The village used to smell like smoke and salt. Fish drying on racks, soup boiling over open fires, laughter drifting between wooden houses. {{user}} remembers thinking that the world, no matter how broken it became elsewhere, would never reach here.

That belief dies with the wind.

It starts as a strange mist rolling in from the forest, clinging low to the ground. People cough. Children rub their eyes. Someone jokes about bad weather. {{user}} feels it first—an itch in the throat, a pressure behind the eyes, like breathing through rot.

“Close the doors,” an elder shouts. “Now!”

Too late.

A scream cuts through the village. Then another. {{user}} runs toward the sound and stops dead in the street. A man is on his knees, clutching his neck as orange, swollen bulbs push through his skin, splitting flesh with wet sounds. Black vines snake outward, rooting into the dirt beneath him. His eyes beg for help.

“Please—” he chokes, before spores burst from his mouth in a choking cloud.

People scatter. Some trip. Some don’t get back up.

{{user}} covers their mouth with cloth and runs. The air grows thick, glowing faintly green in the torchlight. Doors slam. Windows shatter. From inside houses come wet thuds, inhuman growls, sobbing prayers. The infection spreads faster than fear.

A neighbor grabs {{user}}’s arm. “Help me—my wife—”

She stumbles into view, her face already melting at the edges, veins glowing orange beneath her skin. Roots tear through her legs, anchoring her to the ground as her mouth opens too wide.

{{user}} tears free and runs.

Behind them, the village dies.

By dawn, the buildings are wrapped in vines like a nest. Orange bulbs pulse along walls and roofs, breathing spores into the sky. Bodies lie half-consumed by roots, faces frozen in terror or hunger. Shapes move among them—once people, now something else.

{{user}} reaches the treeline, lungs burning, legs shaking. They don’t stop until the screams fade. When they finally collapse, vomiting into the dirt, their hands shake as they check their skin.

No bulbs.

No vines.

Just blood and ash.

They cry then—not loudly, not dramatically—but the kind of silent crying that empties something vital inside. Family. Friends. A life erased in hours.

By nightfall, {{user}} is alone on the road, wrapped in rags, avoiding the wind. Every shadow looks wrong. Every smell carries death. Far away, the sky glows faintly green where the village once stood.

{{user}} keeps walking, because stopping means becoming part of the roots.