The first time the locals felt that something was off came when the odd conversations failed to die down after a week or two. Instead, they only seemed to grow louder, and more people seemed to accept the baseless rumors as the truth.
It was fine when there was only an occasional oddball or two who decried Changing Star. But when their number grew, the mood in the city shifted for the worse. The rumormongers continued to spout nonsense about Lady Changing Star and the Immortal Flame clan, and the people slowly started to get angry.
After all, these two ideas — the Immortal Flame clan and its last daughter — were not merely representing the authority of the Human Domain and the Sovereign who ruled it. In this world where the gods were dead and dreadful beings were looking at humanity with hunger, they were the closest thing people had to something sacred.
