— A Few Days Later —
In the middle of nowhere, deep within the territory of the Vermilion Bird Province, stood an ancient temple that had long since fallen into ruin.
More than a century old, the temple had once been a place of worship. Its weathered stone surfaces bore the scars of time, with chipped walls marked by the traces of blades and spears. Its crumbling halls stood as silent witnesses to the passage of time and the tumultuous eras that had come and gone.
Now, it had become a bandit camp, occupied by a nameless group of outlaws who possessed little more than their rust-covered weapons and the clothes on their backs.
Or rather, it had been their camp.
The bandits were all dead.
Their corpses had already been thrown off the nearby cliff, leaving no bodies behind to attract unwanted attention. The once noisy compound had fallen into an eerie silence, broken only by the occasional gust of wind sweeping through the courtyard and the creaking of old wooden doors.
