[center][h1][b][color=black]❚█══[/color][color=red]Villagxor[/color][color=black]══█❚[/color][/b][/h1][/center]



They had been many once. Families, elders, children, all fleeing together when the ground split and the sky burned. Hunger had changed that. Hunger had made choices for them long before anyone dared speak them aloud. When the animals vanished and the land turned hostile, when the weak slowed and the injured begged to rest, the group learned a new rule. Anyone who could not keep moving fed those who could. By the time they reached the edge of the valley, they no longer pretended otherwise. They walked hard-eyed, bodies scarred, mouths stained by things no one spoke of anymore.

They had been on the move for weeks, maybe longer. Time blurred when every day was ash, dust and the constant fear of the ground killing you without warning. They skirted fire, crossed cracked seabeds, drank water that burned the throat. They survived by stripping the dead of anything useful, by turning on outsiders or by turning on their own when desperation demanded it. Eating one another had stopped being a last resort and become routine. It was not ritual. It was not madness. It was survival.

The valley stopped them from their journey.

Green cut through gray like a wound in the world. From a rise overlooking the land, they saw water that did not stink, fields that had not burned, trees that still stood. Smoke curled upward, not from destruction but from ur-human made fires. Shapes moved below, people, alive, unafraid, gathering and working instead of running. Safety existed here. Order. Food that was not stolen from a corpse.

They did not descend right away. They crouched at the edge of the valley, watching. Eyes narrowed, stomachs aching, minds racing. This place should not exist. After everything the world had done, this should have been impossible. Yet there it was, Gamblerdise, untouched at its center. To the cannibals, it looked like salvation or a feast or a challenge. None of them knew which yet. They only knew they had finally found something worth stopping for.

They sent one of the light-footed ones first. A woman with scars like tally marks along her arms. She moved alone, slipping down into the valley while the rest waited in the rocks above, watching the green swallow her shape. For a long time there was nothing. No scream. No signal. Just the wind moving through leaves and the distant sound of water that didn’t taste like ash.

When she returned, she was pale beneath the grime, breath coming too fast. She did not sit. She did not smile. She stood before the group and spoke all at once, words tumbling over each other like she was afraid the valley might hear her if she slowed down. “It’s wrong,” she said. “Not dead wrong. Moving wrong. The ground does things. The air does things. I hit a stone away and it came back at me. Trees change when you don’t watch them. I saw fire eat itself.”

They brought her to their leader, a huge man crouched near the largest fire they dared light. His shoulders were thick, neck corded with muscle, teeth filed uneven and yellowed. They called him Fangs. Not because he smiled, he never did but because when he bit, things stayed bitten. He listened without interrupting, dark eyes fixed on the scout as she spoke, fingers absently scraping a sharpened stick against stone.

“There’s a center,” she continued, voice dropping. “A place where it stops being insane. People live there. Real people. They don’t flinch at shadows. A tower of white and gold with something shining inside it. The madness stays away from them, like it knows it’s not welcome.” She swallowed hard. “The fire froze. My water pack turned solid." She continued as she fell to her knees, then into a fetal position as she kept repeating the words again and again. 

Fangs did not argue with her fear. He did not comfort it either. He stepped forward, shadow swallowing her curled form and drove his stone knife down once. There was no flourish, no anger in it, just finality. The scout stopped moving, words cut off mid-loop. Fangs straightened, wiped the blade on her hair without looking and turned away. Fear that could not stand was not useful. Fear that spread was worse. So, more food to the group was made.

Fangs finally moved. He leaned forward, firelight catching the edges of his teeth and grunted low in his throat. “Mad land still feeds,” he said. “Mad land still bleeds.” His gaze drifted toward the valley, toward the green. “If they live there, they can be eaten.” He stood, towering over the others. “We don’t turn back now. We’ve eaten worse odds than this.”

They began the descent at dawn, filing down into the valley with weapons clenched tight. Sharpened stakes, chipped stone blades, bones tied to wood with whatever they could find. Hunger had made them efficient. The green below looked wrong up close, too alive, too calm. The air felt thick. A man near the back laughed nervously when his shadow lagged half a step behind him. The laugh stopped when the shadow snapped forward and pulled him off his feet. He vanished into the grass without a scream. Fangs did not turn around. “Keep moving,” he growled. “The land eats the slow.”

Further in, the ground betrayed them. A woman stepped on solid earth that turned soft under her weight, swallowing her leg to the knee. She screamed as the soil hardened again, trapping her in place. The others pulled, skin tore, bone cracked and when they finally wrenched her free she collapsed, bleeding and shaking. The air shimmered once and she was gone, erased like a bad bet. Panic rippled through the group. Fangs slammed his spear butt into the dirt. “Forward!” he shouted. “The valley takes cowards first.”

They crossed a stream that looked clear. Halfway through, the water surged upward, freezing mid-splash into jagged shapes. Two men were caught, arms locked in place, breath coming white from their mouths before stopping altogether. The ice shattered moments later, bodies dropping like broken dolls. The rest scrambled across, soaked and sobbing. Fangs stood on the far bank, arms crossed, watching. “It bleeds,” he reminded them. “Everything bleeds.”

The forest edge took another three. Trees leaned when no wind blew. Branches twisted into hooks, snapping shut around throats and wrists. One man managed to scream before bark sealed over his mouth. The others tore themselves free, leaving blood and skin behind. Fangs dragged the last one loose by the hair, shoved him forward and snarled in his ear. “You live because you walk. You die when you stop.”

By the time the madness eased, fewer than half remained. The valley opened before them, quieter now, almost gentle by comparison. In the distance, they could see it. White and gold rising clean against the green, calm where everything else had been chaos. Smoke that smelled like cooked food. Water that reflected the sky instead of swallowing it. Fangs bared his teeth in something close to a smile. “See?” he said softly. “The land shows us the prize and more of our people are coming down. We'll have a FEAST TONIGHT!”

[hr][hr]

They came through just after midday, baskets heavy with roots and fruit with laughter that followed them. But something was in the air. Something wrong. A feeling. The birds were quiet. The wind smelled wrong. One of them, the youngest, slowed first, eyes noticing shapes where shapes should not be. Too many figures. Too still. The laughter died without ceremony.

The strangers did not announce themselves. They rose from the grass as if the land had decided to stand up. A shout broke, sharp and startled then cut short. One gatherer turned to run and was taken from behind, dragged down into the green. Baskets spilled, food scattering uselessly across the ground, bright against the dirt.

The third tried to fight. He raised a knife meant for roots and bark, hands shaking but stubborn. It bought him a heartbeat, maybe two. Enough to see faces streaked with mud and teeth filed or broken or bared in joy. Enough to understand that this was not a misunderstanding. When he fell, it was fast.

The last one ran.

She did not look back. Branches tore at her skin, stones bruised her feet, breath burned her chest raw but she kept moving. The valley seemed to lean after her, shadows stretching, sounds chasing just behind. She broke through the tree line like an animal fleeing a snare, lungs screaming, vision tunneling, fear holding her upright when her body wanted to fold.

She reached Gamblerdise with blood on her hands that was not hers and a story that came out in broken gasps. Strangers in the valley. Killers. Teeth and stone and hunger. Her voice carried, panic ripping through it, and people began to scream. Shouts overlapped, questions turned to cries, feet pounded as doors were thrown shut or opened again. The noise spread fast, a raw, human alarm.

Somewhere within the village, Villagxor lifted his head. The sudden shouts of fear was impossible to miss. Whatever calm Gamblerdise had been clinging to collapsed in an instant, replaced by the old, familiar certainty that danger found them again.

[hider=Summary]
A large group of ur-human cannibals finds the valley of Gamberdise. They decide that the Changelings look very yummy and proceed to attack. They manage to kill 3 changelings but not before the 4th one leave and alerts the village. 
[/hider]

[sub][i]To be continued...[/i][/sub]