Berga ad Zonam
“Where silence spills in morning grey,
and mist upon the heather lay,
there slumbers deep, both old and fair,
the veiled Berga ad Zonam, rare.
God shield the path where shadows stray.”
It is the year 1011 A.D. in a land that one day will bear the name “The Netherlands.” On the northern edge of the clay and sandy grounds of Brabant, nestled at the boundary where sandbanks meet the higher ridges of the Brabantse Wal, lies a small, slumbering settlement, Berga ad Zonam. A name that, in time, will change to Bergen op Zoom.
To the west, in seasons of wet breath and softened light, glimmers the shallow water of a winding brook, known among the locals simply as “the Zooma” — the world’s hem, the edge of the dwellable.
The landscape surrounds like a faded tapestry, sandy heathlands interwoven with young woods of oak, birch, and pine. In the low places, bogs and moor ponds glisten, thick with wild herbs like bog-myrtle, honeysuckle, cattail, heather, and ferns growing in defiance of time.
Here dwell the creatures of the borderland’s swine and deer, ravens and crows. A wolf, sometimes. The wind roams unshackled over the moors. Mists crawl in at dawn and the ground gives little. Winters are long. Life is plain.
In a room lit only by the trembling hearth, Godelina, the village elder, sits in silence. As every evening, she rests beside the fire. Its flickering light plays gently across her face, catching the lines shaped by age and memory. On this moonless night, she is joined by her grandchildren young eyes caught in the spell of tale and timber. The older ones know the story’s shape but await its telling with held breath. The younger ones press close, still untouched by its darker turns.
Godelina sips from her tea fragrant with chamomile plucked and dried in the long days of summer. The scent anchors her in the present. Yet her gaze drifts, as though memory or warning has cast its net once more. Nights like these unsettle her heart. “Remember this, my children,” Godelina said, her voice low,
“They take the lost on moonless eves,
where no star glows and no beast breathes.
Their step is silent, their shadow cold,
they drift like smoke through birch and fold.
They fear the glades where Diana stays,
where priestly blood still soothes the clay.
So carry oak or beech in hand,
and speak the Nightbird’s name, lest faceless ones command.”
In the ember-shadowed back of the room, Godelina’s daughter Bertha sits with her husband Goswin. Bertha is knitting. Goswin, puffing his pipe, mutters, “There we go again. Every night, the same old crone stories.”
Bertha smiles. “Let her be. She loves giving the children a tale well told.” She sets her knitting aside and rises. “Children, time for bed.”
The young ones kiss their grandmother and father goodnight, retreating into the darkness beyond the hearth’s reach. Goswin watches from the shadows, eyeing his mother-in-law.
“I feel your eyes, Goswin,” Godelina says quietly, breaking the silence. “My sight may have faded, but I’m not blind. Say what you’re chewing on.”
He exhales a heavy plume of smoke. “It’s just... you tell so many tales. Most of them are charming. But this one the pagan one it always comes back.”
Godelina’s gaze shifts to the window, to the black night pressing its face against the glass. “Some stories need telling,” she replies. “They’re told to be heard so that what must not be forgotten may endure.”
What Goswin did not know, was that Ludger, his aging stableman, was even now making his way through the night toward Berga ad Zonam. He’d bypassed Halstara, the village northward, choosing instead to press on. The woods, yes, they harbored dangers. But not on a night like this. Not in such superstitious lands, where even robbers shun moonless hours.
Ludger was a Christian man, bold in his faith. With God at his side, he feared nothing.
The road led from the moor to the woods that walled Berga ad Zonam like an old dream. Before entering the trees, Ludger lit his lantern. He knew how treacherous the path could be. The old road twisted like a forgotten vein through the woods barely wide enough for a cart’s wheel, flanked by birch, beech, and black alder.
By day, light breaks in scattered shards. But on a moonless night there is no light. Only dark so thick even sound seems to drown.
The trees stood shoulder to shoulder, silent sentries. Roots clawed from the earth like crooked fingers. Moss crawled over bark like ancient skin, damp and breathing. The scent of iron and decay and something unnamed clung to the air.
Stones flanked the road old, worn, veiled in ivy and sacred moss. Some said boundary markers. Others whispered they moved at night.
Here, where the moon cannot find you, even the faintest sounds become monstrous. A cracking twig, a breaking bone. A rustle, a whisper. The wind crawls, not from above, but low between trunks a breath with no mouth.
Ludger knew these sounds well. He had travelled this path many times, but never beneath a sky so blind. It is in this silence they come the Faceless. They slip between trees without stirring a leaf. No owl sings. No crow warns. Even the masters of night shun this path. Only those who know the Nightbird’s name walk here... and even they, sometimes, do not return.
Ludger shook off the thought. “Nonsense. Fool’s talk,” he muttered, squinting into the void.
His lantern swung from an iron hook, flickering weakly with each jolt. A trembling eye of copper and oil. The wagon groaned beneath him like old bones. His horse breathed heavy, steam rising from flanks made silver by cold.
He murmured not a spell, but a prayer, “Dominus illuminatio mea...”. But the darkness did not yield. The forest felt deeper than ever. The trees, like saints upon a gravefield, stood frozen their limbs folded in silence.
No bird. No mouse. Even the air seemed to hush.
A rustle. Not beast. Not wind. Something walking... without feet.
Ludger gripped the reins tighter. His eyes searched past the lantern’s reach. The dark beyond seemed wrong. Thicker than nature would allow. His breath smoked. His heart raced louder than hoofbeats.
A movement.
To the right. Between trunks. A shape tall. Too tall. Too still. No face only a black, glassy surface where eyes should be. And it looked at him... without looking.
Ludger gasped. Pulled the reins. The horse reared, crying out. The wagon tilted. The lantern swung wildly. In that breath the shape vanished. Swallowed by the forest.
“Go!” he snarled, snapping the reins. The horse obeyed. Each hoofbeat a sin against the stillness.
Then a wind, sharp and sudden.
The lantern hissed out. Blackness.
A grasp. The wagon overturned. Ludger flung into roots. A scream swallowed by leaves whispering like they rejoiced.
He tried to rise. Too late. It was there.
It crawled no legs, no arms. Claws like split branches. A body like mist and meat. Black against black. No face only a gleam where none should be.
Its claw struck. Blades of bone sliced flesh like parchment. Warm blood streaked his temple.
Ludger screamed. The claw pressed found an eye. Twisted. Plucked. Fire exploded in his skull.
He thrashed legs kicking, arms clawing. He struck cold flesh. It didn’t flinch.
A voice. Not a voice. A thought: “You did not see. You never did.”, then silence.
Ludger gasped. Blood and terror filled his lungs. The claw still pressed searching the void where his eye had been. His legs flailed in the damp leaves. His hands struck nothing.
Then a deep ancient voice.Broken by time, but not by weakness. “Let him go. Return... to your masters.”
The Faceless stilled.
A shiver in the air. Not sound a growl from the woods themselves. The Faceless recoiled slightly. Still looming, but shrinking.
“You know how I’m,” the voice said again, closer now. “And you know what I can do to you.”. Storm upon gravestone that was the sound of those words.
A man emerged. Age written in his stance. A staff in his hand, knotted as old oak. A charm tied atop it. His cloak, shadow-laced and heavy, moved as though night clung to it. His eyes not bright, but burning from within.
“Begone,” he said once more. “Or I will unmake you, shadow-born.”
The Faceless turned. The two stood silent the man and wraith, memory and myth. The creature trembled. Barely. Ludger felt it a ripple in the world. Then it was gone. Folded into its own shadow. The man remained. Watching.
Ludger lay there, chest heaving, mouth full of blood and dirt and cold. The forest smelled of iron and fear. One eye throbbed. His skull pulsed like a chapel bell in storm.
The priest stood, unmoving, like a tree defying the storm.
Then Ludger broke. Groaning. Crawling. His hands found mud, roots. He surged up. Legs trembling. Driven not by strength, but something older: Flight.
He ran.
Through bramble, over roots, past trunks that seemed to shift at the edge of vision. His breath came in broken bells. He dared to look back.
And saw...
In the highest boughs of an ancient beech, perched like a sentinel of dusk something not man, not beast.
Long and thin, cloaked in feathers that shimmered without light. Legs taut as branches, arms folded like wings. No face only two deep-yellow eyes, watching. The Nightbird.
No light, no moon yet it was there, silhouette sliced into the night itself. Even the dark softened where it sat, as though the shadows knew reverence.
Ludger dared not call out. He dared not pray. He had been seen.
And that was enough.
He ran toward Berga ad Zonam. Toward whatever waited next.
