The village was silent—too silent.No laughter of children, no chatter of families, not even the barking of a dog. Only a few thin strands of smoke rose lazily from blackened pits inside, curling against the still air like ghosts refusing to leave.
Ethan Cole crouched in the undergrowth, frowning. Where the hell is everyone?An entire settlement, gone. Could they all have gone hunting? No, that didn't make sense. Every village had its elders, its sick, its women, its children. They didn't all just pack up and vanish.
Maybe there had been a raid. Maybe another tribe had come, killed, or taken them. But the huts stood undamaged, the fences unbroken, and the ground was clean—no blood, no signs of struggle. The place looked lived in, yet abandoned all the same.
Ethan's gut twisted. The treasure signal pulsed steadily in his mind, close—just a little deeper inside the village. But if this place had gone quiet for a reason, walking in blind could be suicide.
Still, his uncle's face came back to him, pale on a hospital bed. Every second he wasted here was a second lost. Ethan clenched his jaw. He couldn't afford to wait.
Gripping the steel baton he kept in his storage space, he pushed forward. The village gates, made of rough-hewn logs, were little more than a barrier against wild animals. He slipped easily through a gap and stepped inside.
The smell hit him first. A heavy, smoky odor hung in the air, sharp enough to make his eyes sting. Someone had lit fires here not long ago, which meant there had been people… recently. But where had they gone?
Ethan's boots crunched softly on hardened earth as he followed the signal toward the largest structure in sight: a wide, domed tent in the village center. Taller than the other huts, it loomed like a gathering hall, or perhaps a chieftain's dwelling. The signal thrummed strongest from within.
The flap of the tent hung open. Ethan edged closer, pressing against the frame as he peered inside. At first, his eyes caught only movement—a fat rat, squealing as it gnawed at something on the floor. The rodent froze when it saw him, then scurried beneath a plank, vanishing in a heartbeat.
If the rats are bold enough to wander in broad daylight… then no one's been here for a while.
Ethan ducked inside. And instantly gagged.
The stench was overpowering, a wave of rot and decay that clawed down his throat. He pulled his old motorcycle helmet from storage and shoved it on, hoping the visor would block the smell. It didn't.
On a raised platform in the middle of the tent lay bodies. Dozens of them. Men, women, even children. Their skin had turned waxy and gray, some faces eaten away by rats, others bloated with rot.
Ethan stumbled back, bile rising in his throat. He tore the helmet off, bent double, and vomited hard onto the dirt floor.
What the hell happened here…?
He forced himself to look away from the corpses and focused on the task. The radar pulsed insistently. The treasure was in here, somewhere among the death. His hands tightened on the baton.
Step by step, he moved forward. Totem poles carved from dark wood lined the tent's walls, looming like silent sentinels. The altar in the center—if that's what it was—reeked of sacrifice, though none of it made sense. Had they all died willingly? Had something poisoned them?
The thought crawled in his mind like ice: Was it plague?
The radar's hum grew louder, drawing him toward a wooden table set behind the altar. Scattered across it were stones, bones, and other objects, strange tokens used for rituals or offerings. Ethan's fingers brushed over them one by one, waiting for the signal to flare.
Finally, his hand closed around a lotus-shaped stone. The radar sang in confirmation. The voice of the system echoed in his mind, calm and clear:
"Congratulations. You have located a level-four treasure: agate rough. Colloidal mineral, formed in volcanic caves. Raw material suitable for carving."
Ethan hefted the stone in disbelief. Heavy, solid, yet it looked no different from a chunk of rock. He was about to stash it when a flicker of motion caught his eye.
Behind the table, slumped against the wall, was a figure.
His chest tightened. At first, he thought it was another corpse, but then—movement. A faint tilt of the head. A weak shiver of breath.
Alive.
Ethan's instincts screamed to leave it. Take the stone, take the win, and get the hell out before whatever had killed the others claimed him too. But his legs carried him forward anyway.
The figure was a woman. Long, tangled hair, skin pale as ash. She wore clothes woven from rough fibers that barely covered her, her body gaunt and trembling with fever. Her eyes fluttered open as he crouched near her.
For a heartbeat, they met his—and filled with raw hostility. She bared her teeth, a weak growl rising in her throat, as if she would bite him if she could.
"I'm not your enemy," Ethan said, raising both hands slowly. "You're sick, aren't you?"
She didn't answer, only glared, her breath shallow, wheezing.
Ethan swallowed hard. Plague? Infection? If she carried whatever had wiped out the others, then staying here was suicide. But he couldn't walk away—not when she was the only living soul in this graveyard of a village.
Reaching into his storage, he pulled out a bottle of antibiotics. He shook two pills into his palm and held them out.
"Here," he said gently. "Medicine. It'll help. Morning, noon, and night—two each time. Understand?"
The woman's gaze flicked between him and the pills, but she made no move to take them. Her body convulsed with another shudder, her breath ragged.
Ethan gritted his teeth. She was too far gone to manage on her own. If she was going to survive, he'd have to help her himself.
He sat back on his heels, staring at the bottle in his hand, torn between the risk and the choice that already weighed on him.
(End of Chapter 18)