"Do you even know where you're going?"
Nilo's voice cut through the morning air, half teasing, half genuine. He walked a step behind the girl, squinting at the endless dunes ahead of them. "We've just been… walking. East. Slightly left. Then more east."
Kanan shrugged from behind them, hands tucked behind his head. "If she's walking, I'm walking."
The girl did not turn. Her desert raider cloak shifted with the wind, hood low, scarf hiding everything but her eyes. Calm. Focused. Certain.
"Yes," she said simply. "Keep moving."
The old man chuckled softly beside them, kettle hanging from his pack. "Sometimes the road reveals itself only to the one willing to walk first."
Nilo groaned. "You're both impossible."
The sand beneath their feet began to change by midday. Less loose. More compact. The wind carried a different scent, not the clean dryness of open desert, but something stale. Sour.
They crested a low ridge and stopped.
Below them sat a village.
Or what had once been one.
Clay homes sagged into themselves. Roof beams splintered and caved inward. A well stood crooked in the center, its rope frayed, its bucket overturned in the dust. No smoke rose from chimneys. No animals wandered.
Yet it was not empty.
Figures moved slowly between the homes. Thin. Bent. Wrapped in cloth stained dark around the mouth.
Nilo's grin faded. "What happened here?"
The old man's face grew still. "So," he murmured, eyes scanning the rooftops, the dry gardens, the cracked irrigation channels. "It has spread here too."
Kanan swallowed. "Spread?"
They descended into the village.
The closer they came, the clearer it became. Nearly every adult bore the same signs. Veins darkened beneath the skin like ink spilled through parchment. Eyes dulled. Lips cracked and bleeding. Their breathing shallow, each inhale sounding like sand dragged through lungs.
Ash Rot.
The name felt heavier here.
A woman leaned against a wall, coughing violently into a rag already blackened. When she lowered it, flecks of grey clung to her lips. Her eyes lifted weakly toward them. Not with hostility. Not even surprise. Just exhaustion.
The girl's steps slowed. Her shoulders stiffened beneath her cloak. Body trembling with rage and sadness.
Kanan knelt beside an old man collapsed near the well. His skin was hot and dry, but he shivered as though frozen.
"What does it do?" Kanan asked quietly.
The old man with the kettle knelt opposite him. His voice was low. "Ash Rot begins in the soil. Or in water touched by poisoned land. It seeps into crops. Into livestock. Into blood. First comes fatigue. Then the veins darken. Then the coughing. The body weakens, but the mind…"
He paused as another villager staggered past, eyes unfocused.
"The mind begins to fray. Some grow violent. Some simply fade."
Nilo looked around. "So... it's kinda like what happened to our mum. How many are sick here?"
The old man's gaze swept the village. "Nearly all."
As if to contradict the silence, laughter rang out suddenly from behind one of the ruined homes.
Three children burst into the open square, chasing one another with sticks, pretending they were swords. Their clothes were torn but their faces were bright. One boy tripped, rolled, then sprang back up with dramatic flair.
"I told you I'm stronger!" he shouted, grinning wide despite the hollowness beneath his eyes.
The contrast was unbearable.
The girl turned slightly away, her hands clenched within her sleeves. These were neighboring lands. People who once would have paid tribute. People whose suffering should never have reached this depth.
Kanan forced a smile for the children as they ran past. Nilo even joined their play for a brief moment, exaggerating a fall to make them laugh harder.
But when the children ran off again, their laughter echoing through broken streets, the reality returned like a weight on the chest.
Ninety five percent of the village bore the marks.
Gardens were dead. Wells nearly dry. Food stores empty.
"This is what happens," the old man said quietly, "when the earth's balance is disturbed for too long."
He did not say by whom.
He did not say how.
But something in his tone suggested this was not accident.
The girl stepped toward a frail woman struggling to carry a small bucket. She took it gently from her hands without a word. The woman tried to protest but lacked the strength.
For hours, they worked. Fetching water. Reinforcing weak walls. Distributing the last strips of beast meat they carried.
Kanan hauled debris.Nilo played with the children until his laughter turned forced.The girl moved from home to home, silent, steady, her presence alone calming those she touched.
As the sun dipped lower, a sudden, desperate cry tore through the air.
"Help! Someone, please!"
They turned.
Near the far edge of the village, a man lay collapsed in the dust. His veins were almost entirely black now, crawling up his neck toward his face. His breathing came in violent spasms, each one rattling.
A young girl knelt beside him, no older than seven. "Papa, please wake up."
The old man hurried forward, kneeling instantly. His expression hardened.
"It has reached his lungs," he said under his breath. "And his heart."
The man convulsed suddenly, coughing up thick grey ash that scattered in the wind.
Nilo stepped back. "Can you heal him?"
The old man did not answer immediately. His hand hovered over the man's chest, golden light flickering faintly at his palm.
But it flickered weakly.
Too weakly.
The girl stood frozen, watching. Watching the child cling to her father. Watching a village already on the brink teeter toward despair.
The wind picked up, carrying dust through the empty streets.
The old man's jaw tightened.
"This," he said softly, "may be beyond mending."
And for the first time since they began their journey east, the desert did not feel like their greatest enemy.
The sickness did.
[To Be Continued...]