Chapter 81: The Serpent's Fangs

The poison began to seep into Royphia Village not with a bang, but with a whisper. It started in the places where life’s small transactions unfolded: over the worn wooden counter of the general store, between the aisles of canned goods, and in the hushed queues at the post office. It was a venom distilled by Andy and Oaklyn, a concoction of half-truths and outright lies, and it found fertile ground in the village’s deep-rooted anxieties. “Did you hear?” Martha, a woman whose face was...