Adelaide had seen death before.

  She had battled against it, warded it off, and watched as it took those beyond her reach. She had knelt beside the dying, whispering prayers as their last breaths rattled out. She had stood over the slain, blade in hand, as their blood pooled into the dirt. She had seen it in war, in sickness, in the quiet of an empty home where an elder had simply not woken up. Death, pain, healing, and liffe, were all part of being a Veilwarden.

  She had felt the slow cooling of a patient’s skin beneath her fingers, the waxen stillness of a body no longer inhabited. She had smelled death’s bitter rot, thick in stagnant air, clinging to walls and linens long after a body had been carried away. It was not something she welcomed, but something she had grown accustomed to.

  But it had never felt like this.

  Never before had she felt such a gnawing, unnatural wrongness so thick in the air.

  Life in Vorrengarde had never been easy, but its people were fortunate. She was fortunate. The Veilwardens ensured it. Healers, scholars, alchemists. They were the keepers of the fragile boundary between life and death. They were sworn to uphold that balance, to fight against the unnatural forces that sought to tip the scales. In times of war, they stood at the frontlines, wielding magic to tear through enemy ranks. In times of peace, they mended broken bones and ailed fevers. It was their duty to protect, to heal, to understand. Adelaide had spent her life among them, learning the delicate art of warding off sickness and the precise science of stitching flesh back together. She had mastered the ancient rites of healing, memorized the sequences of spells that sealed wounds, purged infections, and guided souls gently to their end when no magic or medicine could save them. It was an honor to be a Veilwarden, to wield such power, to play a role so vital in the great, endless struggle of mortality.

  And yet, what they faced now was beyond their knowledge, beyond anything any of them had ever faced. The skills they had, the magic they wielded meant nothing against what was happening.

  “There’s nothing more we can do,” she murmured. Her voice remained steady out of habit, but the words felt hollow. Today alone, she had watched more patients die than she had in the past six months combined. They couldn't continue at this rate.

  She stood beside the bed, unbuckling the thick leather straps binding the patient’s arms. Across from her, another warden did the same for his legs. The restraints had left angry welts against his pallid, mottled skin, but without them, he would have torn into them, into himself, into anyone who came near.

  He had died thrashing.

  They all did.

  The nurse beside her hesitated before pulling a sheet over the man’s pale, mottled skin. A moment’s pause that spoke volumes. There had been a time when they would linger, murmuring prayers, honoring the dead before moving on. Now there was no time. Others turned away, already moving to the next crisis. Because there was always a next. They had not stopped coming for days now, quickly overwhelming the infirmary.

  Adelaide stepped back into the hallway and exhaled.

  The infirmary was chaos, mirroring the streets beyond the thick oak double doors at the end of the hall. Currently guarded by two large, armored wardens, she feared what was happening out there. They caught glimpses as the doors opened to allow in a new patient, but knew that the guarded gates around the infirmary still held back much of the chaos. What was her city like right now? If these hallways were filled with the dead, what were the streets like?

  The air inside was thick with sweat and the acrid bite of fever. Sickness and death wafted from all corners of the building, a smell unlike any other. Patients lined the corridors, writhing on makeshift pallets. The ones who could still scream did. The ones who couldn’t were worse, their bodies locked in unnatural rigor, mouths frozen in silent, gaping wails.

  It had begun with a single case. A farm worker, found collapsed in the fields. Then the others came. More each day. Faster each time. Now the infirmary overflowed, bodies stacked in corners, covered in bloodstained sheets. Too quick for the crematory, its fires burning night and day, consuming flesh faster than the city had ever needed. They were now down several workers themselves and they could handle no more.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The Veilwardens had fought disease before. It was their duty, their honor to do so. But this… this was something else.

  The symptoms followed no logic or pattern. Some patients lasted days. Others only hours. Fevers spiked past the limits of survival. Organs shut down in minutes. While deadly, these symptoms were not unfamiliar. But the rash...the rash was the worst. It was nothing even the eldest Veilwarden had seen before, and it frightened even those who had served on the front lines of the Great War.

  It moved.

  The rash appeared to move beneath the skin, shifting like ink in water, as if something inside the patients were trying to surface. Or escape.

  This was not a plague. A plague they could predict. While the fight against a plague was a difficult one, a plague had rules, patterns, a clear cause and effect.

  This had none.

  Adelaide swallowed. The thought felt dangerous. It was a possession of the flesh.

  While the symptoms appeared in random order, the cause of the rapid spread of the illness was painfully obvious. All patients presented with bites. Varying degrees and locations, some small bites on their arms or legs, others mauled, with chunks of flesh and muscles missing or hanging loose. But all had bites.

  They had resorted to restraining all of the patients who entered the infirmary, no matter the symptoms they presented with or if they were able to locate a bite or not. The desire to bite and consume flesh was ferocious, and only through ending this access could they slow the spread of this...possession.

  A physician should never fear the sick. But for the first time, Adelaide did.

  A figure stepped into her path, shoving a slate tablet into her hands.

  “We need full quarantine,” said Dr. Priya Patel, her voice rough from exhaustion. She snapped her gloves tighter, already turning to the next patient.

  Adelaide barely heard her. Her gaze locked onto the tablet’s surface. She waved a finger an inch above the small glyph on the side of the tablet. At her touch, glowing script unfurled across the screen. Scanning the latest death reports, she felt numb at the hopelessness revealed within. Reports from not only other areas of her city, the capital city, but also from other cities stretching far across Vorrengarde all echoed the same. The coastal towns. The northern provinces.

  No pattern. No progression. Only a descent.

  Priya was right. They weren’t fighting an illness. They were losing to it.

  Adelaide swallowed hard and turned. “Get the apothecaries on—”

  A scream. A crash.

  A nurse stumbled backward, her heel catching on the leg of a supply cart, sending it toppling. Vials shattered, glass skidding across the cold stone floor, the sharp tang of herbs and potions spilling into the already putrid air. Instruments clattered and spun in all directions, a chaotic symphony of disaster.

  Adelaide barely noticed.

  Her eyes locked on him.

  The body on the bed, the one belonging to the man she had just witnessed lose a gruesome battle with death not moments ago, was moving. His body had risen from the bed, his muscles taught. Adelaide stood frozen, her mind fumbling for reason, for logic, for an answer that would make sense of the impossible.

  She found none.

  He turned toward her, inching forward in slow, agonized movements. Each step looked excruciating, his body convulsing, his muscles spasming with a sickening rhythm, like a puppet whose strings had been tangled.

  Then she saw his eyes.

  Black.

  As he stepped closer, she saw that the whites of his eyes were veined with something foul, something alive, tendrils of ink threading through his gaze. His lips, now cracked and ruined by the creeping rash, curled into a grotesque, jagged grin. His fingers twitched, too fast, too unnatural, almost like a marionette testing its strings.

  Then he lunged.

  Adelaide prided herself on her reflexes. They had been honed through years of training, through battlefield surgeries performed under fire, through the delicate intricacies of spell-weaving. But the man was too fast, simply a blur in her vision.

  The impact of his body against hers sent Adelaide crashing backward, skull cracking against cold tile. Pain burst behind her eyes. Her vision flickered, blackness threatened to consume her, then withdrew, leaving her in a cloudy, disoriented haze. Her body felt heavy, as if she were surrounded by water and fighting her way to the surface. She fought against it, gasping for breath, urging herself to stay awake. She had to move.

  Then, she felt the sharp sting of teeth. His teeth.

  They tore into her forearm.

  Her blood burned, searing against her skin. Wet. Ragged. The sickening sound of teeth grinding through muscle and sinew.

  Adelaide felt her mouth fall open, a scream racking its way through her body, yet heard none of it, the only sound surrounding her that of her flesh being consumed.

  Pain bloomed across her body, radiating outward from the gaping wound, but it was nothing compared to what came next.

  A pulling.

  A twisting.

  Something inside her shifted, something deeper than mere agony. It clawed at her very essence, as if unseen hands were reaching through her flesh, burrowing beneath skin and sinew, grasping at something farther in.

  Her vision blurred again. Her breath came in ragged gasps.

  This time, as she felt herself sink again, she felt as if hands were crawling amongst her body, dragging beneath the surface of something vast and unknowable.

  Then, just darkness.

  Complete and utter darkness, void of all sensations.

  And in it, a voice.

  Whispering. Crawling.

  Calling her name.