I Became the Sect Master’s Shadow

Chapter 002 - The smell of death

The moon rested like a chilled silver eye over the village, shedding a pale shadow of light upon the vacant streets below. The streets themselves were strangely silent, a sickening stillness resting in the air, relieved only by an infrequent groan of the creaking of a wooden sign swaying on its chains in the breeze. A sprinkling of torches flickered against the walls, their light flames casting small shadows onto the somber town. It was late at night and every street had its own quiet emptiness, a strange, empty void that gave it an ominous feeling of something not quite there. No one was awake, yet no one was asleep.

In the stillness of the town square, even the birds had stopped singing their songs, feeling the tension in the air. They crouched in clusters on the houses along the street, peering intently at the town square behind shuttered windows and closed doors. The moment the first glimmer of torchlight showed on the horizon, they would scatter into concealment with hardly a whisper of feathers, never letting out another sound until dawn. Their absence today was almost reassuring. At least this uncanny silence was pierced only by the distant cries of the cicadas. This town's citizens needed no other noise at the time, nothing except their own frantic breaths.

A man stood alone at the gate to the town hall, leaning on his spear and staring into space. His eyes were wide open and unblinking. He wasn’t looking at anything, just staring blankly, as if he could see through the gates into the darkness beyond. His face was serious and hard to read. The night wind blew by, messing with his hair, and the air carried a strong, unpleasant smell of death that anyone nearby could smell. Then, he heard something and turned his head toward the noise.

Down the winding cobblestone street, a group of black-clad figures, their faces concealed behind gruesome beaked plague masks, walked with deliberate care. Their billowing long robes flowed behind them, and their gloved hands clutched the limbs of a body between them. The body was dead, its pale and mottled skin bearing the unmistakable marks of the sickness. It had been left on the ground like all the rest that had died from the illness. Their trip had served no other function but to guarantee that the body would be disposed of in the same manner as all bodies from the diseased—destroyed. One of the men gazed up unexpectedly, focusing their gaze on that of the sentinel, and he cringed, moving back involuntarily a pace.

He didn't know who or what they were, but he knew he better not interfere with them. Swishing their dark robes aside, the men proceeded past, heading on down the road. They left nothing behind but the smell of the rotten body. The silence on the street was almost suffocating, broken only by the soft yet unsettling sounds of the footsteps. The cobblestones beneath their feet seemed to hum, the noise of every step magnified as if the ground itself grieved for what had happened to the village.

They approached the old warehouse, a dilapidated building that had originally been used as a grain and tool storage facility but had been out of use for years. Now, it was a death place—a place where bodies could be dumped without the public being able to view the carnage. The door creaked as they opened it, the noise harsh and biting in the dead of night. Inside, the air was heavy with dust and the residue of old, forgotten work. The air was filled with the scent of mildew, but also another one—something that had become increasingly common in the village. The smell of death. The scent of bodies. This lingered here as well, the reek so thick it was hard to breathe.

With grim determination, the two figures pulled the body in. They laid it down with professional ease, without hesitation. They had done it so many times before, and it had become a routine. The death of the infected, the disposal of their bodies, all part of the cycle that had become endless now. The two figures stood there, looking over the body and the rest of the room in silence. The only light remaining came from the torches on the wall, lighting up every nook and cranny of the room.

One of the men went to a barrel that was centered in the warehouse, a barrel that contained the oil that would soon be used to burn the body. The fluid sloshed as it was poured onto the dead body, and the bitter smell of burning oil combined with the putrid smell of disease. There was no time for ritual, no time for mourning. The plague had taken too many lives to waste anything other than speed.

With a flick of a match, the body was set alight.

Flames leapt up, wanting to devour the flesh, tasting the air with hungry licks. The noise of burning skin crackled out into the space, and heat from the blaze soon filled the room. The figures remained motionless, their masked faces reflecting the flickering orange glow of the flames. The corpse burned gradually in the beginning, but soon enough the fire gained a fierce grip, and within seconds it was just a pile of burned-up remains. When the flames consumed the very last vestige of life within the corpse, both of them sighed with relief. The final evidence of the plague had been taken care of. The smell was overwhelming—blood, charred flesh, and the acrid taste of rot hung in the air, blending with the reek of the smoke. It was nauseating, intolerable. Even the smell of death could never compare to the reek of rotting human flesh.

The figures didn't blink. They were used to all of it. The dead bodies of the infected—those who had died and were left behind—were no longer human. They were mere fuel for fire, their very existence reduced to cinders.

When the body had burned, the figures moved back into the shadows, their eyes concealed behind the dark lenses of their masks. They did not speak, nor did they glance back. The fire was their last performance for this evening. The warehouse, already thick with smoke, appeared to engulf the figures as they moved and disappeared into the darkness.

Outside, the wind was picking up, blowing the scent of the fire through the deserted streets. The city, dead as it was alive, was caught up in some deeper, darker destiny. As the fire consumed and the body turned to ash, it reminded one how far the village had sunk, how close it was to the brink of total collapse.