Arc 2 – Chapter 1
The road was lined with broken statues.
Heads of stone Buddhas gazed into the mist, half-buried in mud, their smiles eroded into grimaces. To the blind wanderer, they whispered in silence, voices only he could hear—mockery, warning, and prophecy tangled together.
He leaned on his crooked staff, robes tattered, his eyes hidden beneath a gray veil. To those who passed, he was nothing but another beggar-monk drifting between shrines. None knew the weight of the disguise. None knew the truth he carried beneath that veil.
The City of a Thousand Buddhas rose before him.
Its gates were massive, carved with golden sutras. Bells tolled from towers, their iron hum vibrating against his bones. Inside, the air was thick with incense, smoke spiraling into the heavens, yet beneath it lingered the stench of something fouler—blood, ash, and the faint rot of things not entirely human.
Here, monks chanted day and night. Pilgrims knelt until their foreheads bled. Gold gleamed on every temple wall. Yet the blind wanderer felt no peace. Only unease.
He had come here with a purpose:
To seek the smell of beauty, the essence needed to ascend from Stage One to Stage Two. Without it, his path would end in stagnation. But beauty was elusive, and love—even more so. To one who had walked in shadow and deception, the very concept of love was foreign, slippery, impossible to grasp.
And yet… he followed its scent. A faint, unformed thing.
At the central plaza, she appeared.
The monk-woman.
Her robes were black and gray, modest yet flowing, her hair bound simply behind her, strands catching the faint silver of the sun. Tall, serene, her presence stilled the chaos of the crowd. Her eyes were unclouded—too unclouded. Pure, untouched by deceit, yet carrying a sadness deeper than most mortals could bear.
When she prayed, even the broken statues seemed to bow.
The blind wanderer did not know her name. But something in her presence made his chest tighten. Not warmth, not desire—something stranger. Something that pressed against the wall he had built around himself.
He turned away before she could notice him.
But it was already too late.
That night, the city changed.
The bells tolled out of rhythm. Chanting faltered.
And from the shadows of the grand temple, something stirred. A low growl, not animal nor man, rolled through the alleys.
The blind wanderer knew what it was: the first of the city's buried monsters, an ancient hunger bound beneath golden shrines.
And by cruel coincidence—or fate—the monk-woman was there too, walking the night streets, alone.
That is how their paths crossed.
Not in prayer.
Not in peace.
But in blood, shadow, and the stirrings of a nightmare.