"This village... is worse than I expected."
Louis stood behind a damaged stone wall, his palm resting on a broken brick as he gazed toward the village center. Whispers surged toward him like a tide, yet clung to his ears like scraps drifting in the wind, refusing to disperse.
In the square, the "villagers" paced slowly across cracked flagstones like puppets stripped of their souls.
Their clothes were ragged, their skin ashen, and their eyes clouded like those of dead fish, yet their lips occasionally moved, murmuring something.
"Don't you think these insect corpses... are different from the ones we found at Cold Fir Ridge?" Eduardo spoke first, his gaze sweeping over the wandering figures. "Those were just controlled corpses. But these people..."
"These insect corpses seem to have a tiny bit of 'self' left," Louis replied.
"More like partial parasitism." Eduardo rubbed his chin.
"The question is, why preserve their 'consciousness'? If it's for control, that's terribly inefficient. If the mastermind just wants to torture them... that's rather too artistic."
Louis nodded, his gaze settling on the village center.
There stood a stone altar about two meters tall, its edges weathered and worn. It should have been a sacred place for ceremonies or offerings.
But now, that altar had long since changed beyond recognition.
Dark red vines coiled around it like some malevolent force, densely packed, their roots interwoven like a cocoon of spiderwebs.
The vines were covered in translucent, membranous tissue, with what looked like blackish-red liquid slowly flowing inside.
"It's... moving." Eduardo narrowed his eyes, his voice barely audible.
They both saw that the mass of vines was not still-it rose and fell faintly, as though breathing.
"That's not an occasional gust or tremor. It's showing signs of life." Louis squinted at its irregular writhing.
"Or gestating,"