In the flickering candlelight of the village inn, three old women sat cloaked in shadows.
They sat at the back of the inn, draped in moth-bitten shawls and surrounded by the soft crackling of a dying hearth. No one knew where they lived, and no one dared to ask. They simply arrived when fate called and whispered when doom lingered close.
Tonight, one of them—a woman with teeth like iron nails—pulled out a shallow clay bowl and filled it with water. Another dropped bone fragments into the bowl—phalanges, from a child, judging by the size. The third drew lines of soot on the wood with her bare fingers and muttered something that made the shadows in the room shift and ripple.
A fourth presence entered—not a person, but something heavier. A pressure. As if the world itself paused to listen.
The middle one—blind in both eyes—dipped her finger into the bowl and stirred counterclockwise.
A whisper escaped the liquid.
The other two leaned in, eyes wide, as if a serpent had begun to sing from beneath the surface.
"Calamity is coming," rasped the blind woman.
The eldest's lips moved like dried leaves. "A god not of light, nor one of flame."
The water stilled.
A magic circle with otherworldly runes and symbols appeared above the bowl, lighting up the surrounding space into an ethereal section. Bones slowly rose up out of the water into the formation of an eerie skeletal hand with a crystal ball inside of it.
And in one voice, all three women spoke:
"A calamity will soon drench this land in blood and rot. But from its depths will rise peace, and from peace, prosperity. A new god watches. A god not born of stars, but decay. When his name is spoken aloud, all that rots shall be made whole."
Slowly, the crystal ball began to congeal into a face—smiling, hideously serene, with three eyes and flesh like wet moss with a sharp white beak.
The bowl cracked down the middle. The bones sank, and the magic circle dispersed.
And no one in the inn dared speak for several minutes afterward.
***
A week passed in silence, but the tension swelled.
Felix had returned to the village after only being gone for thirty minutes, staggering back through the gates just as the sun dipped below the trees. His limbs trembled, his skin burned with fever, and his eyes still had that glassy sheen of near-death. But he did not die.
He lived.
And since then, he wore a long robe at all times, pulled tight with thick gloves and a hood that shadowed his face. He told the Salvation Temple his symptoms had returned, so they'd stay away. They didn't ask questions; too many villagers were dying for them to spend time on the ones still breathing.
What they didn't know—what no one knew—was that Felix wasn't weakening.
He was evolving.
Rain fell from the sky like ash. Sickly gray. Unmoving clouds above choked the sun, but the heat lingered still, heavy and damp, crawling through the bones.
By the end of the first week, Felix found himself capable of carrying a full sack of plague-cleaning powder across the village without getting winded. He could run faster than the dogs the temple released to sniff out the infected. He could see in the dark now—just barely—but enough to make his night deliveries swift and silent.
He worked a second job now. Delivering food to the dying and sick.
Bread and milk. The last comforts of the dying. He placed small bottles of water on window ledges, often with wrinkled scraps of cloth for wiping blood away.
Felix left them outside without knocking. When he bent to leave the baskets, his nose often caught the copper scent of blood and the heavy, sweet reek of rot. And yet… it no longer disturbed him.
If anything, it made him feel awake.
Then came the voice. At the end of the seventh night, when he lay on his side beneath a moth-eaten blanket, the divine voice returned.
"It is time. Reveal my name to the World."
It echoed from nowhere. It echoed from within.
A cold, inhuman whisper that scraped at the corners of his mind. Overpowering. Emotionless. Impossible to deny.
Felix obeyed.
It happened on the fourteenth day, in the dead middle of the market square.Felix was hauling a wheelbarrow filled with bodies toward the usual drop-off section where the bodies would be taken to the fields to rot.
The rain had stopped.
By the time the village awoke the next morning, Felix was already back. No robe. No gloves. No mask. Just the ragged tunic he'd worn when he first fell ill.
"Everyone! Listen to me!"
A few people turned. Most ignored him.
But he didn't stop.
He shouted louder, his voice fueled by something more than confidence.
He lifted his hand, and his voice boomed.
"LISTEN TO ME!"
The words hit like thunder.
"I am not dying. I am not sick. I was healed."
Silence.
He turned in a circle, making sure they all saw him. His skin was whole. His eyes clear. He looked stronger, taller, unrecognizable.
"The plague that cursed us is not natural. It was created by men. By necromancers using forbidden magic."
Gasps started to fill the air.
"A lie," someone whispered. "It must be."
But Felix stepped forward.
"The priests lied. The Salvation Temple does nothing. They watch you die and tell you it's holy. But there is another… someone who saved me. Someone who didn't turn away."
He raised his hands to the sky.
"He is called Demise! The Plague God! The one God who never forsook us!"
Then, thunder again—only not from his voice this time.
From wings.
Dozens.
At least fifty mutated birds descended from the sky, shrieking like banshees, blotting out the sun. They were enormous—five feet tall, feathers torn and oily, beaks cracked and wet with dried blood, and three eyes glowing with green luminescence.
The crowd scattered.
And from the far end of the square, the lower clergy of the Salvation Temple stepped out in formation, wielding purification rods and chanting protective verses.
There were six-teen of them, and they started to chant divine light incantations to ward off evil.
They didn't get to finish.
The birds fell upon them in one swoop.
Tearing, ripping, skinning them alive. One bird grabbed a priest by the throat and ripped his spine out like a ribbon of flesh. Another dug into a man's chest with its claws and yanked out his lungs. Screams filled the square. Blood rained.
And Felix… Felix didn't flinch. In fact, a look of disdain was on his face as he watched the people of the Salvation temple get mutilated helplessly.
And to be honest, he wasn't the only one. Most of the people there had been turned away from the Salvation Temple for healing, since they couldn't actually heal anybody who was afflicted with the plague. Slowly, the villager's emotions turned to animosity for the church people, and non-belief towards the religion.
When it ended, all that was left was red-stained cobblestone and tattered robes.
Silence returned.
Then, an old man stepped forward. Scarred arms. Burnt fingers. A blacksmith by trade because of his dwarven bloodline.His name was Swindel.
He had first been affected by the plague three weeks ago after it had just finished killing off his wife and two-year old daughter.
He knelt.
"I—I don't care if you're mad," the man said. "If what you say is true… if Demise really healed you… then let him heal me too."
Felix stared down at him.
"Swear to him."
The man lowered his head to the blood-soaked ground.
"I swear eternal loyalty to Demise, the Plague Deity."
Felix's eyes gleamed.
"Then you shall be healed."
The man began convulsing almost instantly. He fell to the ground, clutching his stomach, retching blood and bile, screaming as his eyes bled red. The villagers screamed too—many backed away. Some cried.
Then the man went still.
And seconds later, he sat up.
He gasped and blinked. He then wiped blood from his mouth.
"I—I'm fine. No… I'm better!"
He leapt to his feet, laughing, twirling, throwing his arms wide.
"I can feel everything again! My legs! My lungs! My strength!"
He turned back to Felix, dropped to his knees, and wept.
"All praise to Demise!"
A hush fell over the crowd.
Then…
"M-My daughter," a mother whispered, pushing a little girl forward. "She's sick. Please."
"My brother too—he's all I have left!"
"Save me! I'll do anything!"
Dozens began to come forward. Some on their knees. Others sobbing, dragging their loved ones with them.
And in the shadow of blood and corpses, under the eyes of mutated birds and the looming plague mist, the crowd began to convert.
One by one, they turned to Demise.
And the calamity that destroyed the old world gave birth to something far, far worse.