Despite his body’s apparent rejection at seeing this sight, Red tried to force himself to stare at these people. Domeron walked by his side, and even his decomposing appearance didn’t phase him at that moment.
“They died… of fright?” The swordsman didn’t sound too confident.
The youth frowned. “I feel like this goes beyond simple fright.”
Just staring at their expressions sent shivers up his spine. He had seen plenty of horrifying sights in the past, but that didn’t make him immune to their effect. Rather, it just made him even more sensitive when it came to detecting when something was wrong, even if he couldn’t tell necessarily what it was.
In this case, however, it was more obvious.
These people’s mouth were opened up far past what it should be humanly possible, their brows were scrunched up at an exaggerated angle, and their eyes were rolled back into their head. An expression of fear, of screaming in fright, of a terrible death. Whatever it was that got them, they saw it quite clearly, and it was probably the most terrifying moments in their lives.
“They were just eating dinner, so whatever got them must have done so by surprise.” Domeron said with a concerned tone. “Can you examine their bodies?”
Red, who would have been eager to offer his help in the past, now hesitated. Just looking at them was already hard enough, but searching through them? That was even worse.
“There’s no lingering energy in their bodies.” Aurelia tried to assuage his worries. “You can look through them without concern, but I can tell you already that you won’t find anything else.”
The youth frowned. Even if the woman was correct, he knew this was still something they should do.
He braced himself and approached the corpses. He first examined their body temperature, the coloration of their skin, the tightness of their muscles, everything necessary to determine how long they were dead for. The results, however, concerned him.
“They haven’t been dead for more than a day.” Red said.
Domeron grunted. “Matches up to when we got the dagger, doesn’t it?”
“… So it seems.”
“What about any wounds?”
Red hesitated once more, but he knew he needed to go through with this. He examined their corpses, lifting their shirts and clothes in search of anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t go so far as to perform a full autopsy, but what he saw was more than enough for him.
He shook his head. “No abrasions, no cuts, no blood… They didn’t die to any weapons or something similar.”
In retrospect, this was rather obvious to conclude, but if there was indeed something they could find in their bodies, then the duo would have been kicking themselves for not looking for it.
“So, no weapons or anything similar.” Domeron hummed to himself. “No sign of struggles and judging by everything in the room, they were clearly taken by surprise. Yet, their expressions of fright seem to indicate they died from a scare, which contradicts that… So where does that leaves us?”
Red closed his eyes in thought. “Something that target their minds and made them see a sight horrifying enough to kill them.”
“That does seem to fit.” The swordsman said. “Attacks that target the mind and soul are almost always invisible and intangible, so they couldn’t have seen it coming. Yet I know for certain that things like that are the sole domain of powerful ghosts and cultivators at the Spiritual Awakening realm and above.”
The youth knew this from experience. Thinking back on it, Aurelia’s wail against the ghouls back then should have been a similar attack, although that one seemed to be mixed in with a physical aspect too in the form of her screeching sound. This one didn’t seem to have left any traces behind, though.
“I assume you don’t see them as rotting corpses anymore, do you?” Domeron asked.
Red shook his head. “Just common corpses now.”
The swordsman sighed. “Let’s examine the other houses.”
The youth nodded and walked out in front.
The duo started to go through every single house in the village, being met by similar sights. It all seemed to have happened during dinner time, which meant most of these families were sitting at a table together, only to be surprised by whatever had killed them. They ended up finding the body of the elder, too, who seemed to have died alone at his own home. Not even the animals escaped this fate, as they died in a similar manner to their owners inside their sheds.
At first, Red and Domeron were still thorough in their search, but they soon noticed that they wouldn’t be finding anything different with the victims. They gathered in the center of the village again.
“That’s dozens of people, dead just like that.” Domeron said with a grim tone. “Children, adults, elderly, even animals. An indiscriminate murder and we have nothing to indicate what could have done it.”
Red hesitated. “… There’s still one more place we haven’t checked.”
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The swordsman sighed. “You’re right. Lead the way then.”
The youth did as much. They started to move towards the edge of the village, where the house of the disappeared peasants was located in, and where their now likely orphaned child lived. As soon as they got close enough, though, they paused.
Red frowned. “The door is open.”
This much wouldn’t have stood out in a village this size, if it wasn’t for the fact every door before this was closed.
Domeron grunted. “Be on your guard.”
The youth rested his hand on his sword and walked inside. A cursory glance through the two-room house didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary, looking just like they left it a few days ago. Yet that by itself immediately caught their attention.
“The girl is not here.” the swordsman said.
Red was also surprised. “I didn’t see her in any of the other houses.”
“It could be that she wandered off into the night. With no parent supervision, I can’t imagine she would…” Domeron trailed off.
Red looked over at him, holding back his body’s violent reaction at seeing this walking cadaver. The man stood looking over the table, where the message was previously carved. He frowned and approached him, and it was then that he noticed what Domeron seemed to be fixated with.
His eyes narrowed. “This is…”
The message on the table had changed. Instead of the multiple lines once carved on its wooden surface, now there was just a single line, with no trace of the previous message. Unfortunately for them, it was still an incomprehensible mess of letters.
Or so he thought.
“H-How could this be?” Aurelia’s alarmed voice reached his ears.
“What do you think this could be now?” Domeron asked the youth.
Red frowned, forced to tackle and parse through two conversations at once. He shook his head at the swordsman. “I… Need a minute.”
“What?” Domeron seemed confused.
Still, he didn’t try to stop Red as he walked outside.
Once he was out of the room, the youth reached into his pouch and grasped the insectoid core in his hand, reaching towards it with his expanded awareness.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The message…” Aurelias seemed hesitant.
“You can read it, can’t you?”
The woman didn’t say anything, but her silence was more than enough confirmation for him.
A few seconds later, she spoke up again. “It’s written in the secret language of our sect.”
The youth frowned even as he kept his meditative state. “What does it say?”
“It says ‘Do not interfere.’”
Red was quite confused at this. “Interfere with what?”
The woman snorted in anger. “Does it matter? What matters the most is that whoever left this message behind clearly knew that about my associations and that I would find it!”
“How could they know that?”
“If I knew about it, I wouldn’t have been so disturbed! It is one thing to know about my presence, as any ghost or powerful cultivator would be able to, but it’s another to know about my origins!”
Before Red could ask anything else, he felt the connection between them being severed. He opened his eyes in confusion, only to find Aurelia’s human image conjured in front of him in the real world.
She had her arms crossed and was staring at the house with a look of anger and concern.
“It shouldn’t be possible.” She shook her head. “They would need to probe my soul, but I would have definitely felt it if that happened. Unless… Did they recognize me?”
The youth could only stare at the woman as she talked to herself.
“No.” Aurelia shook her head again. “It’s been so long. How could anyone from that time still be alive? But if not that, then, how else?”
Red was about to say something before he saw Domeron walking outside. He averted his gaze from the man’s rotting visage in a hurry.
“Did you find out anything?” Domeron asked.
“Not necessarily.” Red shook his head.
“That’s a shame.” The man sounded disappointed. “I was thinking, though… Could it be that whatever abducted the girl’s mother also took her?”
The youth frowned. “The method of leaving a message behind fits, and if it managed to convince an adult, a child shouldn’t be much harder. However, that doesn’t explain why it would do this, and how this connects with what happened here.”
“That’s what we should find out. Look,” Domeron pointed at the ground not too far from the house. “Tracks leading into the forest.”
Red looked over in surprise. He had been so preoccupied with whatever happened in the village he forgot to take into account the simplest thing.
‘I need to focus.’
He approached the area Domeron pointed at and observed the tracks. The footprints seemed to have been made by a child, barefooted, and since the village didn’t have any pavement to speak of, they were quite clear even in the dark.
‘This easy, huh?’
Red was surprised at this, but perhaps he shouldn’t expect a normal child to take such considerations when moving about. Like Domeron said, the tracks seemed to lead deeper into the forest.
“We should go after her.” The swordsman said. “Maybe we can still save her from whatever is about to happen and figure out what is going on at the same time.”
The youth hesitated. “… We don’t know what we are dealing with.”
“Even still… Do you feel comfortable just leaving an innocent child to die?”
Red frowned. Of course he wasn’t comfortable with that, but this didn’t mean he was eager to jump into a situation against a being that had already killed an entire village through some nefarious means.
“Go after her.” Aurelia, whose form was still out and about, looked at him with a resolute expression. “We need to find out what this being knows. For the both of us, or are you forgetting that they also knew about the place where you came from?”
These words were convincing, but Red still felt an unexplainable hesitation deep inside his mind. It was as if something within him was telling him not to proceed, but whenever he pursued this feeling he came up with nothing to justify it. It wasn’t just fear for his life - that accompanied him everywhere he went.
No, it was something else.
“Do not concern yourself.” she cut him off before he could even say anything else. “I have examined the bodies, and I am certain this being must have used a terror spell on them. I can’t claim to be able to do the same, but with the energy I gathered from the dagger, I can at least protect the psyche of you and your friend.”
Although she said that, Red ignored her, still searching his mind for a reasonable explanation for what he felt. It felt like he was forgetting something, but he didn’t have any idea as to what it could be.
“I don’t blame you if you don’t want to go, kid.” Domeron said. “But we need to make a decision soon.”
Red sighed, unable to come up with anything. “We will go. We have no choice but to go if we hope that you can avoid your fate.”
Domeron laughed. “I’m glad to hear you still care about your teacher, kid. Besides, you were a child just like her once in need of help, weren’t you? Now you can pay the favor forward.”
“I wasn’t being haunted by a powerful ghost back then.” He shook his head.
“Maybe, but when I first saw her back then, she reminded me of you somewhat. The same intense flame in her eyes, the same unyielding attitude…” Domeron shrugged. “There’s something special about that kid, so it would be a shame if we can’t save her.”
As soon as the man said that, Red froze. Something seemed to click in his mind, and he suddenly remembered what it was his mind seemed incapable of recalling.
The girl. Her clouded eyes when she looked at him and how he felt uncomfortable staring at her.
All familiar sensations.
A shiver ran up his spine.
“We can’t go.” he shook his head. “If we go, we will die.”