Weeks blurred into months, and since Eoghan's return from the cursed place, the rhythm of his days carried a heaviness that thickened with time. He moved through the village with the face of a leader, yet inside his chest the ground shifted without rest. The world appeared familiar in form, yet estranged in spirit, as though the air itself observed him with a secret he could never reach.
The advisors measured his distraction with anxious precision. They spoke in council with words coated in courtesy, yet their glances revealed their unease. They convinced themselves that sorrow worked its slow craft upon him, or that the crown weighed too heavily upon shoulders untested by years of rule. In whispered corners they speculated whether the huntsman they had raised could sustain the ceaseless weight of governance.
Within Eoghan, the weight that hollowed him carried an age older than memory. It lingered with the patience of the tide and the cold persistence of winter, shaping him slowly, as if it had mastered the art of wearing stone into dust.
It pressed upon him without revealing a face, offered no voice to answer, and kept its form forever hidden, so that he lived in the shadow of something vast yet unnamed. He reached for guidance with the desperation of a drowning man searching for air.
He bent his mind toward the sacred words he had been taught since childhood, yet the prayers slipped from his lips and fell heavy in the silence, as though the heavens themselves had turned their gaze away. He turned inward in long hours of solitude, waiting for some revelation to rise from the stillness, yet the stillness only deepened, surrounding him like stone around a prisoner.
That ignorance rose like a torment in its own right, carving deeper into him with each passing day. A cut upon the flesh would have given him a boundary, something he could tend with care. An enemy standing before him would have offered direction, a target for his strength. What faced him instead had neither shape nor edge, and in that absence his spirit found no ground to brace against.
He felt himself enclosed in a furnace that gave off no flame, a heat that consumed without light, a hunger that fed only on his endurance. The daylight hours unfolded as corridors without end, time stretching thin until despair thickened the air around him. He pressed forward through those hours, yet every step carried the sense of sinking into ground that dissolved beneath his weight.
Around him, life unfolded with its familiar rhythm. Councils gathered with their careful words, the market filled with the calls of barter, hunters returned with game slung across their shoulders, and at dusk the village gathered in its low murmur of voices. Yet to Eoghan these sounds arrived as though carried through heavy water, blurred and dulled, stripped of the sharpness that once made them real.
The world had not changed in its shapes, but it no longer touched him with the same clarity. He sensed a hidden fracture beneath the surface of things, as though the ground itself shifted with a quiet treachery, soil sliding beneath his steps even when the earth appeared firm.
The advisors, blind to the depth of his estrangement, clothed their fears in familiar reasoning. They assured themselves that grief explained his silence, that the weight of rule bent his shoulders, that time alone would steady his course. Yet while they wove these comforts, something vast and relentless drew closer, gathering strength beyond their sight. It circled their horizon with the patience of a hunter, waiting for the moment to descend upon the village with a weight beyond all imagination.
It began almost imperceptibly, as though the land itself sought to hide its betrayal. The fields, long relied upon to deliver the rhythm of survival, shifted into something strange. At first the stalks leaned heavy with promise, but then black veins crept along the leaves, curling them into withered husks. Farmers stooped to touch the soil, and their hands came away smelling of iron, damp as though something beneath the ground had begun to rot.
A few steps away, the same soil yielded green and thriving grain, a cruel contrast that mocked the labor of the farmers. Rows that had once stood even and proud now carried scars of ruin, patches of ash-colored earth spreading like wounds across a body. Farmers bent low, running calloused hands across the blighted stalks, their brows knit in disbelief.
They whispered to one another of curses, of hidden rot in the earth, yet no answer satisfied the dread rising in their chests. Tools hung idle, for how does one strike against soil that betrays its own seed? The promise of a harvest turned into a question that clawed at their stomachs: would the village endure the coming winter, or would the barns echo hollow with hunger?
From the fields, unease crept into the animals. Beasts that had served faithfully through countless seasons now betrayed their own restlessness. Oxen shied at the creak of a cart, eyes rolling white as though they glimpsed dangers invisible to human sight. Horses bolted from the touch of a hand they had known since foalhood, their hooves striking sparks against stone as they fled.
Dogs barked ceaselessly at the corners of empty yards, their voices cracked from exhaustion, yet they refused to settle. Even the birds seemed caught in the strangeness, breaking from their usual patterns, wheeling in restless circles before vanishing altogether. Those who tended the beasts grew uneasy, for when the animals recoiled, it was as though the earth itself had shifted beneath them. Fear spread quietly from pen to stable, a gnawing sense that nature, once partner and servant, now turned its face away.
The market bore the weight of this unrest most visibly. With harvests faltering and beasts unsettled, the stalls no longer offered the abundance of seasons past. Baskets that once overflowed with produce now carried only what could be salvaged, often bruised or half-rotten, yet sold at prices that climbed higher with each passing week. Traders defended themselves with sharp voices, swearing that scarcity demanded its cost, while buyers bristled with suspicion, convinced they were being cheated.
Quarrels broke out over measures of grain, fists striking wood and flesh alike, and once-friendly faces twisted into masks of anger. A hand that reached for a purse too quickly was accused of theft; a neighbor who withheld goods for his own kin was branded as traitor to the village. Suspicion spread faster than barter, and the market that had once been the heart of shared life became a stage for bitterness.
Through all these changes ran the same current, though few dared name it. The land failed in its duty, the beasts recoiled, and the people themselves broke faith with one another. It was not misfortune scattered by chance but a single unraveling, a pattern pulling tighter with every day.
To those willing to see, the world itself seemed to tilt toward ruin, though the advisors in their halls still clung to the comfort of familiar words. They spoke of poor seasons, of ordinary quarrels, of troubles that time would smooth. Yet beneath their reassurances the air grew heavier, as though the village lived inside a storm that had not yet broken. Something vast, patient, and merciless crept closer, and the ground of their lives trembled with its approach.