They tell it differently now. Not like a story you write down, but like something you whisper when the lamps are low and the water is too quiet. The drip of a loose faucet, or the crushed, quiet cries of a rodent being swept away by a hungry owl. During Cycle 537, long after the wardens swore the drains were sealed for good. That the problem had been solved a couple hundred cycles ago, the menace that plagued this part of the city quelled and disposed of after residents were devoured and drowned in these streets.

Archive Reference WF-ACCT-424-1 Archived Local Stories The people of Karth Hollow remember the season of the Featherfall, when the forests surrounding the town grew restless, and then fell quiet, and the birds and animals sped away far from the town, and even the insects seemed to leave the area. For they knew what was coming. They say the Night Peacock passed through the valley and even through the town itself, walking the streets in its slow migration, its long body shifting between the trees like a shadow too large to be cast, then marching onward without a moment of rest.

Archive Reference OR-ACCT-12-ANG
 Source Interview conducted with Elder Marrek of Drennith, 14 years post-abandonment of the settlement.
 Recorder’s Note Drennith is a semi-isolated cliffside village that was once sparsely connected to old trade routes and long rumored to harbor “winged huntings.” Accounts collected here represent oral stories preserved by the remaining elders of this village. Transcribed Account “They came as two. Always two. That’s how we knew they weren’t angels, no matter what they looked like. Angels come alone, or in hosts, never in pairs. And there were other signs that they were wrong, that they were corrupted beyond recognition.

Old farmer Jarek used to swear he saw a tall figure at the edge of his field during the full moons of Junoproto and Selkāla, draped in mismatched, patterned skirts and cramped coats too small for the figure’s tall frame. At first, he thought it was one of his daughters sneaking out to scare him, but the thing’s head was wrong. It was not any of his daughters. The head sat lopsided, stitched together in a way that caught the moonlight like silver thread. Stuffing pushed out from the side of the figure’s neck.

Recorded in the Outer Quarter, Cycle 19 They say the creatures first came through the river gates after a heavy flood, during one of the great rains brought on by a change in the moon cycles. The storm sewers overflowed, choked by years of excessive garbage clogging the street drains, and with those clogs came more than water. A manhole cover rattled in the market square, and the grocer’s boy swore he saw a garbage-slick hand, no, claws, lift the iron disc as if it weighed nothing, before settling it neatly back into place.

They say that once, in the south quarter of Hollowmarsh, a thing made of scraps and stitches crawled out of the flooded textile mill. The old mill had caught fire long ago. All of its workers were lost to the flames when the doors were chained shut by the owner of the building. This was before the first cycle, but the remnants of the tragedy are still visible. The creature smelled of mildew and damp thread. Its seams were split and leaking stuffing like wet snow. Children whispered of it first, how it sat with them by the river, humming without a mouth, eyes flickering in every seam.