The Abductions

Prologue

Millbrook was not a place where mysteries happened. It was a place of seasons and harvests, of quiet routines and predictable sorrows. But three months ago, something changed. It began with old Thomas the miller. His wife found his bed empty one autumn morning—no signs of struggle, no note, no body. Within weeks, six others followed: a farmhand, two children, a merchant's clerk, the blacksmith's daughter, and a traveling scholar. Each vanished during the night. Each left behind only bewilderment and fear. The local constabulary offered no answers. The village council blamed curses, criminal conspiracy, even madness. A merchant named Al Thorne spoke of a strange light descending from the sky the night before the first disappearance, but his account was dismissed as the fancy of a traveling man. Yet when the seventh person disappeared just last night—the blacksmith's own daughter—desperation overcame skepticism. The council has posted a substantial bounty and sent word to the nearest city for help. Now, as night falls over Millbrook's rolling fields, the stars shine with unusual clarity. In the village, families bar their doors. Some speak of nightmares that plagued the missing in their final days. Others swear they've heard strange humming sounds carried on the wind. And somewhere in the darkness above, something patient and incomprehensible continues its work. Time is running short. The village needs answers before panic consumes it entirely—or before whoever, whatever, took these people, takes more.