The darkness of the night was torn apart by glistening light, outside of the small bar of Avalae. Followed by an ear-piercing thunderclap which brought the listeners back into the here and now.

Again their full attention was with the storyteller Ciosso, who managed to put even the last of the attendant Homins under the spell of his story and who was in this moment, as he claimed himself, getting ready for its final act.


The expression on your faces is probably the same I had on mine after I read the words on the tablet. What did the stranger say? Beware of the Soulsnatcher? In this moment it did open my eyes.

Everything just made sense now. The appearance of the stranger, his clothes where exactly the same as in the descriptions of the Cut Throats. He had to be one of them. But how did he vanish from the cave without a trace? The only possible explanation made me shiver.

"Is it true?" I asked the void around me. "Are you one of them?"

Silence remained. Around me the void was floating without grip and structur. The silouette of the stranger wasn't to be seen anymore and, except for the creaking of the trees around me, there were no sounds.

"Is it true?" I asked again, and this time a bit louder. But still, silence remained.

"I know you can hear me!" I screamed into the fog. "IS IT TRUE?"

And yet again silence.

Then, nearly not senseable, remarkable just as a disturbence at the edge of my visual gaze, the fog moved.

The wind got stronger, the gray curtain began to swirl around me. The fog was ripped apart on many places and allowed sight on knobby trees, which had lost their leaves long ago. Fumbling in the wind like a blind one, they graped the air with their long, claw like, thin branches.

A fizzling behind me made me turn around. But there, nothing could be seen.

Something touched me lightly at the side. But there, nothing could be seen.

A sudden blow in my back made me stumble forward. I picked up my self und did turn around again. But there, nothing could be seen.

The branch of a tree hit me and threw me off my feet. I fell and found me lieing on my back. Then I saw him, standing above me.


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