Mother gathered me into her arms, her trembling fingers weaving through my disheveled hair as though attempting to stitch together the tattered fabric of my frayed nerves. "Dearest heart," she whispered, her voice a fragile vessel carrying centuries of matriarchal resilience, "let not despair claim dominion over your spirit. When dawn's gilded fingers pry open night's obsidian fist, we shall seek Grandfather's hallowed wisdom in the ancestral sanctum. Perhaps this accursed union demands naught but symbolic gestures—prostrations before a jade-carved effigy, ceremonial wine poured over ritual bronzeware, vows whispered into censer smoke that dissipates like forgotten dreams. You may yet emerge from this trial unscathed, your mortal existence continuing its sunlit trajectory unimpeded."
"Precisely so," Father interjected with forced joviality, his calloused palms pressed against the mahogany bedpost as though anchoring himself to tangible reality. Shadows pooled beneath his bloodshot eyes, testament to sleepless hours spent contemplating our family's damned legacy. "Retire now with your mother, child, while I attend to the fallen creatures. Their innocent forms deserve dignified repose beneath the ancestral cypress, their interrupted journeys honored with proper rites."
Our lineage, steeped in celestial mastery across thirty generations of Lujiagou's history, regarded all life as sacred threads in heaven's grand tapestry. The doctrine of cyclical rebirth—those intricate karmic dances choreographed across infinite reincarnations—commanded us to honor even these unintended casualties. The marmoset's delicate paws that once groomed its young, the thrush's iridescent throat that trilled morning arias, the hare's obsidian eyes that mirrored the moon's secrets—all severed from their destined paths by our family's ancient debt.
That interminable night found Mother and I entwined upon the carved matrimonial bed, our limbs interlaced like the roots of the sacred banyan guarding our courtyard. Silence hung between us, thick as temple incense, more eloquent than any hollow reassurance. Fear's icy fingers traced cryptic sigils along our spines, their glacial touch rendering mutual comfort an impossibility. Though my eyelids shuttered against the darkness, sleep remained a fugitive. The ceaseless susurrus of scaled bellies across courtyard flagstones, the sibilant chorus of forked tongues tasting poisoned air—these diabolical lullabies held me captive in a waking nightmare.
Twice I tore open the bedchamber's rice-paper screens, half-expecting to confront coiled sentinels at the sill. Yet only the indifferent moon gazed back, her silver countenance mocking mortal trepidations. By the witching hour's descent, exhaustion finally claimed me—a shallow, twilit slamber haunted by jeweled eyes glimmering in perpetual judgment, their vertical pupils contracting with predatory precision.
Dawn's arrival came not with roosters' clarion calls but neighbors' panicked shrieks slicing through the village's deathly hush. The square erupted into bedlam, cries ricocheting between tiled rooftops until all Lujiagou stood trembling like a doe scenting wolves. Mother and I jolted upright, our frayed nerves mistaking breeze-stirred curtains for renewed serpentine assault.
The silence struck first—that unnatural void where dawn's avian chorus should have cascaded like celestial windchimes. No proud cocks proclaimed solar dominion, no goslings piped watery greetings to the mist-shrouded ponds. Through paper screens bleached pale by morning's accusatory glare, we beheld the atrocity:
Every henhouse violated. Every coop defiled. Every dovecote transformed into charnel house.
Feathered corpses lay strewn like macabre blossoms across blood-frosted earth, emerald-tinged ichor pooling beneath severed necks. The metallic reek of poisoned vitae assaulted our senses—a nauseating perfume that set Mother retching into her embroidered sleeve. Villagers clustered around these sites of slaughter, their ashen faces reflecting our own horror in grotesque pantomime.
"Behold the Serpent Sovereign's displeasure!" croaked Elder Lu, his gnarled fingers trembling against an ophidian-headed cane of polished ebony. "Observe the viridian venom corrupting their lifeblood! This carnage bears the unmistakable mark of sacred retribution—a warning etched in gore and gall."
At his pronouncement, three generations of villagers turned as one—their collective gaze settling upon our family with dreadful comprehension. Young men in factory-woven sweaters exchanged bewildered glances, their modernity clashing against ancestral dread. Women clutching infants to their breasts murmured protective incantations older than the Han dynasty.
"Serpent Sovereign? What archaic nonsense—" began a youth in denim jacket, his smartphone's glow incongruous against the blood-smeared cobblestones.
"Silence, fool!" The Elder's cane struck stone with a crack like splitting bone. "Name not the Ancient One without proper reverence!" His milky eyes sought Father's haggard features. "Summon Virtuous De from the mountain hermitage. The hour demands full revelation of the ancestral compact."
Our clan's position in Lujiagou had ever been paradoxical—simultaneously revered and feared. For ten generations, we Lu celestial masters had mediated between mortal and spirit realms. Grandfather's counsel guided crop rotations, resolved spectral hauntings, consecrated ancestral tablets with calligraphy dipped in dragon's blood ink. Now, as villagers swarmed toward the ceremonial hall, our family found itself paraded like sacrificial lambs before the hungry multitude.
Elder Lu's grandson, Prosperity Lu, came panting through the throng, his university-educated composure shattered. "Father! Virtuous De convenes emergency council at the ancestral hall! Every household must send representation!"
The Elder's arthritic grip closed about my wrist with startling force. "Lila Voss," he intoned, each syllable heavy as temple bronze, "Our village's survival now rests within your grasp. The Serpent Sovereign's patience wears thin as winter ice."
Three hundred pairs of eyes crystallized their focus—farmers bearing scythes still crusted with dawn's gore, weavers clutching shuttles like protective talismans, students gripping smartphones recording the madness, elders muttering hexagrams from the I Ching. Beneath the rising sun's accusatory glare, I stood transfixed, understanding at last the terrible truth:
I had become both pawn and priestess in this primordial game—the linchpin between Lujiagou's survival and its descent into scaled oblivion. The ancestral hall's vermilion doors loomed ahead, their bronze knockers shaped like coiling adders awaiting my trembling touch. Somewhere beyond those gates, the truth of my destiny coiled tight as a sleeping python, ready to strike.