“Here you go. We can’t go further.” The taxi driver stopped by a patch of grassy area by the side of a road: “If you’re going backpacking, please be careful and let your friends know you came here. I’ve heard people coming here without telling anyone, and then something happened, nobody knew they’re here and they’re dead because of that.”

“It’s okay, sir. I really appreciate your concern for our wellbeing and safety.” Marcus answered with a slightly forced South-Western District: “We’ve already let out friends know. And if they haven’t heard from us, they’d be alerted. ”

“And hopefully then they’ll be looking for us here.” Gloria shrugged.

“Alright alright, as long as you know what you’re doing. Have fun!” The driver chuckled and drove away. The tip he received from the two put him in quite a good mood.

“Did we over-tip? I think we over-tipped.” Gloria frowned as she turned around, after seeing the taxi driver’s face.

“It’s fine, we’re tourists from the South-Western District.” Marcus shrugged: “They - I don’t know, I heard they’re good tippers.”

“Yeah I can kinda attest to that - kinda.” Gloria chuckled: “Not sure we had the best attitude for it though.”

“It’ll be fine. It’s a short ride, and we’re on our phones most of the time anyway.” Marcus chuckled.

The further they went in their direction, the grass and land under their feet became less flat and the grass grew longer and denser. More trees appeared along their paths, with greater heights and bigger crowns. As a result, their surroundings became dimmer as well.

“Looks like nothing is happening here.” Marcus looked around, there were no visible signs of anything being organized or built. Even for a one-time event like a back up food festival arranged to make up for the canceled one, it should at least leave some trails around the area.

“Let me go higher.” Gloria took a look around, then pointed at a tree on her right. With a few well-timed pulls and jumps, she reached the top of the crown.

Marcus remained on the ground and looked around, checking out the soil around and the grass. The earth appeared quite fertile here, it was slightly strange there was no one doing any farming here. And the environment around was quite pleasant, at least at this time of the day, which made it stranger that there was no one living here. He did hear something about the old ruins, which was some distance away from where they were now, but never understood the aversion to this place from the locals.

“I don’t see anything obvious, but there’s some buildings there.” Gloria pointed at something to the north of their location: “I see some wood panels and some pillars, but I can’t see clearly here.”

“Alright, let’s go check it out.” Marcus nodded.

The direction pointed out by Gloria was along a path that seemed treaded before, but not frequently visited. Marcus knelt down a couple of times to check the ground - the earth was solid from the footsteps, and grass was popping out from the cracks.

“Someone’s been using this path.” Marcus caught up to Gloria.

“Yeah - yeah, it seems so.” Gloria looked around, frowning: “This is - this is weird. People generally don’t come here.”

“What do you mean?”

“This place is still too close to the old ruins. And the old ruins - the locals, and I mean the REAL locals, not someone who came from the other districts and only stayed for a bit - would never go near it if they could help it.” Gloria shook her head: “I only heard a few things - like the entire land is haunted, there’s this ‘Lady in White’ or ‘Witch in White’ who abducts unruly children, and such.”

“But isn’t it still a bit of distance from here?” Marcus checked his phone, looking at the picture he took of Gloria’s hand drawn map. “The old ruins area - judging by everything - even if we’re driving we’re still at least ten minutes away?”

“The area is big, and the old ruins, from what I’ve heard, were just a smaller part of what was here long ago - when it was still occupied.” Gloria shook his head.

In less than 10 minutes, they finally saw what Gloria found when she was on top of the tree. It was not a setup for any kind of festival, much less a food festival they were expecting. This was a place of ruins - not ruins of any of the buildings from distant times, but more modern ones - wood panels, broken glass windows, tiles and moldy painted exterior.

A small neighborhood, but abandoned. A winding road laid across seven or eight wooden buildings in various levels of ruinage. Grass sprouted from the cracks and gaps between the bricks on the road. More than half of the buildings no longer had most of their walls or their ceilings, only three stood with some cover for any potential squatters inside.

“This is - some kind of neighborhood? And new looking - relatively.” Marcus checked the splintered wood from one of the broken walls, and the remaining interior decorations of the house it belonged to: “This is a modern house. Style wise it is not anything new. But it’s definitely not ancient, like what you would expect from ‘the old ruins’.”

“They’re definitely not THE ruins. Looks like they’re just buildings - multi-family homes, if I remember correctly. If you want to we can check a few out near the Mud River banks - ” Gloria walked around the exposed base of the building: “I - I think I know a little bit about these buildings. There’s some talk about certain neighborhoods being abandoned due to the rampant paranormality.”

Just this moment, three shadows circled around the area, in a formation to flank them.