From future soil

Chapter 7: Night of the Black Rai

The next morning dawned gray and heavy with warning. Clouds crawled across the sky, so low they seemed to drag their bellies over the rooftops. Daisy woke from a dreamless sleep and knew, without even rising, that something had shifted.

By the time she stepped outside, the first drops had already begun to fall.

They were black—inky globes that sizzled where they landed. The wooden porch boards hissed and smoked under their touch. She felt a prickle along her scalp, an instinct older than thought: *run.*

But there was nowhere to go.

All along the village paths, people emerged, staring up in mute horror as the rain gathered strength. Within minutes, puddles pooled—thick, dark, alive with a faint writhing.

Daisy clutched her belly, feeling the child recoil. The air smelled of wet decay, of old wounds reopening.

Kael appeared at her side, his hair plastered to his forehead. In the dull light, he looked like something carved from stormwood.

“It’s here,” he said simply.

The words were unnecessary. The rain spoke more eloquently than any prophecy.

---

By midday, the damage was visible everywhere. The few green patches Daisy had coaxed into life lay shriveled and blackened. Vines turned brittle as bone. Whole trees buckled under their own weight, their trunks eaten through by some unseen rot.

And worse—far worse—were the people.

It began with a fever. Shivers that seized them without warning. Then dark patches on their skin—small at first, then spreading like spilled ink. One by one, the afflicted collapsed in the mud, writhing, clutching their throats.

Daisy raced from house to house, trying to help. But there was no salve for this. No poultice, no whispered prayer. When she touched a woman’s arm, she felt the heat of infection rising up through the veins—and beneath it, a deeper wrongness, something *infinitely ancient.*

Kael knelt by the first man who convulsed so hard his bones cracked. A hush fell over the crowd as his skin split open. From beneath erupted a blackened crust—hard as bark, gleaming with sap that smelled like old blood.

Heralds. The rain was not merely killing—it was *transforming.*

---

By dusk, she and Kael gathered those still unmarked in the temple square. Daisy counted fewer than fifty souls. Some were children too young to understand why their parents wouldn’t wake. She forced her face into calm, though her heart screamed.

Kael stood before them, rain dripping from his hair. His voice was hoarse.

“We cannot stay,” he said. “If the rain continues, no living thing will survive by dawn.”

A murmur of fear rose and fell. Daisy pressed a hand to her belly. The child pressed back, a small, determined throb.

She raised her chin. “There’s still the caves to the north,” she said. “The stone will protect us.”

Kael nodded. “Gather only what you can carry.”

He turned to meet her gaze. In his eyes she saw exhaustion—and something like quiet faith.

“We will see morning,” he said.

Daisy wanted to believe him.

She glanced once more at the sky, where the rain fell in endless sheets of black. In her mind, the child’s voice whispered:

**Mother. The garden is dying. I must be born soon.**

She drew in a steadying breath.

“No,” she murmured. “Not yet.”

She bent to help a child to her feet. Kael lifted a bundle of supplies. And together, beneath that ruinous sky, they led the last of the village north—toward what little hope remained.

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(To be continued…)