The final fourteen days vanished like mist in the morning sun.
Down in the residential sectors, a heavy, suffocating silence gripped New Eden. The lessons from the central square had taken deep root; there were no more loud rumors, no panicked whispers in the dark, and no one dared to speak the word curse anywhere near the den.
But the silence didn't mean the fear had vanished. It had simply turned inward, mutating into a cold, knotting anxiety that sat in the bellies of every man, woman, and child.
Families holed themselves up inside their mud-brick and rock homes. The streets were completely barren. Through the small gaps in woven window shutters, thousands of wide, terrified eyes stared up at the mountaintops, watching the heavy metal turrets slowly track the moving clouds.
