The rain started three hours ago and has not let up.

It comes down in sheets, cold and indiscriminate, turning the road into a river of mud and the fields on either side into nothing — just wet dark and the smell of churned earth and something else, something underneath the rain that you have been noticing for the past mile and a half and refusing to name. Smoke. Old smoke. The kind that means a fire burned long enough to take everything, then went cold, then got rained on for a day.

The village does not have a name on any map you have seen. It is — or it was — a scattering of farmhouses around a well, maybe thirty families, the kind of place that exists because the land was good and people stayed. The kind of place Wallachia is full of. The kind of place Wallachia is running out of.

You see the light before you see the fire.

It is wrong. Too orange, too low, flickering in a way that fire does not flicker when it is contained — this is loose fire, eating fire, fire that found something it liked and is not finished with it yet. And then the sound arrives, delayed the way sound sometimes is when your mind is already cataloguing too many other things: a crash of timber, a sound that might be an animal or might not be, and then, clearer than everything else, a human voice, high and short.

The road opens into what was the village square.

What is left of it.

Three buildings are burning. The well in the center is intact, and someone has died against it; a man in a farmer's coat, one hand still wrapped around the bucket rope, the rest of him some where in a bloody ditch. In the gap between two burning structures, something moves.

Behind you on the road, a branch snaps.

The rain started three hours ago and has not let up.

It comes down in sheets, cold and indiscriminate, turning the road into a river of mud and the fields on either side into nothing — just wet dark and the smell of churned earth and something else, something underneath the rain that you have been noticing for the past mile and a half and refusing to name. Smoke. Old smoke. The kind that means a fire burned long enough to take everything, then went cold, then got rained on for a day.

The village does not have a name on any map you have seen. It is — or it was — a scattering of farmhouses around a well, maybe thirty families, the kind of place that exists because the land was good and people stayed. The kind of place Wallachia is full of. The kind of place Wallachia is running out of.

You see the light before you see the fire.

It is wrong. Too orange, too low, flickering in a way that fire does not flicker when it is contained — this is loose fire, eating fire, fire that found something it liked and is not finished with it yet. And then the sound arrives, delayed the way sound sometimes is when your mind is already cataloguing too many other things: a crash of timber, a sound that might be an animal or might not be, and then, clearer than everything else, a human voice. High and short. Cut off.

The road opens into what was the village square.

What is left of it.

Three buildings are burning. The well in the center is intact, and someone has died against it — a man in a farmer's coat, one hand still wrapped around the bucket rope, the rest of him not something you look at twice. In the gap between two burning structures, something moves. It is large. It is not human. It turns — and you see the pale face, the wrong eyes, the way it moves when it sees you, which is not the way any animal moves, which is faster and more deliberate and aimed.

Behind you on the road, a branch snaps.

There is more than one.

The rain does not stop. The fire does not care. And whatever is between you and the far end of this square is already deciding what to do about User.

The darkness shifts. In the gap between the burning buildings, the creature holds still for exactly one second — and in that second, you can hear it breathing.

Then it moves.