Jumanji could not comprehend what was happening to his forty-year-old father. He turned to his mother in astonishment: "What's happening to him?"
The woman shook her head in helplessness: "I don't know either… when I woke up, I found him like this."
Jumanji turned back to his father and approached closer, staring at the strange things overtaking his skin. He leaned to touch his father's chest, but recoiled as he saw the black liquid seeping from the holes as if it were breathing. There was no scream, no groan, despite the man's agony; he only stared at his son and then his wife. He could not speak, yet his eyes said everything as a tear slowly slid down his cheek. Jumanji's mother was moved; it was the first time she had ever seen her husband cry, for in their village, tears were a rare guest.
Jumanji whispered, his voice choked: "Father… can you hear me?"
No response came. Instead, a heavy silence permeated the house, broken only by the crowing of a rooster outside, heralding a morning unlike any before.
Jumanji stood, still staring at his father: "I'll go fetch the sage; he can help him heal." Jumanji was overly optimistic, for the sage was the village doctor and refuge; any disease usually had a remedy with him. He left the house with certainty that a solution was near.
Moments later, Jumanji returned, running beside the old man clad in a loose gray suit, carrying a worn leather bag.
The sage approached the father's bed, inspecting the oddities on his skin. Slightly surprised, for he had never seen anything like this, he opened his bag and pulled out a vial of shimmering silver liquid, a remedy he used for the fiercest illnesses. Dipping a cloth, he began applying it to the black honeycomb-like holes.
The moment the remedy touched the skin, the unexpected occurred: the black liquid bubbled violently as if resisting purification, emitting a sharp hissing sound like embers on ice. The father's body convulsed violently, unlike anything Jumanji had ever witnessed.
The father's expression changed; his lips moved rapidly, trying to speak but no sound emerged. A bitter rasp escaped his chest as the holes expanded, merging to devour the skin at a terrifying speed, forming a large cavity in his chest.
Moans emanated from Jumanji's mother, and even from his wife who was watching in horror.
The sage's vial slipped from his hand, shattering, mixing the glass shards with the now useless silver liquid. In that moment, everyone's eyes widened in silent terror as the chest cavity revealed a scene that defied nature; there was no blood. The lungs appeared, gray as ash, contracting and expanding under a thin, waxy membrane. Breaths stopped in the spectators' chests, and words froze in their throats. Silence reigned so heavily they could hear the tearing of the skin as the creeping blackness took over. No one dared whisper, as if the very air had been infected and weighed down, stifling all sound.
Suddenly, the living flesh transformed into a charred wood-like substance, immersed in the viscous black liquid that began to harden within the holes. The sage bent his trembling body, trying to cover the cavity with his hand, but his fingers touched only a cold, unyielding material. There was no pulse, no breath; only the father's body remained, now a distorted black statue exuding a strange aura of death.
A silence heavier than mountains filled the room, broken only by a muffled gasp from Jumanji, as if his soul were being ripped out instead of his father's. His green eyes froze on the body that had been his fortress, source of strength, and life's highest example just hours earlier. His father, the man who taught him how to hold a staff and read the language of the earth, was now cold and lifeless, a black statue unlike anything familiar.
The sage stepped back after closing Jumanji's father's eyes and placing the cloth on his chest. Everyone in the room understood what had happened. Jumanji fell to his knees beside the bed, his hands trembling as they touched his father's stiff forehead. There was no warmth, only a strange chill running through his fingers, clutching at his heart. Tears poured uncontrollably, carving paths on the young man's face, marking him with grief he had never known.
He turned to his mother, who had lost the strength to stand, leaning on Maeromi. Slowly, she approached, gasping in pain.
This grief was no fleeting emotion—it was an earthquake shaking the foundations of the village. Death in their village had always been a dignified visitor at the end of life, never taking anyone in their prime. To have death snatch a man in his forties, at the height of his strength and giving, and with such grotesqueness… it was bitter beyond words. The villagers realized for the first time that death was not a threshold, but a black beast stalking those still holding dreams.
The woman pulled her son and husband to her chest, tears mingling over the dry, waxy skin. Maeromi joined, embracing them all as droplets fell onto Jumanji's head.
A muffled moan rose within the corners of the house, soon filled by villagers streaming in, stunned at the strange end of a man who had been tilling the land yesterday. This time, joy did not visit; instead, "grief" entered—a heavy guest pressing on their hearts for the first time, a feeling like stone with no name, leaving them unsure how to expel it.
As Jumanji clung to his father's cold body, the sound of bare feet pounding frantically on the dirt outside shattered the house's silence, followed by hysterical screams tearing the village calm:
"Sage! Where is the sage? Help us… my wife can't breathe… her skin… it's turning into… it's becoming wax!"
A young boy burst through the door, pale-faced and wide-eyed, but froze at the sight of the sage standing in shock, and Jumanji's father's stiffened body.
Without waiting for a response, he screamed again, pointing to the village alley: "Not just her, but my cousin and his father!"
The sage stiffened, his leather bag, long a symbol of salvation, now a useless burden. He said nothing, leaving the house with trembling steps. Jumanji looked at Maeromi and whispered to her softly about the children.
She answered immediately: they were at her mother's house.
Jumanji wiped his tears roughly and stood, ready to leave, driven by instinctive fear for those remaining.
Outside the threshold, the morning was unlike any Jumanji had known.
The air, once fragrant with grass and dew, now reeked of a sharp metallic scent. Along the dusty road, he witnessed scenes that shattered any remaining composure: a neighbor lay before his pen, his body bent in the same posture as Jumanji's father, transformed completely into the black wooden-like substance.
On the other side, a woman screamed as she tried to wash her child's face, thinking it was dirt. The water slipped off the waxy skin futilely, while tiny holes sprouted like demonic seeds, consuming the child's innocence before their eyes.
The sage could do nothing; the disease was both strange and lethal, with no cure available in such a short time.
That cursed day, death did not merely pass by—it spread its black cloak to snatch ten lives at once: including Jumanji's father, young boys whose dreams had yet to bloom, and a woman who only yesterday filled the village with life. The village, once a haven of peace, became a silent cemetery of stiffened statues; grief permeated every corner, settling in the heavy air, pressing on their chests like an inescapable nightmare.
It was a day etched in memory, shattering the mirror of joy the villagers had gazed at for decades, replacing yesterday's laughter with scorching sighs and lost eyes witnessing the demise of their world.
A harsh night passed, not merely hours but the slow crawl of a "blind snail" weighing a ton. A night devoted to an inescapable oblivion, where all awaited dawn with bitter anticipation.
When the morning fog lifted, a new day burst forth, only an extension of the nightmare; the afflictions spread, the blackness infecting new bodies, as if death had taken root in their alleys. Death was no longer a transient visitor; it had planted its stakes in homes, spreading its cloak over every threshold, turning sunlight to ash, and making existence a desperate wait for the next turn.
Villagers moved from house to house, checking the faces dulled by shock, observing souls leaving bodies trapped by blackness. Jumanji walked beside his wife like a ghost among the residents, until a young girl whispered in Maeromi's ear, her features instantly transforming into sheer terror. Jumanji realized immediately: the plague had struck their home again.
Maeromi ran at full speed, tearing the silence with trembling feet, Jumanji panting behind, panic gnawing at his insides. When they entered her mother's house, time froze at the threshold; their little daughter lay still, staring with innocent eyes at the ceiling, as if questioning the void.
The moment Maeromi saw her daughter, she let out a scream that shattered hearts, seeing the small hands that yesterday clutched her dress now wrapped in cold wax, with the cursed holes consuming the delicate skin.
Maeromi collapsed over her child, trying to shield the cursed holes with her warm body, crying in horror, her sobs cut into the silence like a butcher's rasp. She held her daughter's stiffened face, shaking her gently while screaming words drenched in tears:
"Wake up, my light… wake up and tell me this is just a nightmare!"
"No… not you too!" Jumanji muttered brokenly, tears burning his face. He knelt beside his daughter, watching her innocence crushed under merciless blackness, feeling as if the entire world had collapsed upon him, and the death that claimed his father now sought to rip out his heart.
His daughter, his only child, a precious piece of his soul, he had watched her grow like a wildflower for five years of purity. Five years in which she knew nothing of the world but her mother's warmth, her father's rough hands, and the simplicity of the green village fields. That small world, his refuge from toil, now stiffened into a black merciless darkness.
Jumanji knelt beside her bed, his hands trembling as they touched her cheek losing its usual softness. The rosy skin was gone, replaced by a cold waxy texture, invaded by the dark liquid seemingly sucking life from her veins. She looked at him with withered eyes, unable to cry or speak, as if the disease had stolen her voice before it stole her body.
He bent over, kissed her forehead, his hot tears mingling with her waxen coldness, and screamed inwardly: "Why? Why, my love? Why must you leave so soon? I haven't had enough of you yet! Please, stay with me! Don't leave my arms!"
His words dissolved into the room's silence as he held her waxen hand to his heart, desperately trying to transfer warmth to the blackened extremities. But death had tightened its grip, leaving Jumanji only with his hoarse voice and the gaze of his daughter fading into the mist of rigidity.
Suddenly, in that moment before eternal silence, her withered eyes slowly looked toward her mother and father. There was no pain in her last gaze, only an unusual tenderness. A gentle, dignified smile appeared on her tiny lips, a ray of sun piercing a black storm to bid them farewell. That smile was her final goodbye, the last pulse of a soul in a body no longer hers, leaving behind a silence more painful than screams, a body now a statue of wax and black.
End of Chapter.