Chapter 107 - New Elder; Winter’s Arrival; Dragon-Fanged Spear - Part 1
It had been almost a year since the central market of Silver Creek’s black market had been declared a forbidden zone. By now, merchants had grown used to its closure and moved on. They busied themselves clearing away corpses; just yesterday, these had been living, lovely women. Now, they were bloodied bodies filled with resentment.
Amid the bustle, no one noticed the eerie changes unfolding in the old guard house of the central market.
Previously, no sign of anything strange could be found there. But after so many people died so close together, all cursing and hateful to the very end, those deaths unleashed a malignant energy.
On the dim, shabby bed inside the guard station, a faint moldy odor began to spread. The wooden bedframe creaked, but not from someone’s weight above. It seemed to groan from below, as though something beneath it was pressing upward.
In the stillness, there came the sound of someone, or something, ramming a door from inside. Then it stopped. Then came rapid knocking, then frantic scratching, then a dragging noise across the floor. Finally, it died away into silence. No one heard it. No one knew.
˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙
A few days later.
Autumn winds swept piles of withered leaves through a gray, endless sky. They fluttered down onto muddy paths between the fields, only to be crushed under the hurried footsteps of peasants.
More and more people came running to these fields, and soon anguished cries rang out.
“Heavens, why? Why again?!”
“Another bad harvest...worse than before!”
“Why?!”