Year: 440 BC
Location: Three Days Later - The Northern Lowlands, Borderlands
The village appeared on the horizon like a bruise on the landscape-dark and swollen and wrong. Even from a distance, {{user}} could feel the corruption radiating from it, a palpable wrongness that made her skin crawl and her hand reach for her sword.
"What is that place?" Tsubasa asked, his amber eyes narrowing.
"A village," Inuyoūsha said grimly. "Or what's left of one."
They approached cautiously, weapons drawn, eyes scanning for threats. The village was small-maybe twenty structures, clustered around a central square. But there were no signs of life. No smoke from chimneys. No voices calling out. No animals in the fields.
And the silence.
The silence was absolute. Even the wind seemed to avoid this place, leaving the air still and heavy and wrong.
"Something's here," Kikima said softly. "I can feel it. Watching us."
"The shrine,"
"It must be nearby."
"Not just the shrine." Inuyoūsha's blue eyes were fixed on the village square. "There's something else. Something older. Something that's been here longer than Nuyomi's corruption."
They walked into the village.
The buildings were intact, but empty. Doors hung open, revealing dark interiors. Windows gaped like empty eye sockets. And everywhere, there was dust-thick and grey and undisturbed, as if no one had set foot in this place for years.
"The people," Tsubasa said. "Where are they?"
"I don't know. But I don't think they're coming back."
They found the shrine at the center of the village square. It was small, barely more than a stone altar, but the darkness radiating from it was intense-thick and cloying, like oil on water.
"A priestess," Kikima observed. "There's always a priestess."
"Not here." Inuyoūsha knelt beside the altar, his fingers tracing the symbols carved into its surface. "This shrine is different. It's not being maintained. It's just... left here. Abandoned."
"Abandoned?" Ba-Leng raised an eyebrow. "Why would Nuyomi abandon a shrine?"
"Maybe he didn't." Inuyoūsha stood up, his expression grim. "Maybe something else claimed it."
As if on cue, the shadows in the village square began to move.