Found Between Pages

When the children from around the land started disappearing in the night-when nothing but empty beds and half-folded blankets greeted their parents at dawn-the village learned how loud silence could be. Doors were barred earlier. Lamps burned longer. Mothers began counting breaths instead of sheep, and fathers slept with knives beneath their pillows, listening for footsteps that never came. No tracks marked the roads, no cries pierced the dark. The children did not struggle; they were simply gone, as if the night itself had learned how to steal.