By rights, this small village of fewer than a thousand people shouldn't have been very large.
Moreover, Hai Na's home wasn't on the edge of the village, but right in its center, in the best location.
Iver and the others followed Hai Na. It didn't feel as though they had walked very far... but when they reached Hai Na's door and looked up, they discovered that the moon was already high in the night sky.
Before they knew it, it was already the dead of night! Iver and Sherlock exchanged a glance, then looked at Lily, who was wearing the same astonished expression. In their hearts, they confirmed that the passage of time here was disordered.
At present, however, they could only confirm that this disorder definitely existed. They couldn't analyze its pattern in detail—the only thing they could be certain of was that Hai Na, as a local, couldn't sense anything unusual, while outsiders like them could all feel it...
After they approached, they could see light spilling from the blacksmith shop inside Hai Na's home. The interior was brightly lit, yet no voices could be heard from outside.
"Mom, I'm back."
Hai Na pushed open the tightly closed door of the blacksmith shop. Her voice sounded somewhat tired now, no longer as excited as it had been when she first returned home.
The lights were on outside, but there was no one around. A few completed weapons hung haphazardly on the walls, while countless tongs, cleavers, iron hooks, files, saws, sickle blades, and other tools—as well as scraps of iron from those tools—were strewn across the tables like harvested wheat or hung from racks.
Some of them had already begun to rust, but they hadn't been removed. Instead, they had been left together with the other tools.
Chunks