Chapter 11: The cruelty of the masked man

In a village not far from Ren's, the sky stretched clear, dotted with small white clouds moving lazily in the wind. It was an ordinary afternoon, and there was the usual stillness in the air: children running laughing through the dirt streets, shopkeepers attracting customers by displaying their wares, and artisans intent on beating metal or weaving baskets.

No one paid any attention to him.

A man, or perhaps something that only looked like one. He had materialized slowly, descending from the sky like a shadow too light to make a sound. His feet touched the ground without raising dust. His face was completely covered by a white, smooth, expressionless mask. No slit for the eyes, no opening for the mouth. Just a white blankness.

His body was wrapped in a long black robe, his hands hidden by dark gloves, his head covered by a hood that did not reveal any hair or skin. He moved slowly, walking through the crowd like a simple wayfarer.

“Who is that?” asked a little girl, stopping for a moment
as she chased after a friend.

“An outsider, probably,” replied a woman, without even
looking.

People walked past him, distracted by normalcy. No one noticed the gaze that seemed to pierce through things. The man in the mask stopped at the corner of the central square. He remained there. Motionless. Silent. He watched.

Every corner. Every street. Every position of the guards. The towers. The roofs. The entrances. Even the spot where children took refuge to play.

He studied. And the clock was ticking.

As the sun began to set beyond the hills and the sky became tinged with shades of orange and crimson, the village prepared for night. The lights began to turn on, the lanterns hanging outside the houses swayed lightly in the breeze.

That's when it happened. The curtains began to move on their own, as if an invisible current was flowing through the houses. The flames of the candles flickered... then went out, one after another, leaving the rooms in darkness.

“Strange...” murmured an elderly man, looking out the window. “The wind wasn't so strong just now...”

Then came the screams. One. Two. Then dozens. Harrowing, tearing screams, impossible to ignore. Terror spread like poison.

The first bodies began to fall in the streets. People ran, stumbled, slumped lifelessly to the ground, as if something had touched them... and drained them of their souls. Their mouths remained open, their eyes fixed in emptiness. No visible wounds. Only death.

Flames took the village soon after. A black, almost liquid fire climbed the walls and devoured the wood as if it had a life of its own.

Smoke rose high, dispersing into the air.

A squad of mounted guards, alarmed by the acrid smell and distant light, rushed to the scene.
“For the love of the gods...!” exclaimed the captain, when he saw the first houses collapsing under the flames.

There were corpses everywhere. Some were still burning, others were crushed by beams and stones. Some looked ... drained, as if their lives had been sucked from within.

And then they saw him. Standing above a still intact roof, he. The wind barely stirred the flaps of his black tunic. The white mask reflected the glow of the fire, motionless, as if he were part of the landscape.

“Hey, you! Who are you?!” shouted one of the soldiers, raising his sword.
“Was it you...?!” shouted another. “Answer!”
“We will kill you!!!”

The man did not answer. Slowly, he turned his head toward them.

At that instant, a crimson light flashed in the center of the mask. It was no ordinary glow. It was-something that penetrated the mind, that made the bones tremble. A glow without heat, but charged with overwhelming pressure.

The world seemed to stop. Horses whinned, maddened, before collapsing to the ground. The guards brought their hands to their chests. They gasped. Their eyes rolled back. Then one by one, without a scream, without a whimper, they fell. Dead.

Silence returned to reign among the burning ruins. The wind carried away the last spark in the night sky. And the man in the mask stood there, observing the chaos, not saying a word.

The flames continued to devour the houses now reduced to black skeletons, the sky above the village had turned a somber red, almost as if the sunset itself was weeping for that carnage.

The man in the white mask stood there, impassive, observing his own handiwork. There was nothing more that could be called "life" around him.

Or almost.

A faint sound. A moan. The wind carried faint sobs... and sharp, trembling, shrill screams. They came from a distant spot, hidden behind a rocky hill at the edge of the village.

His gaze turned slowly. There, at the far end, hidden between two old willows, was a small house, a shelter usually used as an emergency shelter for children during monster attacks. Perhaps they believed that place would protect them from him as well.

Maybe... they still hoped.

Slowly, his footsteps began to echo across the scorched ground. One after another. No hurry. No sound but that of his boots stomping on the charred remains. His every step seemed to carry with it an unbearable pressure, an invisible weight that seemed to suffocate even the air.

Then, the creak. The door to the shelter opened. A faint flickering light, probably from a hastily saved candle, illuminated the figure silhouetted on the threshold. The children froze, petrified.

One of them, perhaps the bravest... or simply the most desperate, stood up. He must have been six or seven years old. His shirt was torn, stained with dirt and blood. His hair, a light chestnut color, fell messily over his dirty forehead.

His hands were shaking, but he lifted a stick, as if it were a sword.
"S-Stop there! I-If you come near... I'll kill you!!!"

His voice cracked in his throat mid-sentence. No one responded. The man advanced without a word. His eyes, or what was hidden behind that smooth, unnatural mask, stared at him with an inhuman calm.

The child could not move. When the man was in front of him, he slowly lifted his gloved hand. And he laid it, with unexpected gentleness, on the little boy's head.

He brushed his hair. A caress. A terribly sweet thing, in a scene filled with horror.
“I don't want to hurt the children.” His voice was deep, emotionless, like a distant echo. "But... I can't leave any witnesses. Not even you."

The touch of his hand was the last thing the child sensed.

His eyes closed, slow, as if sleep had gently embraced him. The body slumped to the floor without a sound.

The screams ceased.

The other children instinctively retreated, clustering against the far wall. Some cowered, others cried. One of them, too small to understand, peed his pants. The smell wafted through the air already impregnated with smoke and blood.

The man turned toward them. Silence. And then, again, that light. A crimson ray leaked through the mask. All it took was an instant. One glance. Just one. The children stopped crying. Their bodies slowly sagged, like dry leaves carried by the autumn wind. There were no cries. There was no pain.

Only emptiness. And then... nothingness. The shelter sank into silence.

The man stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the motionless bodies. No expression. No reaction. Only his breathing, slow and steady, behind the mask.

He exited the house as calmly as he had entered. The flames behind him reflected off the white mask, turning it into a hellish face.

He stopped on an elevated rock, looking at what remained of the village. A pile of ashes. A field of death. A place no one would ever recognize again.

He raised a hand toward the sky, as if to call the whole world to him. And he spoke.
“Well...” he said, and there was an icy, maddening, distorted joy in his voice.
"This is just the first of many. I will prove to everyone... how powerful I am in this world!"

His laughter, low, cavernous, like a funeral drum, was lost in the night wind.