Chapter 205: Faceless
The wet squelch of mud beneath my boots echoed through the silence as I trudged toward the mill. The night sky hung heavy, with the faint crescent moon barely piercing the thick shroud above. Everything felt still, as though something unseen was watching me.
As I reached the mill's base, I froze. A suffocating realization hit me; the night was utterly silent. No chirp of crickets, no rustling of wind through the trees, not even the distant hoot of an owl. The usual life of the night had vanished, swallowed whole, leaving behind an unnatural stillness that clung to the air like a predator's breath, waiting.
The windmill towered before me, its stone walls cold and unfeeling. The great wheel hung motionless. Small windows dotted the mill's surface, their dark glass like blind eyes watching me.
I pushed open the weathered wooden door, and it let out a long, drawn-out creak that pierced the oppressive silence. The sound echoed as though the building itself was announcing my intrusion. The stillness felt alive inside—thick, heavy, pressing down on me. The beams overhead groaned faintly as if they carried a weight that wasn't there. Was someone moving above?
The air was thick with the faint scent of old flour and dust, mingling with something sinister. Weak and sickly moonlight seeped through grime-smeared windows, casting long, twisted shadows that writhed across the stone floor. The massive gears and wooden mechanisms stood still.
Outside, the wind howled faintly, yet the wheel above remained frozen. Something was wrong. Why wasn't it spinning? No, I was outside not even a minute ago, and there was no wind.
I moved cautiously, each footstep disturbingly loud against the stone floor. The gears and machinery on the lower floor appeared intact, but a foul, decaying stench lingered in the air. Despite everything seeming in place, a sense of wrongness gnawed at this. It felt as if the mill itself was holding its breath, waiting.
I didn't linger on the lower floor for long. Pulling in strange Qi, something about the top of the mill drew my attention.
After pacing in contemplation, I finally ascended the wooden stairs. Each step groaned under my weight, the sound unnervingly loud, cutting through the heavy silence. The noise reverberated in the emptiness as though the mill was alive, amplifying my every movement as if it were listening.