The night was filled with the wild noises of celebration.
The torches burned bright their flames dancing and casting long, and distorted shadows against the thick walls of houses.
The windows were shut and the doors are tight, all of it closed and barricade in wood, but the plaza itself was alive with light and movements. The wooden patterns carved into the beams the plain roofs the sharp arches all reflected in the glow.
Looming at the far end of the square, behind the wooden execution platform, rose the massive silhouette of a large church, its spires stabbing into the night sky like black spears.
The air itself felt unnaturally light, almost weightless, as though the crowd's cheers had driven away the heaviness of the world.
Evan stood among the people, his eyes scanning the faces twisted in excitement. Why are they celebrating? Why are they laughing, and cheering, as if death itself were a festival? His thoughts cut deep. Even if those prisoners were heretics or traitors, even if they betrayed the empire, does that justify this thing? A public execution... Beheadings?
He muttered under his breath, his voice trembling. "Beheading… is one of the most brutal punishments known to man. And to make it a spectacle… they do it in public" He exhaled a sharp sigh, the cold air rattling his chest. Fear and mingled with disgust.
Moments passed.
Then the woman kneeling at the center of the platform threw her head back and erupted into laughter. It was not the laugh of a madwoman nor of someone broken. It was sharp, shrill, and piercing, echoing across the plaza like the cry of some unseen predator. The sound of it crawled beneath the skin of every soul present.
The cheering stopped. Murmurs died.
One by one, the faces of the people changed. Where moments ago they bore a joy and fervor now only fear remained. It was as though the laughter itself carried words they could not comprehend, but instinctively feared it like hearing the tongue of demons for the first time.
The plaza fell silent. No sounds nor chants of it, only her laughter stretching on clawing at the night for what felt like an eternity.
Five seconds. Six. Seven.
And then, suddenly, it ended. The sound died away, strangled into a silence.
The woman raised her head slowly. Evan's breath caught as her face became clear in the torchlight, blood smeared across her skin bruises deep as wounds, yet her eyes… her eyes were wrong. The color of it is red as crimson. Not the dull red of irritation or bloodshot weariness, but glowing red it was more alive, burning like fresh-spilled blood under the moonlight.
The crowd recoiled.
Then she began to whisper.
At first it was barely audible, a murmur beneath her breath. But the sound grew each word sharper than the last, and more stranger, like the crackle of a firewood.
Her voice rose and rose, until the words swelled through the square.
Evan pressed his hand to his ear while watching it. "What… what is she saying?"
But the words did not belong to any language he knew. It wasn't just foreign it was twisted, more like ancient. As though the syllables themselves were never meant for human tongues.
The air shifted. The once-light breeze grew heavier, and cold.
From the ground, from the very cracks between the cobblestones smoke began to rise. Gray at first, then it became black spreading in tendrils across the square.
It wrapped around the feet of the crowds, crawled along the buildings spread even toward where Evan stood at the back of the crowds.The fog thickened in seconds until only the platform remained clearly visible, the white-robed man standing tall behind the chained woman.
Evan's instincts screamed at him. Something is wrong about this situation.
Terribly wrong. His legs trembled he tried to move it but his body betrayed him, Evan is frozen in his place like a statue. His eyes refused to blinked he tried but it did not follow him, he was forced to witness it.
The white-robed man did not falter of any of this things. He stepped calmly to the woman's side placing himself beside her kneeling figure. He raised his right hand, extending it above the head of the woman head.
A glow sparked in his palm.
First white then a threads of gold shimmered within it, weaving together until the light was both brilliant and divine.
A wave of radiance pulsed outward, spilling across the platform and wrapping the two figures in a halo-like brilliance.
Evan eyes squinted against it, his heart racing. "What is that, a magic? No… something else, something more holy. It's Divine." The thought chilled in him. If men wielded such power like this, what chance did the three heretics or anyone could truly have that extraordinary ability, like this?
The light grew stronger and stronger. Like a a liquid, that poured from the robed man's hand into the woman, flowing into her eyes, her nose, her ears, and her very flesh. Forcefully.
She convulsed.
A scream tore from her throat. A sound of pure agony, pain, terror, and rage all at once echoing so loud it seemed to shake the heavens themselves.
Her skin shriveled her features hollowing. Her face became thinned, her body twisted like a deformed human, withering into something frail, brittle, and unrecognizable features. Within moments, what remained was not a woman anymore but a husk like the dried plants.
Evan's knees buckled. His mind flashed back to the bear he had encountered and almost killed him, and its rotting corpse. "The same… it's the same…"
The white-robed man lowered his hand. His expression returned to its serene calm, as though nothing extraordinary had taken place.
Then his voice rang across the square.
"Let this be a warning," he said, his words heavy, more precise. "To all who would conspire against the Holy Empire. To all who would dare call upon heresy and profane magic."
He paused, letting silence carry the weight of his words.
"This… this is what becomes of the unworthy. This is what awaits to those who turn against the Divine. Death without honor. An end without salvation or hope and a death without mercy."
He smiled slowly but more superior smile now that radiated both satisfaction and authority.
The crowd erupted. Cheers rose louder than before, as though the fear of moments ago had never existed. "For the Goddess! For the Empire!" they cried.
Voices roared, hands lifted, fists clenched.
Evan could not move. He stared at them all these people, cheering and laughing at the death of others, as bile in his stomach, he almost vomit. "How can they rejoice at this? How can they see holiness in cruelty?" His voice is low, His very soul recoiled at their celebration.
The white-robed man bowed gracefully to the people then turned. Half the soldiers followed him, his cloak trailing like a veil of light in the darkness. The others soldiers remained behind, dragging the husk of the woman's body away and the two man's severed body all their scrubbing blood from the platform as though nothing sacred had occurred here at all.
Moments passed.
Slowly, the crowd dispersed one by one or groups. But even as they drifted from the plaza Evan could still hear their laughter, their murmurs, their satisfaction carried into the night air event.
The night sky slowly bled into shades of orange, the stars fading one by one as dawn began its quiet reign.
The horizon glowed brighter with every passing heartbeat, the deep velvet darkness giving way to a softer and tender light. The first rays of the sun touched the rooftops of the village houses, gilding their wooden beams and weathered stones with a fragile brilliance.
Within moments, the light crept lower slipping past the eaves and drifting across the narrow paths.
It finally reached Evan, brushing against his face as though the sun itself had chosen to greet him.
Its warmth kissed his skin, For a fleeting second, in that embrace of light, the world felt almost kind and almost merciful.
He stood frozen for a minute his fists clenched at his side. He wanted to run, to leave and to forget everything that he see's.