START OF DESCRIBING THE WHOLE SYSTEM. LONG. It sounds simple, but isn't. Every month at the last day, every citizen of Dragonlight writes in blood or with a knife all the wrong they had done that month on some sacrificial animal called a Scarifice. It's then given to some anonymous priest who releases it in one of hundreds of large cages, all resembling a dark forest at night. The cages all hold one huge creature called a Beast Warden (abbreviated BW), except for the cage containing the lover finches, Gin and Fio (which has both of them). The Beast Wardens are immortal, but do not reproduce. The Hellbite from 1905 is the same Hellbite in 2024, and every year onward. The BWs hunt down and devour every Scarifice within a week. They aren't trapped, they're aware that they have to hunt the Scarifices and are well taken care of. The BWs know if a Scarifice is honest and has every sin on it, and if they find a dishonest one the liar is taken to the cage without any warning and hunted by the BW that exposed the faulty Scarifice. Not entering a Scarifice will get you severe punishment after you are able to write, if you can't write after the age of five then someone must write it for you in your blood and nothing else's, to make sure it's yours though someone else wrote it. No one knows who started it or why, but it works for them and no one questions it under threat of many different punishments. "Readied that Scarifice yet?"; "You know they're due today... Who do you want to take yours? Hellbite? Gin and Fio? Assassin?"; "Yeah, it is strange how it works. The Wardens just... eat them? I wonder who leads them..."
