Roth came to as a hand lightly pressed against his shoulder, and his eyes shot open.

“You’re alive! Hurry, get up!”

Jean Farsue- the town’s baker- was standing over Roth, his face glowing with an orange flare. The bright light shining on the man’s face was a stark contrast to the darkening sky above. One of Roth’s hands instantly moved to his waist, feeling Holl’s revolver tucked just beneath the outer layer of his coat.

Danger. There is danger near me.

Roth’s eyes fixed on Jean for a moment, but then his ears picked up a noise.

Crackling. Wooshing. It sounded like… fire.

Roth started to pull himself up, his elbows knocking against the frozen ground. Somehow, Roth didn’t feel too cold. When he sat up, he saw the reason why.

Earlier in the fight, he’d noticed an orange light a few buildings down, near the bakery. That light had been a fire, and with the current state of the town, there was no one who’d attempted to fight it before it spread. Now, it engulfed half of the street, and blazing tongues of flame had reached near where Roth was lying.

The fire was currently engulfing the shop one over from where he and Cundy had been hiding before the battle.

Holl’s body was still lying in front of the door, a small pool of nearly-frozen blood now warming back up from the head of the blazing inferno just off to the side.

“Everyone is dead. What the hell happened here?”

Jean Farsue looked anxiously between the surrounding buildings.

“I… I felt something change, like a veil was lifted. There has been something seriously wrong with our town for a while, and I only just noticed now. I rushed back over here, but everyone is dead…”

Roth pulled himself up to his feet, quietly tucking Holl’s revolver into his belt beneath his coat, out of Jean’s vision.

“That ‘Lord Enthenglem’ you were worshiping before was an evil artifact. It’s dead now.”

Jean didn’t say anything as he looked back over the destruction. The townsfolk were dead. Aside from the few hunters that were out searching for Enric, every last person in town was dead.

“Alisa and Cundy! They might still be in there!”

Roth couldn’t think of a reason why Cundy wouldn’t have come and helped him if everything was alright, but Roth knew that his crewmate had been fine when he exited the fight.

Alisa did get shot, and knocked out at the end… but she had all those coats on to hopefully stop bullets. If Cundy hasn’t come back to help me, then she must still be alive, but heavily injured!

“Jean, get somewhere safe. I’m going to look for my crewmate.”

Ignoring the heat buffeting from the raging flames just to the side of the entrance of the shop, Roth charged over to the entrance. He paused for a moment as he reached Holl’s body, and his eyes caught a small object reflecting the light of the fire.

Stooping down, Roth grabbed the small captain’s badge that Holl always wore. There was a pin on the inside of it.

“Captain… I’ll keep a part of you with me.”

Roth couldn’t say that he’d been super close with Holl, but he had known the captain for months. With how they now found themselves in an unfamiliar world, their crew grew closer together. Holl and Cundy were the only two people left who were truly familiar to Roth.

Now, one of them was gone forever.

After fashioning the badge onto his own jacket, Roth continued into the building. The flames were already licking through the wooden walls on one side of the shop, and Roth hurried inside to search for his teammates.

“Cundy? Alisa? Shout if you can hear me!”

There was no answer.

Roth continued running through the hallway into the back room of the store, and just as he opened his mouth to call out again, his foot slammed into something. He nearly tripped and fell, but managed to recover and spun around to see what was lying in the center of the hallway.

It was Alisa.

Roth could still see her chest moving, but her breaths were short and shallow. She was still covered in all of her outer coats, and her face was twisted in pain, even though she was still unconscious.

“Alisa!”

Roth quickly knelt down, his hand brushing against her forehead. She was freezing cold, the opposite of the boiling temperature in the hallway. The girl’s eyelids flickered as she reacted to Roth’s touch, and she slowly opened her mouth.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Cundy… you friend. Something worse than the corruption took over hi-”

Alisa shuddered mid-sentence, then hurriedly rolled over and spewed a mouthful of vomit onto the floor. As she heaved, Roth could see the back of her hand, where she’d once had all of her huskies stored as part of her Regard.

The blue dots denoting all of the dogs that’d died to the corruption outside were all gone. There still should’ve been three dots left- the two pups she had left, and the first husky who’d died of physical injuries during the fight.

Instead, there was only one dot, and it looked dimmed and gray.

Alisa finished vomiting, then collapsed weakly, her head leaning against the ground.

“What happened to Cundy?”

Alisa’s dry lips cracked as she struggled to speak.

“I don’t know. I woke up as he was carrying me, and he stopped right here. It was like he suddenly changed, just like the townsfolk did before… but it was different. Something a lot stronger and worse. Ah, he said something, about a message for you…”

Alisa tried to moisten her lips with her tongue, but it didn’t seem to help her much.

“He took all of my mist. I don’t know how… It was like he ripped it out of me. I feel weak. So, so weak…”

Alisa’s voice was barely a whisper as she slowly closed her eyes.

“Did we at least win? Are the townsfolk alright now?”

Seeing Alisa start to shut down, Roth hurriedly pulled a small water canister out of his backpack and pressed it against Alisa’s lips. The hallway was getting progressively hotter, and smoke was starting to waft inside, but after taking a drink, Alisa looked a bit better.

“Jean is waiting for us outside. The rest… It's not good. We’ll have to search for survivors together. The fire is still spreading this way, I’ll get you out of here first.”

Roth slid his arms under Alisa, then lifted her up and climbed back to his feet. She was light. About what he would’ve expected, if she wasn’t so laden with gear and coats. The smoke was spilling into the hallway even faster, and Roth ducked below it as he charged out toward the door.

The flames were already scorching the wood of the doorway, but seeing as how they could only get worse if he waited, Roth just continued to run directly through them, doing his best to shield Alisa from them.

He let out a small hiss as the heat boiled against his skin, but he was running through fast enough that he wasn’t burnt through his heavy clothing. Roth burst out into the street, taking deep breaths of the much cooler evening air.

Jean Farsue was still standing out in the street at the same spot he was before, his eyes fixed on the Roth as he carried Alisa out. A slight grimace flashed across his face for a split second, but he hid it before Roth saw it, then he walked over with a concerned expression.

“It’s Alisa Hendricks! Is she alright?!”

Roth was still holding her with both arms, and he didn’t want to set her down on the cold, wet ground- or inside the corpse-filled buildings on the other side of the road- so he wasn’t able to do much to check on her.

It looked like she’d fallen unconscious again while Roth was picking her up, but he could still see her chest moving beneath her coats, a bit more calmly now that they were out of the suffocating heat.

“No. Do you know any first aid?”

“Huh? What do you- oh, no, I don’t.”

Roth’s expression fell as he shifted Alisa’s position a bit, his arms already starting to grow tired from holding her in a princess carry. He would’ve tried shifting her around into a more ideal position, but he still wasn’t sure how badly she was injured.

She had taken a bullet at the start of the fight, on top of whatever happened after Cundy carried her away.

Cundy… Cundy wouldn’t do anything like this. He’s always been a steadfast right-hand man for Holl. But… Alisa was left there, and Cundy never came back out to help me. There has to be something going on.

If it was as Alisa said, and Roth’s crewmate was possessed, just like the townsfolk had been, then it was almost like it had all been for nothing. Roth had a sudden idea, but he didn’t have any free hands to check his map at the moment, and something was telling him that it was best to continue keeping it a secret from whoever he could.

“Jean, I’m going to bring Alisa back to our cabin for now, it should be far enough away from the other buildings that the flames won’t spread to it. I’ll come back to help search for survivors as soon as I can.”

Holding Alisa against his chest, Roth started plodding toward the cabin. The amount of destruction on the street decreased rapidly as he walked away from the battlefield, but there were still signs of it.

He paused as he saw a limp figure on the far side of the road. Even without walking over to examine it, Roth knew whose body it was. Enric, the other hunter. It looked the same as all of the corpses of the other townsfolk. There was nothing special about it.

Roth didn’t even pause or glance twice as he walked past it.

-

Roth laid Alisa down on Holl’s bed when he reached the cabin, then started pulling her jackets off, taking care not to pull too roughly. He wasn’t sure where the boundaries were, but seeing as how she could possibly be bleeding out from a gunshot wound beneath all of the coats, he opted for the safer option and continued stripping them off until she only had a regular cloth shift left.

As it turned out, Alisa’s makeshift body armor had worked.

The bullet had likely been partially deflected off to the side by the first few layers, turning it into a glancing hit, and eventually trapping the musket ball beneath the fourth layer of jackets.

She had a nasty bruise growing on her shoulder from where the force of it slammed into her, but it was better than there being a gaping hole there.

Alisa’s forehead still felt awfully cool after Roth finished checking her for injuries, and he ended up grabbing both Holl’s and his own blankets to cover her up. It felt a bit counterproductive- having just removed a whole host of jackets from her- but Roth wasn’t really sure what to do. He had next-to-no medical experience. If he wanted that, he would’ve had to consult the right-hand man of their crew… Cundy.

Alisa mentioned something about a message…

Roth slowly stepped into Cundy’s room. It was empty- emptier than it should’ve been, considering the rush they headed out in. Everything had been tidied up in a neat fashion, and there was a single piece of paper left on the small table that served as a nightstand.

A frown grew on Roth’s face as he picked it up and read over the short message scrawled in black ink. For some reason, the old native Holl had recited to him back on the island flashed into his mind.

“Tomorrow, the rain will begin.”

At the bottom, there was a date. Yesterday’s date.

Outside, the rain that had all but halted slowly shifted over to a light snowfall, starting to coat the town of corpses in a beautiful layer of white.