After the dance ended, three men had followed Dusya outside.
Someone nearby had seen them call out to her just beyond the entrance to the club.
Moments later, all four figures disappeared together into the darkness beyond the village road.
No one had seen them afterward.
Lydia felt as though the last thread holding her together had snapped.
That night she did not scream.
She did not collapse in tears.
She did not race through the village in blind panic.
Instead, she turned quietly and walked straight to the village council office.
The duty police officer barely looked up when she entered.
At first, he wasn’t even interested in filing a missing-person report.
“Maybe the girl just decided to have a little fun,” he muttered lazily with a dismissive shrug. “Young people wander off all the time these days.”
Lydia didn’t answer.
She simply stared at him.
There was something in her silent gaze—something heavy, unwavering, almost impossible to endure.
The officer shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
For the first time that night…
…he began to feel afraid.
The search did not begin until the first gray light of dawn.
A handful of local men gathered with hunting dogs and headed into the forest, hoping they were not already too late. The rain, however, continued to pour relentlessly, washing away footprints almost as quickly as they appeared. Endless marshes surrounded Silent Marshes for miles in every direction—deadly wetlands that had swallowed travelers long before the Revolution, places the older villagers spoke about only in whispers.
By evening, the searchers discovered the first clue.
A single shoe.
Blue.
Half-buried beneath layers of wet mud.
The moment Lydia saw it, she recognized it without hesitation.
It belonged to Dusya.
Later that same night, they found her.
She lay beside the edge of a quagmire, hidden among rain-soaked reeds. Her body was bruised, her dress ripped to shreds, and her face almost unrecognizable beneath the injuries she had suffered. Her vacant eyes no longer seemed able to focus on the world around her.
But she was still breathing.
Lydia dropped to her knees beside her daughter and gathered the broken girl into her arms.
Dusya tried to whisper something through swollen, bloodied lips.
Whatever she struggled to say was swallowed by the endless roar of the rain.
Without waiting for anyone’s help, Lydia lifted her daughter and carried her through the forest herself. She stumbled over tangled roots, slipped into deep mud, fell again and again, yet each time forced herself back to her feet.
It felt as though death itself was following only a few steps behind them.
When the village medic examined the girl, he lowered his eyes in silence.
Then he slowly shook his head.
They had arrived too late.
Just before sunrise, Dusya slipped away without ever regaining consciousness.
After the funeral, an unnatural silence settled over the village.
Neighbors avoided one another’s eyes.
People spoke only in hushed voices.
No one wanted trouble with Boris Chernov or the Lapin brothers. The three men had influential acquaintances, knew exactly whom to bribe, and had spent years keeping the surrounding villages under a cloud of fear. The police investigation moved with painful indifference, as though they were searching for a missing chicken instead of seeking justice for a murdered young woman.
The investigator visited the village only twice.
He scribbled a few notes inside a worn folder.
Asked cold, mechanical questions.
Showed little interest in the answers.
Then he drove away.
Within a week, rumors began spreading from house to house.
People whispered that the suspects might never stand trial.
There simply wasn’t “enough evidence.”
When Lydia heard those words…
Something inside her finally shattered.
The woman everyone had known disappeared with her daughter.
She no longer cried.
She rarely spoke.
From dawn until long after sunset, she remained seated before her old loom.
Only now the rhythm of its wooden frame had changed.
It no longer sounded patient.
It sounded angry.
Violent.
As though every beam of weathered timber had absorbed the hatred burning inside her heart.
Whirr…
Clack.
Whirr…
Clack.
Night after night, the lamp inside Lydia’s cottage burned until morning.
Then people began noticing strange things.
She often disappeared alone into the forest.
Neither freezing rain nor bitter winds could keep her away.
Some villagers claimed they had seen her speaking with old Agafya, a nearly blind recluse who lived deep in the woods. Many believed the old woman practiced witchcraft, though nobody could prove it.
Others swore Lydia spent hours sharpening an enormous pair of tailor’s shears until the blades gleamed like polished silver.
A few insisted that after midnight, soft whispers drifted from her cottage—quiet prayers… or perhaps something far darker.