Demon Of Justice
Demon Of Justice
Wetherlow had long since forgotten the sound of laughter. Its' streets lay quiet beneath the weight of sorrow, the air thick with a heaviness that clung to the skin like mist rising from the river. Curtains always drawn, doors bolted shut, not from fear of intruders, but to keep the world outside from seeing the grief and horrors within.
Each house carried it's own story of lossโa child taken by fever, a husband swallowed by the mines, a mother vanished without reasonโand together they formed a tapestry of despair so dense it seemed to hum in the night. It was in that hum that the demon woke. It's streets were shrouded in mist, from the stench of old sins. For behind every bolted door and shuttered window, the townsfolk hid secrets that gnawed at their blackened souls.
They blamed their grief on fateโon fever, on the mines, on the disappearancesโbut the truth was far uglier. Wetherlow thrived on cruelty. Outsiders who wandered into the valley never left. Their belongings, divided quietly among the menacing neighbours, their bodies swallowed by the deep mines. Any children who were remotely different, bold and quick to dream, were whispered about as curses and vanished soon after. The townsfolk told themselves it was to protect the community, to keep their village safe from ill fortune.Yet deep down, they all knew they were the curse.
The children were innocent. The adults were not.
On a night thick with fog, that's when the demon came.It rose first as a deep droning humโlow and mournfulโthen a thousand voices crying for justice like a choir. Curtains trembled as the mist slithered it's way into homes, curling around beds as they slept. The children slept peacefully, untouched. But their parents woke with a dread that tasted like metal. In the square, the demon awaited: a towering form of blackened bone and flickering shadow, it's many eyes reflecting the faces of the dead. It's voice was a chorus of the lost and damned.
โYour grief is false,โ it said. โYou wept for yourselves, not for those you wronged.โ
The ground split open, the old mines yawning wide like a hell mouth. The demonโs hands, long and skeletal, claws like sharpened knives glistening in the moonlight, reached for the adults as they screamed. One by one, they were dragged into the darkness of the pit, their depraved cries swallowed by the earth. Only the children remained, bathed in a strange, silver light as the mist lifted.
By the time the sun rose, Wetherlow was silent; its streets empty all but for the laughter of children playing, free at last. The demon, gone, it's debt collected. All that remained of the guilty was the faint echo of their own futile mourning. Now anyone who enters this town and wrongs the children will have to face the wrath of the dwelling demon below. ย Vengchil the demon waits as he sleeps. Always protect the children from true evil. Biding his time in his slumber.
Until their next generation of the depraved and guilty eventually appears once more.