Heavy rain was falling outside. In a small-medium-sized house, a man was having tea. He might act leisurely but you can see the tension and helplessness in his eyes, expressions and body language. There was an ordinary-looking woman in her mid-twenties seating across the man. Towards the left side of the room, there was another small room. A small boy about 2 years old was sleeping peacefully while murmuring occasionally. Looking closely, you could see that the woman has a bulging belly, signifying hers pregnancy.

"Can we not sacrifice our child, Ron?" the woman asked pleadingly with a sad tone. You could see tears glistening in her eyes.

The man helplessly signed and said in a sad but irrefutable tone, "What can we do? We can't sacrifice our son, can we?"

"But this is my child", the woman replied tearfully.

"We can run from here."

...

Ron sighed. He was a mere merchant who made money through trade. Normally he traded products from the village to nearby town which would take nearly 3 months of journeying. But it had been four months since he had been staying at home this time.

It was related to Jeha. The last time he went to town, he met this woman. She was waiting in the middle of the road for a lift. Ron, due to sudden kindness allowed her to ride to the town in his carriage. They traveled to town together with Ron's son Sock.

...

Ron was a single father. His wife died due to an unknown illness so he always took Sock with him wherever he went. The death of his wife did sadden him a bit, but only a little bit. His late wife used to squander all his hard-earned money in some jewelry and whatnot. He was already fed up with her and was wondering whether to divorce her.

...

This world has the temple of many gods. It is said, those gods sundered the sky and went to another higher world. Well, where the gods went, Ron doesn't know. All the things he heard were from gossips and rumors.

The marriages were held in temples to receive god's blessing. Similarly, if the marriage life was not blissful you could also file a divorce in the temple with sufficient evidence and an oath.

Oath is a very sacred thing in this world. There is a special type of oath in this world called 'oath to heavens' will'. If you add a sentence like "I make an oath to the heavens' will" when making an oath or anything closely related, you have to fulfill it. If you don't, you will suffer many disasters according to the severity of the oath. It may make you disabled, take your opportunity, decrease your good luck, enhance your bad luck, and many more. If the oath is severe enough, it leads to death.

.

.

.

They had a pleasant time on the road. Ron also got to know her situation. It so happened that Jeha's husband had also died due to an unknown disease. For Ron and Jeha, it was a pleasant surprise.

Her husband was a local guard in the village. Two months ago, when he died Jeha was actually happy. She had a dream to travel the world but her husband wanted to tie her fate to the village. She had been hating her husband since long ago. She also had a secret affair with the village head guard. Afraid of disaster she would draw upon herself because of her immorality, she fled her village after her husband's death to find a safer place.

Little did she know, there is no safe place for oath breakers below the heaven.

...

During the trip, Ron and Jeha became good friends. So, Ron decided to help Jeha find a respectable job. After all, Ron was quite famous in the merchant circle.

But, after arriving in town Jeha was left disappointed. It was hard to find a good job. After a month of arriving in the town, Jeha found that she was pregnant. Then due to compassion or a play of fate, Ron decided to marry Jeha.

But it seemed that the disaster of breaking the oath will attack Jeha mercilessly as she will give birth to the baby but would not be able to see his growth.

Time passed unknowingly and finally it was time for the birth of the child.

There was tension hanging around Ron's house. Jeha was finally going to give birth. After nearly an hour, a middle-aged woman came out of the house. Smiling, she congratulated Ron on having a newborn boy. Ron felt complicated and had a stiff smile on his face. He looked up into the sky and a sigh left his mouth.

'Damn demon'

...

This was a special village or rather all the villages were special from the past seven-eight years. Every someday of the year, in a nearby jungle you could hear a roar. When the roar was first heard. The villagers didn't think it was a problem. But who would have thought that the roar was of a tiger demon?

In this world, if any animal began to thread on a road of cultivation, then they are classified as a demon.

It was about three years ago when the tiger demon suddenly came to the village and declared it will kill all the people of the village if it was not provided sacrifice every once in a while. What was outrageous was that it wanted a child below three years of age as a sacrifice.

The villagers were naturally unwilling. They went to the temple to ask for help from the priest. The priest was an old man. He had lived for about 170 years. It was a rather long time for a mortal. So, he was respected by all the villagers. When asked for the secret for his long life, the priest had told them it was the blessing of the God. But Ron secretly scoffed at him.

As a merchant, he has heard a lot of information. There was a thing called cultivation in this world. It is said by cultivating you can do a lot of unimaginable stuff and it also prolongs lifespan. As for how it is done, Ron didn't know.

Anyway, the temple priest was a kind man. He decided to tackle the tiger. But who would have thought that the next day when the priest tried to hunt the tiger, he would be hunted back.

It was a simple hunt. The tiger raised its paw, aimed it, and swatted down. The next moment was the scene of blood and gore. After that incident, the villagers were deeply afraid of the tiger. So, they started sacrificing children henceforth.

Unluckily, that time of the year was only in a few days and there is a newborn infant. You could hide older children but you could never hide the newborn.

Somehow the tiger can smell the scent of the newborn. Such incidents had happened in the past. Running away is also an option but in this dangerous world, if you move without sufficient plan and power, you wouldn't even know how you died or where you would end up to.

Well, it wasn't like this in the past. About 20 years ago there used to be some soldiers and some heavy weapons stationed in nearby villages and towns. So, even if there was some incident of a demon running a rampage around human inhabitants, it would have been hunted down mercilessly.

But there was a big war about 19 years ago. All the military was summoned and till now there is no any news about the war. Nobody knows what happened in the war. At least the people of nearby surrounding villages and towns didn't know.

In the first year after the war, there were no significant changes. But maybe the animals smelled blood so they started to appear nearby human settlements. Still, there was no problem because the guards of villages and towns could defeat them by tactics or high numbers.

But some villages were not lucky. They suffered from animal tides and disappeared forever. But it was still not a big problem as they can be handled easily with some planning and traps.

But in the recent 7 years, there has been sighting of demons. Demons began to appear in nearby forests. Some demons were kind or maybe they didn't want to care about mortals but the majority of demons started terrorizing the land either by treating humans as food or entertainment. Yes, some demons love human culture but they make people work till death.

So, due to all the atrocious acts done by demons, they were feared by all.