Embittered Lodestone -Prologue

A huge lodestone at the outskirts of a small town, forms the center of most of the town’s superstitions. Whenever someone is experiencing negative emotions, they press their hands into the boulder, and concentrate on fusing their emotions into the rock until they can feel them start to drain away. This is a lengthy process that may take many days visits, if not months if used for therapy, but has been used to successfully reform criminals in the town. One day, the residents of the town wake up to find an oblong fragmented piece of rock has been smashed out of the boulder. This sends the town into uneasy tension, with many townspeople wanting to move away, convinced that all the negative emotions will come seeping out of the lodestone like fallout. In the midst of all this, people start turning up dead, stabbed with little slivers of the lodestone.