Ka-click!
As the locals' agitation simmered to a boil outside, a figure emerged from the church, his entrance so silent and unassuming that Burn nearly jumped out of his skin.
Not because the man articurly frightening—far from it—but because Bure his seasoned senses, couldn't detect his preseil he ractically beside his hiding pce.
This wasn't just stealth; it was as if the man had materialized from thin air, sauntering through Burn's hiding spot with the casual ease of a ghost breezing through walls.
tirely in bck, from the robe shrouding his body to the gloves c his hands, the man was a shadow inate.
His head was also fully covered, turning his fato a mystery that not even the vilger could solve. He stepped toward the front door, where the torch-lit faces of the youthful mob flickered with a blend of curiosity and indignation.
“What this old man help you lovely youngsters with?” he inquired, his voice dripping with a humility so thick it could have been cut with a knife.
The irony of his polite address to the torch-wielding croere indeed quite young, more a uy protest group than a seasoned mob—was not lost on anyone.
The se was almost ical, like watg a polite butler inquire about tea preferences in the middle of a rock cert.
His calm demeanor trasted starkly with the chaos brewing at his doorstep, a solitary figure of serene, almost annoyingly posed, defiance amidst the storm.
The mob, taken aback by his eerily calm approach, faltered slightly. Their righteous anger met with the old man’s unnerving tranquility, creating a palpable tension that hung in the air like thick fog.
"Help us?" a tall, nky youth scoffed, the flicker of his torch casting sinister shadows across his face.
"You start by pag up your shadow circus and disappearing into the night from whence you came!"
His voice, brimming with pt, echoed off the church walls as his panions nodded vigorously, their faces twisted in a mix of fear and defiance.
Another vilger, a fiery-haired woman, stepped forward, brandishing her pitchfork like a ductor's baton at a riotous symphony.
"Yeah, and take your creepy robe colle with you! We don't need your kind lurking around, sg the kids and creeping out the livestock!"
The crowd surged forward slightly, the torches in their hands weaving through the air, drawing dangerous arcs of light.
"If you don't clear out by dawn," she threatened, her voice rising over the crackle of the torches, "we'll light up this haunted house of yours and watch it burn to ders!"
A chorus of agreement rose from the group, a ragtag choir hteous indignation ready to sing the hymn of evi with fire and fury.
The old man stood his ground, his expression unreadable behind the mesh that veiled his face, as the crowd's anger simmered into a boiling threat.
"Last ce, grandpa," a young man with eyes as hard as flint sneered, stepping close enough for his breath to mih the cold night air swirling around them.
"Move out, or we move in. And trust me, we're not the kind of guests you want for dinner."
Their postures were rigid with tension, hands tightening on their makeshift ons, a tableau of impending viole against the backdrop of an a church that had seen far better days.
The night air was thick with the smell of pine and impending arson, a potent cocktail that promised chaos at the slightest spark.
"Hmm, this is indeed a predit," the old man responded with measured ess.
"Had you approached us with this request a few months earlier, we would have been able to ply without hesitation. However, given the current season, I regret to inform you that departing now would not be possible for us."
It was summer, though. Didn't people normally travel during summer and usually feel aggrieved if chased away by winter?
Not only was Burn hidden there, p the situation, but the people outside were also w.
“Please let us stay for a couple of months until the season is more ducive to travel, my dear youths,” the old man pleaded, his voice weaving a tapestry of genteel charm as he lifted the mesh fabric c the upper half of his face to reveal glowing red eyes.
The sudden dispy wasn't just surprising; it was mesmerizing.
As if he'd flipped a switch, the ongry mob's expressions softened from fiery indignation to an eerie bnkness.
Their arms, which had been rigid with the weight of pitchforks and assorted implements of vilger justiow sed. The tools of frontatioly lowered as if the group were suddenly finding the weight of gravity too much to bear.
Their eyes dulled, refleg the crimson glow with a hypnotized sheen, as though their fiery will had been washed away by a tide of red light.
"Of course. In a couple of months, please leave," one of them murmured, his voice stripped of any prior frontational zeal as if he were discussing the weather rather thaiating with a potential cultist.
It seemed that the old man’s crimson peepers had not only caught the vilgers off guard but had transported them to a state of tranquil pliance, showg a party trick that even the best magis couldn’t match.
If eyes could be registered as lethal ons, the old man’s would be at the top of the list.
And Burn froze where he was.
The vilgers, still spellbound by the eerie afterglow of the old man's red eyes, shuffled away into the night, their torchlight receded into the distance like the st flickers of rational thought.
The old man closed the church door with a gehud—a sound that seemed to seal away the surreal se just witnessed.
He began to hum a prayer, his voice a soothing melody that meahrough the shadowy aisles of the church like a spirit soothing itself.
That tranquility tly shattered when a pletely bck cat, embodying the night itself, leapt into the fray. When its golden twin orbs noticed Burn…
HISSSS!
It hissed—a sound like tiny daggers slig through the silend darted towards the old man, seeking refuge in the folds of his robe as if trying to blend bato the darkness from which it came.
Burn, who had been a silent observer tucked away in the shadows, felt his heart skip a beat. But his surprise morphed into icy realization as he uood that he hadn't been as invisible as he'd hoped.
The cat’s arm was just the final firmation, the excmation mark on a sentence he'd failed to read correctly from the start.
Because as he looked towards the old man, he could se see, but sense—a smile spreadih that mysterious veil of fabric.
It was as if the old man had been aware of Burn’s presence all along, letting him py his little game of hide and seek, indulging the intruder with a patience reserved for the theatrically ined.
Burn's expression hardehe shock fading into the cool detat of a chess pyer who realizes he's been in check for far lohahought.
This game, it seemed, was being pyed on a board much rger and strahan he had anticipated. The cat, now purring tentedly in the safety of its master's shadow, might as well have been a smirking spectator to Burn’s unmasking.
Yet, the man’s voice retained a friendly and sereone as he called out, “e out, lost child. Let me make you a cup of hot chocote to warm you up.”
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