Amara POV
By the third day, thirty people were sick.
Amara moved between huts like a ghost. Her healing supplies were running low. Her magic was depleting faster than she could regenerate it. But she kept moving anyway because stopping meant accepting that she couldn't save them.
The sickness wasn't following any pattern she recognized.
It started with the blacksmith's family, then jumped to the weaver three streets over. It skipped the baker's house but took the schoolteacher. There was no logic to it. No reason. Just darkness spreading through her village like it was choosing victims on purpose.
By day five, fifty people were transforming.
Amara hadn't slept in days. Her food sat untouched on tables in the healing hut. Her hands shook from exhaustion and magic depletion. Her eyes burned from staying open. But she couldn't stop. If she stopped, she'd have to accept that her village was dying and she couldn't do anything about it.
She sat beside old Marcus, the blacksmith's father. He'd been transformed three days ago. Now he was something else entirely. His skin was translucent. His eyes were that dark ink color that meant the human underneath was already gone. But his body still moved. Still breathed. Still looked at her with something that might have been recognition.
"How long?" she whispered to him, knowing he wouldn't answer. Knowing he couldn't answer anymore.
He didn't move.
The elders came that afternoon.
They stood in the doorway of the healing hut with desperate eyes and the weight of the village on their shoulders. Amara recognized the look. She'd seen it before. It was the look of people who were about to ask her for the impossible.
"Can you stop it?" Elder Thom asked.
"I'm trying," Amara said.
"We know you're trying. But is there something more? Something the healers before you might have known? Some ancient magic?"
Amara wanted to scream. She wanted to tell them that she was just a girl. That she'd been trained by an old witch. That she had no ancient knowledge and no secret spells. That she was doing everything she could and it still wasn't enough.
Instead, she just shook her head.
Elder Thom's face crumpled. Elder Sara put a hand on his shoulder. They looked at each other and Amara could see the moment when hope died in their eyes.
"Then we're lost," Sara whispered.
They left without another word.
That night, Amara sat alone in the healing hut surrounded by the sounds of her village dying. Screams from the infected. Weeping from the families who'd lost someone. Silence from those who'd stopped trying to fight.
The door opened.
Verity stood there covered in dust and desperation. Her best friend since childhood. The girl who'd taught her how to laugh. The girl who'd stood beside her through every loss and every grief.
"We're leaving," Verity said.
"What?"
"Tomorrow morning. You and me. We're leaving this place."
"I can't leave," Amara said. "My village needs—"
"Your village is dying," Verity said, and her voice was harder than Amara had ever heard it. "And you're dying with them. I can see it. You're fading. You're using up your magic and your life and your heart trying to save people who can't be saved."
"There has to be a way. There has to be something I haven't tried—"
Verity crossed the hut and grabbed her shoulders. She held Amara's face and forced her to look into her eyes.
"If you stay here, you'll die with us," Verity said. "But if you leave, maybe you can find someone who can help. Maybe you can find someone strong enough to stop this."
"There's no one—"
"Grandmother Moss knows something. I can see it in her face. She knows something she's not telling you. Go ask her. Go find out what she knows. And if there's even a chance it could save us, you have to take it."
Verity let go and stepped back.
"I'll wait for you tomorrow at sunrise," she said. "And either you come with me, or I come back and drag you."
She left before Amara could argue.
Alone again in the hut, with the sounds of her dying village all around her, Amara understood that Verity was right. She was fading. She was burning herself out trying to save people she loved. And it wasn't working.
There had to be another way.
There had to be.
She stood up and walked toward Grandmother Moss's cottage, not knowing that her life was about to change forever.