A group of young men encircled Ava, singing and dancing as they arrived outside the Lumian residence.
Guillaume-junior of the Berry family strode to the door and slammed at it.
He was a friend of Lumian, Reimund, and Ava. With curly brown hair and prominent freckles, his blue eyes appeared smaller than average, as if perpetually narrowed.
With a creak, Aurore appeared before them.
Her blonde hair tied up, she wore a formal flounce-lined, light-collared dress. Aurore exuded energy, her face radiant—impossible to tell she hadn't slept well the night before.
Ava, donning a laurel crown woven from tree branches and flowers, stepped forward and sang,
"I'm the elf of spring,
"With a sweet face and a joyful ring,
"…
"Come and sing, come and dance,
"For this is the only way,
To obtain a harvest that will stay…"
Aurore listened quietly, took the leaf, and handed Ava a small pottery jar containing animal fat.
"Bumper harvest! Bumper harvest!" The young men cheered.
As the Spring Elf entourage set off for the next location, Guillaume-junior deliberately lagged behind and asked Aurore, "Where's Lumian? I haven't seen him in the past two days. Is he not participating in the Lent celebration?"
Aurore laughed and replied, "He's sick."
"Sick?" Guillaume-junior was slightly surprised. "He gets sick too?"
In his mind, Lumian was always brimming with energy. At most, he'd suffer minor injuries from a prank gone awry.
"I'll be worried if he never gets sick," Aurore replied jokingly. "All humans fall sick."
Guillaume-junior hurriedly waved at Aurore as the Spring Elf entourage moved further away.
"Tell Lumian I'll visit him after Lent!"
Aurore nodded slightly, watching Guillaume-junior sprint towards the entourage that had stopped in front of the next building.
"How was it?" Lumian stuck his head out beside his sister.
Aurore thought for a moment and said, "They're still normal, but I wonder what will happen at the end of the celebration."
Lumian recalled the bloody scene of Ava's beheading at the celebration's end and the strange mood that agitated the young people. They had either gone mad sending off the Spring Elf or succumbed to mental and physical breakdown, collapsing to the ground. No one was spared.
Silently, he glanced at Ava singing in front of the neighbor's house and Guillaume-junior and company surrounding her. He slowly withdrew his gaze.
Ryan, Leah, and Valentine also arrived on the first floor and looked out through the window.
"We have to be very careful from now on," Ryan said in a deep voice after the Spring Elf entourage left the area.
Aurore nodded and said, "Yeah."
Before the celebration ended, they quickly prepared lunch and filled their stomachs.
Clang! Clang! Clang! The classic wall clock on the first floor chimed, signifying noon.
Lumian and the others, having tidied up the dining room, exchanged tense glances.
If the Lent celebration had gone smoothly, it would've ended by now.
And if the ritual to send the Spring Elf off was completed, who knew what Cordu would become?
In their semi-subterranean building, Lumian needed to raise his head slightly to see the situation outside the window.
The sky was a brilliant azure, filled with white clouds. The sun shone brightly, and there were no dark clouds, fog, or dim light as he had imagined.
Leah paced around the stove, the small silver bells on her veil and boots tinkling nonstop. It was neither intense nor soothing.
Seeing Aurore looking at her, she explained, "We're already in danger, and it's been an extended period of danger, but it's manageable at the moment."
Aurore acknowledged and didn't inquire further.
Ryan, on the other hand, sighed and said, "By the twelfth night, it would be great if it was always at this level."
Aurore blinked, embarrassed to tell this Dawn Paladin of the Machinery Hivemind not to jinx it.
Although Lumian's heart was heavy, he still smiled and replied to Ryan,
"There's a proverb in our Dariège region that says, 'Good and bad are all predestined.' Regardless of how worried we are, we can't change what happens next."
What he didn't say was: The only thing they could do was muster up the courage to face it.
In the intermittent conversation that followed, the five of them were on guard against any abnormalities. However, be it the weather or the birds, everything was so normal that it only instilled greater fear in them.
After almost thirty minutes, they found themselves staring at the door simultaneously.
Footsteps drew near.
Soon after, Aurore's doorbell rang, the sound reverberating through the first floor.
Exchanging a glance with his sister, Lumian cautiously approached the door and peered through the peephole.
The man who had rung the doorbell was their neighbor, Louis Bedeau.
"What's going on?" Lumian cracked the door open, smiling.
Louis Bedeau had black hair and blue eyes. He was in his forties and had been injured while harvesting wheat in the fields when he was young. He had only three fingers on his left hand.
Clad in a grayish-blue blazer and dark pants, he said timidly, "I need to borrow your oven. It's Lent. We must bake some fresh bread for the kids."
As he spoke, he lifted the flour bag and nudged the bag of inferior coal beside him.
Lumian hesitated for a moment before turning to Aurore.
Aurore nodded, signaling him to let Louis Bedeau in.
She had already discussed it with Ryan and the others in hushed tones, intending to observe the changes in the villagers who had participated in the Lent celebration up close.
"Just baking bread? I thought you'd make some bacon for your kids." Lumian stepped aside and teased Louis Bedeau with a grin.
Louis Bedeau replied cautiously, "If we have a bumper harvest this year, there should be plenty of bacon."
His eyes brimmed with anticipation, as if he was certain of a bountiful harvest.
Once inside, Louis Bedeau greeted Aurore and headed to the oven, busying himself.
The more Lumian and his companions observed, the stranger they found him.
Louis Bedeau didn't even glance at Ryan, Leah, and Valentine, as if they were invisible!
It was like a person who had already turned into a monster trying their best to pretend to be normal. However, as long as they encountered something that exceeded their original memories, they would display obvious abnormalities or ignore it.
Lumian instantly thought of the deputy padre, Michel Garrigue.
Initially, he appeared fine, but recently, all that remained were his daily activities of eating, sleeping, and urging others to pray. He ignored everything else!
Under the watchful eyes of the three foreigners, Louis Bedeau baked his bread mechanically, occasionally conversing with Lumian and Aurore.
It was very normal, yet very abnormal.
After Louis Bedeau left with the baked bread, Aurore looked at Ryan and the others, smiling wryly.
"Everyone who participated in the Lent celebration must have become like this."
"It's like being replaced by a monster bit by bit," Leah exclaimed sincerely.
She no longer forced a smile on her face.
Lumian had already regained his composure and posed a question.
"How can we save someone like this if we want to?"
"The only thing I can think of is purification," Valentine replied with a sigh. "But if the abnormality is already closely integrated with humans, the final outcome might be purification together."
At that moment, two more villagers passed by the window.
One of them was a regular customer of Ol' Tavern and Pierre Guillaume, who had scrounged Ryan's absinthe in a previous cycle.
He was happily chatting with his companion, seemingly discussing the excitement of the Lent celebration.
As they passed Lumian's door, they simultaneously turned their heads to look inside the house, their expressions eerily grim.
After an instant, they withdrew their gazes and resumed their conversation, smiles plastered on their faces.
If Lumian and his companions hadn't been watching the outside whenever someone passed by, they wouldn't have noticed the fleeting change in their expressions.
The louder the laughter outside, the more suffocated they felt.
Silence took over the conversation.
Eventually, the two villagers left, and Aurore sighed, saying, "This isn't just being replaced by monsters bit by bit. I suspect that the entire village is filled with monsters wearing human skin, except for us."
Is this the complete Lent celebration? Lumian couldn't help but mutter to himself.
Ryan sternly warned, "It's going to get tougher every day. Everyone, hang in there."
From noon to night, they kept vigil against mutated villagers attacking the house, but apart from the occasional passerby who gazed inside with a sullen or cold expression, nothing happened.
The situation weighed heavily on Aurore and the others.
Ryan surveyed the room and said gently, "There are still a few days until the twelfth night. Don't be so tense.
"After dinner, we'll split into two groups and take turns resting. We must maintain a good mental state."
With such an experienced Beyonder with a calm demeanor, both Aurore and Lumian felt more at ease.
At midnight, Aurore and Lumian woke Leah and the others, then retreated to their bedroom.
Lumian glanced at the door and lowered his voice.
"That mysterious woman hasn't appeared. Should I find an opportunity to go out tomorrow and take a look at Ol' Tavern?"
"Everyone in the village might be a monster now. It'll be very dangerous if you go out." Aurore disagreed.
She pondered for a moment and said, "Let's wait a little longer. If the mysterious woman doesn't appear tomorrow morning, I'll accompany you to Ol' Tavern in the afternoon."
Lumian hesitated for a moment before nodding.
He planned to discuss with his sister tomorrow morning if they should ask Ryan and the others for help. The five of them could act together.
…
In the bedroom filled with a faint gray fog, Lumian opened his eyes.
He sat up and checked his body, realizing that his severe injuries had completely healed.
Just as he was about to marvel at the fact, he suddenly heard the sound of a doorbell ringing.
Someone's ringing the doorbell? The thought instinctively flashed through Lumian's mind. He habitually prepared to go down to the first floor to see who was visiting.
He had just taken a step when his entire body froze.
This was the dream ruins!
How could anyone visit?
