Father Edrine doesn’t ask ?me to prepare candles again at Vigil, but I still carry plant life—moss, when I can find some.

  My life in Marlene’s shed consists of daily labor: wood chopping, scrubbing old tools for the blacksmith…even fetching mushrooms when she’s in the mood.

  Taren takes me hunting often, still intent on seeing if I’ll turn hunter, though he treats me differently since the encounter with the ridgeclaw. We search deep in the woods, and I wonder if Taren hopes for another bear or worse, so he can watch my actions again. I don’t speak of my healing [Skill] or otherwise, and he doesn’t encourage it.

  One morning, the day after Vigil, I wake to a foul odor. Nox flies around my groggy head.

  With [Detect Decay] active, I sense light pulses of decay all around me: the hay I sleep in, and more below, all speckled with mold. More pulses throb beyond my reach, towards Marlene’s home, the chapel, everywhere.

  I snatch up the worst of the hay and toss it down from my loft, then climb down. Two sacks of wheat pulse weakly, the start of decay seeping into them. I don’t know how it could happen so quickly.

  With a hand inside each sack, I [Leech Grip]. Though the grain was once alive, it has no real vitality, only the mold and decay have life. Within seconds I cleanse the grain and become polluted.

  Rot Infection. Vitality diminished.

  I [Leech Grip] drying moss in my cloak before the infection spreads.

  Outside ?my shed, I find Denet. The boy stomps his foot as he stands before his front door. “It stinks,” he says. “I’m not going back in there until it's gone.”

  I look into the window and see Marlene gathering bags and pots.

  Denet grabs my arm. “How are we gonna have breakfast when everything's all smelly like that?”

  Marlene kicks open the door and drops a bag of wheat. Four more bags of grain sit inside, along with three pots. I step inside and drag out grain while she lifts the heavy pots.

  “Maybe some cold air will cure them,” Marlene mutters. Then she glances at me. “You think Taren will get some venison today? I don’t have the coin for more grain.”

  “I don’t know,” I respond. “He cleared out most of the game near the village.”

  Marlene lugs the last pot out. “At least the jerky’s still fresh.”

  I itch to [Leech Grip] the grain now, fix her problem, so she doesn’t worry, but I hesitate.

  At that moment, I hear more voices, more than I would expect in the cold early morning—Marlene frowns as we see people open their doors, many with bags of grain. The entire village has come down with a mold problem.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Complaining won’t turn your moldy wheat to gold,” says Elder Rorahn.

  Honep stands with his arms crossed. His wife and children huddle behind him. More than half the village stands before the stone house where the elder lives.

  Rorahn leans on his cane and gestures to another section of the crowd. “These here are in more need than you, Honep. You can fill your belly with meat until then.”

  Honep storms off, followed by a timid family.

  Others murmur. Rorahn silences them with a raised hand, then speaks of cleansing the wheat: washing and sorting the grains, inspecting the rest of the food stock.

  “We should open the village granaries early,” says Leira, the blacksmith’s wife. “I won’t watch my children starve when our stock is still full.”

  Rorahn grunts. “Then you’ll watch them starve through winter because you wanted to save yourself the labor of salvaging the food today.”

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  “There is already so much to do before the frost,” says a farmer. “We have no time for this.”

  “Then best we get started.”

  Before the gathering can dispute further, Father Edrine appears. He appears ragged, his knees coated in dirt, like he has been praying.

  “Good people,” his voice echoes across the silence. “I fear we are only at the start of a dangerous time. A dangerous winter. Spoiled food is a sign—a sign that evil has entered Ashgrove.”

  I tense, but he doesn’t look at me.

  “We must remember Vigilance. Only that will protect us from what is to come.”

  He does not stay to answer the fear in everyone’s eyes, but twists about and marches back toward his chapel.

  ~ ~ ~

  I find Taren as he fills his quiver. “Marlene is hopeful of the hunt today,” I say.

  Taren nods.

  I have a small bag for mushrooms. Anything can help, though I plan on cleansing the wheat when I can approach the task with some stealth.

  I reach to help Taren with his pack, but he catches my arm. “I need to focus today, Sevorn.”

  I rub my hand on my bow, still slung over my shoulder. “Agreed.”

  “You should stay and help Marlene. I’ll drop some of my catch when I return.”

  He tosses his pack over his shoulder and walks away as I stand, alone, packed up for the hunt, apparently for no reason at all.

  Villagers tend to the wheat bags, sifting out what is rotten. Having no other excuse, I join them. When no one watches, I [Leech Grip] rot, healing myself each time with the moss, until my mana runs dry and my moss is little more than crumbled ash.

  ~ ~ ~

  I cannot sleep. My hands are raw from scrubbing down every inch of Marlene’s home. Nothing can spoil the food now, but faint pulses continue to rack my mind, coming from everywhere in the village. I leave [Detect Decay] active and lie in wait, listening for whatever is causing the mold.

  [Detect Decay] has reached level 3.

  My range of sense increases, the faint pulses enlarge. Bits of decay that I missed in the house come prick my ears.

  And then it hits me, a powerful pulse of decay, more like a drum than the light taps of normal rot. Then another pulse slams into me.

  New pulses of decay chorus in unison with the stronger one. Some from the house, others from the hay at the foot of the loft. More and more appear as the loud drumming continues. The decay spreads.

  I scramble out of bed, waking Nox. The beetle hisses at my alarm and lands on my shoulder, opening and shuttering his wings with agitation that washes over me.

  Sliding down the ladder and out the door, I enter the icy darkness of the village, silent as the grave.

  The drumming pulses stop then. I cannot trace their origin anymore.

  Nox dances around my head before flying low along the ground. I follow. Maybe he can sense more than me.

  I flare [Detect Decay], burning through mana, stretching myself. Pulses echo around me, but they are weak. Nox continues to guide me until we reach the outskirts of the village, then he lands on the hard earth and walks in a circle, over and over.

  I kneel next to him. [Detect Decay] still sends me pulses, but nothing different—no, there is something. I put my hand on the dirt in the middle of Nox’s small circle and feel it. Like a root. A thick root of decay that branches into segments that lead through the village.

  One leads towards Honep’s home, another towards the Elder’s stone house.

  “Sevorn?”

  I’m kneeling by Taren’s home when Marlene speaks. I don’t move. Nox climbs my arm and under my shirt in the darkness. He’s invisible there.

  “What…what are you doing so late at night? I saw you, stalking around…touching the ground near people’s houses…”

  I cannot lie. Not to this woman. “I am…searching,” I say. “I can sense something affecting the homes. Like decay.”

  “This is one of your [Skills]? And the healing too?”

  I nod. “I sense decay. That’s how I find mushrooms for you.”

  Marlene’s face is cast in the moonlight, so pale. “Decay. What kind of [Class] does that come from?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, though I suspect it isn’t a good kind.

  Maybe she does as well, but she doesn’t say it. She shifts her shawl. “Where does the decay lead?”

  I hadn’t gotten that far yet.

  Without Nox, I must rely on my own [Skill] to trace the threads of decay that form a web through Ashgrove. Marlene follows behind me. We do not speak.

  I catch a stronger pulse of decay at the thicker roots near the surface of the ground. I wonder if I can dig it up. We follow its winding path to the edge of the village, near the forest, where an old granary stands, one of three. Surplus wheat and produce is stocked here, for selling to traders or filling bellies throughout winter and early spring.

  My mana empties and my decay vision disappears.

  A chain and lock restrict access, but I tug at the handle until I jar the door a crack.

  One whiff of the room sends me reeling. Powerful decay, by the scent of it, but with no mana, I have no proper sense of the scale.

  “There’s something in there,” I say as I close the door, “something causing the food stores to rot.”

  She must smell the odor too, because she doesn’t question me. “Elder Rorahn will handle this, child. For now, we should rest.”

  That nameless raven from before, with no description or level, swoops in from the darkness and lands atop ?the granary. Marlene shivers.

  I don’t, because I believe I’m to blame for the omen.