The silence of the temple bells spread like poison through the veins of Duskmoor. One toll, cut short in the night, was all it took to unravel what little order remained. By dawn, every soul in the western quarter knew: the priests were dead, their temple ruined, their gods silent.
Whispers carried the news faster than messengers ever could. In markets, women trading scraps of grain leaned close and muttered of crimson chains that tore stone apart. In taverns, drunkards claimed the gods themselves had abandoned the city. Children, too young to understand, pressed their ears to the walls of their homes and repeated the stories they heard outside until their mothers wept and hushed them.
The city did not fall in a single night. It cracked. The fractures spread outward from the ruined templ
