Years ago, before he had even known the name of the Guild, he had been a different man. Younger. Hopeful. Naïve, even. He had lived in a small, quiet town nestled in a valley where the sun seemed to linger longer, as if the light itself didn't want to leave. His life had been simple, filled with warmth and love, the laughter of his wife, the playful voices of his two daughters echoing through their modest home.
But all that had changed one night, a night that began like any other. He'd been out, enjoying the calm of the starlit skies, the crispness of the night air. It had seemed so serene, so perfectly ordinary.
Yet when he returned to his town, there had been something wrong, something off.
The usual sounds of evening chatter and the calls of night animals were absent, replaced instead by a heavy silence that hung over the town like a thick fog. He remembered the metallic scent that hit him first, sharp and chilling, unmistakably the scent of blood.
