“Luna?!” My voice tore through the stagnant air like a dying creature’s cry — raw, broken, useless. I collapsed beside her crumpled form, my trembling fingers searching for life beneath her skin. Her pulse thudded beneath my fingertips — unnaturally rapid, a frenzied staccato that no human heart should sustain. But even in that nightmarish moment, she smiled. Her hand, frail and shaking, found my cheek and brushed it like wind brushing ash.

  “I can see it now … Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis … Lucinda … I know a way … it’s through you…”

  Her words came from a place beyond pain — a whisper etched in agony and madness. Her soul, defiant against death, burned one final time as she tried to call forth her magic. It flickered—splintered—and failed. But she kept going. And going.

  “Stop it!” I screamed as my tears strangely fell like rain onto her face. But she didn’t flinch.

  She couldn't hear reason — or chose not to. Her body was collapsing, being ground to dust from within by her own power. And I was left to witness it. Useless. Paralyzed. The girl I called my friend was killing herself with every breath, and I couldn’t even understand why.

  “It’s all right… it is the only way forward…”

  Her voice carried a certainty that chilled me. She had seen something through the veil — through her magic. Something so profound it burned conviction into her marrow. But even in her resolute tone, her lips quivered — betraying the terrified, fragile girl beneath the martyr’s mask. And my heart, already shredded, clenched harder.

  I would have torn the world apart for her. But in this moment, I was a child staring into the eyes of Death. Helpless.

  “Lu … keep going … I know you will make the world a better place …”

  Her voice broke. Her chest stilled. And then, silence.

  An unbearable, infinite silence.

  Her eyes closed for the final time, and in that moment, I understood what it meant to lose something irreplaceable. Something pure. My wails filled the tent, hollow and shuddering. The rest of the world remained mute, as though it, too, had turned its face away from this cruelty.

  The only soul I loved in this filthy, cursed world had been taken. And not in some noble sacrifice. No — she was devoured by the very reality we trudged through.

  I screamed. My throat ripped with it.

  I let the rage crawl up from the bottom of my spine and hollow out my chest.

  The world had sinned one time too many. For Luna’s sake — for my sake — it would burn.

  A sharp tug yanked me backward. Someone dared to touch me. To drag me away from her. My knuckles cracked as I spun and struck without thought — Markus. He staggered, bloodied, wide-eyed. Good. Let him bleed too if he tried to separate us. I’d fight every soul in this camp if I had to.

  But then another hand clutched my shoulder.

  “Lucinda! Calm down and look at her—she didn’t sacrifice herself for nothing!”

  Words. Pointless words. But I turned anyway, if only to silence them with a snarl.

  And then I saw it.

  Her body—still and quiet just moments ago—began to change. A grotesque bulge pressed against her belly from within, distorting the fabric of her tunic.

  Something… moving.

  Wriggling.

  “No …”

  The word slipped from me like a curse.

  Even in death, this world would not grant her peace. It desecrated her.

  Her skin convulsed. Her throat pulsed.

  And then it burst.

  A glistening black worm punched through the flesh of her neck. Blood followed, sluggish and thick, pooling onto the earth. The parasite, shiny and vile, slithered free — writhing like a maggot fattened on sorrow. It squealed. A horrible, wet cry. It wanted its mother.

  I retched. I wanted to die.

  It was my fault. All of it.

  I had left her alone with that mage. The one I foolishly trusted. I had shared a damned carriage with the woman who orchestrated Luna’s death.

  And now Luna was gone.

  The fire inside me died with her. Rage gave way to ruin, and I crumbled. My screams turned to sobs. I clung to her ruined body as if I could pull her soul back into it.

  But death does not negotiate.

  And the gods, if they exist, are nothing but cruel children.

  She was gone.

  The words echoed in my skull like iron bells tolling for the dead. Not just gone — taken, consumed, corrupted by something ancient and merciless. And I was to blame.

  A part of me — a small, distant sliver of thought — noticed how hands dragged me from the tent. Away from her lifeless form. Away from the worms. Those slithering abominations that had once nested inside the only person I had ever truly trusted.

  Their slick, wet sounds haunted my ears as they crept across the earth like death incarnate, inching closer with every moment. The tent flaps closed behind us, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did.

  “How do we kill these things?!”

  Arthur’s voice slammed into me like a cannon blast — close, loud, frantic. He was shouting into my ear now, his words shaking with panic. He finally believed.

  But it was too late. Far, far too late.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t even flinch when he grabbed my face and struck me, once… twice… his hands trembling with desperation. My skin stung faintly where he hit me, but it was nothing. Just a hollow sensation, a whisper of pain next to the gaping void inside my chest. My heart felt like it had been clawed out and left to rot.

  She was gone. And the world — my world — had stopped.

  “Luna did this for a reason.”

  Tom’s voice sliced through the numbness like a shard of ice. There was no warmth in it — no pity, no comfort. Just cold fact, spoken like a man recounting the weather.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “She saw her death before it happened and accepted it. She was already dead the moment those things touched her. She knew what they were doing to her. And yet, she chose that moment to die.”

  I turned my face toward him, barely breathing, as he continued.

  “She wanted Arthur to see. She wanted you to lead the fight against this monstrosity. The one that fed on her. The one that used her. So now I ask you, Lucinda… will you honor what she died for? Will you let this filth consume the world as it consumed her, or will you get rid of it?”

  His words weren’t cruel — they were correct. They slid into my thoughts like rusted nails, sharp and unrelenting.

  The girl who could read the tides of time and fate — the one who danced through destiny like it was a melody only she could hear — had stepped out of the pattern. She hadn’t been taken by surprise. She had chosen it. She sacrificed herself, not out of despair, but with purpose.

  Because she saw something.

  Because she believed in me.

  I didn't deserve it. Not her faith, not her death, not this horrifying gift of clarity that came at such a cost.

  But there it was. A path she had carved with her blood, and placed before my feet.

  I clenched my fists until the bones ached and the skin broke. The grief didn’t disappear. It never would. But beneath it, something darker began to stir — a quiet, monstrous resolve.

  She had burned herself out to illuminate a way forward.

  Now I would follow that path — and I would make the world bleed for what it did to her.

  “Fire… burn everything down,” I whispered, my voice barely rising above the wind, thin and brittle like a dying ember. My eyes remained fixed on the tent — not with sorrow alone, but with a swelling hatred that pulsed in my chest. Hatred for what had been done to her. For what had been stolen from me.

  Markus didn’t question it. He moved fast, snatching a nearby torch and hurling it with precision into the fabric of the tent. It struck, and the flame latched on greedily. Like a beast starved of flesh, the fire crawled along the canvas, swallowing it whole. Heat shimmered in the air. Wooden beams groaned and cracked as they gave way to the rising inferno. And then — it happened.

  The worms. Still writhing in their nest of filth and bone, were touched by the fire.

  A flash — a sharp pop — and the tent trembled with a small explosion, unnatural and sudden. The parasites ignited like oil-soaked rags. Whatever bile pulsed through their veins was volatile. They burned.

  Luna’s death had cursed me, yes. But even in that curse, she had gifted us three truths. Three tools.

  The first was fear — it belonged to Arthur. The commander, once dismissive and blind, now stood slack-jawed at what his eyes refused to deny. His brute methods had no hold on this enemy. The old world — the one of swords, shields, and command structures — was useless here. And he knew it now. Whether he liked it or not, he would listen to me. He had to.

  The second gift: a weapon. The pattern became clear. The elements — not steel, not spells — was their undoing. Just like the explosion that had consumed our supply camp days ago. Just like the nightmare in purgatory. It wasn’t coincidence. It was vulnerability. Fire, the great purifier, was one thing that ruptured them at their core. One thing that reduced them to ash before they could multiply. Even though I knew of several more, fire seemed to be the best solution.

  But her third gift — her final whisper — changed everything.

  “What is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis?” Tom asked, his voice cold but curious. A good question. One none of them could answer — except me.

  I turned to him, the glow of the flames flickering across my face.

  “It’s a fungus. A parasite. It infects ants and hijacks their bodies, makes them climb high so it can spread its spores. The host dies. But the fungus lives on.”

  They stared, uncomprehending at first. But I didn’t stop. They had to hear this.

  “This isn’t an illness spreading in the camp. These are not the dying. These are not infected. These are hosts. The worms eat some. Others, they puppet.” The soul disappears not because it’s hiding — but because it’s gone. Already devoured.

  The horror of it all settled in my stomach like lead.

  I was standing in a graveyard that walked.

  A camp full of corpses — clever ones. Repeating old behaviors like marionettes tugged by invisible threads. They smiled. They laughed. They wept. But behind their eyes? Nothing. Only echoes. Only the parasite.

  There was, however, a problem with my theory. The mage. She had a soul. I had seen it.

  But as the fire continued to devour the tent and the last of the worms screamed in their death throes, the final piece fell into place.

  She wasn’t just another host. She was their queen.

  The rest weren’t individuals. They were extensions of her will. She was the only one who truly thought, truly planned, truly lived. And the others? They obeyed.

  Without her — the nucleus, the spine, the hive mind — they were senseless meat.

  With her, they were a precision instrument capable of mimicking life itself.

  I felt bile rise in my throat.

  “Find this bitch,” I growled.

  This wasn’t a war. This was a purge. And she was the source.

  But killing her… that wasn’t simple. Because without her guidance, the parasites would spiral into chaos. A thousand frenzied worms — all programmed to devour — would scatter like embers in a hurricane.

  That kind of outbreak could cause havoc, especially when one of them mutated into another hive queen.

  It was a choice between madness and control. And I had no way of knowing which was worse.

  Only Luna had seen the entire pattern.

  Only she had glimpsed the chain of horrors tied to this parasite queen.

  But she was gone. And now it fell to me to unravel the rest.

  And I would be damned if I couldn’t revenge her.