'Unpleasant'

"Hmm."

The sound barely left Heinz's lips, yet it sliced through the thick silence like a blade. It was nothing more than a breath of sound, but it carried weight—a weight that settled over the villagers like a suffocating shroud.

The shift was subtle but unmistakable. Where there had been grief, there was now something far more dangerous—an unspoken, simmering bloodlust.

The woman who had been cradling the remains of her child only moments ago, sobbing brokenly into the charred remains of tiny bones, now stared at him with a chilling emptiness. Her tears had dried, her face was rigid. The flames behind her raged on, devouring the village with hungry, crackling fingers, but no one turned to stop them anymore.

Their mourning was over.

Now, all that remained was him.

A normal village—normal people—would still be in chaos. They would be screaming, wailing, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of what they had lost. But these people?