Soleiman stumbled his way from tent to tent, his toes numb and his face even number. Each listing step he took, he teetered and tottered from side to side, his two arms wrapped tightly about his body out of a trembling fear of the cold doing little to help him balance.

Eventually, in spite of the biting of the cold wind, or the searing cold in his nose and throat, or the sinking doom writhing within his heart, the warm light of their tent fell upon his face once more. Hearing the sounds of rising voices within, though paying them no attention, he stuck his hand out, pushing aside the tent flaps to peer inside.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Rumi asked, hastily strapping on her boots whilst sitting atop a chair by the dining table. “Didn’t they say Miss Lauka preferred smaller audiences?”

“Yeah,” Qingxi responded, her back turned to the entryway as she slung a bag over her shoulder. “But they should’ve finished long ago. We should-”

“Soleiman!”

The two girls turned to face him as he stood alone in the entryway, his hunched over and almost blue-skinned form looking as though it would collapse at any moment.

“Are you okay?” Rumi asked, hobbling forward as she tried to force her other foot into its boot while walking.

“Where’s Pallas?” Qingxi asked, pushing the other tent flap aside.

“She…” Pallas struggled, his vocal chords weakened by the wind and his energy sapped by the cold. “She’s at the infirmary.”

“What?” Rumi asked, hurrying outside to try and support him.

The shivers and tremors that racked his almost stone-cold body spilled into his voice, quivering his words and silencing his bravado.

“She…” he began, soon trailing off as if in refusal to speak Pallas’ situation into words. As if there was a chance, no matter how little, that she would be fine– and that speaking it would somehow seal her fate.

“...She has Deathblight.”

There was no fighting it. No one who had crossed paths with the disease had survived. Pallas, as he knew her, would be no different.

The tent flaps fell shut behind them, leaving the cold stew to lay untouched atop their dinner table.

“Are you serious?” Qingxi asked. The bandages on her face, hastily applied after coming out of the bath house not too long ago, had fallen off– revealing in full the myriad of scars and irregularities upon her burnt face.

She made no attempt to tie them into place.

His eyes slowly drifted over to meet hers.

“I wish.”

“Can we go see her?” Rumi asked.

Soleiman nodded. He turned slowly, hobbling around on the spot to turn back the way he came.

“This way.”

As they walked, Rumi placed her chullo onto Soleiman’s head, taking special care to make sure his ears were covered before tying it around his chin. With Qingxi taking the lead, following the directions he mumbled as Rumi wrapped her shawl around the both of them, they made headway into the dark, torch-lit forest of tents.

“So…” Rumi asked, using her right hand to hold together the shawl about her and Soleiman’s shoulders while he held her left. “What exactly is… Deathblight?”

“It’s the plight upon life itself,” Soleiman said. “The worst of all ailments.”

Frightened, fearful and frenetic. All three did well to describe the fiasco after the plight visited Xiafa atop the backs of veterans returning from the Silent Valley.

“It infects and preys on all aspects of life, on every level,” he whispered. “And when it latches onto a host, it always kills them.”

Quiet, barren, sterile. All three did well to describe the ruins of Manarat after the plague fell from the sky like some avatar of the night.

“Some say it's something beyond the physical,” he added. “That it infects not the body, but the soul.”

By the borders of the encampment, snow that fell kilometres away piled up against the wooden palisades of the perimeter, carried by the ever-spreading wind.

“Some say it’s not even a disease at all,” he said. “That since it fell from the sky, that since it decimated the world’s population over the course of a decade, that since it almost immediately succeeded Ruination…”

“...That it a punishment?” Rumi asked.

He looked at her, his eyes swollen and turned black, little specks of frozen tears stuck to his lower eyelids– glittering like little suns in the orange firelight of the torches against the dark sky of his strained sclera.

“...Yes.”

They arrived at the entryway to the infirmary, Qingxi almost tearing her boots off her feet as she rushed in to take a look at Pallas. She only turned back when she remembered that Soleiman and Rumi might’ve required a bit of help.

With all of their boots off and somewhat neatly arranged by the tent’s entrance, they slipped into the infirmary, easing up the moment the warmth of the heaters and the scent of the many incense sticks hit them.

That momentary calm was very quickly snuffed out by the sight of Pallas laying atop a bed just by the entrance, still as a statue.

Still as a corpse.

Qingxi was the first to rush forth, Rumi taking the time to hold Soleiman’s hand as he hurriedly shuffled over to his sister’s side.

There was something so hauntingly familiar about the environment they were in. The lightning, the smell, the backdrop. They could almost see the blood-soaked bandages that were once tied about the hole in her chest– the hole that had infected her in the first place.

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Qingxi put her hands on Pallas’ cheeks, the latter’s lips just slightly separated. Her complexion was not one of peace, but not one of pain either. Instead, it was entirely neutral, as if entirely devoid of life.

Or, perhaps, it was all in their heads.

Qingxi leaned into her, resting her forehead against Pallas’ as she began whispering in Sinitic.

Soleiman too leaned over the bed, placing his arms by Pallas’ sides as he buried his face in her abdomen– feeling as it rose and fell, ever so slowly. He moved up, placing his ear against her heart as he kept his hands wrapped about her.

And sure enough, it thrummed on. Ever fighting, ever stubborn.

Rumi picked up one of Pallas’ hands, clasping it in hers as she closed her eyes and bowed her head, rubbing it gently with her thumbs.

There was something sick in the air.

Or maybe it was just Qingxi.

To think that the two of them had… paraded the cadaver of the Protoataphoi, scampering around in some cruel mockery of its existence, only to have it have the last laugh… it made her almost want to throw up.

How many times had she hoisted its skull into the air? Roared using its vocal chords?

She stopped her prayers, squeezing her lips until they went white from the pressure.

How many times had she celebrated on its behalf? Proclaimed its victory?

She felt the bed shift slightly, and she rose from her embrace to see as Soleiman and Rumi turned around to talk to a nurse.

“I’m sorry,” she began. “But if she really is the Soteira, and what Miss Lauka says is true, then there’s still a chance she can get out of this.”

“I understand,” Soleiman responded, adding nothing.

“If it makes you feel better, we’ll be staying here for the next few days,” the nurse said. “Typically we move with the tribe, but since we’ve a rather large number of patients this time around, we decided that it would be best to just focus entirely on them.”

“What about the rest of the tribe?” Rumi asked.

“They’ll still be going out, as per usual,” she said. “You guys are going to have to follow them, though. They’re a bit tight on supplies because of us and they’ll need all the help they can get.”

“Understood, madame,” Qingxi said, rising from her knees as a dark determination fell upon her brow.

“We will.”

It was dark. Soleiman lay curled up atop his and Rumi’s shared mattress, the weight of their blanket and the warmth of her body against his back doing well to fend off the cold of the night. The tent’s thick canvas stifled the roar of the winds outside, and the perfect amount of amber lowlight trickled in from the torches through the tent’s entranceway.

The world outside was quiet, warm and peaceful.

But the same could not be said for the world within his mind.

He opened his eyes for the umpteenth time that night, rolling them to shake the uncomfortable feeling that had grown on them while he had kept his eyes closed. He sighed, eyes tracing the geometric patterns sewn onto the carpet they had rested their mattresses atop of.

Pallas never liked sleeping alone.

Carefully, he shifted away from Rumi, tenderly removing her arms from around his waist and folding them neatly by her face. He shuffled away from her, lifting the blanket off of himself as he made his way over to their clothing rack. He grabbed his scarf, throwing it about his neck before making his way over to the dining table.

He wouldn’t want Pallas to wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, only to find herself in a place she’d never seen before, in a room with people she’d never known.

The least he could do was to be there for her when she woke up.

“Where are you going?”

Soleiman froze, his hand already resting on the rim of a chair. Ever the observant Chitite, he should’ve known she would pick up on him leaving.

“I’m going to keep Pallas company,” he responded, pulling the chair away from the table. “In case she wakes up.”

Qingxi sat herself upright, patting her blanketed lap in thought as she let her eyes meandre about the tent’s interior.

“Would you like some tea before you go?”

Soleiman set the chair back down.

“...Yes, please.”

“Thank you, Qingxi,” Soleiman said, sliding the cup and its coaster over the wooden table as Qingxi moved to pour her fill of the freshly brewed matcha.

“You’re welcome,” Qingxi responded.

With the gentle sound of rolling water from Qingxi’s pouring filling his ears, Soleiman gently lifted the cup to his lips. He swirled it around slightly, watching as the foamy green elixir inside rotated about. Then, he brought the cup’s wood to his lips, slurping first on the foam and then the fluid of Qingxi’s green tea.

After a long draught, he set the cup back down, watching as the sigh he let out clouded up before him.

“You know, Qingxi,” he said. “Your tea really does work wonders.”

“Mm,” she hummed, herself setting the cup down. “Even Rumi hasn’t complained for a while now.”

Soleiman swirled the cup about a little bit more, his eyes returning to watching it slosh about.

“Look, Soleiman,” Qingxi shifted forward slightly. “I know you’re probably a little afraid right now. I am too.”

Soleiman pulled his eyes off of the cup to match her gaze.

“But I want you to know that that’s okay. It’s okay to be scared.”

“It’s just…” Soleiman broke eye contact, shifting about his seat uncomfortably. “How? How am I… How are we supposed to do everything we need to do in just two years? At best?”

“We can give it our best shot,” Qingxi sat back in her seat. “Like we always do.”

Soleiman hunched over the table, his eyes affixed on nothing in the corner of the tent.

“...And what if our best isn’t enough?”

Qingxi took a sip of her matcha.

“There’s no way of telling at this point in time. So why worry about it?”

He hung his head, staring into the foam within his cup. Perhaps hoping for a reflection to peer back.

“It’s not what Pallas would want you to do, no?”

“I suppose.”

Qingxi shifted in her seat, leaning forward to rest her fingers on his left hand.

“Just keep going, alright?” Qingxi patted his hand. “You don’t have to do things alone, remember?”

His eyes slowly rose, meeting hers as she raised her eyebrows endearingly. He chuckled softly, pulling himself back to rub a tear from his eye.

“Yeah,” he said, a slight smile dawning on his face.

Qingxi smiled back in turn.

“This responsibility is something we’ll bear together. No matter how things turn out.”

Soleiman nodded.

“...Would you like a hug?”

He nodded again.

And so, Qingxi rose from her seat, making her way about the dining table to wrap him in her arms.

“I’ll come fetch you in the morning, alright?” she said, patting his back. “You don’t have to worry about anything else.”

He reached out with his left arm, pulling Qingxi closer as he hid his eyes in her shoulder.

“Thank you, Qingxi,” he said, the fabrics of her gi slowly turning wet. “Thank you.”