Alberre was unchanged from when they had first left. Oldtown towered over the rest of the city in the distance. It clung to the side of the mountain. At the very top of it all sat a broken down cathedral. It wasn’t lit up. Instead, it was an ever so slightly lighter shape against the black sky, easy to miss. Daios knew it was there, and he couldn’t help but look at it - he didn’t know if he imagined that he could make out the towers, the crumbling edge of the roof, where it had caved in so long ago. He supposed he did imagine it, nothing much was to read from the vague shape against the sky. The light pollution from all around them made the shape even harder to read.

Furnaces littered the city, but the most important one rested inside an abyss - it was burning night and day and kept the city a liveable temperature. It sat right there at the base of the central train station. A giant hole in the ground. Alongside the walls of the hole were walkways and doors, houses peeking out of the rock. Rails hung over it, at different angles. The inner-city-trains would rush by every few minutes. The abyss rattled and sparkled, bustling with life. It looked similar to the corruption. It looked beautiful.

Daios and Xalis walked by the edge of it. The walkways were secured by a metal railing, a warm light streamed up. When one looked over the edge, it sparkled back beautifully. It gleamed from below, you could see the air above the furnaces jitter with heat. Below, the world was harsh and straightforward. The buildings mostly consisted of right angles and gray stone - much of it was soiled in black, smudged soot. But against the darkness there were a million tiny lights. Lamps and lanterns, hanging from wires or attached with metal. There were tiny bits of magi-tech, filters and fans, it was cluttered in luxuries.

Whether it was the height, that dizzied him, or the fumes streaming up - he couldn't tell. There was no way to lean over the railing for too long anyway. However, the fumes did give the scene below a dreamlike blurriness. He came away from the abyss, back from the dream. He had to.

The plateau in the middle was different. It was a mixture of the old style - all decorations, little function to it all and the new - all simple, easy-to-take-care of shapes, functional and strict.

The old buildings were all more run down. Few people wanted to take care of them. There were ruined etchings of the old rulers. Now her face was slashed and her followers’ likenesses shattered. There was no glory for the history of Alberre nor for that of Proznia itself.

The new architecture stood out against the flimsy rest. It stood bombastic, nothing could knock it over. Brutal blocks of stone, all straight lines and barren walls. Still, it was better taken care of, so next to the ruins it looked brilliant.

The buildings all huddled to the centre, they all huddled to the heat. And at the other side of the abyss stood the Order building. It was a combination of the grandeur of the olden days and the functionality and brutality of the new. Industrial like halls, with a grand entrance. The walls were encased in lots of metal, it seemed steadfast and heavy - ironic as it was a lot of glass between the metals. It symbolized, how the people could watch over what the Order did, Daios had figured.

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The snow on the streets melted down to a sludge. It was trampled and dirtied until it was gray, slimy even. The tramplers filled the streets in droves. It was mostly workers - and the workers left the factories like clockwork, and others came to fill their places. It was always dark and so it never felt like night. There was never light, but there was always movement. Always something new to do. Always a task. The clock tower of the order hung above them all. It chimed every few hours. The workers all were cloaked and masked. It was hard to pick out details about any of them. They felt faceless, even when they were shaped entirely differently. The diversity in their shape unified them even more. If it had only been one or two that limped, with metal prothesis clattering against the rocky ground every step, it would be noticeable. But every one of them seemed to have something unique to them - and so none of them were. A unified mass moved into and out of the factories every 8 hours.

Though, the streets were filled with something else now. There laid corpses in heaps on the side of the roads. Now, the people of Alberre avoided the roads - or rather the outside world. The heaps of dead bodies themselves were lethal. They spelled out what was bound to happen to all of them, as well as being the lethal factor themselves.

Xalis and Daios had dipped into a side street at the wrong time, it seemed. There was a group of adults, all wearing heavy suits of armour. Masked, not an inch of skin showed itself. They set the bodies aflame with heavy magi-tech flamethrowers, powered with their own magical energy rather than petrol. Torching each stone, each piece of shrapnel that had even the chance of being touched by the piles of bodies. The air sweltered, it was unbearable. A black smudge marked their path.

It was within the instincts of Daios and Xalis to remove some of their layers, remove the masks and the goggles. But the sense remaining in them refused. This was what was supposed to happen. Without clean-up, the situation would only worsen. And yet, they felt the heat, even when the cleansing squad turned off their tools. The oppressive heat remained in the glimmering air, clogged their lungs, sat heavy on their skin.

The cleansing squad gave a solemn nod to Xalis, who responded in kind.

Daios hurried onward, rushing past them, past the soot, past the bones. He was glad for the mask, so he couldn’t smell the familiar scent of burnt flesh. He tried to ignore, how just the sight made his throat itch and his chest sore. He tried to will away the tears, not look at the bodies, not feel the heat, not feel an overly natural urge to hide.

Xalis easily caught up to Daios. They remained in silence on their way back. It seemed as though they were being avoided.

Alberre rarely felt like a ghost town, and if they strained, surely they could spot people in their homes, hiding away from the disease haunting Proznia.

It had been 3 months since the first outbreak of corpsefever.