As the forest began to thin, giving way to the valley where Silent Bliss lay, the air grew even thicker, feeling almost oily against the skin.
The scent of roses, which had served as a grim warning at the wagon, became a physical barrier here, settling on the tongue with the cloying bitterness of oversaturated sweetness.
An old stone bridge emerged before them, arching over a river that made no sound.
Its waters were dark, sluggish, and viscous, as if a steady current of syrup or coagulated blood were flowing through the riverbed.
But it wasn’t the dead river that caught the crew’s attention.
It was the bridge.
Or rather, what was blocking it.
A large crowd barricaded their path.
This wasn’t Memrot’s armed guard, nor a band of woodland thugs.
They were villagers; hundreds of common folk.
Men in dirt-stained tunics, women in aprons, elders leaning on walking sticks, and even children who should have been playing tag instead of standing in a dead-silent line.
They were all holding hands tightly, forming a living, unbroken chain, a solid barricade of flesh and intertwined fingers.
The most terrifying aspect was their faces.
Every single one, without exception, was twisted into a wide, ecstatic smile that bared their gums to the cool air.
Their eyes were stretched wide open, completely devoid of whites or pupils, filled instead with a uniform, pulsating pink glow that seemed to radiate its own inner light.
They didn’t blink.
They didn’t even seem to draw breath.
They simply stood motionless, staring at the newcomers with a profound, terrifying love that chilled the blood far more effectively than any hatred ever could.
Perval stepped to the front of the group.
His towering silhouette cast a long shadow across the cobblestones of the bridge.
The monk crossed his arms over his chest, flexing his muscles until he looked like a statue of an ancient hero.
“Good people!” he boomed, his voice; well-accustomed to shouting over rowdy tavern brawls; echoing down the valley.”We didn’t come here for a village dance.
Step aside, and not a single hair on your heads will be harmed.
We’re heading to the monastery, not your homes.”
The crowd didn’t answer with a single word.
Not a face twitched; not a smile faltered.
Instead, as if responding to an invisible command, a sound rose from hundreds of throats.
It wasn’t a scream, but a low, guttural humming.
The melody was simple, primal, and deeply hypnotic.
It vibrated in the air, crawling under the skin and resonating right down to the teeth and bones of the travelers.
Figi stumbled, momentarily dropping his tankard, which swung wildly from the leather strap at his belt.
He grabbed at the ear holding his brass ear trumpet and tapped the metal loudly a few times, convinced it had somehow gotten clogged.
“What are they blabbering about?!” he yelled, trying to shout over the eerie silence he couldn’t quite interpret.”Are they handing out free ale?!
Perval, tell them to speak up, they sound like bloody sirens!
Like a siren’s song dragging a ship to the depths!
Make them shut up, or I’m jumping in that river just to drown out the noise!”
Neira stepped forward, her serpentine tail lashing nervously against the dirt.
Her hands began to radiate a pale, violet glow as the priestess instinctively began weaving a warding spell.
“These aren’t ordinary people, Leng,” she warned, her voice strung tight with tension.”This is blood magic combined with a potent mental hex.
They aren’t enslaved by fear.
They are…
in love.
Completely enamored with their own condition.
That humming is a prayer of gratitude.
They see us as intruders trying to steal away their ‘happiness’.”
Zedora spat a harsh glob onto the cobblestones.
“In love or not, they’re in our way.
If they won’t move on their own, I’ll move them by force.”
She marched forward, her twin axes gleaming in the dim light.
But before she could take three steps, the crowd reacted.
They broke into a sprint, arms wide open, their maniacal smiles never wavering.
It was a grotesque spectacle; a tidal wave of people rushing to warmly embrace the invaders.
“Let us embrace them!
Let us share the Gift!” hundreds of voices whispered, bleeding together into a singular, maddening babble.
As the first of them; a young girl in a bloodstained dress; lunged at Lengos, he raised his heavy shield to shove her back, unwilling to strike her down.
“Stand back, child!” he commanded.
The moment her body collided with the solid metal of his shield, something horrific occurred.
The skin on her shoulders and chest split open with a sickening, wet tear.
Blood didn’t spray from the wounds; instead, thick, blackened vines shot outward, their tips as sharp as steel needles.
They coiled tightly around his shield, the vicious thorns gouging into the metal, desperately seeking a chink in the paladin’s armor to burrow into his flesh.
“It’s a trap!” he roared, grappling with the girl, who continued to smile blissfully even as the parasitic vines tore her apart from the inside out.”I can’t cut them down!
They’re civilians!
They’re just vessels!”
Pure chaos erupted around them.
Perval was hurling the attackers away like sandbags, trying to knock them unconscious rather than kill them.
Yet, for every villager he threw to the ground, two more threw themselves at him, desperate to plunge their thorns into his skin.
Zedora cursed furiously, parrying their frantic lunges with the wooden hafts of her axes, deeply frustrated by her inability to deliver a lethal blow.
Figi fired his pistol into the air, hoping to scatter them, but the deafening gunshot only fueled their ecstatic howling.
Duria vaulted onto the heads of the mob, leaping across them as nimbly as stepping stones in a creek.
“Yamete!
(Stop it!)” she shrieked, gracefully dodging the sticky, grasping vines.”This is disgusting!
Don’t touch my armor with your filthy paws!
Kitanai!
(Filth!)”
The situation was spiraling out of control.
The mob pressed forward, and the pink mist thickened, choking the breath from their lungs.
Then Yerga, who had spent the skirmish standing in the back, observing the scene with morbid fascination and cold calculation, let out a sigh.
Her skeletal cat hissed at the villagers, raising its nonexistent fur and attempting to bite the nearest leg, which ultimately proved far too tough and thorny.
“Well then,” she said to herself, her cheerful tone vanishing without a trace.
“I suppose it’s time to end this little hugging game.
It’s getting dreadfully stuffy in here.”
The necromancer gripped the carved pendant at her throat.
Her green eyes flared with a dead, necrotic light, and the smile playing on her lips turned entirely cruel.
“Bregg.
Take them.”
Time on the bridge seemed to slow to a crawl.
The temperature plummeted drastically, and a thick layer of frost bloomed across the cobblestones.
The shadow cast by Yerga elongated unnaturally, peeling itself away from the ground and molding into a three-dimensional mass.
The air reeked of ozone, rusted iron, and the damp chill of an open tomb.
From the absolute nothingness, He emerged.
Bregg.
The Death Knight.
He was a behemoth, towering a full head taller than Lengos.
His ancient armor, fractured and etched with centuries-old runes, seemed to devour the surrounding light.
A closed helm concealed his face, with only a sickly, green witch-fire radiating from the visor.
Yet, the most terrifying aspect was his legs; or rather, the sheer lack of them.
From mid-thigh down, his massive silhouette dissolved into a violently shuddering, semi-transparent mirage, as if reality itself couldn’t quite decide whether this entity had the right to exist.
Bregg didn’t let out a battle cry.
He had no need for one.
He advanced, gliding smoothly just inches above the ground.
He swept past Perval, causing the monk to shudder violently as if doused with a bucket of ice water, a thin layer of frost instantly coating his scarred skin.
The Death Knight waded directly into the mob of villagers.
He didn’t draw a weapon.
He simply walked.
Wherever his immaterial aura; an aura of finality, the void, and utter death; touched them, the “life” bestowed by that twisted magic was extinguished in an instant.
The madness in the villagers’ eyes vanished.
The parasitic vines withered, blackened, and crumbled to dust, finally releasing their bodies.
The radiant pink glow faded, swiftly replaced by sheer terror.
People collapsed to their knees, clutching their heads, vomiting rose petals and black bile.
Their blissful smiles twisted into agonized shrieks of pain and profound disorientation.
Bregg pressed on, as methodical and relentless as a glacier carving its way through a forest.
He cleared the path with his mere presence, serving as the antithesis to the feverish, mutated life that had consumed the village.
“That’s enough, Bregg,” Yerga tossed out quietly, as the last of their attackers collapsed, choking on their own jagged breaths.
“Disappear.”
The wraith halted and instantly melted into the air, vanishing like a blown-out candle flame, leaving behind nothing but a lingering, bone-deep chill and a profound sense of emptiness.
Lengos lowered his shield, breathing heavily.
He looked down at the people writhing across the bridge; alive, but thoroughly broken.
“What in the hells was that?” Perval asked hoarsely, massaging the arm the knight had brushed past.
Yerga smiled, slipping right back into the persona of a carefree enchantress, even though her hand still visibly trembled against her pendant.
“That?
That was silence, my darlings.
The ultimate silence.
Come along now, before they decide to start singing again.
My guardian doesn’t care to repeat the same parlor trick twice.”
They crossed the bridge, leaving the groaning, surviving villagers in their wake.
Before them, looming through the haze of the pink mist, were the grand contours of the monastery; a place that looked like an idyllic haven from afar, yet reeked of an open mass grave up close.
Stepping off the bridge, they entered the main thoroughfare of Silent Bliss.
The village’s name had never felt so bitterly ironic.
The houses were well-kept to a disturbing, almost obsessive degree.
The walls gleamed with fresh whitewash, the shutters were painted in bright, cheerful hues, and the red-tiled roofs looked as though they had been plucked straight from a storybook.
Yet, this perfection was entirely dead.
There wasn’t a single living soul in sight.
No dogs barked, no roosters crowed, and the wind didn’t rustle any laundry on the lines, because there was none to be hung.
Instead, there were roses everywhere.
Thick, muscular vines the size of a grown man’s arm didn’t merely wrap around the buildings; they pierced right through them.
They shattered solid wooden doors, slithered down stone chimneys, and burst through window frames, pouring into the homes like a slow, creeping river of green and crimson.
“Too quiet…” Figlin muttered, tapping a stubby finger against his brass ear trumpet as if suspecting a mechanical failure.
From the depths of his braided beard, the small crab peeked out, twitching its antennae, but after a fleeting moment, it burrowed deeper, clearly sensing the unnatural, oppressive aura.
“Not even a damn fly buzzing around.
This isn’t right.
Where are the chickens?
Where’s the livestock?”
“Eaten?” Perval suggested, a faint glimmer of hope in his voice.
The monk, marching right behind Figlin, peered through an open, shattered window into one of the cottages.
Bowls of half-eaten oatmeal sat abandoned on a wooden table.
Small, golden shoots were already sprouting directly from the porcelain.
“Or perhaps they were turned into bouquets.
Shame.
That oatmeal looked rather hearty.”
Yerga strolled down the exact center of the cobblestone road, not deigning to give the cottages even a single passing glance.
“This entire place is dreadfully kitsch, darlings,” she concluded, wrinkling her nose in disdain.”Just look at this composition.
Far too much crimson, desperately lacking in contrast.
Whoever designed this has no taste, just a morbid obsession.
It looks like a pastry shop exploded.”
Neira walked closely behind Lengos, taking great care not to touch a single thing.
She could feel the walls of the houses actively pulsating.
“They didn’t flee…” she whispered, pointing toward a wooden bench in front of one of the cottages.
A figure sat upon it.
From a distance, it looked like an elderly woman sunning herself on a quiet afternoon.
Up close…
the entire group came to a dead halt.
It wasn’t an old woman.
Or at least, it wasn’t anymore.
The woman’s body had been completely subsumed by the wood of the bench and the creeping rose vines.
Her legs had fused seamlessly with the soil, twisting into thick roots.
From her mouth, stretched wide in a silent scream (or was it a rapturous smile?), bloomed a stunning, blood-red rose.
Her skin had taken on the rough texture of bark, and golden beetles nestled deeply within her hollow eye sockets.
“Kirei…
demo kowai (Beautiful…
but terrifying),” Duria murmured, resting a hand on the hilt of her katana.”Is she still alive?”
“In a sense,” Lengos replied, his face hardening.”She has become part of the garden.
There is nothing we can do to help her.”
Figlin wandered over to another “sculpture”; a merchant’s cart that had grown directly into the cobblestones.
His sharp eye had caught something glinting amidst the thorny thicket.
“Oho!
A golden door handle!” he cheered, eagerly reaching out.
But the moment his calloused finger brushed the metal, it yielded like soft meat and puffed out a cloud of jaundiced yellow pollen.
Figlin leapt back, sneezing violently.
“By a hundred barrels of herring!
Everything here is a bloody fake!
Even the gold is some sort of…
botanical filth!”
The closer they drew to the monastery, the thicker the stench became.
The cloying sweetness of perfume mingled sickeningly with the harsh copper tang of blood, and something else; the sharp, biting reek of acid.
The very cobblestones beneath their boots began to shift.
Stone yielded to a soft, spongy tissue that squelched wetly with every step, as if they were marching across the surface of a gargantuan tongue.
Finally, they reached the plaza before the fortress walls.
The pink mist was so dense here they could barely see a few paces ahead.
Looming before them, emerging from the haze like a fever dream, stood the great gates.
They were not made of oak or iron.
They were constructed entirely of violently intertwined, gigantic thorns and bleached bones, gilded with flakes of gold.
“Right then, let’s knock,” Lengos growled, drawing his sword.
“Be ready.”
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