The Dreamgrave Raven didn't attack right away.
It tilted its caved-in skull, its two bottomless eye-hollows fixed directly on Eve.
Then, without warning, the pitch-black feathers covering its head began to writhe.
There was no flesh beneath them. Not a single drop of blood seeped out.
Instead, a mass of shadow—so thick it seemed almost solid—welled from the caved-in wound.
More feathers pushed their way out of the darkness, layering over one another as they rapidly filled the damaged area.
Click.
With a soft sound, the Raven's tilted skull settled back into its original shape.
Eve's grip on the baton tightened, her stomach dropping.
That last hit hadn't actually hurt it at all.
The Dreamgrave Raven moved.
Without warning.
One moment it stood in place; the next, that gaunt black shape had closed the distance to Eve entirely.
Too fast to see anything but a blur.
Eve didn't have time to think — pure instinct raised the baton.
Clang—!
A curved claw slammed down against the metal rod.
The impact tore through Eve's arms, sending a bolt of pain through her wrists. Her entire body was forced backward, the soles of her shoes scraping harshly across the stone pavement.
Before she could regain her balance, another claw swept in from the side.
Eve twisted away.
The sharp tips grazed her shoulder, tearing through her clothes and carving three burning lines across her skin.
Just a little closer.
Half a step slower, and it wouldn't have been only her clothes that were torn open.
The Dreamgrave Raven gave her no chance to recover.
Its black form pressed forward again, its long beak only inches from her face. There was no emotion in those bottomless eye sockets, yet Eve understood one thing with perfect clarity—
It intended to kill her.
Eve gritted her teeth and swung the baton at its shoulder.
Bang!
The Dreamgrave Raven staggered sideways. Its shoulder caved inward, black feathers scattering into the air.
But beneath the feathers, still — no flesh.
Only that churning black shadow.
More feathers emerged from the shadows, filling the hollow once again. Within seconds, its shoulder had returned to normal.
Eve's heart sank completely.
Ordinary physical attacks couldn't kill this thing at all.
The Dreamgrave Raven swung its arm, claws sweeping toward her chest.
Eve raised the baton to block.
Metal clashed against claw, again and again.
Every block left her hands a little more numb. The baton shuddered in her grip, a tearing pain spreading through her palms, which had begun to grow slick.
She'd never learned to fight. She had no idea how to deal with something like this.
All she could do was retreat, dodge, and rely on pure survival instinct to barely block whatever would have killed her.
"Come with me!"
Vera's voice rang out from behind her.
Eve caught a glimpse from the corner of her eye — Vera had already reached the girl and pulled her away from the old man.
The girl fought against her, desperate.
"No! Grandpa's still there!"
"I'm not leaving him behind."
Vera pushed the girl behind her, then bent down, hooking both arms under the old man and hauling him toward the side of the street.
He didn't respond at all, his body heavy as stone.
The instant his body left its original spot, the Dreamgrave Raven's movement stuttered, just for a heartbeat.
It tilted its head.
Its hollow gaze swept past Eve, settling on Vera.
The next moment, the shadow at Vera's feet shuddered violently.
A raven with wings spread wide surfaced from within it, fastening itself firmly to her silhouette.
Vera looked down and saw the mark. The color drained from her face at once.
She'd been judged an Interferer too.
The Dreamgrave Raven abruptly changed direction, lunging for her.
"Watch out!"
Eve had no time to stop it. She chased after the creature, gripped the baton with both hands, and smashed it into its back.
The Dreamgrave Raven stumbled half a step forward.
Vera seized the moment to pull the girl back, still refusing to let go of the old man.
"Drag him behind the stall!" Eve shouted.
"You can't hold it off by yourself!"
"Just get them out of here!"
The Dreamgrave Raven spun around, claws sweeping sideways.
Eve ducked.
The icy tips passed over her head, slicing away several strands of hair.
Using the momentum of her movement, she swung the baton hard into the side of its knee.
One of the Dreamgrave Raven's legs twisted out of shape, and it lost its balance, dropping onto one knee.
But the scattered black feathers rose again almost instantly, as though drawn by some invisible force, burrowing back into its body.
The twisted leg straightened, piece by piece.
"Stop hitting its body!"
Vera's voice rang out.
She had managed to drag the old man beside a stall. Keeping the girl behind her, she stared intently at the Dreamgrave Raven.
"Its wounds keep healing!"
"I can see that!" Eve gasped out, out of breath.
"That's not all," Vera said urgently. "When it opened its beak just now, I saw something glowing inside!"
Eve froze for a fraction of a second.
"What kind of glow?"
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"In its throat. It was faint, but I'm sure I saw it."
The Dreamgrave Raven was already standing again.
Its caved-in, twisted body had returned completely to normal, as though none of the fighting had happened at all.
Eve stared at its long, pointed beak.
If Vera hadn't been mistaken, whatever was hidden inside might be its real weakness.
But the Dreamgrave Raven's beak was tightly shut.
There was no way to see into its throat.
And it wasn't about to give them time to check.
The black creature lunged at Eve again.
Its claw came down from above.
Eve threw herself sideways in a graceless roll.
Bang!
The claw drove deep into the stone path, cracking the hard surface in several places at once.
Eve pushed herself up off the ground, the motion pulling at the three gashes on her shoulder, a burning pain spreading through her.
The mist still hung thick around them.
The intensity of the fight had her breathing hard, drawing more of that sweet-scented mist through her mask and into her lungs.
Exhaustion and drowsiness surged back, all at once.
Her reflexes were starting to slow.
The Dreamgrave Raven pulled its claw free from the stone and turned, walking toward her.
One step.
Two steps.
It wasn't hurrying.
As though it already knew a marked prey couldn't escape.
The girl huddled behind Vera, watching the creature close in, her whole face drained of color from fear.
Suddenly, something seemed to occur to her.
"Black feathers don't bleed..."
The girl spoke, trembling.
Vera looked at her.
"What did you say?"
The girl clutched at Vera's sleeve.
"It's a nursery rhyme. Grandpa taught it to me."
She stared at the Dreamgrave Raven and recited it, halting, broken:
"Black feathers, no blood shed,
White dream, in the throat kept.
To wake the ones you love,
call them back to the world above."
"White dream, in the throat kept." The instant Eve heard the rhyme, she thought immediately of that faint white light inside the Raven's throat.
If they wanted the girl's grandfather to wake, they might need to find a way to call him back first.
The girl paused, taken aback.
"Edmund Chow."
"Don't just call him Grandpa," Eve said quickly. "Call his name. Tell him who you are. Tell him things only the two of you would know!"
"Will that really work?"
"I don't know."
Eve tightened her grip on the baton, eyes fixed on the approaching Dreamgrave Raven.
"But it might be our only chance."
The Dreamgrave Raven attacked again.
Eve stepped forward and caught its wrist with the baton.
The tremendous force bent her knees, nearly driving her to the ground. Metal groaned under the pressure, as though the baton might snap at any moment.
"Quick!"
The girl spun and threw herself down beside the old man.
"Edmund Chow!"
For the first time, she called her grandfather by name, her voice trembling with fear.
The old man didn't respond.
"It's me, Mia! Open your eyes and look at me!"
She clasped his cold hand.
"You said last night that we were running out of food, so you had to go out and find something for me."
"You said you'd only be gone for a little while. You told me to stay home and wait for you..."
"You promised you'd bring me osmanthus cake. You said you'd fix the wind chime by the window too."
Tears kept falling from her eyes.
"You said you wouldn't leave me alone."
"Didn't you promise you'd wake up before eight in the morning? Edmund Chow, you liar! Why did you fall asleep?"
The more she spoke, the angrier she became.
But beneath the anger was grief.
The Dreamgrave Raven suddenly stiffened.
For an instant, Eve felt the pressure against her baton weaken.
The old man's finger twitched.
"Grandpa?"
Mia immediately tightened her grip on his hand.
The black feather at the corner of his eye trembled.
Then came a faint, hoarse voice—
but it didn't come from his mouth.
"Mia..."
The voice came from inside the Dreamgrave Raven.
The black creature jerked its head up, countless faint whispers spilling out from somewhere inside its body. The voices overlapped, layered — as though dozens of people were struggling against sleep all at once.
It opened its beak and let out a shrill, piercing shriek.
"AAAH—!"
The sound tore through Eve's eardrums, her vision swimming with a sudden dizziness.
Deep in the beak, a faint golden light was thrashing violently.
Broken fragments of images flickered inside that light.
A pair of aged hands. A little girl's smile. A wind chime hanging by a window. A packet of osmanthus cakes, never carried home.
The Dreamgrave Raven strained to swallow the light back down.
As its beak stretched wider, something ash-white surfaced deep in its throat.
No bigger than a fist, its surface wrapped in fine threads of pale gold light, pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
"There! That's it!" Vera shouted.
As though sensing the danger, the Dreamgrave Raven whipped around toward the girl.
It threw Eve aside and reached straight for the girl, who was still calling out to her grandfather.
The tremendous force sent Eve crashing to the ground
She saw the claw closing in on the girl and immediately yanked open her backpack, her hand closing around the cold metal flashlight.
"Vera!"
Eve hurled the flashlight toward her.
Vera caught it.
"Shine it into its mouth!"
Click.
A blinding white beam snapped on, striking directly into the Dreamgrave Raven's hollow eyes and open beak.
The black creature's movement stuttered, unmistakably.
It let out a piercing screech, its head instinctively jerking to one side. Deep in its throat, that ash-white core stood out with sudden clarity under the harsh light.
Vera kept the flashlight trained on its beak with one hand; with the other, she grabbed Mia by the collar and yanked her clear of the claws' reach.
"Keep calling him!" Vera shouted. "Don't stop!"
Mia stumbled, thrown off balance by the sudden pull, dropping hard to the ground — and cried out again.
"Edmund Chow! You promised me!"
"You said once you fixed the wind chime, I'd know you were home whenever the wind made it ring!"
"You can't break your promise!"
The old man's voice inside the Dreamgrave Raven became clearer.
"Mia..."
That pale gold dream surged out of the beak again.
The Dreamgrave Raven reached toward the girl, but the intense light made it hesitate.
Ignoring the pain in her shoulder and her hands, Eve pushed herself up off the ground and circled around to the creature's flank.
She gripped the baton with both hands and, with everything she had left, drove it straight into its open beak.
The metal rod wedged sideways, jammed between the upper and lower halves.
Crack—
The Dreamgrave Raven snapped its beak shut, violently.
The horrifying force of its bite pressed down on the baton, the once-straight metal slowly bending, letting out a grinding shriek that set her teeth on edge.
Eve's hands had gone almost entirely numb from the impact.
"I can't— hold it much longer!"
"A little more to the left!" Vera stared into its throat. "The core's on the left!"
The flashlight's beam stayed locked on the depths of the beak.
Mia's voice kept calling out, without pause.
That pale gold dream kept straining outward, keeping the ash-white core from sinking back into darkness.
The baton bent further and further.
The Dreamgrave Raven's claw shot toward Eve's chest.
There was no time left.
Eve wrenched the baton free.
With nothing blocking it, the beak snapped shut in an instant.
Just as the two halves were about to close completely, Vera shifted the flashlight's beam toward one of its eye-hollows.
The Raven's head jerked aside again.
Eve seized that instant of stillness, stepped forward, and aimed the already-bent baton at the gap that hadn't quite sealed shut.
"Break for me—!"
With everything left in her body, she drove the baton straight into the Dreamgrave Raven's throat.
The tip struck the ash-white core dead center.
Crack.
A small, sharp sound of something shattering rang out with startling clarity amid the chaos.
The Dreamgrave Raven's body seized up.
Every motion stopped at once.
A fissure split across the surface of the ash-white core.
Then, rapidly, more spread out in every direction from it.
Crack—
The dream-core shattered completely.
From deep inside the Dreamgrave Raven came the sound of countless people gasping awake at once.
"HAH—!"
The voices came from every part of its body.
Old men.
Women.
Children.
And countless others impossible to distinguish.
All of them awakening from a long nightmare at once.
The Dreamgrave Raven staggered backward.
Black feathers began falling from its body in droves.
Beneath them, no new shadow rose to fill the gaps this time — only cracks of pale gold light, breaking open from within.
Countless fragments of dreams spilled out through the fissures.
A garden in full bloom. A sunlit classroom. Someone holding the hand of a loved one long since passed.
Each image lasted only a heartbeat before dissolving into faint motes of light, drifting off in every direction across Everslumber Town.
The Dreamgrave Raven opened its beak, as though trying to make one last sound.
But its skull had already begun to collapse.
Its gaunt, two-meter frame disintegrated rapidly, finally vanishing entirely in a swirl of scattering black feathers.
All that remained was a spread of black feathers covering the ground.
Eve stood where she was, gasping for breath.
The baton in her hand was badly bent, a gash split open across her palm, blood dripping from her fingers onto the stone.
She looked down at her own shadow.
The raven with spread wings was fading, slowly, until it vanished completely.
Not far away, the mark in Vera's shadow dissolved along with it.
"It's... dead, I think."
Eve didn't let herself relax right away.
She stared at the feathers scattered across the ground for several seconds, making sure the black shadow wasn't going to pull itself back together, before finally loosening her grip on the baton.
A crystal no bigger than a thumb lay quietly among the feathers, its surface a translucent ash-grey, faint threads of pale gold light drifting within it.
It looked like a dream, frozen solid.
Eve bent down and picked it up.
The crystal was cold in her palm, yet somewhere deep inside it came the faintest pulse.
She didn't know what it was.
Nor did she know what it could be used for.
For now, she slipped it into her backpack
On the rooftop across the street, the black-feathered, silver-eyed raven still perched at the edge of the eaves.
Those dark silver eyes moved first to Eve's backpack, then shifted to her wounded shoulder.
Something like surprise.
Or perhaps something like interest.
A moment later, it spread its wings and took off without a sound.
All that remained on the rooftop was a shadow slipping through the mist, flying off deeper into Everslumber Town.
Eve never noticed it leave.
Mia suddenly cried out, overjoyed.
"Grandpa!"
The black feather at the corner of the old man's eye trembled and fell away from his skin.
His breathing, once faint, steadied gradually, and his fingers twitched again.
The old man's tightly shut eyes finally opened, slowly.
His gaze was unfocused at first; it took several seconds before the little girl in front of him came into view.
"Mia..."
Sobbing, Mia threw herself into her grandfather's arms.
Though weak, the old man still recognized her. He raised a trembling hand and gently stroked the girl's head.
"Don't cry... Grandpa's here."
Mia clutched at his clothes, her voice thick with sobs.
"Where did you even go last night? Why didn't you come home?"
The old man went still.
He looked around in confusion at the familiar street, as though unable to understand why he'd woken up here at all. Only when his eyes fell on the black feathers scattered across the ground did his expression shift into something like shock.
Then, slowly, that shock gave way to confusion.
"Last night?"
He frowned, struggling to remember. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find the missing memory.
"Did I... go somewhere last night?"