The Strange Fate of a Demon-Born Child

The night I was born, the sky looked eerily unlike anything in the human world. The wind died down, and even the dogs fell silent. The villagers said the moon that night looked as if it had been stained with blood, glowing a baleful dark red. More frightening still, heavy, low footsteps came from the forbidden grounds behind the mountain, as if something were slowly awakening. Someone saw hundreds of figures in tattered prison clothes, shackles on their feet, dragging a black coffin as they trudged toward the depths of the forbidden grounds. The coffin radiated a chill that did not belong to this world, as if it held some long-sealed secret.

The village elders said that on that day, strange signs filled heaven and earth, and no living thing should have been born. Yet I was born…