27. Chapter 27
T he carts rolled in at dawn, just as they did every day, wheels creaking beneath the weight of death.
She’d grown used to the sight. To the slack jaws, the stiff limbs, the vacant eyes. But not the smell.
Gods, not the smell.
No cloth mask, no amount of ash rubbed under her nose could mask the sick-sweet rot. It was a slug that refused to leave, embedding itself into every part of her body, leaving no part untouched. Not her hair, nor her pores, not even her memories.
“Over and out!” the overseer called, voice raw from barking orders all morning. “Just a few more, and we’re done for the day.”
A lie. They were never done.
She gritted her teeth and picked up her shovel, knuckles whitening. Her hands were blistered, lined with hardened calluses, her muscles aching from the endless toil, but she supposed she should be grateful for the pain. It reminded her she was still alive.
She dragged the next body to the edge of the trench. An old man, bones brittle and yellowed, skin like parchment. With a grunt, she flung him in. He landed with a dull thud against a corpse whose eyes had never shut—wide and glassy, locked forever.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry .
She hadn’t cried since she buried her daughter.
The babe had been barely a year old when the Witherblight took her—one moment giggling, gumming at her fingers, the next burning with a fever no poultice could cool.
Gone before she could even speak her first word.
Gone like her husband, ripped apart by ogres outside their home when he tried to stop them from taking her.
Now she lived in silence. The four walls of her house echoed with memories she no longer dared to remember. And out here, where the dead waited to be burned, she found purpose. Or maybe penance.
Perhaps she wasn’t brave enough to take her own life. But every day she faced this plague, every day she lifted another body, she hoped it would take her, too. That one day she’d stop waking up. That she’d be reunited with her family beyond the Veil.
But not yet.
Today, she lifted a corpse so small her knees nearly buckled.
An infant.
She turned the infant’s face, refusing to look at its features. Her throat convulsed as she tossed the tiny body into the pit like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t once been loved.
Her soul cracked a little more.
And then she reached for another.
A man. Middle-aged. Stiff with death. Her fingers hovered over his wrist, the skin waxy and cold. For an instant, there was only the biting wind and the stench of rot. Then, movement – the faintest twitch beneath her touch.
She froze. She turned slowly, almost unwillingly, to the worker crouched beside her.
His eyes were already fixed on the body, wide and unblinking.
A silent question passed between them, raw fear threading the air: Did you see that, too?
Neither of them breathed; neither wanted to give voice to the impossible.
But when the corpse’s hand jerked again, this time stronger, the worker flinched back with a strangled sound. The corpse’s fingers snapped tight around her arm, iron-hard.
Its eyes shot open – wide, aware . They locked on hers, the dull glaze of death burned away in an instant replaced by an unearthly green. Its jaw clenched, then unhinged, releasing a rasping hiss .
The body lurched upright, jerky, unnatural, like a marionette dragged on frayed strings. Its limbs twitched with an eerie, broken rhythm. Beneath it, another corpse stirred. Then another. A ripple of motion shivered through the trench, the dead no longer still.
“THEY’RE MOVING!” her shriek tore through the air, raw and ragged.
Chaos erupted.
From the corner of her eye, she saw one of the younger boys, barely more than a teenager, swing a torch at a twitching corpse. Another ran in to help, only for the thing to whirl unnaturally fast and tear his face open.
The sound— that sickening wet rip —would haunt her forever.
She spun, wielding her shovel like a blade, swinging wildly. She caught one creature across the head, sending its skull flying into the ash, but the body didn’t fall. It kept coming. Reaching. Hungry.
Groans echoed around her. Not human. Not anymore. Something else.
Something grabbed her leg. She kicked it off, stumbled back—into another. She was surrounded.
And realization dawned on her.
She didn’t want to die.
Not like this. Not here, in a pit of writhing corpses.
She fought. Fought harder than she ever had. Her shovel arced again and again, slick with blood and filth. She clawed for space, for breath, for life.
But there were too many.
She slammed into a tree behind her, back heaving, weapon raised, but her arms were weakening. Her body was giving in.
A hand latched onto her wrist. Another gripped her throat.
She tried to scream. To pray.
But the last thing she saw was a thousand soulless eyes opening, and a wave of the dead rising to consume the living.