One week ago…
It began quietly. No alarms. No warnings. No frantic magic scrolls bursting into flame mid-air.
Just… silence. Several days from the capital, tucked between low hills and an old river bend, a small village vanished in a single night. No battle scars marked the land. No signs of struggle lingered in the dirt. It was as if an ancient shadow had passed overhead—swift, deliberate—and decided that nothing beneath it deserved to breathe again.
Children. Elders. Livestock. Even the trees. Farms.
All dead. Not burned. Not torn apart. Simply… emptied. By dawn, the village no longer smelled of life. No smoke rose from hearths. No birds perched on branches. Leaves clung blackened and brittle to trees that should have been green. Crops wilted where they stood, drained as if the earth itself had been bled dry.
