Chapter 1

"Drink it."

I poured the last half bowl of silverleaf soup into Thomas's mouth; his Adam's apple bobbed, and his ashen face twitched. Outside the window, crows cawed on the withered branches of the old oak. The donkey lay slumped by the well, dark red snot dripping from its eyes.

Then came the sound of footsteps.

It wasn't just one person. Seven or eight. The boots pounded heavily on the muddy ground, coming towards the herbal medicine hut.

I stood up.

The door was kicked open.

Sheriff Brennan Holt stood in the doorway, his face covered with a rag soaked in vinegar, revealing only his eyes. Behind him were men carrying torches and pitchforks.

“Elias Crane.” His voice came through the cloth, muffled yet clear, “In the name of Lord Ashmore, in the name of the Glorious Church—”

He unfolded the parchment.

"—You have committed the crimes of desecrating corpses, concocting witchcraft, and spreading plague. You shall be burned at the stake immediately."

Two men rushed up and twisted my hands behind my back. The thick hemp rope dug into my wrists, and I could feel my skin cracking and blood dripping down my palms.

“One hundred and forty-three people,” Brennan stared at me. “Three months. One hundred and forty-three people died after you arrived.”

"I'm saving them."

He didn't answer. A piece of charcoal hit my cheekbone, and black powder blinded my left eye.

They dragged me out.

Corpses were piled up in front of the herbalist's hut. Dozens of people had died in the past three days, wrapped in rags, flies buzzing around them. The forty or so people still standing in the town were gathered in front of the gallows, and no one spoke.

A rope was put around my neck.

I was hung up.

A feeling of suffocation exploded in my throat, and my vision began to black out. I heard the sound of flint and steel and smelled the burning hay. The heat of the flames rose from my feet and burned up to my calves.

Father Gregor began the lead singing: "May the Light preserve us—"

The crowd followed along, repeating the same pattern, like machines.

Then the ground shook.

It wasn't an illusion. The stone path was trembling, as if something was tumbling beneath it. Crows burst from the withered trees, their dark plume obscuring the sky.

Brennan's chanting stopped.

The first crack burst open beneath his feet.

A black rat scurried out. Then came the second, the tenth, and the hundredth.

They surged from every crack, from beneath the piles of corpses, from the foundations of the herb hut. The black tide overflowed the stone path and climbed the gallows stakes.

Screams erupted.

The rats surged towards the group like living liquid. Brennan tripped, and rats climbed onto his legs and burrowed into his clothes. He rolled on the ground, opening his mouth to scream—

The rat was poured into his mouth.

His throat swelled with writhing lumps, and his fingers dug ten bloody scratches into the stone slab. His voice grew increasingly muffled: "It wasn't my fault... it was the lord... he ordered me..."

And that was it.

The rope suddenly broke.

I fell onto the stone slab, my head hitting the ground. A swarm of rats flowed past me like a river winding around rocks. They didn't touch me.

I watched as the black tide flooded the square, and as people fell one by one.

Then the rats stopped.

Thousands upon thousands of rats stopped at the same time, turned their heads, and looked at me with their scarlet eyes.

They are waiting.

I reached out my hand. A mouse crawled onto my palm, its paws icy cold. I could feel its heartbeat—no, theirs. All of them. Thousands upon thousands of hearts aligned with mine in the same instant.

My head suddenly exploded.

It felt like something had burrowed inside the skull and was churning in the brain.

My nose bled, dripping onto the stone slab, dark red and steaming. Images flashed before my eyes—not my memories, but those of a swarm of rats.

Sewers, piles of corpses, rotting entrails. The stench filled my nostrils; I couldn't tell if it was real smell or a sensation transmitted by the rats.

I want them to stop.

But the rat population began to spiral out of control.

They swarmed toward the corpse and began to devour it. I saw Brennan's face torn open, and I saw those who weren't quite dead yet convulsing in the pile of rats.

I wanted to command them to stop, but the words caught in my throat—not that I didn't want to speak, but something was weighing down my will. A bloodlust surged up from somewhere that didn't belong to me, hot and cloying.

"Stop—"

Finally, I shouted it out.

The swarm of rats fell silent. Then, like a receding tide, they dispersed, disappearing into the cracks and vanishing into the ruins.

I knelt on the ground, trembling all over.

My nose was still bleeding. My vision was blurry, and the blood vessels in my left eye felt like they were about to burst. I leaned on the stone slab to stand up and looked around.

Only corpses remained in the square.

There was also a mouse squatting at my feet, tilting its head to look at me.

In the distance, the church bells suddenly rang—not to tell time, but as an alarm. Three long blasts, repeated three times. It was an alarm for heresy.

Someone on the city wall saw everything that happened here.

I ripped the charred pieces of hemp rope from my neck and ran out of the village. Every step felt like walking on a knife's edge; waves of headaches surged through me, and my left eye flickered between light and darkness.

When I stopped by the stream, blood had already flowed down my chin.

I squatted down to wash my face, my hands trembling. In the reflection of the stream, I saw my left eye—the whites of my eyes were bloodshot, and something black was seeping from the edge of my pupil, like ink spreading in the water.

The mouse was squatting on the rock, washing its face with its front paws, just like me.

I told it, "Spin around."

It went around in a circle.

"Jump."

It jumped into my palm.

But I felt the cost. With each command, my headache worsened. My legs were still trembling after the massive mobilization of the rats in the square, as if my very bones had been drained.

Even more frightening is something else.

When I close my eyes, I can "see" what a mouse sees—the guards on the city wall, the lit beacon towers, and the messengers riding out of the city gate.

The rats are becoming my eyes.

And that means I'm becoming a part of them too.

I knelt by the stream, pressing my left eye. Amidst the sound of the flowing water, I could hear the church bells still ringing, one after another, echoing throughout the valley.

They already know.

They are on their way to find me.

I stood up and looked at the distant mountains, faintly visible through the morning mist. At my feet, the swarm of rats had regrouped, a black tide surging in the grass, awaiting the next command.

I raised my hand. The veins on the back of my hand bulged under the skin, like black tree roots.

"Let's go."