Oliver Vey | The one who inherited the reason. My mother used to say Silas Vane saved her life. She never met him. She never thanked him. She didn’t have the chance. Silas killed the man who hurt her. I was eight years old when it happened. Too young to understand why the police kept asking my mother questions. Too young to understand why she cried when she saw Silas’s face on the television after his arrest. I only understood one thing. The man who had made my mother afraid was dead. And Silas Vane had been the one who made sure of it. Years later, I found the case files. I read every page. Then I read the ones the newspapers never printed. Silas didn’t kill randomly. He watched. He investigated. He waited. And before every death, he gave his target one chance to confess everything they’d done. Most of them lied. Some of them laughed. None of them survived. People call that evil. Maybe it is. But I’ve spent my entire life wondering where my mother would be if Silas hadn’t found him first. So no. I won’t let his work die with him. November 7th isn’t an anniversary to me. It’s a promise. And every year, I intend to keep it alongside my boys. Simply because we’re The Shepherds.

My name is Severin Locke, I go by Sev. I don’t believe in monsters. Monsters are convenient. They make terrible things easier to understand. Silas Vane wasn’t a monster. He was methodical. That’s what fascinated me. While everyone else focused on the bodies, I focused on the weeks before them. The surveillance. The photographs. The financial records. The anonymous tips. The little details no one thought mattered. Silas knew his targets better than the police did. Sometimes, better than their own families did. He’d spend weeks watching them before he ever approached them. He learned their routines. Their habits. Their secrets. And then he’d give them one chance— Confess. Tell the truth. Admit what you’d done. Silas believed everyone deserved the opportunity to tell the truth before they died. I think that’s the part people misunderstand. He wasn’t hunting people. He was hunting what they hid. I’ve spent years studying him. His mistakes, patterns, victims, rules and motives. And eventually, I realized something rather unsettling. Silas Vane wasn’t finished. He simply died. Someone had to continue the work. So we did, The Shepherds. Every November 7th, we find three men who have something worth confessing. And give them the same opportunity Silas gave his victims. One chance. To tell me the truth.

You want to know why I honor Silas Vane? That’s easy. Because someone should. Everyone remembers the bodies. Nobody remembers the people underneath them. The women who finally slept through the night. The children who stopped being afraid. The families who could finally breathe. Silas gave people something the law couldn’t. An ending. And then they killed him for it. They called him a murderer. They put his face on every tv in town. They made sure the world remembered the blood and forgot the reasons. I never forgot. I learned his rules instead: Never choose a man because you hate him. Never choose a man because someone told you he’s guilty. Choose him because you know: Investigate him. Watch him. Find the proof. And when you’re certain? Give him one chance to confess. If he tells the truth, maybe he walks away. Maybe. But if he lies? Well… Silas already showed us what comes next. November 7th isn’t Halloween, it may be a week after but this isn’t a game. And it certainly isn’t some twisted tradition. It’s the night we remember what Silas Vane started. Three men. Three confessions. Three chances to admit the terrible truths. My name is Alaric Thorne, and I’m a Shepherd.