The fated day finally arrived, the Silver Moon Festival had begun. The morning had been filled with the arrival of various merchants and guests, the lively chatter of all the attendees filled the air along with the scent of all the baked goods and street foods. By the evening the festival was in full swing, the streets were lit by the light of the decorative paper lanterns. As the sun set and the night dominated the sky, the festival took on a new level of celebration: music was being played on a grand stage set up by the carpenters of Shinalin, vendors full of people buying their wares, and cheers from the crowds as they drank and danced. The crowd grew more lively as the arrival of some high ranking officials from far off villages were announced as they stepped foot in Shinalin. The administration of Shinalin were confused when the nobles of a few villages failed to show up; however, the volunteers from those villages had told them that they had fallen ill because they had drank too much the night before, so the unease was quickly quelled. Then the moment that the nobles' murderers had waited for, the Silver Moon Bonfire had been lit and a cheer erupted from the crowd. The killers had also given a very loud cheer, but not for the same reason as the rest of the crowd, they were celebrating the demise of the corpses under the fire. With the Bonfire lit, the masses of people began to head to the numerous benches and tables set to one side for the upcoming banquet.
The holder where the Bonfire rested on was a beautifully sculpted statue of a dragon that had openings in its mouth, along its horns, and down its back to mimic the dragon's fire and its fiery scales. The onlookers marveled at the blazing guardian as it stood in the center of the feast as it shone brightly against the nighttime sky. While the festival was bathed in the light of the guardian dragon, the group of murderers fled to the riverbank to clean their weapons and hands of blood. After they cleaned their gear, they thought it would be a great idea to head back to Shinalin to indulge themselves to celebrate a perfectly executed plan by eating a lot and drinking their weight in alcohol. Some of the men opposed the idea at first because they thought the coach would be found and the officials of Shinalin would be suspicious of them; however, their worries were put to rest when the others informed them that they had dismantled the coach while the bodies were being planted. The wood of the coach was broken up and placed in a pile that is to be fed to the fire to keep it going, the carpet was soaked with wine and surrounded with broken bottles to make it seem like a few drunk patrons had stained it with their drinks, and the ornate metals that decorated them were hidden outside of Shinalin to be collected later and reforged to be sold later on. With their plan done and all evidence dealt with, the group of murderers headed back to the village, ready to celebrate what they had done. Back in the village, the people were becoming more and more lost in the fun of the party that they didn't notice the unusual ferocity of the fire inside the statue due to its hidden additional fuel of the corpses wrapped in heavily oil soaked cloth.