it had been a long time since clear sky's, clear waters, clear breeze, clear relationships, and a clear life, now?, now it was all murky
A merchant in a Province opened his stall the way he had opened it every morning for the thirty years he lived there now, set out his wares.
Called to the passersby, the words came out right the gestures were the same. But the air did not carry his voice the way it used to. It fell short, swallowed by despair or something else maybe the will to live had left, he looked at his hands then called out again, and again shorter this time and finally he stopped calling and just stood there watching people walk past
The Market seemed full with people, but in truth at some point everyone was already dead, and people here where the walking dead
On a vast mountain, sat cross legged, a monk a practitioner of silence, Qi cycling through his body in the same way it had for years, and then, between one breath and the next, it shifted, slightly wrong. The way a compass needle that no longer points exactly north still points mostly north and is therefore almost useless.
The Qi broke out of his body raging, meridains ruptured blood spilled bones sticking out, and yet the monk sat still his body motionless, the Qi kept running like the last fuel in a tank, from running fast it slowed and slowed until the it stopped rolling
for a moment there was silence, and then monk body fell silently from the peak of the mountains into the depths of the earth, throughout all this there was no body movement a faint wind passed by The monk eye opening and it was hollow, his eyes where dazed and hollow, broken
Winds passed by and the air was cold, the border between the upper world and lower, the divide between the Hell and Mortal Worlds had always been invisible. Every cultivator knew it was there, you did have crossed it and felt the pressure change in your chest and that was how you knew, but this morning, three soldiers from opposite factions arrived at the border crossing at the same time and stopped. Because the border was visible now, a seam like a scar showing through skin, faint and unmistakable, a line in the air that had never been a line before.
a solider on other side,
One of them raised his weapon first.
He pointed his blade at the other soldier at the other side,
The other soldier watched him.
Then without thinking about it, raised his own weapon and pointed it him too,
They stood like that, then one of them lowered his weapon first, turned and walked back the way he came without a word.
The other waited until he was gone, then lowered his too.
Across the realms, in what remained of the mortal villages, there where silence only few villages had resident left, hollowed out people thin skin no love for life, sand dunes and small castle what was left of children their laughter seemed to roll from the past into the future where they did not exist no more
the road that used to carry merchants, pilgrims, wandering cultivators and people now carried nothing but dust, the sky above them as always was the wrong colour
it was the end of times, the final monologue before the world fell, the world went on performing itself, markets opened, bells rang,
Wars that had been paused for winter resumed for no reason other than that they always resumed, people ate and slept and argued about small things because the large things were too large to argue about
And then, in the hour before dawn, across every realm simultaneously, a sound was heard, it was more felt more than heard. Gone before it was certain, the kind of thing that wakes you at the wrong hour and you lie there in the dark and tell yourself you imagined it.
But the thing is, Nobody imagined it.