"Entry 4. Padre, one of my neighbors in the village, Shella—she's the girl who worked with her father polishing shoes to save for her marriage fund. Oh, the poor thing. I can't quite figure out what happened, but she suddenly disappeared after seeing her father hang himself in the woods.
It all happened so quickly. One moment she was there, going about her work, the next she was gone. The rumors spread through the village like wildfire, and soon enough, the chief and many of my neighbors started to point fingers.
They said it was Shella who killed her father, that she did it out of desperation, and then ran away to avoid being caught.
But you know, that's not the strangest part of this whole thing. What's even stranger is what happened when I saw her. I was wandering around the woods that day—looking for something, though I don't even remember what it was.
And then, I saw her. There she was, standing still in the shadows, as though she'd been waiting for me.
I couldn't help myself. I had to speak to her. It wasn't as if I had a choice in the matter. She just was there, and I walked right up to her.
Her eyes—those eyes—were empty, but there was something in them that made me feel like I was in the presence of something... wrong.
We spoke, but the words didn't come out the way I expected. She was calm, too calm, and it was almost like I was talking to a ghost. Every word I said felt like it wasn't meant for her. Every word she spoke felt like it wasn't meant for me. It was a conversation that shouldn't have happened, yet it did.
I don't know what's going on with her, or if I even should have engaged her at all. But I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about how wrong everything felt."
As Ivaim read the passage, a chill crawled down his spine, the words on the page unsettling him more with each line. He paused, staring at the ink, his mind racing.
'Strange..'
"Entry 5. fall into death. fall into death. fall into death. fall into death."
'What?'
Ivaim thought, his brow furrowing in confusion. He stared at the page, his fingers hovering over the worn paper.
The words in Entry 5 didn't make sense, they were so jarring and out of place. As he flipped to the next page, a cold shiver ran down his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention.
Something about the rhythmic, unsettling repetition of "fall into death" felt wrong—unnervingly so.
"Entry 5. After my conversation with Shella... I've come to understand something.
It's too complicated to put into words, but everything we knew about our God—the one who kept the village safe, the one we trusted—is fading away.
Fading, like a shadow at dusk. Has he abandoned us? No... no, that can't be right. There must be another explanation for all this..."
'Why are there two entry fives?'
Ivaim thought, the question gnawing at him like a persistent itch he couldn't scratch. His gaze flicked back and forth between the two entries, both labeled as "Entry 5," but they were undeniably different—strikingly different.
The pages felt colder under his touch as he flipped back to the first Entry 5. His heart raced, each word seeming to shift and warp under his gaze.
There was a definite sense of dread curling in the pit of his stomach, something wasn't adding up.
'No way...' His mind froze. 'Did he forget that he wrote the first Entry 5?'
He ran a hand over his face, trying to piece it together.
But as he squinted at the entries again, the possibility that perhaps someone else had written the second one began to creep into his thoughts.
'Was he not the one who wrote it?'
The hairs on his neck stood on end.
His fingers trembled slightly as he closed the journal, the chill creeping up his spine like icy fingers digging into his flesh. The air around him felt heavier, thicker, as if something unseen had shifted, settling in the room like a suffocating fog.
The questions swirling in his mind were too much to bear, but the sense of unease gnawed at him, urging him to keep reading.
He flipped through the last two entries, each one feeling like a cold weight pressing against his chest.
"Entry 6. Shella's father is back, I'm glad he's okay. Me and my neighbors were starting to get worried! I wonder where Shella is though? It's quite strange, she's not one to disappear for too long."
Ivaim's brows furrowed in disbelief as his eyes scanned the words.
'What? Isn't Shella's father dead...?' The thought sent a spike of confusion through him.
He couldn't shake the memory of what he'd read earlier—Shella's father had been found hanging in the woods. How could this be happening?
And then it hit him. 'Did he forget that he just had a conversation with Shella a few days ago?'
A cold sweat trickled down his neck as he processed the implications of the words. Something wasn't right, something was terribly wrong.
His heart raced as he quickly flipped to the next page, desperate to find clarity.
"Entry 7. Padre, do not go East."
The words hung in the air, a final warning, sharp and clear.
'What? Don't head East?'
Ivaim's mind reeled. He couldn't reconcile this with the paper he had received from the church, the one instructing him to travel East. What was going on? Had the instructions been a trap all along? Was someone playing a dangerous game with him?
'Did something happen? Is this a trick?' His thoughts tumbled over each other, each one more frantic than the last. But the one question that burned in his mind was.
'Who exactly is lying here?'
A chill ran through him, and he found himself looking over his shoulder, half-expecting something to be lurking just outside his line of sight. The unease clung to him like a shadow, making the room feel smaller, more suffocating.
Ivaim snapped the journal shut with a force that startled even him. His breath hitched as his heart pounded in his chest.
Without thinking, he grabbed the makeshift weapon beside him—a rough-hewn wooden stick with a rotting knife tied to the end—and held it close to his body, the weight of it comforting in his shaking hands.
With his senses heightened, he sneaked back toward the exit he'd entered through. The air outside felt colder now, a sudden, unnatural quiet hanging in the village. But when he stepped through the threshold, his breath caught in his throat.
What greeted him was not the quiet, desolate village he had left behind.
—but a tall creature, its silhouette unnaturally still.