— The Heart of the Black Fog —
The morning air was thick with cursed black mist as the group ventured once more into the blighted lands.
Though thinner than the night before, the fog still veiled the world in cold silence.
At the mist's heart lay a deathly quiet village. Dilapidated eaves swayed faintly in the wind, whispering mournful secrets.
To the west ran a river, black as ink. Across it stretched a newly built wooden bridge, its scaffolding not yet fully removed.
The bridge pulsed with a dark red glow—as if blood coursed through its wooden veins.
Black vapors seeped from its seams, drifting with the river's flow to feed the endless sea of mist.
This was the source. The origin of all the black mist.
"Aarav ... please stop..."
A trembling voice, soft as a weeping melody, cut through the mist.
She wore her hair in a Lung, dark braid, typical of mountain girls. Her face was pale as parchment, yet she radiated a vitality starkly out of place in this land of death.
Most peculiarly, the black mist recoiled from her, refusing to come within ten meters.
"Aarav, you've had your vengeance. Why involve the innocent?" Tears streamed from her red, swollen eyes. "This only deepens your sins, condemns you to eternal suffering..."
She spoke sometimes to the bridge, sometimes to the black water, as if addressing a presence unseen.
"I know you can hear me... You killed everyone in the village, yet spared only me. I'd rather have joined them than endure this heartache..."
The river churned, the mist swirled, but no answer came.
"Aarav... I can't go on living..." She suddenly wiped her tears and leaped toward the ink-black, bottomless river.
A silver thread shot through the air, wrapping around her falling form. The line tightened, pulling her back, and she landed softly in Eren's arms.
"Who... Who are you? Why save me?" the girl stammered, panic in her eyes.
Eren gently set her down. "The Aarav you mentioned... is it Aarav Kumar?"
The girl stared blankly at the group, then met Eren's gaze and gave a slight nod.
Even with some forewarning, Eren sucked in a sharp breath, his voice trembling. "What... what happened to him? I'm Eren, Aarav's university classmate."
Tears burst forth anew from the girl. She pointed a trembling finger toward the central bridge pier.
"Aarav ... he... the villagers used him as a Living Pile!"
"Living Pile! They buried him alive beneath the bridge—to appease the river's wrath?!" Cael gasped, horrified.
The group exchanged stunned, disbelieving looks.
Aveline stepped forward, placing a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder. "Little sister, what's your name? Can you tell us what happened?"
The girl wiped her tears with her sleeve, gazed silently at the nearby village for a Lung moment, and finally spoke. "My name is Mira. I grew up with Aarav ..."
As her trembling voice wove through the mist, the past began to take form before their eyes...
— Kindness Devoured by Greed —
"Aarav! You're back?"
"Did you strike it rich?"
"Heavens... look at all that money!"
In Mira's memory, the village erupted like dry tinder catching flame.
Dozens of villagers surged forward, pressing shoulder to shoulder, their breaths hot with excitement. Their eyes—all of them—reflected the same thing:
Not Aarav.
The money.
There he stood, glasses slightly fogged from the mountain chill, looking every bit the mild, scholarly young man he'd always been. But today he carried a radiance—hope, purpose, a future he had fought blood and bone to earn.
At his feet lay an open suitcase.
Bricks of hundred-yuan bills glimmered in the sun like stacked gold ingots.
A hush fell.
"Fellow villagers," Aarav said, voice clear as the river in spring, "as the only university student from our home, I swore I'd return with wealth to help everyone live better lives."
He raised a bundle of cash.
Faces leaned closer.
"With this, we can build fish farms, raise poultry, plant fruit trees and tea bushes. If we work together, we can all become prosperous!"
He pointed toward the black river.
"But first—a bridge. No more four-hour detours. With a proper crossing, an hour is all it takes."
He inhaled deeply.
"I've earned 100 million INR. Part for the bridge and roads, the rest invested into our village. Every promise I made...I will fulfill."
Mira remembered how his voice shook—not from fear, but from overwhelming joy.
A boy who'd lost both parents to the river, who had grown up on scraps and charity, who swore he would one day return with 100 million...
And now he had done it.
The village chief clapped his shoulder, grinning wide.
"Good! Good! Good! The whole village supports you! Do whatever you need!"
Aarav left to recruit a construction crew, suitcase closed but the image of it burned into everyone's minds.
Then the whispering began.
"Why build a bridge? Split the money—live in the city!"
"Yes! What jobs? What projects? That money is enough for all of us!"
"I heard it's a full hundred million... imagine how much that is..."
The murmurs slithered through the crowd like snakes tasting blood.
Mira stepped forward, braid swaying.
"Everyone, Aarav's money is for the village! Think clearly—don't ruin his good intentions!"
Her voice trembled with urgency, but the glances cast her way were no longer neighborly.
They were sharp. Calculating.
Reluctantly, grudgingly, the crowd dispersed—but their eyes still gleamed with a hunger that had nothing to do with poverty.
---
Back at home, the chief's son—Raghav, the butcher—shut the door with a dull thud.
He stared at his father, eyes fever-bright.
"Dad... we need some of that money. Enough to buy an apartment. Enough to marry. Enough to never work again."
The chief didn't answer immediately. He drew in a long drag of his cigarette, the ember flaring red in the dim room.
Smoke curled around his face.
"Patience," he rasped.
"The bridge needs permits..."
Another drag.
"Materials..."
A thin smile crept across his lips.
"And construction always needs... sacrifices."
His eyes gleamed with something cold.
"There will be opportunities."
Outside, the villagers whispered late into the night.
Inside, the butcher sharpened his cleaver, each metallic scrape lingering in the dark like a slow, deliberate countdown.
And Mira—standing alone by her window—felt the first thin thread of dread coil around her heart.
She did not yet understand.
She would.
Soon.
Because at the riverbank, beneath the site where a new bridge was meant to rise, the night wind carried a sound that did not belong—
a soft, rhythmic disturbance, as if something buried was being quietly... moved.