Recovered from a torn journal found in the ruins of Eryndor Keep.
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Day 3 of the Harvest Moon
The air reeks. Something in the wells has gone foul. The captain says it is nothing but rot from the lower caves. Yet the dogs refuse to drink.
Day 6
Burials are piling. Fevers sweep through the barracks, and men drop where they stand. We burn the bodies by order, but the smoke chokes the whole fort. Some swear the ashes cling to their skin.
Day 7
Gods forgive me. The first rose tonight.
I saw Corporal Jaren claw himself from the pyre, eyes black, mouth gaping like a furnace without flame. His wife ran to him. He tore her throat out before anyone could move.
We tried to strike him down—he did not fall.
Day 8
There is no sleep. They come in dozens now, crawling, stumbling, shrieking without tongues. Their bodies are torn, yet they do not bleed. Blades pierce them, but only fire keeps them down.
Day 9
Captain says the gates will not hold. I see it in his eyes—he knows. I hear whispers at night: voices in the dark corners of the keep, telling me to run, telling me the earth is theirs now.
Day 10
The walls are broken. I do not know why I still write. Perhaps someone will find this and know we fought. We fought. But what rises is not what dies. It is something worse, something hollow, something that hungers.
If there are gods left, they are blind.
If there is hope, it lies not in prayer.
—The ink trails here, ending in a line of smudged black. The rest of the page is torn away.