From the recollections of Yuri Vladimovich Patsov
I do not know if Severus Jäger is mad.
But I do know madness can be the clearest mirror.
It was a day after we delivered the medicine from Father Benedikt. A greenish vial, thick as syrup and smelling of burnt roots. Anneliese took it. She stopped shivering within the hour, and Kaspar, who'd grown pale as birch bark, began muttering again in full sentences.
At first, we thought it a miracle. But miracles do not come so easily here.
That's when Severus came to me.
He was pale, even for him. His hair stuck to his forehead like dried river reeds, his nails were cracked, and he smelled of pine, sweat, and… something else. Earth. Old earth.
"I found a stone," he said, whispering like the trees might overhear. "And then the book."
I listened.
He told me about the moss-covered slab deep in the forest, about the carvings "Beneath the flesh of the priest lies the tongue of the false" and about the book hidden in Father Benedikt's chambers. The one with the children and the stake. The one with the horned god, and the priest beside it. And the yellow eyes.
I asked if he still had it.
He hesitated. Then nodded.
That night, a storm fell upon Steinbruck like a punishment. The wind sobbed through the eaves and the lightning split the sky like screaming veins. I did not sleep. I knew Severus would not, either.
And I was right.
According to his own words, Severus sat hunched at his desk, the stolen tome splayed open beneath a flickering oil lamp. He was copying pages, symbols, phrases, twisted names from some underworld tongue, into his notebook. The drawings were disturbing. Distorted. As if whoever inked them had never seen a human being, only the memory of one after great suffering.
He claims that during a break in the thunder, when the air fell suddenly, unnaturally still, he turned toward the window.
And saw it.
A figure. Tall. Shadowed.
Pressed against the glass as if the storm had no hold over it.
Its eyes, only eyes, glowed a molten yellow, like gold trapped in fire. And it did not blink. It did not move. It only watched.
Severus says he did not scream. I do not believe him.
Instead, he returned to the book. He said he had to finish. That something urged him. That if he didn't write it down before morning, the knowledge would vanish from his head like smoke in wind. He does not know how long he wrote, only that when the sun rose, his hands were black with ink and the book's pages were trembling like they were alive.
At noon, the bell rang again.
This time it was not Father Benedikt.
It was Severus.
He stood in the village center, drenched from the earlier rain, mud caked to his knees, waving the stolen book above his head like a prophet come unhinged.
"They lied to us!" he shouted. "This man, this priest, he is not what you think he is!"
Villagers poured from their houses. The baker. The tailor's daughter. Even the old widow who hadn't spoken since her son fell from the cliff three winters ago.
"I saw it!" Severus roared. "A demon! With his face! Tongue like a blade, sacrificing children, our children! The book shows it! The stone confirms it! Benedikt is the cursed one, he's the reason for all of this!"
People stared.
Then they laughed.
Not cruelly. Not even mockingly. Just helplessly. Like children watching a dog bark at shadows.
"Severus lives in the forest," someone muttered.
"He talks to himself at market," another said.
"Too long alone," came a third.
They didn't listen. They didn't want to.
And I, God help me…I said nothing.
I only looked at him. And he looked at me.
Not angry. Not pleading.
But afraid.
I gave him a sad nod.
But then I saw something no one else seemed to.
Behind the chapel. Just to the side.
A figure, still as a grave statue.
It was Father Benedikt.
Watching.
Expressionless. Silent. His hands folded as if in prayer, though no rosary dangled between them.
He did not interrupt. He did not defend. He only watched.
That evening, I found Severus outside the tavern, muttering to himself in a hush.
"You saw him too," he said.
I nodded.
"Then why didn't you speak?"
And for a moment I wanted to.
I wanted to tell him that I knew about the book. That I had studied parts of it myself. That I knew something lived inside Benedikt now or perhaps always had. That I hadn't said anything because..
Because I was afraid.
Not for myself. For them.
For these villagers who still smiled in the market, who still stitched their buttons and fed their sheep, unaware that something ancient and foul had sunk its claws into our bones long ago.
"He was chosen," I whispered. "Just like the Codex said. The Worm of God, Vermis Dei, it lives in pain. In memory. In loss."
Severus stared at me, wild-eyed, hopeful, desperate.
"You knew?"
I nodded.
And for a long moment, there was only the hush of wind between us.
"But if we speak the truth," I said, "what becomes of them?"
Severus clenched his jaw.
"Better fear than feeding a lie."
But I wasn't so sure.
Later that night, I saw him again.
The priest.
Standing at the edge of the pine, robes still, face aglow from the chapel candles behind him.
He smiled at me.
And in that smile, I heard my mother's voice again.
Calling me home.
Calling me into the dark.