Screams. Multiple, horrific screams tore through the air from the left.

He turned and saw a human head swaying in the air, spinning once, twice, then falling, striking the ground like wood on gravel. The knight froze, staring at the woodcutter standing, axe gleaming with fresh blood not there a moment ago, and in his other hand, a small, headless body.

Motionless.

The other children scattered in all directions, their screams piercing his skull. Matteo’s muscles tightened, all at once. His pupils widened instinctively.

A man of average build. 

A woodcutter’s axe. 

No armour. 

Holding a child’s corpse. 

The other children, dispersed, united only by fear, driven only by the hope of survival.

The knight reached for his sword, its blade trembling from its scabbard in one familiar motion. He felt its weight in his palm before his fingers closed tightly, whitening his knuckles.

Isolate the killer.

No blind rush. He took a semi-circular path around the woodcutter, cutting the way between him and the nearest group of children, balancing his weight to avoid slipping on the mud.

Organise the victims.

“Behind me! Now!” he shouted. Some turned, some hesitated, most lost their way in the fog of panic.

Block the escape.

Two steps. Three. He measured the distance cautiously. He would tighten the circle, corner him, force a confrontation, or…

The woodcutter saw him coming, dropped the body onto the mud with a wet thud, and lunged.

Not fleeing the sword.

but towards the children escaping behind the knight—beyond the blade’s reach, safe from steel, close enough to blood.

Human shields… the madman.

“To the houses!”

His voice drowned in the chaos of screams, dissolving amid wails and moans.

He tried to hasten, but the ground slowed him, his feet sinking as if the earth had a life of its own, gripping him, reclaiming him each time he broke free, like a jealous hand of mud refusing to yield its prey. Yet the woodcutter moved over the same surface as if on ground swept by a dry wind, unhindered.

Impossible.

“Scatter!”

A bid to create chaos to impede the woodcutter. But the children either didn’t hear, didn’t comprehend, or didn’t obey.

He saw him catch a child, wonder still fresh in his eyes. 

No.

Matteo realised the distance was too great, the mud too heavy, the time too... 

The woodcutter seized the child’s shoulder. Raised the axe.

“No!”

The axe fell with a precise, lethal strike, like one that severs a tree from its roots. The head parted from the body. 

Clean. Swift.

Before Matteo could close the distance by a single step. Before his hand could reach, before he could act.

A scream tore from Matteo’s throat, raw, furious… broken. For a moment, he thought the woodcutter would use the child as a hostage, a shield, a bargain. He was wrong.

The woodcutter’s intent was never escape. Nor self-preservation. 

It was simple, clear, direct. 

More bodies.

He wasn’t fleeing the knight. He was running to the next tree in his orchard.

Seizing Matteo’s stunned paralysis, the woodcutter veered sharply in a swift arc, bypassing him on the right like an obstacle, heading straight for a child who had tried to hide in a narrow alley between two houses.

No.

Matteo spun to intercept, but his foot sank into the mud. His fingers dug deep, he staggered, leaning on his arms. In that chaotic moment, as he struggled to rise, it hit him sharply.

Silence.

All he heard was his own screams and the children’s. Nothing else.

He looked up at the villagers—standing, silent, watching. No clamour, no chaos to exploit. Mere spectators destined for this massacre.

Every tactic relying on their reaction… collapsed.

The woodcutter didn’t waste time. He slipped like a shadow into the narrow alley after the child. Matteo had no choice but direct pursuit. He spun and plunged after them into the alley, narrower and darker than he’d thought, with wet clothes hanging on crisscrossing lines above.

At its end, he saw the woodcutter seize the boy clinging to a high, unyielding window. No escape remained.

The woodcutter raised his axe slowly, deliberately, balancing as if on solid ground. Matteo surged forward, ignoring the slip, certain he’d reach him in the final moment…

His face and shoulders struck cold, clammy fabric. Long sleeves tangled around his arm, wet trousers hindered his movement. He tried to tear them away, but a drenched garment wrapped around his right forearm, another obscured his vision for a crucial moment. His left foot stepped on a smooth stone hidden by mud, slipped, and he fell to his knees with force.

His balance… gone.

Then he heard the horrific sound. A sound no ear mistakes. The axe cleaving flesh, snapping vertebrae. 

The child didn’t even scream. 

Only the sound of a limp body falling.

The clothes still clung to him.

Matteo remained frozen, unmoving, staring at the sword in his hands.

Why? 

Why did no tactic work? 

Why did no one obey?

He tore the fabrics off and turned through the curtain of wet clothes to the alley’s entrance. There, at the edge, stood the villagers. They neither advanced nor retreated, gazing with eerie neutrality, as if awaiting the end of a play that didn’t concern them.

“Why… why don’t you move?”

His voice cracked. 

Something that hadn’t happened in years. 

Something he hadn’t felt in ages… helplessness.

New screams of terror erupted from beyond the alley. They snapped him from his stupor. He wrenched himself from the ground and raced back to the main street, leaving the child’s body behind.

“Stop! You madman!” he shouted towards the street before even spotting the woodcutter, trying to draw his attention or delay him for a moment. A second. 

Half a second.

The woodcutter emerged from a house’s door, clutching a small girl who had tried to hide inside. How had he exited through the door when he’d vanished through the window?

No time to think.

He was too far. Matteo carved his way through the crowd of villagers standing like statues, shoving their rigid bodies with force. “Move! Get out of the way! Your children are being slaughtered! Are you blind?”

Heavy, as if rooted to the earth. Under his shouts and shoves, they swayed slightly, then returned to their chilling silence.

He broke through at last. Too late.

He saw the woodcutter grip the girl’s shoulder to steady her trembling body, raising the axe with force. One swift strike. 

The small head split from the neck. 

Blood sprayed in a single burst across walls and stones, the scene like a public slaughter in a market under the indifferent yet eager eyes of villagers awaiting the end.

Matteo shouted at the panicked children still stumbling in the mud, “You fools! To the houses! Don’t you hear?” But his voice was lost in the storm of their screams and terror.

When did he call people fools?

He was running now, without a plan, without tactics. Just… running. Shouting meaningless words.

“Stop!”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Please!”
“Why?”
“Don’t stay in the open!”

But the children’s gazes turned backward, to the source of their terror, not to him. His voice no longer carried the weight of command.

The fourth child, the fifth, the sixth. He stopped counting.

A voice crept into his mind. If he were lighter… if he were faster…

With trembling hands, he bent and cut the straps of his breastplate with his sword. The metal piece fell into the mud. 

His vambraces. 

His thigh guards.

His greaves.

He knew they wouldn’t help. He knew the armour wasn’t the problem. But he needed to do something. Even if futile.

One child remained.

The street had become a stage of bodies and heads, with parents standing motionless. The last child, heart wavering between fear and cunning, seemed to hear Matteo’s cries or muster what remained of his wits, darting towards the nearest house. The house where Rami slept.

The woodcutter stayed close behind, following him inside.

Matteo dropped the last piece weighing him down… his sword. It no longer mattered. He would strangle him with his bare hands, certain his comrades inside would surely wake to this chaos.

He charged after them, leaving everything behind. Why hadn’t his team stirred despite the immense uproar?

Matteo crossed the threshold, braced to confront the killer, expecting the stench of blood and the gleam of the axe. But the room offered none of that.

His breath caught in his chest.

The woodcutter was not in the room.

Instead, a faint light danced on the walls, shadows intertwining around a table beneath a heavy silence. And there… seated upon it.

A child, legs swinging as if awaiting supper. But in his lap… a head.

His head.

Black hair, matted with dark liquid, dripped from the severed neck. 

One drop. 

Then another, staining the white shirt with spreading crimson blotches.

And the head was watching him.

With dull, glassy eyes, like Rami’s. The same features. The same coldness.

Matteo’s eyes widened. He scanned the room… children. Six of them. Each in a corner—slumped on a chair, draped against a wall, sprawled on the floor. 

Each cradled their own head in small hands, raising it like a silent offering, their open eyes staring at him. No blink, no whisper.

He knew their faces. 

Knew them as he knew Rami’s.

His knees trembled, and he collapsed, his back slamming against the wall with a wet thud. He lowered his gaze to find a rippling red pool between his legs, glinting in the slanted light, its choking stench piercing his chest.

He reached out his hands… empty, coated in a cold, sticky red layer. 

Where was his sword? 

When had he dropped it? 

He couldn’t recall…

Then another smell reached his nose. The sharp scent of burning, mingling with blood.

His head turned with effort. The candle, once in its holder, had fallen into the pool. Its flame stilled for a moment, then surged, an orange fire crawling, licking the wood, creeping towards him. Its glow intensified, its heat stinging his face.

He looked up at Rami. The child still sat on the table, staring, the flames dancing in his glassy eyes.

Matteo tried to rise, to scream, to warn the children, but the words sank in his throat, his voice dying before it was born. 

He stretched a trembling hand towards them.

He opened his mouth to say something. Anything…

His hand fell before it reached them, and with it, the last of his strength. His mouth remained open, voiceless, with words that died in his burning throat.

His head tilted slowly to the right.

In the moment he teetered on the edge of consciousness, he raised his weary gaze to the staircase leading to the upper floor. There, at the peak of the shadows, stood a ninth child.

Whole of body.

His features drenched in tears and smoke, he offered Matteo a gentle, reassuring smile.

Matteo closed his eyes, surrendering to the fire creeping over him, holding that final smile in his memory.