The raven, its claws buried deep in the sagging head of the scarecrow, leaned forward, pecking mercilessly at one of the two red buttons sewn in place of eyes. The speed and rhythm of its strikes were frantic, almost deliberate in their precision—a kind of studied cruelty. Its victim could offer no resistance, and the night-black bird seemed to draw a twisted amusement from the act.

Watching the scene unfold just above the ripened corn stalks a few paces away, Goldrick felt a shiver of unease. There was something consciously malevolent about the creature. He had noticed such behavior in those birds before—always unsettling. He had never liked ravens. Not one bit.

A hole in the dirt road, into which he nearly stumbled, tore him from his thoughts and forced him to focus on the path ahead—a muddy, puddle-filled country lane skirting the village’s eastern edge, its borders overrun by tall grass still beaded with dew. Yet even that grass was dwarfed by the surrounding fields of corn, whose towering stalks rose well above the height of a grown man, obscuring all view in every direction.

“I don’t see the chapel,” said Lucien, glancing around in vain. “You’re sure this is the way, Goldrick?”

“I think so,” replied the middle-aged man, scanning for any landmark and finding none. “Beyond the cornfields and the mill, on the eastern hill—that’s what they told me at the inn. But you didn’t have to come. I only meant to pay my respects to my god.”

“No trouble,” the half-elf quickly answered. “We’re curious to have a look around the village anyway.”

“And we’ve nothing else to do…” added Tiresio, walking beside the others with Gwen, Liris, and a silent, shambling Karak.

Smiling faintly, Goldrick looked about again, trying to get his bearings—but the task promised to be difficult. Only a few scattered scarecrows of patched and tattered cloth stood above the sea of golden ears around them, poking up here and there like furtive watchers. Easy prey for the many ravens circling overhead, cawing into the cold morning air.

There was no sign of the mill he’d been told about, nor of any other building, and the man began to wonder if this was truly the right road. Then, faint voices reached his ears—distant at first, but quickly growing clearer. The voices of peasants chanting a mournful work song as they must have been gathering the corn.

Before long, through the thin veil of mist still lingering in patches from the night before, a shape emerged. A great, old windmill rising from the fields to the left of the road, almost twice the height of a common house, squat and cracked along its walls. Its long wooden blades hung motionless beneath a grey, breathless sky.

“Ah, there it is! So this is the right road after all,” Lucien exclaimed as the others noticed it too.

Though reassured, Goldrick was soon seized by another feeling—something closer to a physical sensation than a thought. As the path ahead widened into a small clearing between the fields and crossed another just like it, he stopped abruptly, staring at the mill in its entirety.

A little to the side of the road stood the mill, attached to a lower, rectangular wooden building. Near its base, at least a dozen laborers were advancing shoulder to shoulder through a cornfield, swinging their sickles in wide, sweeping arcs as they sang in unison. The smell of freshly cut stalks hung thick in the damp air, while a black flock of ravens wheeled and screeched overhead, startled by the workers.

The sight sent a jolt through Goldrick. The silent heads of the scarecrows jutting among the golden ears, the remnants of the night mist under that leaden sky, the peasants’ mournful chant, the black feathers of the ravens perched upon the mill’s decrepit blades, and their grating caws—everything struck him as unnervingly vivid, disturbingly alive, to the point of nausea. A feeling he had never known before.

Only then did he notice the sweat beading his brow and the frantic pounding of his heart. He swallowed hard, staring at the scene in mounting unease, unable to explain the absurd, unaccountable dread that gripped him.

“Goldrick, Goldrick! Are you all right?” called a woman’s voice. “Is everything okay?”

Snapped out of his thoughts, the middle-aged man turned toward the sound and saw Gwen approaching, concern etched on her face. He cast one more troubled glance at the mill before forcing himself to look back at her, trying to seem composed and as he usually was.

“Y-yes,” he lied, resuming his walk along the path behind the others. “Yes, everything’s fine…”