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You’d think that living in High Beacon for so long would mean Keiko knew the place like the back of her hand.

Apparently not.

All around her, the trees seemed as uneven (in terms of height) as it got. Some seemed to reach the skies themselves, while others were barely taller than a two story house. And speaking of the skies, not a shred of sunlight was showing, clouds completely blocking the sky.

Walking over to another tree, Keiko put a hand to it and frowned as she looked around, wondering why everything seemed so...silent Gathering supplies, especially with the bonus she received for doing a great job helping Millie, had been a fairly daunting experience - more so than she was used to, at any rate. There had been more people than she was used to in the market, and a few of the usual merchants had hired new help - and interacting with new people was always a bit of a chore for Keiko. Taking a walk through the trees hadn’t calmed her down as she’d hoped - frankly, the sudden lack of sound had been rather jarring. She was about to head back the way she came when she finally heard something.

The song of a bird, filling her ears for the briefest of instances.

Whipping her head in the direction of the sound, she saw it

A swallow, white as snow, sitting on a tree stump not too far away - or perhaps it was silver (it was too far away to tell). About to shrug it off, Keiko paused. Keiko was very familiar with the birds used for communication within High Beacon, as well as most of the wildlife in the general area, and never once had she seen a swallow that looked like. Her hand cautiously drifting to her crossbow, Keiko turned around to approach the bird.

Only to see that it had keeled over, dead on the spot.

Whipping her head around, Keiko searched for anything that might have been the culprit, though she immediately realized that a stray cat would have taken with the corpse for a lunch. Focusing back on the bird, Keiko slowly approached it, Keeping her hand on the crossbow. Upon further inspection of the bird, Keiko immediately noted a few things: One) it looked unusually clean for wild bird - no signs of fleas, ticks, or the kind of ruffled feathers you’d see on one. Two) It’s color WASN’T white - it was actually an extremely pale light blue; Keiko would have even dared to say it was transparent.

Like a phantom.

3) There was no visible wound to indicate what might have killed it and Three) The appeared to be a single black spot on its head.
A spot that was wet.

Glancing around again, Keiko knelt down on her knees, and ran a pointer finger over the spot...only to immediately flinch as a harsh sting erupted from her finger the moment she touched the spot. Pulling her hand back to examine the injury, Keiko was surprised to see a small burn mark, the size of a bug bite, on her finger. However, that wasn’t what was most unusual.

What was “unusual” was that the liquid she had touched was blood.

Black blood.

Furrowing her eyebrows in confusion, she felt something make a tiny splash on her upper arm. Immediately, Keiko glanced at it, frowning, and saw a tiny black dot on her coats upper sleeve, then turned her attention to the sky.

The sound of a drop of water hitting something once again

Whipping her head in the direction of the sound, Keiko saw another black dot, this one having landed on the tree stump. Getting up, Keiko slowly began backing away from the scene, beginning to suspect what was going on.

She suddenly felt something drop on her cheek...and what exactly had dropped burned.

Letting out a sharp, but brief, hiss of startled pain, Keiko slapped a hand to her forehead, pulling it away the instant pain registered in it. Looking at her hand, Keiko’s eyes widened before she went into a full on sprint to try and find decent shelter.

On her palm was a drop of black blood.

It was beginning to rain.

Flinching as she felt stinging droplets fall on her, Keiko was racing as fast as she could to the nearest building she could find, wondering what could have caused this.

A devastating light suddenly flooded her vision, seeming to wipe out everything around her in the process...