A young dirty boy with filthy brown hair, rags as clothes, and no shoes walked the streets alone. In his blue eyes held nothing but a dead look, but maybe behind that dwelt an animosity for the world and everything in it.
Felix had never known the world before it was broken.
He had heard stories, of course. His father used to talk about the harvest festivals, when lanterns would float like little suns through the trees, and music and animals filled the square.
His mother would hum the songs of birds as she worked—soft melodies that smelled of bread, lavender, and warmth.
But all of that was gone now. The lanterns had burned out. The songs had gone silent.
Now there was only the stench of death.
And crying.
And work.
Felix tightened the knot of cloth around his face as he dragged another body toward the pit.
The corpse was still warm. A woman, no older than his mother had been. Her eyes stared upward, glassy and half-lidded, as if surprised by her own ending. Her skin was already turning gray-green around the mouth.
She had died just hours ago.
Felix had helped carry away six others that morning. He tried not to look at their faces anymore.
He tried not to remember that his mother had looked just like that.
Painful memories had quickly surfaced in his mind.
"Don't cry," he whispered under his breath. "Not in front of them. Don't let them see."
There were people in the square watching him as he worked. Villagers. The healthy ones who hadn't yet been touched by the plague. They stood in doorways, muttering behind closed mouths, eyes narrowed like knives.
"That the orphan boy again?"
"Still dragging bodies like a rat."
"Shouldn't even be near the living. Plague child."
Felix ignored them. He had to. There were more important things to do.
His baby sisters, Lilian and Cersei, needed him.
They were less than a year old, barely weaned when their mother died. Felix had found an old milk goat in the barn behind the baker's house. It was skinny and mean, but it gave enough for them to survive—if barely.
He hadn't eaten a proper meal in two days. Just a heel of hard bread and some cloudy water from a rain barrel.
But the girls needed him.
He pushed the thoughts down and trudged back toward the cluster of huts that lined the edge of the square. The one he lived in now used to belong to a butcher, until the man's lungs gave out and he coughed blood all over the walls. Felix had cleaned it himself—scrubbed until his hands bled.
He stepped through the creaking door. Inside, Lilian was fussing, kicking her little legs in a bundle of rags. Cersei slept with one hand curled into her mouth.
"I'm back," Felix whispered.
Neither of them could understand him, but it made him feel better to say it.
He knelt beside them, tucking the covers tighter. A faint tremor shook his hands. Not just from hunger this time.
It had started the day before. First, a dull ache in the joints. Then a metallic taste in his mouth.
Then the heat behind his eyes, and finally his body had began to develop all sorts of bumps and sores - making it look as if he were some horrible mutation gone wrong.
He recognized the signs.
He had seen them a hundred times by now.
The plague.
He sat there a while, back against the wall, listening to his sisters breathe. The tears threatened again, but he bit them back. Crying wasted water. Crying was for people who still had someone to comfort them.
He had no one.
And the village made sure he knew it.
He had begged at the steps of the Salvation temple that morning, hands outstretched, asking to be healed. One of the elder priestesses walked outside and looked at him like he was a disease made flesh.
"You shouldn't be here," she had said, pulling her robe back and covering her lower face with a look that practically oozed disgust. "This is your punishment from the great God of Salvation. You'll bring ruin to us all if you stay here and spread your corruptness."
God is Dead. Ruin's already here, he had wanted to say.
But instead, he lowered his head and walked away.
That night, he tried to sleep, but the fever came. It crept in slow, like a tide under his skin. His bones ached like broken stones. He curled up beside his sisters, whispering apologies they couldn't understand.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He didn't want to die.
He didn't want to leave them alone.
But what could he do?
He had no magic. No bloodline power or any athletic talent whatsoever. Not even a genius intellect that could propel him on a journey to a young scholar.
He was just an eleven-year-old boy with dirt under his fingernails and blood on his hands from dragging neighbors into pits.
So when dawn came, and the light over the horizon glowed sickly purple through the mist, Felix made a decision.
He left the girls sleeping and walked.
Out of the village.
Past the burned-out granary.
Past the boundary stone, where the grass stopped growing.
And into the graveyard.
No one in the village ever came here except a sect from the Salvation temple that was tasked with cleaning up the streets of filth. Even if that filth might've still been alive.
They called it the Contaminated Field. A cursed place. A corpse-flood. A land soaked in rot.
Felix had never seen it with his own eyes before.
Now he wished he hadn't.
The land was made of ash and black soil. Bones jutted from the ground like rotten trees. Carcasses stretched across the earth like abandoned ships on a dead sea.
From dead farm animals and creatures he hadn't even heard of - to humans just like his parents... and now him.
A dry wind whispered through the bones.
It sounded like voices.
Felix walked until his legs gave out. Then he fell to his knees in the middle of it all, surrounded by death. His tears fell freely now, hot against the cold air.
"Please," he whispered, choking. "Please… gods…mom... dad... anyone. Help me."
He looked up at the sky. There was no sun. Only mist and that strange, pale glow that never changed.
"I don't want to die," he said. "Not yet. Not while they need me. Not while Lilian and Cersei still cry in the night."
His voice cracked.
"I don't care if I'm dirty. I don't care if everyone hates me. Just let me live long enough to keep them safe."
He wept there, alone, among the corpses for what felt like hours.
And then… he felt it.
A breath.
A ripple in the stillness.
Like something had heard.
He gasped as the fever in his bones ebbed. His skin cooled. The pain in his head vanished like a bad dream. He sat up straighter, blinking through the tears.
The ache was gone.
His limbs felt light.
He touched his forehead.
Cool.
He stared at his hands.
Steady.
He was… fine.
He was healed.
His breath hitched. "What…?"
Not even just healed, he actually felt a little stronger and less malnourished than he had been before he even got sick in the first place!
The wind stirred again, and in the distance, something flickered.
Something was out here.
Watching.
He stood slowly, wiping his face with his sleeve. He looked once more toward the distance.
"Thank you, Mother... Father... God" he said, voice trembling.
Then he turned, heart pounding, and began the long walk back home.
His sisters needed him.
And he would not fail them.