it made the tired druids laugh softly.

"Yes," one whispered. "That’s our kin, all right."

"So prideful, so unwilling to admit we were right and yet... here they are." Helping.

Standing exactly where they once declared they would not stand. Offering the same teachings they had doubted, the same protection they once called unnecessary interference.

Despite disagreements, despite arguments, despite pride. They had come.

Perhaps grudgingly and silently. But they had come.

The druids stepped into the square, feeling hope flicker back to life.

Their kin might not say the words aloud, they might never apologize. They might still disagree with methods or motives.

But their actions spoke clearly. "They stood together"

And so, slowly but unmistakably, the outskirts began to change.

People were still afraid of the night, how could they not be, with the memory of screams still echoing in their bones? but they were no longer afraid for their survival. Fear became vigilance. Panic became preparedness. These towns and villages, once brittle and doomed, now glowed with faint protective light every dusk as statues were set by doorways and charms hung from beams.

The thralls, meanwhile, found it increasingly difficult to add new victims to their ranks in these outskirts. Every protected home was a sealed fortress of faith. Every unprotected family was now a rarity rather than the norm. The horde, starving for new flesh, began bypassing these towns altogether.

The Vampire Court noticed this shift.

But contrary to what one might expect, they were not angered by their fellow godlings kin action.

If anything, they watched with a mixture of amusement and adaptive strategy.

The godling kins were helping humans survive and strangely enough, this strengthened the Court’s own long-term goals. A living outskirt populace was a shield, a buffer zone between the Court’s lands and the Empire’s military reach. The Empire would not commit to deep incursions if its peripheral territories were still full of breathing, frightened subjects.