On the pole, the young woman in the white dress and robes shivered in the cold wind, but more than the physical chill, it was the terror in her heart that was truly reaching its limit.
"They've gone mad… All of them, mad."
She bit down hard on her lower lip, the sense of dread spreading through her heart making her legs feel weak.
In her sight, the aged and elderly female seer was continuously muttering incantations, while the many Norse warriors closely following behind the seer also had faces filled with frenzied anticipation.
Torbjorn, the old man she had considered the most stodgy, the long-bearded elder who she remembered taking good care of her, one of the clan leaders, now had one eye blinded and one leg missing, forced to stand among the crowd supported by a crutch.
The calmness and steadiness that had once shone in his eyes were now nowhere to be seen, replaced by a fanatical gaze fixed upon the young woman before him, as if eagerly awaiting the upcoming sacrificial scene.
Bor, this young man who had just replaced the deceased former clan leader to become the new chief, his body and face covered in scars, no longer resembled the scrawny boy who had been so often bullied by his fellow tribesmen just a few months ago.
And he, at this moment, was also coldly staring at the young woman, not a shred of pity in his eyes…
Looking from left to right, from right to left, among all the people the young woman saw before her, not a single one held even a glimmer of sympathy or compassion for her plight. Instead, they all seemed impatient, as if eager for the sacrifice to begin.
Undoubtedly, the young woman who had become an outcast among her people and ultimately reduced to a sacrificial offering had reason to be afraid, but this was still far from the source of her terror reaching its peak.
"Why… Why can't any of you see it!"
The young woman's eyes, clear as crystal, gazed at the expressionless faces before her, her lips trembling ceaselessly from overwhelming fear.
In her sight…
Above the heads of those people indifferently watching her, there were wisps of gray mist, constantly rising and spreading upwards. Finally, thousands of strands of mist converged together, forming an enormous, enigmatic haze that blanketed the entire wilderness sky.
This unfathomable, colossal mist simply lingered in the sky like this, as if brewing something within. And just by looking at that immense miasma, the young woman would feel a profound, bone-chilling sense of despair and dread, like a toad transfixed by a serpent's gaze, that kind of overwhelming terror from being stalked by a mortal enemy's icy stare, making the young woman tremble uncontrollably.
But unlike the suffocating fear gripping her heart, the people around her seemed oblivious, completely unaware of this eerie phenomenon.
No, it should be said…
They truly couldn't perceive it.
Ever since a few months ago, shortly after the sacrifices began, the young woman had sensed that something was amiss. From that time, she realized that the mist was an ill omen.
And all of this… seemed to be something only she could discern.
She was terrified and wanted to warn her fellow tribesmen, but… she was mute.
The inability to speak made it difficult for her to explain to her people what she witnessed. It was manageable in daily life, but faced with such an inexplicable scene that she herself struggled to describe, even if she desperately tried to gesticulate, it was still near impossible to convey to her tribe the nature of what she saw.
And as the sacrifices progressed, under the young woman's fearful gaze…
Everyone seemed to start transforming.
Gentle people turned irritable, kind people grew cruel, tolerant people became callous, friendly people turned hostile…
In the young woman's eyes, the whole world appeared to have gone mad. Everyone was subtly warping, whether in personality or otherwise, constantly shifting in unsettling ways. But as if no one except her had any awareness of it, they all treated these changes as perfectly natural.
And she, the only one who had glimpsed the truth, could only watch helplessly in never-ending dread as her once familiar and comforting hometown morphed into a nightmarish den of insanity, a place she no longer recognized.
She didn't dare confide in her tribesmen about all this, because she had begun to fear those kin who were growing increasingly unhinged and twisted by the day.
She was very timid. So much so that after realizing she was powerless to alter this grim reality, she could only cower in her bed, shivering and trembling, not daring to voice all she had witnessed.
Lowly in status, she was inconspicuous among her people and no one paid her any heed, so she instead saw a great many disturbing things because of this.
The clan leaders claimed that people were starting to perish in large numbers due to the snow, disease, and beast attacks brought on by the darkness.
But…
Passing by a room, she had fearfully peeked through a crack in the door and clearly saw the clan leaders gathered together around the corpse of a tribesman they claimed had been "dragged into the darkness by beasts". They tore open his belly and feasted like a pack of ravenous wolves, gorging themselves in a gluttonous frenzy, fighting viciously over the entrails, the savage gleam in their eyes with blood dripping from the corners of their mouths as they tore into the corpse, body parts strewn all over the ground, the nightmarish sight of blood pooling everywhere…
The young woman simply could not reconcile this with the once wise and respected clan leaders she had known.
Beneath the facade of normalcy, there were those bloodstains that would suddenly appear in secluded corners only to be hastily wiped away, those things resembling human fingernails occasionally found in the food, those tribesmen growing more volatile and quick to brutality over trivial matters…
Everything was making the young woman feel increasingly alienated from this place that had once been her home.
The methods of sacrifice grew ever more bloody and cruel, and with each ritual, the mist expanded and swelled day by day.
At first, it was just wisps of smoke-like emanations, but as the haze steadily grew, eventually, all the mist coalesced, forming a vast, nebulous entity that loomed overhead, engulfing the entire sky as far as the young woman could see.
And finally, even as she quaked in terror, she was still dragged out by her tribesmen to serve as a living sacrifice.
…
Looking at the female seer before her who was chanting prayers under her breath, the young woman's body couldn't help but shiver uncontrollably.
Not because of the frigid night wind, but because of that profound sense of primal fear consuming her heart, that sensation of plummeting into a chasm of horror.
She couldn't comprehend why this was happening, but she knew deep in her bones that this was absolutely, unequivocally wrong.
"Someone… anyone… save me…"
She wanted to scream for help, but as a mute, she couldn't make a sound, only silently mouthing the words.
She wanted to struggle, but with her meager strength, she was powerless to break free from the ropes binding her, only able to wait in soul-crushing terror for the sacrificial ritual to end.
And even the most long-winded incantations must eventually come to a close. When the female seer finished her chant, she raised her head and peered into the sky, as if expectantly awaiting something.
In the night sky, first a gust of frigid wind howled past, then all was deathly still, as if the sacrifice had failed.
However, gazing at that gust of wind, the female seer murmured in an almost trancelike state.
"It comes…"
As the female seer spoke those words, the cold wind suddenly intensified.
"Wooooosh!!!"
The wailing gale rampaged across the wilderness, each blast more violent than the last, whipping up countless clouds of dust and debris from the ground. And from the darkness nearby, the panicked screeches and whimpers of fleeing animals could be heard.
"It comes!"
The female seer exclaimed again, her voice trembling with a hint of manic exhilaration.
Hearing this, the young woman reflexively turned her head to look. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning split the night sky…
"BOOM!!!"
Deafening thunder roared overhead, like an enraged dragon tearing through the heavens.
In an instant, the world was illuminated as bright as day, bathing everything before the young woman in stark clarity. But as she beheld the "human forms" standing before her, the young woman was suddenly gripped by a blood-curdling, spine-chilling sensation, her pupils contracting to pinpoints, the fear in her heart instantly surging to a fevered pitch.
Her body instinctively pressed back against the cold wooden pole behind her, teeth clenched so tightly they might shatter, as if even that lifeless pole could offer a modicum of security in the face of this descent into madness.
For before her eyes… a humanoid abomination was staring at her with those cold, serpentine eyes.
Eyes that had warped into reptilian slits, a face covered in fine, glinting scales, even a tongue that had elongated and forked like a viper's… the female seer who seemed oblivious to her own terrifying transformation gazed at the young woman, her expression reflecting nothing but the throes of an inexplicable, fanatical ecstasy from which she could not break free.