509
A bone-chilling cold hung over the early spring grasslands.
A transparent wind swept past, turning the gently swaying grass to white ash. In a distant settlement, cattle and sheep pressed their ears flat against their heads and knelt on their forelegs, refusing to move no matter how the herders drove them.
Where the vast grasslands met the mountains, a patch of blue sky suddenly turned white. Masses of pink flowers sprang up in the increasingly vivid yet illusory air, and a road that seemed painted into existence appeared out of nowhere. It wound along, so narrow it seemed to admit only a single person walking sideways, skirting the vast stretches of dying grassland and taking a detour toward the distant mountains.
The illusory road began disappearing at tremendous speed the moment it appeared, erased by a shadow like smoke or mist following close behind.
A figure wrapped in old white bandages raced along the road. At its far end, a village of an unusual style appeared faintly among the mountains, complete with fields, livestock, and even illusory people walking about.
The village was exceedingly strange. Together with the constantly disappearing road, it inspired an inexplicable fear that anyone who entered would vanish from the known world.
The shadow that was the Artificial God of Death slowed slightly. In an instant, the sky darkened into a night without wind, light, or sound, filled with deathly silence and the stench of rot. A tremendous breath sounded within the clouds, as though someone had inhaled forcefully. Blazing flames fell from the sky like a torrential rain, instantly engulfing most of the land within that eerie village!
Seeing the path ahead swallowed by a sea of white fire, Suah did not slow in the slightest.
A jewel-like vertical eye embedded in the flesh