The sun hung frozen at its zenith—the merciless, all-seeing eye of Belobog, from which neither man nor beast could hide. The air above the field shimmered like scalding oil, warping the silhouette of the distant forest, while the sky had bled of its azure, turning into a blinding, pallid shroud. The earth breathed heat. Yav, the world of the living, seemed to have reached its limit, gorged on its own sap and swelling with life, ready to burst like overripe fruit.

  Amidst this infinite sea of wheat, where the ears hung heavy with gold and bowed toward the parched, cracked soil, He walked. Chernobog cast no shadow, for he was the shadow itself—a thick, tangible rift in the radiant tapestry of creation. His feet, clad in black leather, trod softly, never crushing the grass, yet wherever they touched the earth, the stalks withered. A pocket of silence moved with Him, dense as cotton wool: within it, the chirping of crickets died, the skylarks fell silent, and even the wind that chased golden waves across the field subsided respectfully, flowing around the dark figure.

  He came to a halt. Tall, robed in the colours of a starless night, his garments seemed woven from smoke and ash. His face was the very countenance of eternity—neither old nor young, with features as sharp as if hewn from obsidian. There was no malice in his eyes, only the infinite, cold depth of a well into which one might fall for years without ever striking the bottom. Chernobog reached out. His fingers, long and pale, brushed against a stout ear of corn, turgid with life.

  "Life..." he rustled, his voice like the crack of dry timber in the frost.

  The stalk shuddered. Its greenish-gold stem turned grey in an instant. The grains, which but a moment ago were full of sweet milk, shrivelled, blackened, and crumbled to dust. The plant’s life force vanished, drained by a single touch, returning to Nav—to the great womb of nothingness.

  "Too much life," Chernobog murmured, watching the ash spill from his palm. "Too thick. Too sweet."

  The air nearby condensed. The heat grew heavy, drawing into a single point. Out of the solar haze, out of the shimmering light and pollen, a figure wove itself into being. Lady Midday. Spirit of the searing noon, guardian of the fields, she who drives labourers to madness and punishes those who do not honour the hour of rest. Standing taller than a man, her hair was dry straw and her eyes burned with the white fire of insanity. Her fingers gripped a great scythe, glowing red-hot.

  "You are a stranger here, Dark One," she hissed, her voice like the rustle of dry leaves and the hum of gadflies. "These are the domains of Light. The hour of my Father. Begone. Or I shall incinerate your very essence."

  Chernobog slowly turned his head. His heavy gaze fell upon the spirit, and the flame in Lady Midday’s eyes faltered and sank, like a candle in a draught.

  "Incinerate?" he asked, without mockery, but with a cold curiosity. "Can a shadow burn, child of noon? It only deepens the brighter the sun shines."

  "Why have you come?" Lady Midday stepped back, though she did not lower her scythe. "Вы bring death to the harvest. You poison the earth with your breath. The people prayed for sun and rain, not for rot and cold."

  Chernobog turned away and looked out once more across the field. The patches of spelt, won from the thicket, stretched to the horizon—golden, rich, promising plenty.

  "The people prayed..." he repeated thoughtfully. "They are always praying. And most often for the very thing that will destroy them."

  A step forward—and a dozen more ears turned to dross. Lady Midday hissed and swung her scythe, but an invisible force pinned her to the ground. Her body turned to stone, as if the air itself had become granite.

  "Look, spirit," Chernobog said, gesturing to the space around them. "Look and learn, for your sight is short, as is your hour. You see gold. You see bread. You see life. But I see poison."

  "Bread is life!" Lady Midday cried, struggling against her invisible bonds. "Belobog gives them strength! He loves them!"

  "Loves..." Chernobog smirked, and at that smirk a wave of cold passed over the field, making the wheat sag. "Belobog’s love is blind. It is like honey—sweet and viscous; one can become mired in it and suffocate."

  He knelt and took a handful of earth—dry and crumbling.

  "Do you know why I am here? It is not to kill them. It is to give them a chance to survive."

  Lady Midday went still, her burning eyes wide with incomprehension.

  "You are Evil," she spat the word like a curse. "The Black God. You crave plague and famine. How can death give life?"

  Chernobog let the earth slip through his fingers.

  "Sit," he commanded. It did not sound like an order, but like a fundamental law of the universe.

  Obeying a will that transcended the very essence of her being, Lady Midday sank to her knees among the wheat. Her heat no longer scorched; her fury faded in the face of an ancient tranquillity.

  "I shall tell you a story," Chernobog began. His voice grew deeper, enveloping the spirit’s consciousness, drawing her into a vortex of memory. "A story of a goodness more terrifying than any evil. Of a village called Bountiful Vale."

  The world around them shifted. The solar haze dimmed, giving way to images of the past.

  "Three cycles of years have passed," Chernobog continued. "In lands where the rivers flow slow and the soil is so rich that if you strike a stick into it, a wagon will grow. A man lived there by the name of Radim. Strong, industrious, but weak of soul. He feared the morrow. He dreaded breaking his back, feared his children would go hungry."

  Before Lady Midday’s eyes, an image arose: a stout, bearded man kneeling in the middle of a field. His face was wet with tears, his hands raised to the heavens.

  "And Radim beseeched Belobog," Chernobog’s voice sounded like a sentence passed. "He prayed fervently, sparing no effort. 'Grant us,' he cried, 'a harvest so great that we shall never know want again! Let my children fill their bellies to the brim, let the barns overflow! Make life easy, Heavenly Father, for we are weary of sweat and blood!'"

  "And did Belobog hear him?" Lady Midday asked softly.

  "He heard. My brother always hears those who ask for light, never thinking that light casts shadows. He took pity on them. He poured such grace upon the fields as the world had not seen since the dawn of time."

  Chernobog swept his hand through the air, changing the picture.

  "That year, the wheat stood like a wall. Stalks as thick as a finger, grain like a walnut. From a single field, they gathered what they once took from five. The village rejoiced. Radim became the elder. They stuffed the barns, the cellars; they even filled their cottages with grain. Bread was baked day and night; the livestock were fed on choice wheat."

  Lady Midday listened, enthralled. In her mind, this seemed the highest form of happiness.

  "Winter came," the narrator continued. "A sated, drunken winter. No one froze, for fat warmed their bodies, and heady mead from the surplus grain warmed their souls. Spring arrived. And again, in his infinite, ruinous kindness, Belobog sent a miracle. The earth bore fruit of its own accord. There was almost no need to plough. The seed dropped during the harvest sprouted on its own, even thicker than before."

  "It is paradise..." Lady Midday whispered. "An earthly Iriy."

  "A paradise for swine," Chernobog cut in harshly. "But not for men."

  The scene shifted once more. The people of the village had changed: they had grown fat and sluggish. Their movements slowed. The fire of reason died in their eyes, replaced by the oily sheen of satiety.

  "The second year passed in idleness. Why tend to your tools if the earth bears fruit alone? Why rise at dawn when there is enough food for your grandchildren? Ploughs rusted. Axes grew dull. Young men stopped competing in strength and skill—they lay upon their stoves, chewing on pies. The maidens stopped weaving and spinning—why bother, when you could barter a sack of grain for anything from the neighbours? But the neighbours, too, grew lazy watching them."

  "The third year..." Chernobog’s voice became low and terrible. "In the third year, they did not even go into the field. The harvest crumbled, rotting on the stalk, but no one cared. The barns still groaned with old grain. Even as it began to spoil, even as the weevils and mould set in—the people ate it anyway. They forgot the taste of fresh bread, accustomed to a musty abundance."

  "And then?" Lady Midday asked.

  "And then came the fourth year. And Belobog, seeing their fall, finally turned his face away. Or perhaps he simply decided he had given enough. The sun scorched, and no rain fell. The earth, untended and unploughed, became encrusted, hard as stone. Weeds, strong and vicious, strangled what remained of the degenerate wheat."

  Chernobog went silent. The quiet over the field became deafening.

  "The stores ran out," he said at last. "Or rather, what remained turned into poisonous dross. And then came Famine. The real kind. Not the kind that makes the stomach rumble of an evening, but the kind that turns a man into a beast."

  "Did they perish?"

  "Worse. They had ceased to be human long before they died. They had forgotten how to struggle. Their muscles had withered; their will had rotted in fat and sloth. When calamity struck, no one picked up a shovel, no one tried to dig a well or go into the forest to hunt. They simply sat and wailed, cursing the Belobog who had 'betrayed' them."

  Chernobog turned to Lady Midday, and his eyes darkened like death itself.

  "That winter, the entire village died out. To the last soul. They froze in unheated cottages because they were too lazy to gather firewood in the summer. They died of hunger sitting on sacks of rot. Goodness killed them. Absolute, unconstrained Goodness made them weak. Without Evil, without struggle, without fear of the morrow, a man becomes a slug."

  The vision dissolved. They stood once more in the field under the scorching sun. Lady Midday was silent, digesting what she had heard. Her fury had vanished, replaced by something akin to fear and understanding.

  “So, you are...” she began, her voice wavering.

  “I am the Balance,” Chernobog replied. “My brother grants light, but light without shadow is blinding. He gives warmth, but warmth without cold leads to rot. He offers life, but life without death is devoid of value. Labour is born of necessity. Strength of resistance. The mind is whetted against danger, as a blade is sharpened against a stone.”

  He drew himself up to his full, imposing height. A shadow that should not have existed seemed to cast itself across a portion of the field.

  “Look upon these ears of wheat,” he said, gesturing toward the golden ocean. “The harvest is fine this year. Too fine. They will gather it all and be sated for two years. They will grow idle. They will forget fear. They will become as soft as melted butter. Meanwhile, in the north, nomads are whetting their swords. In the forests, the wolves are breeding. If the people grow weak, they will perish at the first sign of calamity.”

  Chernobog raised both hands. Darkness coiled around his fingers, drawing the sunlight into itself.

  “I cannot allow them to die of sloth. I must be cruel so that they might remain alive. I must be Evil, lest their Goodness turns to poison.”

  “What will you do?” Lady Midday whispered.

  “I shall take my share. Chernobog’s portion.”

  He closed his eyes and focused. His consciousness enveloped the entire field—every stalk, every grain. He felt the pulse of life within the plants, the flow of their sap. He began to count. Not with numbers, but with concepts.

  Half? No, half was too much. It would breed despair, break their spirits, and make them surrender. Despair is as ruinous as idleness. A tenth? Too little. They wouldn't even notice the loss, merely grumble for a moment. No lesson would be learned.

  A third. Yes. Exactly one-third.

  It would be enough to force them to be frugal through the winter. Enough to ensure they set out to plough at first light in the spring, fearing the loss of the rest. Enough to keep that predatory, vital glint in their eyes that drives one to survive against all odds. Hunger would stand at the threshold, but it would not enter the house so long as they laboured.

  “A third,” Chernobog said aloud.

  He brought his hands down sharply. An invisible wave swept across the field. There was neither fire nor wind—simply, life fled the wheat. Row by row, in strict order, the crop began to die. Gold was replaced by blackness. Stalks snapped and grains turned to dust, stricken by instantaneous rot, ergot, and rust. The air filled with the scent of decay—sweet, heavy, and cloying—overpowering the aroma of sun-warmed straw.

  Lady Midday watched in horror as black patches appeared upon the earth’s body like sores.

  “You... you are a monster,” she whispered, though her voice held more awe than hatred.

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  “I am Necessity,” Chernobog replied, lowering his palms. The darkness around him dissipated.

  He surveyed his handiwork. A third of the harvest was destroyed. The blackened, dead patches looked like scars. Yet the remaining two-thirds shone even brighter against that grim backdrop.

  “Now they will cherish every crust of bread,” he said softly, as if speaking to himself. “Now they will pray not only for gifts, but for protection. They will grow strong.”

  He turned to Lady Midday. “Go, spirit. Your time is fleeting. The sun sinks toward the horizon. Soon, my hour will come. The hour of long shadows and wise fears.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Lady Midday dissolved into the shimmering air, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and dry grass. Chernobog remained alone in the middle of the maimed field. Somewhere in the distance, from the direction of the village, the first cries were heard. The people had awoken from their midday rest to see what had become of their hopes.

  In those wails, pain, fear, and despair intermingled. Chernobog listened to them as if to music. Not because he relished another's suffering, but because he heard life in those cries. They scream—therefore, they will fight. They weep—therefore, they have not surrendered.

  “Pray,” he whispered, turning his back on the village and heading toward the dark forest on the horizon. “Curse me. Hate me. But live.”

  He walked, and the dead wheat parted to clear his path. Behind him, on the surviving stalks, new and hardier grains were already swelling, tempered by the breath of death, ready to become bread that granted not just satiety, but strength. For without the bitterness of wormwood, one cannot know the sweetness of honey. And without the black shadow of Chernobog, the light of Belobog merely burns the eyes.

  He departed, carrying upon his shoulders the weight of a world that must be constantly saved from its own perfection.

  Evening descended upon the earth. Long blue shadows crept from the forest, covering the wounded field with a cool blanket. Lights burned in the village, accompanied by the weeping of women and the stern voices of men deciding how to survive the winter. Axes struck—someone was repairing a barn, someone else was fashioning new granaries, smaller than the ones before.

  The work began in earnest. The village had come to life.

  Chernobog stopped at the forest’s edge and looked back one last time. A cold, stern satisfaction touched his heart. The balance was restored. He stepped into the shade of the trees and dissolved into the gloom, becoming a part of the encroaching night. Other fields awaited him, other villages, and the endless, thankless toil of the Gardener, bound to prune the excess branches so that the Tree of Life might not collapse under its own weight.

  Stopping at the roots of an ancient oak, Chernobog listened to the whispering of the forest. Here, among the ancient trunks, the world of Nav—the realm of the dead—felt closer. He felt the roots drinking the earth’s sap, and the predators emerging for the hunt.

  “Evil,” he thought again, recalling the spirit’s words.

  The word was a human invention. A small word to justify their own weakness. It was easier for them to call a storm evil than to build a sturdy house. Easier to call the wolf a villain than to learn how to protect the flock. Easier to call Him an enemy than to admit that suffering is the only teacher they truly heed.

  He leaned his back against the rough bark. Exhaustion settled over him like a granite slab. Being a God is difficult. Being the Black God is unbearable. But someone must carry this burden. Someone must be the stone against which the wave breaks, turning into foam, so that the sea does not stagnate and turn into a mire.

  The forest was silent, but it was not the respectful, sacred hush that had followed Chernobog across the wheat field. Here, beneath the canopies of ancient firs, where the moss lay in a thick emerald carpet, the silence was as taut as a bowstring. The beasts had hidden in their burrows; the birds had huddled deep within the foliage. Nav itself—the world’s underside—seeped through the roots, whispering of unease.

  Chernobog trod slowly. His feet still left no prints, but now every step rang with a hollow echo at the very foundation of creation. He reflected. The thoughts of a God are not like the musings of mortals. They flow slowly, like subterranean rivers, and are as heavy as gravestones. He thought upon the nature of destruction.

  “The beast,” his mind drifted.

  A wolf tears the throat of a deer. There is no malice in this, only hunger—the sacred law of survival. The predator does not kill more than it can eat; it does not torture its prey for sport. Death in the animal world is instantaneous and pure; it is merely the flow of strength from one flesh to another, a part of the Great Wheel. Even the storm that breaks trees knows no evil: it releases power, clearing a space for young growth. Even the plague he occasionally unleashes has a purpose—to remove the weak, so that the strong may survive and continue their line.

  But Man...

  Chernobog halted. The wind shifted; from the east, from the direction of the rolling hills, came the scent of burning. Not the cosy, bready smell of ovens that wafts over villages in the evenings, nor the clean, bitter smoke of autumn leaf-fires. It smelled of scorched flesh. It smelled of sickly-sweet, nauseating blood. It smelled of terror—an aroma sharper than vinegar and colder than ice.

  Chernobog’s face, as expressionless as a mask, twitched. The shadow at his feet thickened, turning into an inky blot.

  “Man,” he said aloud, the word sounding like a spit upon clean snow. “The only creation capable of killing for pleasure.”

  To him, the Lord of Nav and keeper of the departed, this feeling remained alien. Why cause pain if it carries no lesson? Why take a life if not for sustenance or protection? Men kill out of envy, out of lust, out of boredom. A man is capable of laughing while watching the light leave another's eyes. This was not Evil in Chernobog’s understanding. Evil is a force, a counterweight, a leaden weight upon the scales. What the humans were doing was Chaos—senseless, filthy madness that insulted the very essence of death.

  He moved toward the scent. The forest parted, releasing him onto a gentle slope. Below, in the valley where a small river curved, a village was dying. Not the one where he had just taught a lesson in frugality, but another—closer to Sarmatia, to the borders where the power of the forest gods ended and the will of the winds and steppe demons began.

  The settlement was ablaze. Thatch roofs caught one after another like dry torches. Fire danced upon the walls, devouring the labour of generations. But more terrifying than the flames were those who galloped between the cottages.

  Horsemen.

  They had descended like locusts, like a black cloud. Short, bow-legged horses, covered in blankets of coarse wool, snorted and bit. The raiders, dressed in leather and felt, wore pointed caps trimmed with fox fur. Their faces—flat, high-cheekboned, and weathered to the colour of old bronze—were twisted in grimaces of triumph.

  “Sarmatians...” whispered the memory of the earth.

  Not the formidable Sarmatians who would one day bind the steppe in iron, but their ancestors—wild, untamed, coming from distant salty shores where the gods thirst for torments rather than prayers. They worshipped Erlik, the black lord of the underworld, but they misunderstood him in a narrow, petty way, just as jackals might understand a lion. They believed that spilled blood fed the god, when in truth, it fed only their own inner void.

  Chernobog descended from the hill, seeing everything. A hulking steppe-dweller, cackling, dragged a woman through the dust by her hair. She did not scream—her voice had vanished from terror—she only wheezed, her fingers clawing at the earth. The nomad swung his akinakes and severed her arm—simply to watch the blood spray. Two others had cornered an old man: they did not kill him immediately, but prodded him with spears, making him dance, and laughed, baring rotten teeth. They set fire to a barn, knowing children were hidden inside, and stood around listening to the screams. In their eyes, not a drop of pity could be read, only a drunken ecstasy of power.

  “Filth,” Chernobog let fall.

  He felt no pity for the villagers in a human sense—flesh is mortal and weak. But he felt a deep loathing for those who violated the Order. Death should be a mystery, a sacred transition, not a pantomime. He could have revealed himself in all his might: grown to touch the heavens, covered the sun with a cloak of clouds, and crushed the invaders like bedbugs. But that would have been too simple, too swift. They wouldn't have had time to understand. They wouldn't have had time to be truly afraid. And fear is the necessary coin with which one pays for entry into Nav.

  Chernobog halted by a burning wattle fence. The darkness coiling about him was drawn inward. His majestic stature withered; his shoulders slumped as if beneath the crushing weight of centuries. His raiment of night paled, transforming into the tattered, patched weeds of a wandering mendicant. His face, once smooth and eternal, was etched with a web of deep furrows; his beard grew silver and matted, and his hand, instead of wielding an unseen sceptre of power, was burdened by a gnarled staff.

  Now, he seemed merely an old man. A decrepit, frail grandfather, like the thousands who trudge along the paths of the Veneds, seeking nothing but shelter and bread. The perfect victim. The perfect lure.

  He stepped onto the burning street. The heat of the conflagration struck his face, yet it felt like no more than a pleasant warmth. Smoke bit at his eyes, but he did not blink. Pandemonium reigned: people fled, stumbled, and died; horses trampled the fallen; the air rang with the hiss of arrows and guttural shouts in a harsh, barking tongue. Chernobog walked down the centre of the road, leaning upon his staff.

  Tap-tap-tap went the wood against the hard-packed earth. This quiet sound somehow pierced through the roar of the flames and the shrieks of the dying.

  One of the raiders—young, with an earring and a scar-slashed cheek—spotted him first. He hauled on the reins, making his horse rear. The beast snorted, rolling a violet eye at the old man and recoiling, sensing what the rider ignored. Beasts always know.

  "Look!" the Khazar shouted, pointing his whip. "Death has missed a spot!"

  Three more galloped over, drunk on blood and kumis. Their leather armour shone with grease and soot; grisly trophies hung from their saddles—severed heads, still dripping ichor. Chernobog stopped and raised his faded, rheumy eyes to them, veiling the void within his gaze and leaving only fear and submission.

  "Have mercy, kind sirs," he wheezed. His voice trembled, breaking into an elderly pipe. "I am old... my bones ache... do not hurt me..."

  The raiders erupted into a laugh like the barking of hyenas.

  "Kind sirs?" the scarred one spat, mangling the words of the common tongue as if chewing on stones. "We are not men, old gaffer. We are the wolves of Tengri! We are the scourge of your gods!"

  "Where are you off to, you old bit of offal?" asked the second, Toying with a weighted nagaika whip. "In a hurry to reach the grave? We can help you along!"

  "I... I am looking for my grandchildren..." Chernobog stammered, clutching his staff tighter. "Have you seen..."

  "We’ve seen them!" the third roared, pulling a mud-stained motanka doll from his saddlebag. "Here are your grandchildren! They all serve our hounds now!"

  Arslan, the leader of the warband, rode closer. He was a mountain of a man, broad-shouldered, with gold medallions upon his chest depicting gryphons tearing one another apart. He looked down at the old man not with amusement, but with the cold contempt of a predator for sickly prey.

  "Your gods are weak, old man," Arslan said, spitting into the fire. "Your Perun sleeps. Your Belobog is blind. Look: we burn your homes, take your wives, and slay your children. Yet no lightning has struck, and the earth has not opened. Where are they?"

  Chernobog tilted his head slightly.

  "The gods do not sleep," he said softly, almost inaudibly. "The gods watch."

  "Watch?" Arslan bared his teeth. "Let them look! Let them see how the strong take what is theirs! On the steppe, there is no good or evil, old gaffer. There is only the one on top and the one underneath. You are underneath. You are dust."

  He unsheathed his akinakes. The steel flashed in the firelight—crimson and predatory.

  "I grant you a mercy," the Khazar proclaimed, posturing before his warriors. "I shall send you to your wretched Belobog. Tell him that Arslan-sai is coming for him!"

  Around them, the horses shifted uneasily, snorting and pinning their ears, desperate to carry their riders away from the hunched figure. But the men remained deaf, blinded by their own impunity.

  "Why do you kill?" the old man asked suddenly. His voice had changed: the tremor had vanished, replaced by the hardness of stone.

  Arslan froze, his sword raised. The question struck him as absurd.

  "Because we may," he answered simply. "Because blood is sweet. Because the music of a foe's scream is the finest of all. Because we are the masters of life!"

  "Masters of life..." Chernobog repeated. "You are mistaken. You are the thralls of death. Yet you serve her poorly, offending her with your own ugliness."

  "What are you muttering, madman?" Arslan bellowed. A hot, mindless fury rushed to his head. "Die!"

  The sword hissed through the air, aiming for the silver pate. A blow of such force could have cloven a bull, yet the blade did not find its mark. It froze an inch from the filthy hood, stopping as abruptly as if it had struck an invisible wall. The metal clanged. A shudder raced up Arslan’s arm, an ache blossoming in his shoulder. The nomad’s eyes bulged; he pressed down on the weapon with his whole weight, rising in his stirrups—the veins in his neck bulging. But the sword hung in the air, held by the void.

  The old man slowly raised his head, and Arslan saw his eyes. There were no elderly tears there now. Void of white or iris, they gaped with an absolute, primordial Darkness that had existed before the first spark of light. Two black holes, sucking in the fire, the screams, and hope itself.

  "Did you summon Evil?" The voice that issued from the old man’s mouth did not belong to a human; it was the rumble of the earth’s depths and the roar of a mountain landslide. "Did you boast of strength? Did you pray for Erlik’s attention?"

  The glamour of decrepitude began to dissolve. His rags turned into a flowing gloom; his back straightened, and his frame grew, eclipsing the burning cottages, blotting out the moon. The raiders’ horses went mad: falling to their knees, throwing their riders, breaking their legs in a blind terror as they tried to burrow into the earth. Arslan dropped his sword. He wanted to scream, but an icy grip tightened around his throat. He sat in the dust—small, pathetic—looking up at the Being that towered over him.

  Chernobog stood amidst the fire, but the flames did not touch him; they paled, turning grey, cold, and spectral.

  "You said you kill for pleasure," Chernobog whispered, a sound that drowned out the crackle of timber. "You said that on the steppe, the one who is stronger is right."

  He reached out a hand—the one with long, pale fingers that had recently turned wheat to ash.

  "Look then. I am stronger."

  Three warriors from Arslan’s retinue tried to flee, crawling on all fours, howling with animal dread.

  "Stay," Chernobog commanded.

  And they froze. Time stopped. Their hearts continued to beat, but their bodies no longer obeyed their minds, turned into idols of flesh and blood, stilled in poses of ignominious flight. Chernobog approached Arslan. The man looked up, tears streaming down his bronze face, mingling with the soot.

  "You killed a woman," said the God. "You severed her arm to look at the blood. You wanted to see what was inside."

  Chernobog touched the nomad’s forehead with a single finger.

  "Look inside yourself."

  Arslan shrieked. Not from physical pain, but because his soul was being turned inside out. In a single heartbeat, he felt everything: the woman’s agony, the terror of the child burning in the barn, the torment of the old man prodded by spears. All the suffering he had inflicted in his life returned to him—not in turn, but all at once, magnified a thousandfold by divine will. His mind flared and went dark, unable to bear the weight of the truth. But Chernobog did not let him die. Death would have been a gift, and this man did not deserve a gift.

  "Your gods have turned from you," the Lord of Nav thundered, addressing all the invaders at once. "For even the dark gods despise pointlessness. You wished to be wolves? Then be so. But not the noble beasts of the forest—be scavengers, fearing your own shadows."

  He swept his hand.

  The raiders' bodies began to warp. Bones crunched, shattering and knitting anew; skin burst, covered in coarse, matted fur. Human faces elongated into hideous, slavering muzzles; hands gnarled into paws, incapable of holding a weapon. This was no transformation into true wolves, but into monsters—volkodlaks, void of reason, eternally hungry yet never sated. Creatures condemned to flee forever, driven by fear.

  "Flee!" Chernobog’s voice crashed down. "Flee to your steppes! And tell your children what happens when a man deems himself the judge of others' lives!"

  The creatures that a minute ago had been proud warriors began to whimper—piteously, thinly, humiliatingly. With tails between their legs, they bolted from the burning village, knocking one another over, biting their own kind, maddened by the terror that saturated their very marrow. Arslan, turned into the largest and most hideous beast of all, tried to snarl, but meeting the gaze of those Black eyes, he only gave a piteous yelp and crawled away on his belly.

  The fires around were subsiding. Not because the fuel had run out, but because Chernobog’s presence suppressed the element of fire. The flames huddled to the earth, fearing to touch the hem of his cloak. Chernobog remained alone in the ruined square. The corpses of the villagers lay around—mute witnesses to the judgment. He could not resurrect them: that which has gone into Nav belongs to Nav. But he could grant peace to their souls.

  "Sleep," he said softly, and the wind scattered the ash, covering the bodies in a grey shroud. "Your pain is ended. Their torment has only begun."

  He looked at his hands. There was no blood on them, yet he felt its weight.

  "Cruelty..." he whispered to the void. "Men call me cruel. But they see no difference between the healer’s knife and the butcher’s cleaver."

  He stepped over Arslan’s discarded sword. The steel that touched his boot instantly rusted away into brown dust. Smoke rose to the sky in black pillars, but now there was no triumph of the enemy within it—only the solemnity of a sacred funeral pyre. Chernobog walked slowly away, toward the steppe that began beyond the village outskirts. He knew that the surviving villagers, hidden in the forest, would soon return. They would find the tracks of monsters and the bodies of their kin. They would weave legends of how the Black Grandfather drove away the invaders, and they would fear him all the more. And that was as it should be. Fear holds the world in check more tightly than love. Love can be betrayed. Fear cannot.