The village entrance, made of weathered wood, held a tense silence, yet no visible threat appeared as the five of them entered, walking its messy path. However, the houses within the village looked very old and long uninhabited but not abandoned, with the villagers inside starting to smile at the five of them as they entered the area. Sora kept his hand gripping the hilt of his sword while observing his surroundings. Kaelith, always observing with her eagle eyes, saw things that looked suspicious to her. Namien, usually full of humor and sarcasm, acted unusually by covering his mouth with a cloth he had prepared as he stepped into the seemingly calm village; the aroma Namien smelled was like the stench of decay around the villagers' houses, his gaze looking between the calm faces of the villagers. Vael, merely looking around, could only remain silent and always vigilant for threats coming from any direction as he also felt something unpleasant within him. And Arelan, the last one, began to place both his axes behind his back and walked casually while the others felt something bad might happen, but he was just looking for someone near or within the Linshuin Pass area.
Then a voice from one of the villagers was heard from in front of them, greeting gently. “Welcome, travelers. We have been waiting for you.” smiled a woman no older than thirty, her appearance marked by blonde hair tied back, her woven robe draped loosely over her body, and she bowed along with several other people behind her who did the same. Arelan whispered to Kaelith beside him, “How did they know we were coming here?” Kaelith didn't heed Arelan's question, but she was thinking the same thing. Vael stepped forward slightly and spoke to the welcoming village woman. “Is this village… safe to live in?” The woman giggled, her soft laugh sounding like a child's, and the villagers behind her also chuckled softly, slapping their knees. “Do you see danger in here, knight?” the woman asked, gesturing around the village with an open hand. “There are no wild beasts, no strife, and no blood spilled on this land; rather, we guard our homes here.” Sora, hearing that statement, fell silent, feeling a chill begin to prickle and creep up the back of his neck. The villagers' laughter didn't seem mocking, but it was too soft, and Sora sensed a strange desire from them when he saw and heard their very odd laughter. “Come, our priest will be honored to welcome you all, and he is… our chief as well,” said one of the villagers, a tall man with reddish eyes, though his facial expression said otherwise with an unnatural smile.
In the end, the five of them reluctantly accepted the villagers' offer. One of the villagers happily led the five of them into the village, passing houses that had strange symbols near their doors, appearing scorched, making the wooden doors slightly burnt, and some houses were also painted a dark red that had long dried. Kaelith leaned towards Sora and whispered to him, “This place seems too alive… and something strange behind it confirms my instincts. Something isn't right in this village.” Sora, hearing this, could only nod slowly as the five of them followed the villager guiding them somewhere. The five of them finally arrived at the place the villager showed them: a church whose building was now almost destroyed from the scars of war, its foundation half-damaged, and several holes in its roof. But the clear mark of the war's impact was the fire that had scorched several murals on its walls, long faded by time, accompanied by the scorch marks on the wall itself. However, inside the nearly destroyed church, the candles within were still lit, signifying a life that kept the church from collapsing. Inside the church, at the far end near the weathered wooden altar, stood a man whose appearance included pale white robes stained with ash, and his hands visibly held onto the termite-eaten wooden foundation of the church. His facial expression was weary and filled with a sadness he tried to hide within his calmness. When the figure turned and saw them enter his church, Arelan's expression tensed and showed surprise as he recognized that face; he tried to remain calm, keeping his mouth shut to say nothing he knew, to guard his group from unexpected threats.
“Welcome, guests from the fog. The forest does not release many, unless it chooses, and I think you were not chosen by the forest you passed, were you? Rather, you were sent by it to stop by our village.” the priest said with a smile on his face to welcome the five of them. Namien, hearing the priest's welcoming words, raised his eyebrows and stepped forward casually, stepping into the riddle with his own. “Then answer this riddle of mine, you who guide the way to the right path. What does your god say about the path within that leads to silence and the candles that always burn in his churches as places of worship, half-burned and about to be destroyed by warring people?” The priest, hearing Namien's question and riddle, smiled faintly about it and answered. “Even ashes always remember the light from their flame's radiance. And silence? It is not absence; rather, it is the breath exhaled before its bell tolls to show the time.” Namien blinked upon hearing the priest's answer directly, then chuckled softly, satisfied. "Touche." But in his heart, Namien kept the priest's answer, seeing it not just as a clever evasion, though the answer was entirely correct, but too clean for a religious leader in the midst of this world's destruction. The priest continued speaking to them while looking at them one by one: "Rest in here. Do not speak of the forest behind you, because Linshuin Pass is not guarded by sword or fire, but by the memories of those who have left this world from the war that once befell this place." Arelan's jaw clenched as he wanted to say something in rebuttal, but he looked around at his group and felt that he had entered a lion's den surrounded by numerous threats and dangers from all possible directions. Arelan decided not to utter a single word for the safety of the other four from the threat of the man he knew behind the priest's mask.
The villagers, always smiling with very strange expressions, led them to a shelter in a corner of the village, an old wooden cottage reinforced with stone that looked old but renovated, with moss clinging to its roof, yet warm enough to shield their bodies from the wind blowing through its nearly rotten wooden windows. There was no threat for now, no danger circling them as they rested inside, and no magic or anything after Namien carefully checked without the villagers knowing, finding nothing around their resting place. However, the five of them felt the tension from outside like a snare waiting to slowly tighten around their necks. The five of them entered the cottage, and the door closed softly behind them, shut by the villager.
As darkness began to fall, they tried to rest peacefully, but one by one, they felt the same gripping tension. Vael, who had been sitting near the cottage window, finally broke the silence and said softly: “They knew we were coming, and every word they spoke was carefully measured. This place is too clean for a village adjacent to the danger in the previous forest.” Kaelith, standing and leaning in the doorway with her bow already gripped, responded to Vael. “That priest… I didn’t trust his words from the moment he spoke to us. He talks like someone delivering another's message who is already dead, mimicking them.” Namien, sitting on the edge of the bed resting his head in his hand, seemed to be thinking about something until he finally spoke up too. “My riddle wasn’t just for fun. It… was a code or a warning for us, more precisely.” Sora, sitting in a chair against the farthest wall, could only silently observe a sign around the cottage area until he found faint writing, seemingly scratched out by carving, in the corner of the wooden ceiling which read,
A warning for those who stay in this cottage and still possess by human sanity.
Kaelith averted her gaze and began to watch Sora, seeing what he was looking at, and Kaelith started to see the writing that was clearly hidden and intended for those still alive and sane, beginning to understand the meaning behind the words. Kaelith chose not to say anything, and the time for rest would eventually arrive, but they still doubted their safety, which felt unlike the security and peace one would feel in a village. Because Linshuin Pass was a place remembered by those who had died in that area, and they did not yet know what lay ahead. The fire Sora had made in the hearth began to flicker, casting their elongated shadows that twitched like restless fingers on the wooden floor and walls. Inside the cottage, none of them slept, not because they were ordered to stay awake, but because they couldn't, as the threat they sensed grew stronger.
Kaelith, having changed position, now sat beside the window, her fingers ready to draw her bow. She peered through a thin crack in the window to observe the conditions outside, seeing that none of the villagers were moving out of their homes, only the swaying lanterns making a rhythmic sound from one to the next, blown by a wind that never touched the trees. The silence in the village was palpable, like fog turning into a solid mass filling the surrounding area. Vael moved towards the entrance door and stood before it, his arms crossed over his chest, his sword still sheathed at his hip. His posture was calm like a statue waiting for something, and he hadn't said anything since his last words, just watching the crack of the door that led to the path in the middle of the village.
Every sound that emerged and every faint rustle from outside the resting place made him slowly tighten his grip on his sword hilt. Arelan stood in the corner of the cottage, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, but his eyes... were looking elsewhere, lost in thought about the priest whose face he recognized. The priest's face brought back some buried memories from the ruins of Borreal, something he hadn't spoken of for a long time about what he had seen before Borreal met its destruction, with the priest's not-unfamiliar face. Namien stood beside the fireplace with both hands behind his back, as if trying to keep his thoughts from escaping the labyrinth of his riddles with the priest's answer. "That riddle... ash remembers light, and silence is the breath before the bell tolls..." he whispered, analyzing the answer, which was too clean, too precise, and too careful for just a riddle's answer. "Someone is testing us and watching us, certainly," added Namien, having reached the conclusion of his analysis.
Sora sat in a chair near the fireplace with his sword placed beside his knee, his fingers gently tracing the end of its hilt, not to sharpen it, but to listen to what made his sword, which had passed through death and fire, hum when things got bad, especially now. His sword was showing the same sign, making him feel wary of the threat within this village. Suddenly, Vael turned to the others and broke the silence. "I'm going for a short walk outside," he said softly, his hand already reaching for the doorknob. Namien looked up and followed him. "Wait, I want to go out too. I still have some questions for the priest, and if I don't come back in ten minutes, just burn this place to the ground." Kaelith almost laughed upon hearing Namien's words, and finally, Vael and Namien went out of the cottage.
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Outside on the path.... Vael walked through the paths, flanked by the villagers' houses, his hand placed on his sword hilt for vigilance. The houses were so quiet, and the lanterns beside the path shone with a soft light, but not with the fire within the lanterns, which was more like a dim, unwarm glow. As Vael passed a villager's house that sounded a bit noisy, he stopped and tried to gather information, carefully circling the house.
When Vael found a small crack in the slightly open window, Vael's curiosity momentarily overcame his caution. He leaned closer to peek inside and could hardly believe what he saw and found. Inside, someone was bent over a table, tearing at rotten meat with their bare hands. Their mouths were slick with blood from what they ate raw, muttering between chews with low, inhuman, cannibalistic whispers. "Flesh... bone... uncooked and must not waste what has been given..." And in the corner of the room, Vael saw something that intensified his horror: a dismembered and decaying human corpse, its flesh torn, with slightly neat but hurried cutting marks from a sharp knife visible. Vael's eyes widened in disbelief, his fingers clenching at the clear evidence of the threat and danger surrounding him and his group. Vael chose to retreat from the villager's house slowly and carefully, not wanting to alert the inhabitant to his presence, until he was far away and back on the village path. Then, he hurried and ran towards the cottage where his group was staying to tell them what he had just discovered.
Meanwhile, inside the ruined church.... Namien stepped into the church, slowly opening the nearly broken door, the sound of his boots echoing on the partially destroyed floor. Namien saw the figure of the priest standing alone at the partially destroyed wooden altar, his gaze directed towards the partially destroyed and hole-ridden church ceiling, his back to Namien. Namien did not turn back towards the cottage but chose to walk closer to the priest, until the priest broke the silence without turning towards Namien, still looking up at his dilapidated church ceiling, “I wondered when you would come here, Snake in the Torn Robe?” Namien froze instantly, the priest's words making him even more suspicious. “I never told you that name before.” Finally, the priest slowly turned towards Namien to look at him, showing his weary face, his eyes glowing faintly in the church's darkness, lit only by the still-burning candles, and with something not entirely human. “I know many names. From your name, his name, and their names, certainly, even people like that bear their silence like a crown already turned to ash.” The priest began to show a terrifying smile on his face after those words. Namien narrowed his eyes and asked him. “Who are you really, and what is your actual purpose?”
The priest tilted his head and answered Namien’s question. “A shepherd, a keeper of the gate, and a listener of God’s servants whose voices are alienated in their prayers.” Namien began to take a step back slowly. “What lies beyond the forest near this village?” “Oh, that forest? Did the forest lead you here? It’s not just the forest that can pose a threat if you know about it, right?” the priest said, his tone beginning to change into one of horror, and his smile now wider and more frightening than before. It made Namien’s hair stand on end more than any monster that had threatened him so far. “Time here is very limited, and the graves you passed are not just graves you think they are. Inside those graves, the dead await you. The dead walk crawling because they remember what should rightfully be theirs to live, and now they are moving towards you, certainly.” The priest continued, beginning to step forward towards Namien slowly. Namien’s voice whispered as he took a quick step back, asking him while the priest intended to approach him.. “And what do they want from us?” The priest paused his steps for a moment and smiled. “The same thing as we all do, Snake in the Torn Robe. A Witness that we desire to satisfy us.”
Namien stepped back quickly now, just realizing as the moonlight began to shine into the church, revealing something wrong and so cursed within, haunting him with unspeakable horror. “You will leave at dawn, won’t you? The way out will open, but that path will not last long before disappearing from you.” The priest said with his laughter filling the entire church, and Namien began to look up, seeing no symbols indicating what they worshiped or which god the villagers and the priest believed in. Instead, he saw bones arranged and displayed above, charred by something older than the fire that burned them. “Never say anything about this village and let them forget again what happened inside this village if you survive the threat that will come to you and your group.” The priest said with a cynical smile, making Namien turn and run with all his might to reach the exit and escape the madness within the church, where only the laughter of the heretical priest could be heard.
Back at the resting place.... Vael arrived first at the cottage and opened the door hastily, returning with short breaths and a pale expression. Kaelith, seeing him, instantly stood up, her wariness reaching its peak, and said to Vael. “What happened?” Vael looked at the others and finally at Sora, telling them. “We have to get out of here. Right now!” Sora, understanding the condition from Vael’s face which showed all his doubts and the impending threat, nodded firmly. Not long after Vael arrived, Namien opened the cottage door in the same way as Vael and stepped inside, silent for a moment to look at the others, and said when his breathing was controlled. “We won’t talk about this village again, not this time!” he muttered, his expression having reached a point of horror from what he saw and heard while outside their cottage. Kaelith, fed up, glanced at them with astonishment mixed with wariness this time, asking them both once more. “Hey, what actually happened outside that made you two act so strangely?” Vael answered in a flat tone, bowing his head. “They smile too much, and what we felt before was proven when I was out there.”
The fireplace in the cottage began to crackle, and not long after, the wind became an unusual gust, turning the fog into a screaming sound, and the gripping silence now became a song requesting fresh flesh and bone. One by one, the villagers came out of their houses without smiles on their faces, their eyes filled with hunger and pale emptiness. Their mouths were already drooling with dripping saliva and old blood. In their hands, they held machetes, rusty pitchforks, hooks, and torches dripping black oil as their weapons, and the horde of villagers moved towards their cottage like puppets with many strings controlling them, continuously stepping forward towards the place where the five were. As the villagers walked, they muttered a slogan that was heard repeatedly along their way. "Flesh... warm flesh... fresh flesh..."
Inside the shelter, Vael stood with his sword drawn from its scabbard, his eyes narrowed. Namien's hands shone faintly as the flow of his magic began to pulse at his fingertips. Kaelith had already nocked an arrow through the window crack upon hearing the villagers' voices, her breath uneven and her jaw clenched as she saw the phenomenon. Arelan picked up and spun both his axes once, then stamped his boot, showing his unyielding stance on the ground. And Sora, the Silent One, opened the front door without a word and led the charge, stepping out first and raising his sword into the lantern-lit darkness of the village. "MOVE NOW! WE GET OUT NOW!" Vael shouted to the others.
The five of them charged into the open just as the horde of villagers surged forward to meet them in overwhelming numbers. Kaelith, moving to the side, began to release her arrows again, one hitting the throat of a villager. A village woman collapsed from Kaelith's arrow but merely writhed on the ground, rose again shortly after, and hissed with a blood-choked smile as she pulled the arrow from her throat. "They're not living as humans anymore; they're possessed by something!" Kaelith grumbled irritably upon seeing her attack was ineffective. Namien raised his hands, and the air screamed with the light of his fire magic as its waves began to shock the villagers, hurling fireballs into the horde that sent them flying, scorched, and destroyed them. Vael faced the wave of villagers attacking brutally and wildly head-on, his sword sweeping through them in wide arcs. "Don't hesitate! They're already dead!" he said while busy trying to stop the villagers permanently. The five of them fought with anger and frustration as the villagers seemed endless.
Until then... not long into their fight, the ground trembled from the presence of the most terrifying creature in the village. From the edge of the fire-scorched square, a figure came towards the five of them: the Butcher, massive and towering. His skin was wrapped in several other skins stitched together with his flesh, and the Butcher's apron was soaked in fresh, wet crimson. In his right hand, he carried a cleaver the size of a large mace, and in his left, an unnaturally large hammer stained dark red with remnants of crushed bone visible on its head. A steel mask served as his helm, covering his grotesque and frightening face, tightly sealed and carved with a grim, crimson smile. The villagers, seeing his arrival, began to clear a path for him, bowing their heads and whispering his name like a hymn: “Othegrun… Othegrun… Feast of the Father’s Word…” Othegrun, the Butcher, walked with slow confidence. “Fall back! We’ll never survive him if we stay here!” Vael shouted as the Butcher began to approach the five of them.
The five of them tried to find a gap to escape to the far side of the village square. Then laughter echoed from inside the church, rising and resonating like the tolling of a bell; it was the voice of the heretical priest. The heretical priest stood with his hands stretched towards the sky, his head looking up at the hole-ridden church ceiling under the moonlight, his mouth chanting something that sounded like a prayer. “The feast is begins, my children! Murmur your hymns; the threat before you is like sacred verses that vanquish evil with good, blood is your drink when thirsty like holy wine, and flesh is food from abundant heaven like the harvest from your gardens in paradise!” Meanwhile, Namien turned to Sora and said, “We’re not fighting villagers anymore; we’re fighting a heretical cult.” Sora, protecting Namien and Kaelith, could only nod firmly and grip his sword tighter. Then Sora stepped forward to face Othegrun, the Butcher. Sora, having made that decision, might have lost his sanity as a human fighting something much larger than himself, but his stance spoke clearly, saying, ‘You have to get through me first.’ The five tensed behind him, surrounded on all sides and outnumbered by the villagers who were no longer human. But if the five of them gave up now and resigned themselves to their surrounded state, they would never know the feeling of overcoming the villagers' desire for their flesh and surviving the terrifying threat and danger. Their battle for survival against the heretical cult villagers had begun.
