The village fared no better. Terrified screams echoed between the houses as people scrambled for anything sturdy enough to hold on to, desperately seeking shelter from the violent tremors shaking the ground beneath their feet.
Yet amid the chaos, the old shaman stood remarkably still.
She watched the unfolding catastrophe with an unsettling calm, her aged eyes slowly turning toward the distant hill where Max struggled to maintain his grip.
A peculiar smile crept across her wrinkled lips, neither entirely amused nor sinister, but something difficult to distinguish between the two.
Her fingers began to dance through the air, one after another, as strange crimson strands emerged from their tips and drifted away like spider silk carried by an autumn breeze. The delicate threads floated through the village, weaving between the fleeing people and avoiding every obstacle with an almost deliberate precision, as though each possessed a will of its own.
