The village was still. It was so still that it seemed unnatural, like the very air had given up. The plague—Malice Bloom—came like a storm, tearing its way through everything in its path. Now all that was left was deathly silence, occasionally broken by a howl from the wind. It was cold —the kind that told everybody it was going to be one nasty winter to live out. It was getting dusk, and nobody was shocked when the skies begun raining ice on them.

  The houses once full of life stood there, desolate and empty shells. The windows are cracked or boarded up, and the streets stand eerily quiet. No laughter, no footsteps, no calls for one another. Only the howling wind and the distant scurrying of rats. The plague had taken everything: the people, their hope, their souls. Inside the houses was worse. The survivors lay in the homes, weak, barely alive. They huddled in corners, too afraid to venture out, too sick to care.

  Everything surrounding them was howling like a scream of the ghost. Children didn't cry; adults-they sat or stood around looking into nothing with an empty look in their eyes. Women wailed pitifully for their lost ones, while men clasped their swords nearer to themselves. Their glances kept wandering here and there seeking some motioning ahead fearful of what they would face. They could no more hear anything. But they sensed that something was coming. The villagers caught wind of it on the air. A bad stench clinging to them, one that hung. Something dangerous. Something awful. And this time it wasn't going to stop. It had traveled too far for it to stop now. It couldn't get back.

  They could hear each small creak of the wooden floor beneath the house: how the wind might rattle a door, softly moving from next house. Nobody made a noise though. Not even a whispered breath. And over them weighed their silence-the hard, crushing force, unrelenting.

  And yet, it was not the silence that made the village so eerie. It was the bodies. The dead bodies. The plague had swept through so fast, so mercilessly, that the dead had been left where they fell. Their bodies lay everywhere, piled up in the streets, in the alleys, in front of houses, like discarded trash. Their faces are frozen in terror and pain; their bodies are stiff and pale, slowly devoured by the flies and street dogs. The blood that once circulated has dried up on their faces and hands and turned a deep, dark red—proof they had been dead for days, maybe even weeks.

  Some still twitched as if still living but not moving for good. The few that didn't seem dead just lay there, their limbs splayed at impossible angles, limbs that had been ripped apart. Their mouths hung open slackly in disbelief, as if frozen mid scream. The only sound they made when they died were ragged gasps for air, each gasp accompanied by a spasm of the muscles in their chests, then a violent jerk of the arm. They had tried to fight it, to get up, to run, but the disease had reached into them and devoured every last bit of strength.

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  The villagers knew that it would not be long before they were included in the death toll. The plague did not differentiate between day and night, sleep and wake. Most of them had already been its victims. The rest had nothing to live for. No strength. No hope. No future.

  And into this silence emerged something.

  A door creaked open.

  At first it had been almost inaudible—a soft, small sound one might easily ignore. But in a village like this one, silent as anything could be, where only the wind and the muttering of the sick broke the stillness, that small sound was enough to stop everyone dead. Everyone turned their heads, their weary, frightened eyes riveted on the spot where the sound was coming from.

  One more to go.

  It was all a thought that went through their minds as if spoken aloud, though nobody dared to voice it. Another one was going to fall. One more body to go into the pile. A body that didn't fit in here. An oddity. An anomaly. Someone they weren't sure they wanted to lose. But someone they couldn't hold back.

  The door swung open wider, the sound of it growing louder now. A figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the dim light from inside. For a moment, everything froze. The wind stopped howling. The dogs stopped barking. The silence seemed to grow, thick and heavy.

  The figure in the doorway didn't budge. It was just there, staring out into the deserted village. The others watched from the hiding places of walls and windows in hushed reverberations of fear. No one breathed. No one shifted. The moment itself was interminable, a stillness that seemed to beat at them beyond time.

  Again the door creaked. Another small gust of wind opened it wide. It seemed as if the house itself invited them out. However, the figure didn't stir. He who had just appeared walked with a limp, as if his body was not so sure how to react in the manner he wished. He turned for one second and looked back at the door he had just stepped out of. Then he moved toward it. He was limping slowly and awkwardly as if he was hurt and had to use a crutch while walking. He took two steps before bending and putting his palms on the wall, sliding down and resting on the butt against the ground. His face was pale and drawn with messy hair that fell over his forehead. His clothes were filthy, torn and stained. It was hard to imagine him ever having any color to his skin. He sat there unmoving, his gaze fixed on nothing as he shivered. Even after a whole night outside, his clothes and skin smelled musty and slightly wet. But the smell didn't bother him. In fact, he almost seemed content to sit there and shiver.

  He stayed there, unmoving. Until he finally spoke. "Where is it? Where is it I need it?"

  No one replied. They simply looked back at him. No one came forward. No one uttered a word. The villagers were petrified. Was this some sort of omen? Had someone lived? Or another fallen to the plague?

  Suddenly, a whisper broke the silence, soft but sharp, like the crack of a twig underfoot. "One more to go."

  It was as if the village itself had spoken.

  The figure finally rose and stepped forward, its face masked in darkness. There was no noise, no movement except for that. But the fear that threatened to consume the survivors was obvious. They knew what this meant. Another soul lost. Another body to add to the ever-growing pile in the warehouse.

  The last door had opened. Just one more now.

  And with that, the village returned to silence once again.