Under the crimson moon, the red wine coursed down Nosmir's lips, staining his purple velvet robe. His body became recipient to the bitter grape from a tainted cask, and his strenght doubled by the once-in-a-century moon after the twilight tide.

  The townsfolk, both victims and perpetrators, have been tied in a perfect circle around an old altar of a faith long forgotten. Nosmir had spent years studying the arcane craft to draft the summoning sigils, written in white chalk.

  In the air hung the scent of an unknown herb mixture, pungent and sacred, and three censers hanging from the surrounding tree branches continue to bathe the summoning circle.

  The ritual was almost complete.

  On the victims he had tied up in a circle next to the altar, Nosmir saw but consequences of their own actions—a human child now practically drowned in his own tears. He cried for mercy, he clamor to the skies his innocence. But how gleefully had his eyes sparkled when, thinking himself alone, he stoned birds day after day, crippling them, gouging their eyes and watching them fly headlong into trees. Nosmir had seen it from the edge of the wood, powerless to intervene.

  Humanity—no, all sapient lifeforms, whether it be lizard, mutant, shadow-born or stardust remnant—were as a spreading rot, necrosis to the world, and Nosmir was here to amputate.

  The hummingbirds danced under the moonlight as the rightful, god-driven hand plunged a curved sacrificial blade into the youngster's twisted, black heart. The blood pooled through the guiding lines, carved in stone, leading towards the altar at the very middle.

  He didn't fool himself that he could be spared from the purge only because his features were different to the humans, or that he was closer to the fae simply due not having been carried in a woman's womb. He had been abruptly ripped off nature, and now, he was like them. Murderous, evil, rotten.

  Nosmir cast his disdainful eyes to the selfish woman that had dragged him out of the woods and turned him into a pet, for the sake of some delusion, some fantasy that "rescuing" him into the human world was an act of kindness. He didn't care about her affairs, or the mountain of lies she had to create to maintain them, or her greed, and the hundreds of stolen items bought for a fraction of their value and sold for twice that to their owners. As he plunged the knife into her heart, his scrutinizing gaze focused on her eyes—scared, surprised, unaware of all the damage she had caused.

  Such an ignorant thing. Nosmir shook his head seeing his reflection in her dead eyes, wondering how much damage of his own he had done, seeking justifications, excuses. A blue flower sprouted from the blood pooling around her dead body, the blossom giving him the strength to not doubt his last mission.

  She paraded him before her friends—"Look at him, so exotic, so strange," like a shiny stone or a colorful plant. It had been almost a second nature, Nosmir came to complete a fantasy of the family she couldn't have, like the cuckoo that throws the other's eggs off the nest to leave its own. Unaware, immoral, uncaring. As long as they were happy, it was all good.

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  He had always been a sideliner, a stranger in the human town. He had attended school, and saw firsthand how even from childhood humans were drawn to violence, and thirst for destruction. Always packed with bandages, oil and vinegar, he assisted the others that played with wooden swords. He didn't want to fight, or kill—and was mocked because of that. The scornful laughter still rang in his ear as he plunged the knives into the now-grown people that had called him weak and wan.

  The river of blood, like that of Hel, grew thicker as it flowed unnaturally, moved by the sprites of the forest. Nosmir didn't feel gratified by his actions; he didn't kill them for revenge. He approached the man who, while living with the woman that had kidnapped him, scared him at night, trying to make him soil himself in fear for a laugh.

  He approached the back of his hand- of a sickly pale green shade, cracked like the bark of a tree, and caressed his cheek, sunken by age. The man trembled, and another substance joined the mortal-realm Phlegethon.

  "I forgive you," Nosmir whispered, a tear forming in his eye as he slit the throat of the man before he could answer. Once, he had been filled with rage at his fate, nourishing the flame of hatred with daily imaginations of a place where he'd be accepted rather than shunned, where happiness was at the reach of the hand like a plump fruit of a tree, and surrounded by his kin under Perun's night sky, until the fire combusted in conflagration, and he caught himself reflected in a puddle while carrying an oil lamp and a torch, ready to burn down the house of his fake mother.

  As he grew more aware of his surroundings, as sapience took more and more prevalence, he too became violent and destructive.

  He had tried to run away, merge again with the forest—but it had, too, rejected him. It was too late for that; it hadn't matter how much he called out in the language of root and leaf, or half-whispered songs of birds. Nothing answered, even as he pressed his palms against oak trunks, begging the trents to recognize him, to take him back. Only now things have changed, now, when he decided to put an end to all.

  Another open vein, another slit throat, all vortex towards the altar. The evergreens shook to an unseen wind and the lightbugs performed dazzlingly; the skies turned blue, contrasting with the dark red moon.

  One last sacrifice remained to be done. Nosmir walked past the lifeless bodies of his captors as he advanced towards the altar. The flowers and the grass bent towards him as he walked, bowing in respect to his selflessness. The buzzing insects and the dancing birds fluttered faster, exhilarated by what's to come—even the trees, those passive sentinels of the world, awoke from their stupor as they paid attention.

  Nosmir stood atop the altar, contemplating his surroundings, that which he was bound to save. Then, he looked up to the skies and saw as the ghostly figures of the wild hunt crossed the crimson moon, led by the God of Nature himself. Banners of silver and weapons made of dew, they clamored the return of the primal. Closing his eyes, Nosmir could hear the strained strings of the talharpa and the whistling winds of the bone flutes—drums and bells echoed through the woods as the King himself blew the goat's horn.

  "Purify us, oh great one." The knife pierced his heart, and his blue blood joined the rest, like a red-petal anemone flowing outwardly in ultimate surrender.

  The stone was warm beneath him.

  The forest gave no answer, as it never did.