In the chill­ing chap­ter titled The Wed­ding Night, the once-joy­ful atmos­phere of a cel­e­bra­to­ry gath­er­ing has been con­sumed by the weight of a ter­ri­ble tragedy. What should have been an evening filled with joy and love has turned into a haunt­ing tableau of death and dis­be­lief. A group of peo­ple stands frozen in shock around a life­less body, the grim real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion set­ting in with each pass­ing moment. Femi, a skilled sur­geon accus­tomed to life-and-death deci­sions, bends over the body with a pro­fes­sion­al calm­ness, des­per­ate­ly search­ing for any sign of life. His fin­gers move swift­ly, check­ing for a pulse, lis­ten­ing for breath, but the body before him remains cold, unyield­ing to his efforts. The unsee­ing eyes stare upward, the slack jaw a macabre con­fir­ma­tion of death, and the blood­stain that spreads across the chest is the final, unmis­tak­able mark­er of the tragedy. The storm howls around them, the noise of the wind almost deaf­en­ing, height­en­ing the iso­la­tion and despair. The pow­er­less­ness of the sit­u­a­tion weighs heav­i­ly on the group, with noth­ing but the rustling of foil blan­kets and soft, pan­icked whis­pers fill­ing the silence.

In this tense and suf­fo­cat­ing atmos­phere, the group is so absorbed in the corpse before them that they fail to notice the oth­er fig­ure emerg­ing from the shad­ows. Slow­ly, as if sum­moned by the storm itself, a fig­ure steps for­ward into the flick­er­ing torch­light, their pres­ence send­ing a rip­ple of fear through the gath­ered crowd. At first, the sight is almost surreal—this fig­ure, drenched in blood from head to toe, appears to have stepped out of some dark, ancient myth. The blood is not just a faint trace but a dis­turb­ing smear, cov­er­ing the person’s shirt, drip­ping from their wrists, and stain­ing their neck and jaw in grotesque fash­ion. The sight is so jar­ring, so alien, that it seems impos­si­ble for the group to process what they are wit­ness­ing. Soft sobs escape the figure’s lips, adding a chill­ing lay­er to the scene, but it is the gleam­ing knife clutched in their hand that steals the group’s atten­tion.

The knife, with its moth­er-of-pearl han­dle gleam­ing in the torch­light, now seems entire­ly out of place in the con­text of death and blood­shed. This was not just any blade; it had once served a cel­e­bra­to­ry pur­pose, a tool to slice through a wed­ding cake dur­ing a moment of joy. Now, it has been trans­formed into an instru­ment of vio­lence, its sharp edge soaked in blood, mark­ing the shift from joy to hor­ror. The con­trast between the blade’s ele­gance and the gris­ly scene it now sig­ni­fies is stark, mak­ing the group freeze in place, unsure of how to react to what they are wit­ness­ing. The knife’s sin­is­ter pres­ence serves as an unwel­come punc­tu­a­tion to the night’s dis­as­trous turn, an unde­ni­able sym­bol of how quick­ly every­thing can spi­ral from light into dark­ness.

As the fig­ure stands before them, the group slow­ly begins to real­ize who it is, but the image before them is so grotesque that it seems almost impos­si­ble to rec­on­cile with the per­son they once knew. The trans­for­ma­tion in the fig­ure is more than physical—this is some­one who has been irrev­o­ca­bly changed by the events that have unfold­ed. The blood­stains on their clothes and the knife in their hand speak to some­thing much dark­er than any­one could have imag­ined, a rev­e­la­tion that throws the group into a state of con­fu­sion and fear. They begin to piece togeth­er the events, try­ing to under­stand what hap­pened, but there is an unspo­ken under­stand­ing that things have gone far beyond a sim­ple tragedy.

The emo­tion­al weight of the moment grows heav­ier as the fig­ure, still sob­bing, begins to speak, their words break­ing the heavy silence. But each word seems like a cru­el con­fir­ma­tion that this was no acci­dent, no moment of mis­guid­ed chaos—it was delib­er­ate, planned, and exe­cut­ed with a cold­ness that chills the heart. The group, still in shock, now faces the daunt­ing real­iza­tion that this tragedy is far more com­plex than they had ini­tial­ly thought. They are not just wit­ness­es to an unfor­tu­nate death but are now entan­gled in a web of emo­tions, guilt, and con­se­quences that stretch far beyond the present moment.

The storm out­side inten­si­fies, reflect­ing the tur­moil with­in the group and the fig­ure before them. As rain lash­es against the walls and wind howls through the cracks, it seems as though nature itself is bear­ing wit­ness to the ter­ror that has unfold­ed. The bog beneath them, dark and silent, stands as a grim reminder of the grave they now find them­selves in—both metaphor­i­cal­ly and lit­er­al­ly. Will they be able to make sense of the night’s events, or will this moment of hor­ror leave them shat­tered for­ev­er? The rain, relent­less and unfor­giv­ing, mir­rors the grief that begins to set­tle over the group, a grief that will not be eas­i­ly dis­pelled.

As the fig­ure con­tin­ues to stand in front of them, the real­iza­tion of their con­nec­tion to the death of the body in the cen­ter of the group becomes clear­er. There is a sense of final­i­ty in the air, a sense that some­thing has been irrev­o­ca­bly bro­ken, and the truth, how­ev­er painful, is now unavoid­able. The group is forced to con­front their own role in the tragedy and the way their rela­tion­ships have been shaped by secrets and lies. The dark night, the howl­ing storm, and the blood­stained fig­ure are all part of a larg­er, more intri­cate sto­ry that has yet to ful­ly unfold. The ques­tion that lingers is not just about the fate of the fig­ure, but the future of the group—their abil­i­ty to move past the night’s events or be for­ev­er marked by the choic­es that were made.