James was still deeply asleep while the first rays of the morning sun began to slip through the window.
Its faint orange light gradually illuminated the room, making it clear that the storm had ended during the night.
Everything seemed to have regained its calm... until a scream shattered it to pieces.
"AAAAH!"
James woke up with a start, his heart racing, and for a second he didn’t even know where he was.
"What the hell was that?!" he said, jumping to his feet and rushing out of the room still half-asleep. "Faust! Rosalía! Are you okay?! What’s going on?!"
When he reached the main room he found Rosalía completely pale, unable to look away from the floor while pointing at it with a trembling hand.
"J-James... look... look at that," she said in a shaky voice.
James followed the direction of her finger and, the moment he looked down, felt his blood run cold.
There were bodies scattered all over the room, lying on the wooden floor.
Men, women, and children, all motionless, surrounded by dark pools of blood that spread around them.
"Holy Fuck...", James murmured in surprise. "What the hell happened here?"
"I don’t know!" Rosalía answered, her voice trembling. "I just woke up and they were already like this! They appeared out of nowhere!"
James scanned the room with his eyes, trying to make some sense of what he was seeing.
"Really? And you didn’t hear anything? Not even a sound?" he said, turning to look at Rosalía.
"Nothing, I swear!" she answered, clearly frightened.
But while they were still trying to understand the situation, Faust remained calm.
And as if the scene in front of her were nothing out of the ordinary, she approached one of the bodies.
"W-what are you doing?" Rosalía said, stretching out a hand toward her to try to stop her. "Don’t get near that! Are you out of your mind?!"
But Faust ignored her completely.
The elf crouched next to one of the corpses and examined it carefully, tilting her head as if something didn’t add up.
And then, without any hesitation, she grabbed the head of the body with both hands and, with a single sharp tug, ripped it off.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU CRAZY BITCH?!" Rosalía screamed, jumping backward.
"..."
Faust carefully observed the head she held in her hands while slowly turning it, examining it from different angles.
"Relax... It’s not a person," she said after a few seconds.
"Huh?"
"They’re not real people, look," she repeated, lifting the head so they could see it. "They’re just dolls made of wood."
James approached cautiously and looked at the head Faust was holding.
And indeed, in the hollow where the neck should have been there was neither flesh nor bone, but splintered wood.
The entire head was carved wood, painted to look like human skin.
"Are... are you sure?" Rosalía said, a bit distrustful. "They’re just... dolls?"
"That’s what it looks like," Faust answered. "Although there’s something I don’t like."
The elf frowned and brought the head closer to her face.
"They have real hair," she said in a low voice. "And the eyes also seem to be real."
And to check, she started poking the doll’s eye, the same way a kid pokes a dead fish’s eye in the supermarket.
"That’s disturbing...," James murmured, watching how Faust examined the head with an almost childlike curiosity, as if she had just found an interesting toy.
But then the doll’s mouth suddenly opened.
"Hey, brat, can you stop doing that?" the head said in a raspy, annoyed voice. "You’re supposed to be scared shitless by now, not feeling me up."
Upon hearing the head speak, Faust froze completely.
Her eyes widened like saucers and what little color she had vanished from her face in an instant.
And without thinking twice, she hurled the head with all her strength against one of the windows.
The glass shattered into pieces and the head flew outward, disappearing into the street.
"We have to leave," Faust said, turning toward her companions with an urgency none of them had ever seen in her before. "NOW."
"Wait a second!" Rosalía said, agitated. "Do you want to explain to us what’s going on?! What the hell was that thing?!"
"There’s no time for that," Faust answered, grabbing her things and heading for the door. "Just listen to me. We have to get out of this town—"
But before she could finish speaking, the ground began to tremble.
A strong quake rose from the depths of the earth, making the walls and everything around them vibrate.
And before any of them could react, the rest of the dolls shot upward at the same time.
They burst through the ceiling and the walls, destroying half the house in the process.
"Watch out!" James shouted, pulling Rosalía toward him while the debris fell around them.
The three of them managed to get out of what was left of the house as best they could, coughing through the dust and rubble.
And once outside, they looked up to observe what was happening in front of them.
In the center of the town, the dolls floated in the air, slowly spinning in a circle, one after another, forming a perfect ring suspended over the street.
And beneath them, on the ground, lines of red light began drawing themselves across the dirt, extending and connecting with each other until they formed an enormous pentagram.
"Demons...," Faust muttered, slowly shifting into a defensive stance.
The symbol began to shine brightly and, little by little, a figure started to materialize in its center.
When it finally took shape, a tall person with completely white skin stood before them.
It had two enormous black horns that curved backward over its head.
And instead of arms, it only had two stumps from which numerous threads extended all the way to the dolls floating around it.
"You’ve got to be kidding me..." James said as he materialized his sword.