Keiser's thoughts drifted back to Muzio and the chain of events he had unknowingly set in motion.
The boy likely hadn't known what he had caused. All he'd wanted was a place to hide, a shelter to call his own.
The sigils he had carved into the bark of trees, the runes etched into the beams of that rough barn... those were not acts of malice, but of desperation.
He had been building a sanctuary for himself and for Lenko, a place to survive. Yet that very sanctuary had displaced others.
Because of those wards, the beasts of Sheol had been driven from their rightful place.
They hadn't vanished instantly, rather, the order of the forest had been slowly unraveled, its natural paths warped by illusions that kept the predators circling away from Muzio's little haven.
The beast, robbed of their hunting grounds, wandered further afield. Hunger and instinct drove them into lands where they should never have been.
And there, in Hinnom, people suffered.
