The wind whispered cold across the graveyard as Felix stepped past the rust-wet gates, the night cloaking his form like the hands of the dead. Fog clung low to the earth, and every breath he took burned—though he was no longer sick. Not really. Not since that day a week ago. But he pretended. Always pretended.
He hadn't told anyone what happened. Not the coughing stopping, not the strength in his limbs, not the strange clarity blooming behind his eyes like some hidden sun. His body had grown faster, his balance unnaturally sharp, his mind more calculating than ever.
But he had feigned the trembling and the rashes. Even when he ran errands through the broken, plague-stenched streets, he walked with a limp, stifled his breathing, kept his head low.
Because the Salvation Temple watched.
Their silver-masked zealots eyed every survivor like cattle already half-dead. If they knew he was no longer sick, well... Felix did not want to stick around to find out.
That was why, when the voice had returned that night—Return—cold and bone-deep in his mind like it was carved into the walls of his skull, Felix didn't even hesitate.
He slipped out of his hovel before his sisters stirred, leaving Lilian and Cersei wrapped in rags beside a flickering candle, and ran barefoot through the dead town until the black iron gates of the plague graveyard yawned open before him.
Now, standing again among the rotted bones and twisted flesh, he looked for something—anything—that might explain what had happened to him. But the voice didn't come again. Not yet.
Until it did.
"Welcome!," came a rasp.
Felix jumped, spinning toward the sound.
A massive bird—five feet tall—stood on a crooked gravestone. It had three eyes, each gleaming like oil beneath the moon, and blood crusted the flesh torn around its jagged beak. Its feathers twitched unnaturally, moving like they were breathing.
Its beak opened—and it spoke.
"You have returned, child."
Felix took a step back, heart pounding in his throat.
"I... I heard you. In my head."
"I am everywhere," said the bird. Its voice was hollow, without warmth or texture. As if meaning itself had been stitched into sound. "I am the one who healed you."
Felix's voice trembled. "Who are you?"
There was silence.
Then, from the mud-soaked ground, two animal corpses twitched.
Felix gasped and stumbled back as the bodies began to rise—cracking, wet, unnatural. Their eyes rolled open, fogged by death but aware, as if something deeper than life now animated them.
One was a Deer-spider with a bulging eye on its chest, and another one was a Bear with two long horns.
They opened their mouths and spoke in unison."I am the only God who did not forsake this wretched world."
Felix fell to his knees.
"What... what does that mean? Why me?" he asked, eyes wide, tears carving paths through the dirt on his cheeks. "Why would a God save me?"
The bird answered first, stepping forward slowly on talons like curved knives.
"Because I am not a God of light or fire or judgment. I am not one who hides in the heavens and turns away when the rot comes. I am the master of all things that grow in decay. I am the sovereign of the unseen, of the billions of lifeforms that dwell beneath skin, within blood, along bone. I am the voice in disease. I am the king of all plagues."
Felix stared at him, too afraid to run, too awed to speak.
All of his life, his parents had never taught the religion of the village to him or what it truly meant, so Felix assumed this must be one of the many Gods of the village's religion.
The voice continued, this time from a corpse with melted features, the mouth barely moving.
"I did not create the plague that kills your people."
"What?" Felix whispered.
"I am its master now. But I was not its maker. That disease... that blight... is not divine. It is forged by human hands. Necromancers, dabblers in forbidden magics. They have unsealed something they do not understand. What ravaged your village is not a punishment—it is a crime. A weapon."
The world shifted sideways in Felix's head. He felt his stomach twist.
"They… They did this?"
"Mortals playing with death, animating plague with their sorcery. I did not unleash it. I only reclaimed it. Tamed it."
"You stopped it," Felix said. "You stopped it in me."
"I did." The bird's voice was calm, indifferent.
Felix looked down at his arms. No more sores. No more pain.
"Then… why me?"
"Because you survived. You walked among the dead, and yet you did not fall. You bore the curse of the man-made plague, and yet you lived. That made you mine."
Felix lowered his head, confusion and awe battling behind his eyes.
"I don't understand."
"You will,"said a new voice.
He turned—and there they were.
Two more corpses standing side by side, but these ones didn't smell of death. Their skin no longer sloughed. Their eyes glistened with recognition. Their faces were warm, alive.
His mother and father.
"Felix," they whispered.
"No..." he breathed, stumbling forward, choking on tears. "You're... how?"
"They are dead," said the voice. "But I have shaped the bacteria in their blood. Rebuilt their bodies, reanimated their nerves. They are puppets—yes—but they remember. They know you."
Felix clung to them, too overwhelmed to question anything else.
"I can bring back what you lost,"the voice promised. Now it came from all around—the trees, the dirt, the air. The corpses. "I can protect your sisters. I can give you purpose."
Felix looked up, eyes burning with emotion. "What do you want from me?"
The bird tilted its head, smiling without lips.
"Loyalty."
Felix nodded slowly.
"You have it."
Then, and only then, did the dark green mist have an immense increase in both quality and quantity. It was much thicker and felt like Xiang had soaked himself in a hot tub where he - and all of his stress went away, and was replaced by a feeling of overwhelming pleasure.
He almost got completely lost in the sensation.
Xiang Zainan, unseen and incorporeal, drifted above the boy. The bacteria in Felix's body now pulsed like tiny suns, feeding him. The dark green spiritual energy flowed into Zainan like rivers converging, thick and slow and sweet. He drank it in, this mist only he could see—his reward.
He would raise this boy.
And when the time came, he would use him.
Felix slowly prostrated himself on the ground, and asked with a newfound reverence "What should I call you Lord?"
Twelve other mutated crow, a little smaller than the one previously but still just as deadly and horrifying, landed behind the biggest one - and all of them suddenly spoke in a voice louder and more otherworldly than anytime before in this conversation.
"You shall call me Demise, The Plague Deity!"