The silence stretched, thick and unexpected. Jadwiga finally lowered her needle. The mended griffin wing, a needlework figure of gold and crimson, looked as if it had never been torn. She ran a thumb over the fresh stitches, then looked up at Olgierd. His face, usually a storm of theatrical expressions, held a rare stillness.
“It’s practical,” she stated, her voice even. “A tear of that magnitude would compromise the structural integrity of the wall hanging. Further fraying would spread, eventually detaching a significant portion. Repair now prevents greater damage and cost later.” She tilted her head, observing his reaction as if he were a particularly stubborn knot in a piece of twine. “And as for Głowacz, his presence was disrupting my organizational schedule. Eliminating the immediate threat was an efficient allocation of resources.”
Olgierd stared. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at the hanging fabric, then at her, his dark eyes searching for a deeper meaning, a hint of something beyond cold logic. He found nothing but the quiet, unflinching assessment of a mortician inspecting a poorly preserved cadaver.
“Right,” he eventually managed, the single word deflating from him like air from a punctured wineskin. He turned abruptly, his velvet cloak swirling, and stalked away without another sound. Jadwiga watched him go, then returned to her mending basket, already planning the next repair. The loose mortar in the south wing’s foundation. A much more pressing concern than Lord Olgierd’s wounded pride.
Yet, the question lingered. *Why?* And her own lack of a swift, logical answer bothered her more than she cared to admit. The manor was a chaotic organism, diseased and mismanaged. A curse was simply an advanced form of rot, a systemic failure. And like any failing system, it could be diagnosed, dissected, and perhaps, even repaired.
Her boots echoed on the flagstones as she made her way to the library, the scent of parchment and dried herbs filling the air. This time, she didn't wait for the books to arrange themselves. She moved with purpose, her fingers tracing spines, her eyes scanning titles. She needed facts, a blueprint of this specific malady. Generic folklore was useless. She required the precise anatomy of the Starfall Curse.
Hours passed. Dust motes danced in the shafts of moonlight filtering through the tall, arched windows. She dismissed tomes on elemental spirits, on blood rituals, on vengeful fey. These were superficial symptoms, not the underlying cause. Then, tucked away behind a shelf dedicated to ancient cartography, she found it: a slim, leather-bound volume titled *Księga Gwiazd i Klątw Niebieskich*. The Book of Stars and Heavenly Curses. Its pages crackled with age, smelling faintly of dried belladonna and forgotten starlight.
She opened it. The script was a meticulous, archaic hand, each letter a tiny, perfect constellation. She turned pages, her lips moving silently, translating the dense prose. It spoke of the Starfall Curse, not as a random act of misfortune, but as a cosmic alignment, a clock ticking down to an inevitable, irreversible end. “*Gwiezdny Zegar*. The Star Clock,” she murmured, her finger tracing a diagram of celestial bodies. “The convergence of the Three Weeping Sisters and the Solitary Eye.”
Her eyes narrowed. The text described how the curse gained strength with each passing planetary phase, culminating in the final alignment. “*Wtedy Wilkoszpon, niegdyś człowiek, stanie się jedynie Bezkresnym Mrokiem. Bez umysłu, bez duszy, tylko głód. Pożre wszystko, co żyje, zaczynając od tego, co mu najbliższe.*”
She translated aloud, the words cold and stark in the silent library. “Then the Gloomfang, once man, will turn completely into Endless Gloom. Without mind, without soul, only hunger. It will devour all that lives, starting with what is closest to it.” She looked down at the diagram. Her own name, Jadwiga Poleszuk, was practically etched into the description of the curse’s final victim. Her sacrifice was not solely a feeding, but the first act of the beast's permanent rampage.
This was not a simple logistical problem. This was a catastrophic, region-wide event. A true solution would not just save her, but prevent the annihilation of Powrozie. The scale of the problem expanded exponentially. Her goal to survive with minimal fuss suddenly seemed quaint.
She found Olgierd in the conservatory, staring at a wilting night-blooming cereus, its petals already beginning to curl inward. He looked like a statue carved from pure melancholy. She held up the ancient book, its cover catching the faint glow of the distant moon.
“The Starfall Curse,” she stated, cutting directly to the point. “It’s tied to a celestial alignment, the Gwiezdny Zegar. If not broken by the final convergence, you don’t just die. You turn into a mindless, ravenous Gloomfang permanently. And I am your first meal.”
Olgierd flinched, a genuine, unadorned reaction. He turned, his face pale. “You… you found the *Księga*? No one has seen it for generations.” His voice was low, devoid of its usual dramatic flair. “It was hidden for a reason. To spare me the precise knowledge of my doom.”
“Ignorance is not a valid preventative measure,” Jadwiga replied, unimpressed. “It only complicates diagnosis. What is the origin of this pact? The book speaks only of the mechanism, not the genesis.”
He sighed, a long, weary sound. He walked to a large, dust-shrouded portrait hanging on the far wall, ripping away the protective sheet with a single, frustrated yank. The painting depicted a man, not unlike Olgierd, but with a younger, more hopeful cast to his features. He stood beside a woman, frail but beautiful, holding her hand. “My ancestor, Lord Kazimierz Wyrwidąb. And his beloved, Lady Elzbieta. She was wasting away from the Withering Sickness, a plague that swept through the north centuries ago.”
Olgierd’s voice grew softer, laced with a bitterness that wasn’t entirely his own. “He made a pact. With an astral spirit, they say. To save her. To trade his own life, his own lineage, for hers. The spirit demanded a heart of true love to break the curse, to undo the exchange. A love so pure it could mend the rift between worlds. But the spirit was fickle, jealous. It twisted the pact. Kazimierz was saved, Elzbieta lived, but the price was… this.” He gestured vaguely at himself, at the manor, at the concept of his cursed existence. “A lineage doomed to shift into the beast, until such a love appeared. Only it never does. Or it appears, and it’s never enough.”
Jadwiga approached the portrait, her eyes narrowed, not at the tragic figures, but at the details. Lord Kazimierz Wyrwidąb. A fine fur-lined cloak, an elaborate ruff. And on his right hand, a unique signet ring. A heavy silver band, bearing the distinct, intertwining symbol of a serpent devouring its own tail, its head topped by a tiny, stylized crown.
She recognized it. Not the ring itself, but the symbol. She had seen it before, not in a book, not in a manor. But in the village. In the faded, almost forgotten sigil on the doorframe of the old Poleszuk family crypt, where generations of morticians, her own ancestors, had laid their dead to rest.
A prickle, unusual and sharp, ran through her. It was not fear. It was the sudden, jarring recognition of a pattern, a piece of a puzzle she hadn't known she was assembling.
Later, much later, as the moon climbed to its zenith, Jadwiga found Olgierd. He was not in his bed, nor pacing the halls. He lay curled on the cold stone floor of the conservatory, amidst the tropical plants, not as a man, but as the horned predator. His dark fur blended with the shadows, his massive claws tucked beneath his chest. He was asleep, a low, rumbling snore escaping his snout. His teeth, usually bared in a terrifying grimace, were hidden. In the soft light, with his beast form relaxed, he looked… small. Vulnerable.
She stood over him for a long moment, the *Księga Gwiazd i Klątw Niebieskich* still clutched in her hand. The chill of the stone seeped into the air. She looked around, spotting a heavy, woven shawl draped over a terracotta pot. Without conscious thought, without a single logical reason, she picked it up. The rough wool felt warm in her hands.
Very carefully, Jadwiga leaned down and spread the shawl gently over the slumbering, colossal body, covering his massive, heaving flank. The beast shifted, a soft growl vibrating from his chest, but he did not wake. He simply settled further into the warmth, his breathing deepening. Jadwiga straightened, her hand lingering on the edge of the shawl. She looked at her fingers, then back at the sleeping beast, a strange, unfamiliar sensation stirring beneath her ribs.