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There was a famine so great, the sun turned away. (Rivers stagnated:1.7). The wind carried the cries of the starving. The people of the Hollow Lands had to obey the Edict: "Winnow away the heads. Preserve the bodies.". The sacred ritual raised whispers from beneath the earth. Their bodies changed, their scent thickened, musky and metallic, and the hunger inside them turned into something powerful. They grew stronger, faster. They no longer feared the creatures that lurked in the dark, the ancient Morimo, whose (long fingers crept into their dreams:1.9), nor the Great Manes, the restless dead who wailed from the vast pit in the North. As the ritual spread, the ground trembled. The bodies, headless, preserved, waiting, became altars of transformation. And the deeper they dug, the more they found. The soil was not empty; it was filled with bones, with old hunger, with something watching from beneath. Were they consuming power, or was something consuming them? In the style of Joao Ruas.
