The plague came from the east, carried by traders who should have stayed home.
Elara smelled it before she saw it—a sweet, rotten stench that clung to the air like a second skin. She stood on the wall of Ember's Rest, watching the carts roll toward the gate. Bodies wrapped in grey cloth. Faces pale and sweating.
"What is it?" Taylor asked.
"I don't know. But it's not natural."
It is hunger, the void whispered. Not mine. Another kind. The hunger of rot. Of decay. Of ending.
"Can you stop it?"
I do not know. I have never tried.
"Then learn."
---
The first victim collapsed in the square.
A young woman, no older than twenty-five. Her skin was grey, her eyes sunken, her breath shallow. Sarai hobbled to her side, pressing cold cloths to her forehead.
"The fever is like nothing I've se
