Book 5 of The Dark Tower opens on a small village whose children are routinely stolen by "Wolves." What state are these children returned in?

In The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, the children are returned mentally and physically ruined, a condition called “roont.” The Wolves abduct one child from many pairs of twins in Calla Bryn Sturgis and take them toward Thunderclap. After a period away, the children come back with severely diminished mental abilities and a frightening physical fate.

“Roont” is the Calla’s dialect form of “ruined.” The returned children often cannot speak or care for themselves normally, yet they grow to enormous size and strength. Their growth is described as painful, and many die young. The villagers fear the Wolves but have historically accepted the children’s return because getting them back, even damaged, seems better than losing them completely.

The mystery deepens when Roland’s ka-tet learns that the Wolves are not supernatural beasts but robotic agents connected to the larger conflict surrounding the Dark Tower. The stolen children are used in a process involving the Breakers, whose psychic abilities threaten the Beams supporting the Tower. The answer is therefore more specific than simply “disabled”: the book’s canonical term is “roont,” meaning ruined.