After descending the mountain, Erik seized an opportunity to steal a straw raincoat hanging beneath someone's eaves. Donning it, she blended in, ensuring that even if a villager spotted her, she wouldn't immediately arouse suspicion.
The boy's home was closest, but the place was bustling — lights blazed through the windows, voices clamored, and the rich aroma of fish soup lingered in the air. Clearly, many were present. She had to give up on that lead.
Passing by the players' stilt house from afar, Erik heard agonized screams. It seemed Josephine and Emery had been captured.
She felt a pang of sympathy, but she lacked the strength to mount a rescue.
Instead, she slipped into Nora's home, climbing through her bedroom window.
Nora was asleep, alone. Her mother, seated in the living room by the glow of a kerosene lamp, spun thread with an old spinning wheel. The wheel creaked with a mournful rhythm.
Erik covered her mouth.
"Mmmph—!"
"Don't scream. Your daughter is with me," Erik whispered coldly. "Nora is very sweet. I like her. You wouldn't want to see me harm her, would you?"
As Erik had anticipated, the woman froze in terror.
Tears welled in her eyes. Regret gnawed at her.
She should never have let her husband go. He'd been guarding them, but when the villagers called for help, she'd let him leave. She'd thought the offering would never return to the village — never imagined one would come straight to her doorstep.
"I'll ask, you'll answer. Scream, and I'll kill your daughter." Erik pressed the cold blade of a fruit knife against the woman's cheek. The woman trembled violently and nodded.
"Why did you make us eat those human-headed fish?"
Erik lifted her hand from the woman's mouth but kept the knife to her throat. A gentle slice brought blood and the iron tang of fear.
The woman had intended to lie — but Erik's calm cruelty shattered her resolve.
"If you lie," Erik warned, "the next cut lands on Nora."
"I—I'll tell you!" the woman stammered. "I don't know much, I swear! I only know what my mother-in-law told me. The Dragon King Festival is an old tradition — only the elders understand its full meaning."
She said the festival came once every twenty years, always at dusk on April 4th — when the sun dipped below the horizon.
At that moment, villagers would carry the offerings to the heart of the river. Seven youths, all born on the same day, in the same month and year.
"The Dragon King accepts the offerings and grants us peace for another twenty years... that's what my mother-in-law told me. I was barely ten during the last one — I don't know more. Please, don't hurt Nora. You're the one who gave her sweets and hairpins, aren't you? She likes you. Please don't hurt her…"
She shared everything she knew. As for Yinghua, the purpose behind the fish soup, and how the offerings might escape — she truly knew nothing.
"No one leaves the village. In the past twenty years, only two girls married out. My eldest daughter left over a year ago, and I haven't seen her since. I really don't know how to get out…"
Realizing he could extract no more, Erik knocked the woman unconscious.
Nora still slept soundly, her mother now slumped beside her.
Suddenly, the mother's eyes snapped open.
Erik, dissatisfied with the scant information, resolved to find the fishermen brothers' home — their mother might yield more.
But as she descended the stairs, a chill shot through her spine. A dreadful presence surged behind her, brushing her back with killing intent so palpable it froze her blood.
Heart racing, Erik dashed down the stairs in long strides.
Danger clung to her like a shadow. The icy rain soaked her to the bone, the chill burrowing into her marrow.
Just as she reached the bottom, a dark figure appeared before her.
Too fast.
Was this the power of a ghost?
In the darkness, she could only discern the outline — it looked like Nora's mother. But how had she become this… thing?
Erik didn't dare engage. She turned and fled.
Claws raked across her back — a soul-deep agony erupted. She stumbled and fell hard.
Before she could rise, the shadow seized her throat.
The hand was deathly cold and impossibly strong. Powerless, Erik felt the same helpless dread she had in every ghost encounter — there was no escape.
She couldn't breathe. Her vision darkened. Consciousness ebbed.
Then — a shrill, ghastly scream pierced the air. The grip on her throat slackened.
"Cough, cough!"
Erik collapsed, clutching her throat, gasping for breath. Each cough tore through her lungs like shattered glass.
But she was alive.
"Erik? Are you okay?"
Wet hands helped her sit up. "Can you stand?"
Delilah's voice.
Erik's vision swam. "Yes," she rasped, rising with Delilah's support.
They moved quickly through the village. Delilah guided her under a darkened stilt house, seeking another route. She, too, wore a villager's raincoat. Seeing Erik recover, she smiled.
"Let's hurry — I think dawn's coming."
They zigzagged through back paths, slipping quietly into the mountains once more. Fearing detection, neither spoke.
Erik heard dogs barking intermittently, but luck was with them — no pursuers followed.
While Erik and Delilah fled deeper into the forest, Josephine, Emery, and the unconscious Weston were suffering unspeakable torment in the players' former residence.
The NPC villagers had cast off their masks of civility, revealing snarling, monstrous faces.
"Ugh—I won't drink it! No! I can't! Please!" Emery sobbed.
"Hold her down! Don't let the funnel fall!"
Two burly men and a woman surrounded her. One pinned her down, another shoved a funnel into her mouth, and the third began ladling thick fish soup into it.
The boiling broth scorched her throat. She screamed, garbled and wet.
Josephine, restrained beside her, suffered the same fate. But her eyes — her hatred — were fixed not on the NPCs, but on Emery.
She loathed her.
The quiet ones were always the most dangerous. Who would have thought this seemingly docile newcomer would sabotage her at the critical moment?
Yes, the escape had been chaotic. Perhaps she wouldn't have gotten away even without Emery's interference — but she had a chance. Emery had crushed her final hope.
How could she not hate her?
Unlike the two women, Weston was in bliss.
Cradling a bucket of fish soup in his arms, he ate with unrestrained delight, scooping mouthfuls with a ladle — then drinking straight from the bucket when that proved too slow.
He chewed only when a bone got in the way.
When he emptied the bucket, another freshly cooked one appeared. Weston beamed and dug in again.
It was plain to see — he was no longer normal.
Mind and body both had begun to warp, exactly as the villagers had hoped.
The village chief watched Weston's bloated stomach with satisfaction.
"These two women clearly didn't eat yesterday. Get more soup into them — we need them to reach the incubation stage before it's too late."
Of the three remaining offerings, at least one was progressing well. The Dragon King Festival wouldn't be delayed.
Still, if the other three weren't found, the village would need to supply replacements.
And then there was the harpoon — essential for the ceremony. Without it...
The chief's smile faded.
Another villager ran in with bad news.
"Chief! One of the families was attacked — they say it was the offerings!"
Moments later, another breathless report:
"Chief! Nora's mother was attacked too. She said the offering did it!"
The chief's eyes gleamed.
"They came back? Bold little rats! Call the others back — half of them! Keep the rest searching the mountain!"
Inside the stilt house, Josephine and Emery heard him and dared to hope.
Had Delilah come? Erik? Brooks?
Were they here to rescue them?
But hope was fleeting. The forced feeding continued. Slowly, the resistance in Josephine and Emery faded. Their bodies began to swallow without protest.
Soon, they were devouring the soup voluntarily, like Weston.
Their bellies swelled grotesquely, distended and unnatural.
For Weston, already burly, the change wasn't so jarring. But for Josephine and Emery — once slim — the sight of their bloated stomachs and delicate limbs was terrifying.
The fish soup soon ran short. The boy's grandmother, exhausted, could no longer lift her arms. The chief's wife urged her on.
"Just hang in there. Once the boy's ready, he'll take your place in the next Festival."
The old woman's face was ghostly pale. She sighed.
"This isn't a job to envy."
If she'd known this burden would fall to her, she'd never have agreed to brew that prenatal tonic for Yinghua years ago.
With the supply of human-headed fish depleted, the chief dispatched a crew to fish through the night.
The old woman was finally allowed to rest. She lay motionless while the boy gently massaged her back.
She gazed through the rain-streaked window into the storm, her eyes distant — as though she were once again watching that blood-soaked evening long ago, the water choked with boats, bodies, and shattered stones.