I return to my neighbors house a few hours later to pick up Branwen. I knock on the door and wait a few seconds. Nobody comes to answer the door, so I knock again. Still nothing. I put my ear up to the door to see if I can hear them inside. Nothing but silence. My heart starts to race, and I try to calm myself down. I check the doorknob and it's unlocked. He never leaves the door unlocked when he isn't home. I throw open the door, only to find the house had been completely trashed. There was broken furniture and blood everywhere, and my neighbors dead body was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, and my sister was nowhere to be found. I immediately run to find a guard, but they brush me off, saying he must be pranking me, as there's no way he could actually be dead. I insist that he is, so they follow me. When we enter the house, there was still broken furniture and blood everywhere, but his body was gone. The guards again brush me off, saying he must have been pranking me. I start walking around the village, asking if anyone has seen my neighbor or my sister. I start to wonder if he really was pranking me, so I decide to wander around a bit, maybe wait an hour to see if he shows up. As I enter the town square, I hear the sounds of a band playing nearby. I glance over and see a girl onstage with two other people. She was holding a lute decorated with carvings of flowers and singing about 'The Old God of the Forest', one of her friends is holding a strange looking tambourine and clapping his hand against it, and the other is playing what I believe is a pan flute. She's a bard, clearly, but a story telling bard. She goes around with her little group of friends singing songs that revolve around folklore, but I've never heard this story. I sit down on the edge of the fountain and listen to them play