The elders spoke of demons buried deep in the earth, horrors sealed away by the great dragons so they would never again see the sun.
We thought it might just be a myth, but this world is… Changing.
The ancient forests have grown cold, the once-green canopies twisting into jagged, skeletal shapes that whisper of ash and ruin. A child in the village of Auren stopped speaking three weeks ago. She sat at windows and watching the treeline… She died screaming, her eyes turned completely white.
Tension fractures the races. Hardened warriors flinch at shadows. The elves, the druids, the dryads, they all wander the dying groves with hollow eyes, looking less like saviors and more like mourners.
There is a suffocating weight bleeding through the soil. The wells have begun to taste old and bitter.
We kneel and pray, but the heavens remain completely silent. There was a time when prayer felt like reaching out and finding a hand waiting. Now it feels like shouting into a sealed room. The dragons are long gone, and whatever they buried down there is waking up, quietly choking the life from our world.
A farmer two roads over left his door open, fire still burning, food still warm on the table. Just gone.
But you can always feel their shadow.
Even hunting feels like being hunted. You walk through the trees and feel eyes on your back, accompanied by the sickening feeling that the silhouette trailing beside you might only be pretending to be yours.
I light a candle at night now, just to have something to look at that isn't the dark. I try to sleep it off and live a normal life, but some mornings I wake up and sit at the edge of the bed for a long time, not sure what I'm waiting for. Not sure I want to know.
There was once peace.