When I was a child, my twelve brothers used to run through the fields with me, their laughter echoing beneath the setting sun. We were inseparable—wild, untamed, and bound by the kind of love that only siblings who have lost everything can understand. Then, one night, the storm came. Our parents never returned from it, and my brothers changed. A curse—old as the wind, cruel as sorrow—fell upon them. One by one, they turned into blackbirds, their cries lost in the thunder. That was ten years ago. I’m twenty now. I thought I had learned to live with the silence they left behind. But I was wrong. They still come back to me. Every dusk, when the sky bleeds into twilight, twelve blackbirds gather outside my window. They perch on the dead tree near the edge of the field, watching me with knowing eyes. Their feathers shimmer like obsidian, glinting with secrets. Sometimes, when the wind is just right, I can hear whispers—my name carried softly between their caws. They are still my brothers. They guard me from the shadows that creep too close, from the things that lurk in dreams. I feel their warmth in the cold wind, their strength in the beating of wings above. They cannot speak, yet I understand them. I see the love they still carry, the same fierce, protective love that once pulled me from danger when I was a child. But the curse keeps them bound. I’ve spent years searching for a way to break it. Ancient books, forbidden rituals, and the whispers of old spirits—all speak of a choice. To set them free, I must trade something of equal worth. My humanity. Sometimes, when the night is deepest and their red eyes gleam through the dark, I wonder if it’s worth it—to give up everything, to be with them again, flying across the endless night sky. Because in the end, they’re not just my brothers. They’re all I have left.