Romanian village turned Jaehyuk into their newest scarecrow

So this is a creepypasta about a Korean climber named Jaehyuk who gets caught in an unseasonable blizzard in Romania's Retezat National Park. He's doing a solo climb, living his best "civilization is fake" era, relying on maps and compass. Very romantic. Very stupid in hindsight.

Then September decides to be September in hell. Sunny sky turns gray in like an hour, then DUMPS snow the size of houses. His compass goes haywire, GPS dies, he's freezing and his eyelids are getting heavy. Literally watching death creep up behind him. And then through the blizzard he sees lights.

They're real. He stumbles toward this village that isn't on ANY map. Old houses made of logs and stone, chimneys smoking. An old man in homemade clothes opens the door. Normal, right? WRONG. The villagers are creepily nice. Too nice. They feed him hot stew and hard bread while speaking some ancient Romanian dialect he can't understand. His body thaws by the fire but something's OFF. Their smiles don't reach their eyes. Like. At all.

Then he notices. Scarecrows. Every. Single. House. Has one right by the front door like some kind of guardian. Not in fields. AT the house. Made of straw and old wood crosses, dressed in the villagers' worn clothes. So much nope.

That night he wakes up to this EERIE humming. Dozens of voices singing the same low note. He looks out the window and the whole village is in the town square bowing to the biggest, oldest scarecrow like it's a god. Storm raging, lightning flashing, and when the lightning hits, he SWEARS the scarecrow's head tilts slightly toward him. He tells himself it's exhaustion. His brain knows better.

Next day the old chief guy (촌장) tells Jaehyuk he's lucky. Today's the "Silence Festival" (침묵 축제). Rules: nobody can speak. Everyone has to offer their most precious thing to the scarecrows in complete silence. The festival is so quiet it's HORRIFYING. The villagers move around decorating the scarecrows, dressing them up with their best clothes and old jewelry.

Jaehyuk gets bored so he explores and finds an old grain storage shed. Inside? Mountain of old scarecrows stacked like corpses. He picks one up and the straw is rotted, falling apart, and something YELLOW is poking through. Not straw. HUMAN BONES. He freaks out, tears through every scarecrow. They're ALL full of bones, teeth, hair, human REMAINS. These people aren't making scarecrows. They're making people INTO scarecrows.

He HAS to escape. That night during the festival he bolts for the forest. Better to freeze than stay here. But the forest entrance? Lined with dozens of scarecrows in a wall. They MOVED themselves. He screams and turns around — there's the whole village behind him. Hollow eyes, creepy smiles. The chief raises his hand and points at the town square. A NEW wooden cross is standing there. Empty. Waiting. The chief's voice sounds like dry straw scraping in wind: "Time to send away the old and welcome a new protector."

One year later, summer. Two young Romanian climbers are hiking with an old map looking for traces of an abandoned village. They find it. Impossibly clean. But nobody home. They walk into the town square and see the scarecrows. SO MANY scarecrows. Weird number. Too many.

Center of the square stands one that's obviously newer than the rest. Year-old weathering on it but you can still tell — it's wearing hiking clothes. Recent model. One climber zooms in with his camera and then the text cuts off because the author is evil and wants us screaming.