📅 50 Years Later — February 14, 1990
📍 Valmora — Alchemist's Tavern
The tavern buzzed with life.
Laughter echoed.
Mugs slammed against tables.
Drunken voices sang over one another in clumsy celebration.
Smoke rose from pipes.
Ale spilled across the wood.
Someone danced on a barrel in the corner.
But at a table near the center, the mood turned darker.
---
Kaya leaned forward:
> "Have you heard the story from fifty years ago? About the cursed book?"
Elton replied:
> "Ah… you mean the one they say killed half the people in this city?"
Faz laughed:
> "Come on. You guys believe that crap?
We hunt real monsters—Garote beasts, shadow wolves, banshees.
But a book that kills people? That's bedtime horror for cowards."
Some nearby patrons chuckled.
Others leaned closer.
The tavern's rhythm shifted—
from chaotic joy to cautious curiosity.
---
Man 1 whispered:
> "I heard it only takes a whisper of its name… and you're dead."
Man 2 added:
> "My uncle swore he saw it happen.
A woman said the title—and blood poured from her mouth."
Old drunk in the corner muttered:
> "It's not just the name.
They say a spirit comes when you speak it.
Tall. No face.
Holding a knife made of shadows."
Girl (mocking):
> "Oooh! Don't say the name or the ghost with the knife will come for you!
Puh-lease."
---
In the far corner, near a window fogged with frost, sat a man.
Leo.
He didn't drink.
Didn't laugh.
Didn't blink.
He simply watched.
Listened.
One hand resting calmly near the hilt of the blade at his side.
---
Then someone—drunk, grinning—shouted aloud:
> "The Gossipers' Karma!"
---
For a heartbeat... silence.
Then—
CRACK.
The speaker's neck snapped sideways.
His mouth opened—blood spilled out.
He collapsed.
A scream tore through the tavern.
---
Chairs flew. Bottles shattered.
People stampeded toward the door.
But it was too late.
They came.
Figures emerged from the shadows—
tall, faceless, gliding like smoke.
Not one.
Many.
Some slipped out from beneath the floorboards.
Others burst through the back wall, blades in hand.
Black knives. Twisting. Hissing.
The air turned thick.
Cold.
Voices vanished mid-sentence.
---
Leo moved.
Like a sword loosed from its sheath.
He vaulted a table, blade flashing.
The first demon met him mid-strike.
He drove steel through its throat—it screamed and burst into shadow.
Another leapt from above—Leo rolled, twisted,
sliced clean through its leg.
He rose, spun, blocked a third blow—
then slashed downward, splitting another chest.
---
All around him—chaos.
Men gurgled on their own blood.
Women clawed at throats that no longer screamed.
One boy tried to run—
vanished in mid-step,
his voice left behind.
Leo fought like instinct.
Not fearless—
but focused.
Three more.
Five more.
He grunted as a blade tore across his side.
Blood poured.
He staggered—caught himself—struck again.
---
He slammed one demon's head into the wall.
Another, he burned—plunging his blade into a lantern, then its gut.
Screams.
Smoke.
Black mist.
It didn't end...
Not until the last of them—hissing—dissolved into fog.
---
And then… it was over.
Leo stood in the wreckage.
Bodies. Ash. Blood. Silence.
He dropped his blade, breath heaving.
Fell onto his back.
Eyes open to the broken rafters above.
> "So… it begins again."
---
[BLACK SCREEN]
---
Elina's Cottage — Woodland Edge
The sun poured through the windows—
golden and gentle.
In a quiet cottage beyond the northern hills,
Elina stood by the sink, humming softly as she washed a wooden bowl.
Outside, birds chirped lazily.
A breeze moved through the trees.
From the back room came the familiar rustle of a child waking—
followed by the soft thud of little feet across the floor.
---
> "Mama!"
Elina turned, drying her hands as a small boy ran toward her.
His curls were messy. His smile was missing two teeth.
> "Good morning, sleepyhead," she said, crouching to hug him.
"Did you dream of dragons again?"
> "Nope," he beamed. "Just bread. Big bread."
Elina laughed.
> "That's even better."
---
Behind them, the front door opened.
A tall man stepped inside, carrying firewood over one shoulder.
His eyes met Elina's—warm, steady, tired in a familiar way.
He set the wood down, dusted off his hands, and kissed her forehead.
> "Morning."
> "You're late," Elina teased.
"I was about to declare war over firewood."
He grinned.
> "Had to chase off a deer. Big one. Probably ate our tomatoes."
---
Soon, the table was set.
The boy chatted endlessly about everything and nothing.
Elina poured tea. Her husband broke bread.
It was quiet.
Ordinary.
The kind of morning that leaves no trace in history—
but lingers in memory.
Outside, the wind passed through the trees.
Inside, Elina looked at her little family... and smiled.
---
Valmora — The Old Manor by the Cemetery Wall
Few people walked this far.
Even fewer dared to look up.
The house was ancient—
built long before the war,
long before the whispers.
It stood near the city's edge, right against the cemetery wall.
Too close to the dead.
Too quiet to be clean.
No children played nearby.
No deliveries were ever made.
Just one house.
One candle.
One woman.
---
Inside, the room was dim.
Fire crackled softly in the hearth.
Dust hung in the air like memory.
In a velvet chair near the window, she sat—unmoving.
A woman with pale skin and ink-dark hair.
Her beauty sharp and unsettling,
like something sculpted too perfectly to be human.
She looked young.
But her eyes told a different story.
---
Across from her sat a man—cloaked, thin, fidgeting.
A guest.
Or a fool.
He cleared his throat, watching her carefully.
> "You're alive," he said.
"After all these years… you're really still here."
The woman didn't blink.
> "I never left," she said.
Silence.
Then, softer:
> "Is it true?"
"That the curse has returned?"
She finally turned to look at him—slowly.
> "It never left," she said.
"The city just forgot how to listen."
---
She reached forward, poured herself a cup of tea with graceful precision.
Then, as if reciting an ancient memory, she whispered:
> "The book remembers."
---