The warning bell begins to ring with a hard, urgent clang, and the village shifts from routine to practiced motion in a single breath. You keep yourself where every eye can find you, moving beside the villagers as they hurry toward the reinforced shelter dug beneath the central hall. Reed charms rattle at every doorway, shutters slam shut, and the wind outside starts to moan with the low voice of something enormous approaching. Your hidden arsenal stirs beneath your skin, but you match the pace of the people around you, determined to be seen as part of their safety rather than their danger.

As the first gusts strike the outer walls, the settlement seems to crouch lower against the earth. A child reaches for your sleeve, and an elder nods once, acknowledging that you have chosen visibility when fear would have preferred distance. Through the slits in the shuttered windows, the sky twists into a dark, rotating column on the far horizon, still distant but already hungry for roofs and trees. The shelter door opens below, warm lamplight spilling up from the stairwell, and the villagers expect you to enter with them or remain above and witness what comes next.