The pain got better, but the anger was on a constant simmer.

It came to a boil every time he saw Lyla. He wanted to hold her and tell her it didn’t matter. That he would still go with her, but he felt like she had moved on from him. And he was terrified of her telling him that.

It wasn’t long before he got back to work and he learned to deal with it. While everyone was interested in giving him some space, they were equally determined to make sure that the work got done. If they couldn’t finish the shipment, they couldn’t eat. So he had to get to work. It helped, except for the times when he had to deal with Lyla.

“Zayn, you can’t stay angry at her,” his father had walked up behind him, “It isn’t fair to just blame her.”

“What happened though? Why?”

His father didn’t answer right away. Zayn turned to look into the pained eyes of his father. He was a tower of strength, and everyone looked up to him. It made him feel small.

“You’ll…” His father coughed, “Need to ask her.”

Zayn frowned, “What is that?”

“What is what?”

“That thing you just did,” Zayn imitated the cough.

“Oh, it’s a cold. You get them from time to time.”

Zayn didn’t think to correct his father. He just wondered why he had never noticed it until today.

His father coughed again, and Zayn found himself supporting his father by one of his muscular arms.

“I think you need to lie down.”

It was near sunset and everyone had already gone off to work in the clay pit. So it was the two of them as he helped his father get to bed. In the brief twenty meters to the house, his towering father, a bastion of strength and integrity, went from being able to walk, to needing Zayn’s help, to relying on Zayn to keep him upright.

At the door to the house, he collapsed and Zayn was forced to drag him to his bed.

The coughing was a lot worse. Several times he sounded like his lungs were going to explode, leaving Zayn so shaken that he stood there watching his father spasm.

“Get… Selene,” his father gasped.

With that command, Zayn bolted from the house for the clay pits. He had never run that fast. He got to the group of people, puffing and huffing out of breath.

“What’s wrong Zayn, where is Azarik? His mother looked him at with pleading in her eyes.

“He… collapsed.” Zayn pointed back to the village, “Home.”

Everyone turned and ran for the village, leaving Zayn all alone. As he caught his breath, his vision cleared and he realized Lyla was standing there. Her hands clenched at her sides. She looked angry and determined, and Zayn couldn’t help but see her storming off of the rooftop in anger.

He tried to say something, anything, and he failed. He stared at her for a moment and realized she was trying to say something.

Time froze.

He could see a thousand possibilities. Half of them ending with them happily together, and half of them ending with him angry and alone.

“Zayn…” She coughed, and Zayn felt his stomach drop. He didn’t even wait. If she had a cold, he had to get her home as quickly as possible.

She gasped and protested him lifting her into her arms, and Zayn only succeeded in that because of all the hard work in the clay. He ignored her squawks as he ran home faster than he had gotten here.

He didn’t make it, but he did catch up to several of the other village’s men. They saw him carrying her and came over to help. By this time, her coughs had gotten a little worse and she wasn’t trying to insist that she was alright.

One of the men, only ten years older than Zayn, took her from him. And for a moment Zayn saw nothing but rage. Was it him that had stolen her heart? Someone who dreamed of leaving the village and going on adventures together?

He didn’t have the strength to say anything. His body was pounding with the exertion; and once Lyla had been carried away, he collapsed to the ground.

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“What do we do?” Selene asked Aria, Lyla’s mother.

Aria was a strong woman, and Selene had always known that she could rely on her. Even with her daughter sick, she was still reasonably calm.

“How is his temperature?” Aria asked, dabbing at Lyla’s forehead.

“He’s running a fever. He also has red legions covering his skin.”

Alia sighed, “Do you think it…”

“What else could it be?!?” Selene didn’t mean to yell at her childhood friend, but time was running out.

Alia dabbed at Lyla’s forehead, “I guess we need to prepare a cemetery.”

Selene was shaking with rage, “If only…”

“If it doesn't help Selene. We have a lot more people than these two. We can’t afford to lose sight of the curse’s reach.”

Selene slammed her hand into a table, “Why would he wish this on us?”

Aria stood and hugged her friend, “You know why. He is angry.”

Selene looked at two of the people her son loved more than anything else in this world, “My poor son.”

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Zayn woke to a loud thump and an angry voice shouting about wishes and curses.

“My poor son.” His mother was talking about him.

The night with him wishing on the wind for everyone to disappear flashed before his eyes. He was feeling better and hurried back out to the pit. The wind was blowing steadily in the night air, and the normally active worksite was dark and quiet.

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“Stop!” he shouted into the night, “Don’t take them away from me! I didn’t mean it!”

Pathetic humans. The wind answered they deserve to die. All humans do.

“No, they don’t!”

The wind grew still and the temperature dropped quickly, leaving Zayn uncomfortably cold.

“Save them. Please!”

Death comes. Plague-bearer.

“I didn’t do it!”

Pathetic humans.

Zayn dropped to his knees and wept. He listened to the wind as it laughed at his suffering.

Plague-bearer.

Zayn felt his skin writhe. Every time it whispered his name.

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Azarik died in the night. Zayn wanted to cry, but his little brother had started coughing. Even now, as the men discussed burying his father, he watched his mother working a wet cloth along his little head.

Ethan was always a pain, but he didn’t deserve this.

“Come Zayn, you should be here for this.” Corin, an older man, put his hand on Zayn’s shoulder, “Your mother is doing what she can for Ethan. Let us send your father to the next life in the best way possible.”

They went up the hill to the east. A hint of sunlight brightened the distant horizon, blotting out the stars. Several of them had shovels, and they set to digging the hole. Zayn did his best to keep up, but most of the work was done by everyone else. They went back to the house and carried his father up the hill.

As they walked up, Zayn noticed several of the men were coughing.

They Azarik into the ground and Corin spoke of things that sounded good. The times they had been together, about how things were going to be alright. About the future and how they would all see each other again.

They always talk. The wind sneered.

The coughing started getting worse, and Corin told everyone to go home and rest. He then turned to fill in the hole. Zayn joined him in the work and the two of them spent a considerably longer time working on it than the others. Corin started coughing as they neared the finish, and Zayn encouraged him to go home and rest.

He stared at the grave, not really understanding what he was looking at. His father had seemed to be invincible, and he had died in a single night. It was exhausting to finish the grave, the sun was far up into the sky and Zayn was only awake because he had collapsed the night before.

The next day, he watched his brother grow sicker and sicker. His sister started coughing by the end of the day. His mother, normally beautiful and devoted, looked exhausted as she dealt with her sickly children.

Zayn had never felt so helpless. He had wanted to help his father, but he didn’t really have anything he could do to help. He had never imagined his father dying, and his loss shook Zayn deeply. When his little brother lived through the night, he thought that he might survive, but his mother seemed to be growing more and more frantic.

She had taken to sobbing uncontrollably and she seemed to think that both her children were gone.

When Zayn woke to find her at work in the kitchen, he almost yelled at her. Then he remembered the first time he had seen her use the enormous pot that she was working with. It had been the day he found out about Lyla.

He tried to push her to explain what was happening, but she could only babble incoherently about how it was important. Zayn gave up in frustration and did his best to save his sister. Her breathing was the worst and she was even smaller than Ethan.

He knew that his father would have fought to save everyone, and it was his job to be just as strong. So he spent every waking moment trying to ease their obvious discomfort. When he spotted the angry red marks on their skin, oozing and bloody, he knew that it wasn’t helping.

He thought about his mother and her strange behavior, and then he heard her coughing.

The days and nights blurred together as he worked.

He would collapse in exhaustion and then wake up to see them looking worse. When he woke to see his little sister still and cold, he shook with rage. His mother was still scrambling in the kitchen over that stupid pot.

He left the house to dig a hole for his sister and looked around at the other homes. No one was moving around. There was an eerie silence that hung over the entire place. He thought about visiting Lyla, but he didn’t have time for that. So he trudged up the hill. Then he realized all of the shovels were still laying where they had been dropped.

No one had come to clean up.

It was at that moment that he realized how desperate their situation was.

Pitiful humans. The wind laughed.

He couldn’t expect anyone to help with his sister's grave, so he dug it fairly shallow and then went to get her body. It was then that he realized Ethan’s cough had gotten worse, so he spent a minute taking care of him before going up the hill.

No one came to pay their respects or help with the digging. A part of Zayn was angry at them all, but he realized that they were all falling ill. He lowered her to the ground and filled in the grave. He looked at his hands, they had started bleeding from several spots. His body ached all over and he struggled to stand.

He tried to think of the words that Corin said, but all he could think of was how his brother needed him and his mother was doing something pointless.

“May we meet again and be happy.”

He turned and walked down the hill. The whole walk he listened to the laughing wind.

All you do is talk. Pathetic.

He got to the house and found his mother was looking after his brother. He thought about what he wanted to do and ended up going to bed. He woke up feeling much better and found his mother sleeping next to his brother.

He started to wake her and realized that she was damp with sweat.

He did his best to move her to a bed, and then applied a damp cloth to her forehead and went to look after his brother. Both of them needed his attention, but fortunately, his mother quickly improved and she was soon back to helping with his brother.

He took the break to go check on everyone else. He went from house to house and discovered that almost everyone was either sick or tending to the sick.

Lyla lay panting for her breath. Her mother was trying to take care of her, but she looked almost as bad as his mom. Her dad and sisters were nowhere to be seen.

He was too tired to offer to help. He went back to his house and lay down. He wasn’t eating well and he hadn’t really slept properly.

He lay down and all he could think about was how pointless this was.

It didn’t help. Everyone was getting sicker and sicker.

Everyone was going to disappear.

Soon it would just be Zayn.

His stomach growled, and he realized that the shipment was supposed to be done at this point. They were never going to be able to complete it. The food wouldn’t last much longer if they didn’t get the new supplies. That meant that they needed the wagon loaded and ready to travel.

It didn’t matter how hard he worked at it, he could never finish the job.

Pathetic. One little plague and you all die.

Zayn cried himself to sleep.

He dreamed of discovering a cure, buried in the clay, and helping everyone recover. Then using it to bring the dead back to life. He dreamed of everything going back to the way it had been. Lyla was close and telling him about her dreams. He was listening to her and encouraging her to escape this hell. She promised she would escape, and find a way to be happy.

He woke to again discover his mother, feverish, had fallen asleep at Ethan’s bed. He moved her to bed again and then went to take care of both of them. He noticed that what little food they had was starting to look rougher and rougher.

It didn’t matter. Everyone was going to die.

He fed them and ate a little, not even noticing the taste. Then he went to see Lyla.

Her mother wasn’t there, and the sound of almost constant coughing made him pause before going inside. Everyone sounded sick.

He found that Lyla was already gone. Her body looked so small now, and he wondered what had been the point of being so angry. He lifted her up and took her up the hill. Slowly he dug her a hole next to his father and sister and lowered her into it.

He wanted to say something. To fix everything.

You can’t do anything for them. They are all dead.

He looked around, realizing it was sunrise, with a tiny glimpse of the sun.

“It’s going to be another day. I wish I hadn’t gotten angry at you. I wish I had told you I wanted to go with you and explore the world. I was just scared. I was scared to leave home because I thought we were safe here.”

Zayn looked at the rapidly growing cemetery and laughed.

“Now I am talking to…”

He caught his breath for a moment, “I will be there soon enough. I think everyone will be joining you. It will be better that way. We will all be happy again.”

He filled in the hole and went home.

That night he didn’t have the strength to look after anyone. He could just see Lyla’s baby, unable to ever see the world. He felt awful, angry, and confused.

The normally soothing wind only whispered its mockery.

He went home to discover his brother and mother were in their equally awful state. He had wished this very thing on them. He did what little he could for them before moving on to the other homes.

He checked every room, and every time he found the same thing.

The group who had been fighting to save the sick lay in their own beds. The first people to fall ill were dying or dead.

Everyone was disappearing.

Zayn looked at the hill and the long trek to where the graves were. It wasn’t so far that he couldn’t make the trip, but he suspected he was going to be dealing with a lot of bodies. He just couldn’t handle the trip, so he made the choice to dig a single larger grave in the center of town.

He didn’t start digging though, just dragged bodies out of the homes and lined them up on the bare ground. He was in the middle of dragging Corin when he spotted the three men. They stood some distance away, and they were just standing there. Zayn realized that they were the men sent from Emberfall to gather the clay shipment.

That meant that they had the town's meager supplies on them. Zayn’s stomach growled. He had been so busy dealing with the bodies that he had forgotten about food. What was left in the kitchen was almost entirely inedible anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

He went over to see them.

They didn’t run away, but they did move back if Zayn got close.

“Do you have food?” Zayn asked, “Where’s the rest of the men?”

A taller man with a mustache, Zayn thought his name was Gavric, answered, “What’s happening here?”

“People are getting sick and dying, sir.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know if anyone else is healthy but me.”

The men turned and fled without saying anything.

Zayn stood there watching their vanishing forms and wishing that they had simply left him enough food to survive.

He went home to see his brother had died, and his mother was crying.

He wanted to tell her to rest, but he didn’t see any reason to.

Everyone was disappearing.