The wind of the wasteland swept up sand and grit, striking against Cain's cloak with a dry, rattling hiss. At the edge of his vision, the outline of a ruined town shimmered in the thin air like a mirage.
This was the place marked on the map—Starving Ghost Town, a waystation long since abandoned. Once a bustling hub of trade routes, now only weathered ruins remained, along with a few emaciated figures gnawing on tree bark beneath the dead trees—phantoms more than people.
Cain's brow furrowed instinctively. He hated places like this—places where even the air reeked of death. Detouring would have been the best choice.
But just as he turned to leave, several small figures stumbled out from the shadows of the ruins, swaying as they blocked his path. Children—skin stretched tight over bone, eyes sunken deep, as if only two faint ghostly flames remained inside their sockets. They said nothing, merely reached out skeletal hands, silently begging for something.
Cain's expression didn't change. Compassion, in this world, was the cheapest emotion. He was just about to raise his hand and push them aside with a burst of energy when a shrill alarm exploded inside his head.
[Warning!]High-intensity collective hunger detected—Despair Resonance in progress!Area of effect: entire town!Prolonged exposure may cause mental contamination. Host advised to evacuate or perform purification immediately!
The cold alert hit him like ice water. Cain's pupils constricted sharply. He instinctively activated his Emotion Vision. The world before him was instantly overlaid by an eerie glow.
Every child—every visible townsfolk—radiated a dark purple aura that bordered on black. Those auras weren't independent; they were woven together like strands of webbing, intertwining into a vast, pulsating network that loomed over the entire town. The structure throbbed faintly, like the nerve system of some enormous, slumbering beast.
Then his gaze caught on something at the town's central square—a distorted black silhouette. A nameless statue, material unknown, vaguely human in shape, as though countless writhing bodies had been forced together into one.
Cain approached silently. On the weathered, eroded base of the statue, he made out several half-destroyed lines of Ancient Common script:
"…Sacrifice the wails… in exchange for survival…"
Sacrifice the wails. A spark flashed in Cain's mind—the memory of an inscription he'd seen not long ago in the border graveyard:
"It feeds upon lamentation."
So that was it. This was no abandoned waystation at all—it was a sacrificial ground, a pasture built to cultivate despair for some Old One that once hungered for it.
He needed more information. Merging into the shadows, Cain slipped into a dilapidated shack. Inside, huddled in a corner, was a one-eyed man, stinking of decay and soil, gnawing greedily on a bloody rat.
"Who are you?" The man raised his head warily, madness and fear swirling in his single eye.
"Just passing through," Cain replied flatly.
The man barked out a hoarse laugh, the sound like sandpaper scraping stone. "Passing through? Heh… no one should be here anymore. Three years ago, the drought came. The mayor locked the last of the grain in the cellar. He said if we made offerings to the god, it would bless us with food."
He paused, staring blankly out the window. "We drew lots. Whoever lost had to offer up their child… But the more we killed, the less food there was."
The man grinned, showing yellow-black teeth with bits of rat flesh stuck between them. "Now no one dares even say the words 'eat' or 'food'. You say them, and you go mad—really mad."
Cain left the hut deep in thought.
That night, the moonlight was a ghastly white. Instead of leaving, he lit a bonfire in the middle of the deserted square. The flames drove back a little of the chill.
From his storage space, he took out several loaves of soft white bread and a small piece of roasted meat, placing them casually beside the fire before fading into the darkness to wait.
By midnight, a dozen hunched figures emerged, drawn to the aroma like iron filings to a magnet. Their throats worked audibly as they swallowed, eyes burning with naked hunger.
One man, the nearest, trembled as he reached out—and the instant his fingertip brushed the bread—
"Aaaah—!!"
A scream, sharp and inhuman, tore through the night. The man clutched his head, collapsing to the ground. At once, the rest followed—every villager who had approached the food shrieking in unison, writhing violently as black mucus gushed from their mouths and noses.
[Soul Essence +3.1 threads acquired!][Warning: Anomalous soul feedback detected. Residual divine contamination present!]
The cold system prompt confirmed Cain's suspicion. Despair here had long since been domesticated. Hunger was no longer mere physical need—it had been twisted into ritualized suffering.
Any attempt to break that "rule" of hunger triggered divine punishment burned into their souls. And as Cain harvested their tortured screams, the Soul Essence that poured into him meant he was unknowingly taking the Old God's place—becoming the new feeder.
At dawn, the first ray of sunlight pierced the darkness. A small figure appeared at the town gate—a girl clutching a rag doll to her chest. Her face was smudged with dirt, but her eyes were frighteningly clear.
She didn't wander aimlessly like the others. Instead, she walked straight through the ruins to the base of the clock tower where Cain was hiding.
Tilting her head back, she said softly, "I know you're there. On the night of the black flame… I saw you walk into the fire—and come out again."
Inside the ruined tower, Cain's hidden figure froze. After a long silence, he stepped out from the shadows and offered her an intact piece of dry rations.
The girl didn't take it. She didn't go mad, either. She just looked at him and asked quietly, "Will you take them away? The ones… crying in the shadows?"
Cain shook his head.
"Then why are you collecting their voices?" she asked again.
He couldn't answer. And at that very moment, a crushing sense of danger seized his heart. The system interface flashed blood-red.
[High-purity "Faith-Level Despair" detected—source unknown.][Initiate Deep Harvest Protocol?]
Almost as the alert appeared, every villager in Starving Ghost Town—the sitting, the wandering, the gnawing—froze in place. Then, as if pulled by invisible strings, they began to turn their heads, one by one, all toward the clock tower.
Within a second, their eyes turned pitch black, the whites drowned in ink. Their mouths stretched open into the same grotesque, uniform grin.
Hundreds of voices blended into one low, sticky whisper that echoed across the town:
"...We're hungry..."
Cain's face changed drastically. He seized the girl—Sera—and, summoning all his strength, smashed through the weakened wall of the tower, diving into a narrow alley.
Behind him, countless twisted figures began to move—their synchronized, unnatural steps closing in from every direction, like a tide of the damned converging upon the ruins of the clock tower.