Day seven.
Seven days since he left home.
The sky is still gray—always gray. The sun drags itself behind the clouds like an old scar no one talks about, just a pale smear in the sky. He walks the broken dirt road, the one carved by wagon wheels long since vanished. On either side, dead fields yawn open. Wilted stalks of wheat jut out of the soil like ribs from a starved belly.
He's starving. Not the kind of hunger you can fight with hope or memory. No, this one's cruel. His body's eating itself, slowly, methodically. His mind floats like a boat with a torn sail. Nothing feels real anymore, the world itself seems like a fever dream he can't wake up from.
And then—smoke.
Not the kind that warms. Not a fire shared by hands and stories. It's thin, bitter, rising from a pile of rags and straw left at the village gate.
He steps closer, slow, cautious.
The stench hits him harder than any memory ever could.
Corpses. Three of them. Two grown, one child. Wrapped in torn blankets, tossed like broken tools. Their lips are blue. Faces swollen, bruised, as if death had teeth and bit down hard.
He steps back. One pace, then another. But it's too late, the air's already in his lungs. His throat burns with the ash of something unspoken. This isn't just death.
It's plague.
The village ahead is still. No roosters, no crying, no dogs barking behind fences. Just homes sealed shut, windows boarded like coffins. As if the whole world decided to rot in silence.
He creeps inside, crouching low behind a crumbling stone fence. Blood stains mark the ground, dried to a dull brown. A little river of grief. Ahead, two bodies swing from a tree. One sways gently in the breeze.
"Thief," reads the wooden sign hung around the man's neck.
His stomach growls like it wants to tear him apart. He crawls into one of the houses. The door's wide open, the stink inside like something crawled in and screamed itself into pieces.
In the kitchen, a pot. Inside—grayish green porridge. Slime. He dips his finger in and tastes it anyway, his tongue protests, his gut twists. But he swallows, he forces it down. Because surviving doesn't get to be noble anymore.
In the back room—an old woman in a rocking chair.
At first, he thinks she's a doll. Skin stretched thin over bones like paper on twigs. But her eyes are open, and they see him.
"Leave," she whispers.
Her voice crackles like dry leaves underfoot.
"Please…" the boy says. Half a plea, half a collapse.
"Too late," the woman rasps. "They're all dead. The ones who stayed, and what's left behind… it's just meat waiting for its turn."
He stands still. Afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
"Do you know why this place is empty?" she asks. "No one stayed to bury the dead. And the dead… they don't rise to walk. They rise to haunt. This sickness doesn't show itself, it chews you from the inside like rats beneath your ribs."
She lets out a broken laugh, and tears drip down her hollow cheeks.
"And now you show up. Still a flicker of life in your eyes. That—" she swallows, "—that's the cruelest thing to see."
He wants to say something. But her voice is already fading.
"Take what you need. But don't stay, don't let this place touch your soul."
Minutes later, she goes silent. Her head tilts, a lifeless marionette. Her final breath lingers like a curse in the air. It stinks with the season.
He leaves with a piece of stale bread and a cup of sour water. Outside, the world looks even more colorless than before.
He walks back to the path.
But his steps drag heavier than before. Not from fatigue.
From the echo still clinging to his ears:
"Don't let this place touch your soul."
But how could he not? This world didn't just touch him.
It clawed.
It scraped.
It dug into him and left a hole where something called faith used to live.