The fever had teeth.
It gnawed at me with every breath, every twitch of muscle. There was no comfort in the cot, no safety in the tent. The healers' chants were distant bells, muffled as though their words passed through thick water. Garron's presence was a weight against the storm, but even that was fading. The heat surged higher, until it hollowed me out, until I was no longer flesh but a vessel filled with flame.
And then the world broke again.
The tent dissolved into ash. My body fell from the cot into a sea of gray dust, endless, swallowing. I tried to catch myself, but the ground shifted like silt, pulling me down. The sky above was a veil of cinder, cracked by veins of fire that pulsed like the heart of a dying god.
The commander waited.
