Chapter 9: The First Vector

The silence in the GuildMaster’s tent was absolute, broken only by the rasp of Liana’s breathing. Valerius’s face was a mask of stone, but the terror in his eyes was naked. Gretta stared at the makeshift microscope as if it were a venomous snake, her skepticism finally shattered by a fear so profound it left her speechless.

"Infected?" Kaelen’s voice was a low growl from the doorway. "All of us?"

"I... I think so," Leo stammered, his mind struggling to process the scale of the disaster he had just uncovered. "The pathogen is airborne, or at least transferable by touch. It’s microscopic. We've been breathing it in this whole time."

"Then we are all dead men walking," Valerius said, his voice hollow. He looked at his daughter, his expression breaking.

"No," Leo said, forcing a strength he didn't feel into his voice. "Not necessarily. Exposure doesn't always mean infection. And infection doesn't always mean symptoms. It needed a wound to enter Liana's bloodstream directly. For us... it might still be dormant. Our bodies might be fighting it off."

It was a hopeful lie, and he knew it. He had no data, no proof. He was just trying to stop the panic before it started.

He failed.

A choked cry came from the corner of the tent. It was Gretta. The old healer was staring at her own hands with wide, horrified eyes. On the back of her wrinkled left hand, a place where a small cut from grinding herbs had scabbed over, a single, terrifyingly familiar black line was beginning to form. It was faint, like a shadow under the skin, but it was undeniably there.

"No... no, it cannot be," she whispered, backing away from the bed, from Leo, from her own hand.

The sight of that black line was a lit match in a room full of gunpowder. Gretta, her face a mask of primal terror, turned and fled from the tent, screaming.

"The curse! It spreads! The outworlder brought a plague upon us!"

Her shrieks ripped through the relative quiet of the camp. Heads turned. The adventurers, already on edge from the news of Elara's "miraculous" recovery, now had a new, more terrifying rumor to digest.

"Seal the tent!" Valerius roared at Kaelen, his commander's instinct taking over. "No one in or out!"

But it was too late. Panic was a contagion faster than any disease. A man near the infirmary, the one with the festering arrow wound, began to scream that he could feel the rot in his own blood. Another adventurer, remembering a sparring cut from the day before, frantically tore at his bandages.

The camp dissolved into chaos.

"Leo, stay with my daughter!" Valerius commanded, drawing a short, elegant sword from a scabbard on his desk. He and Kaelen plunged out of the tent, trying to restore order.

Leo was left alone with the dying child and the source of the plague. He could hear the shouts and screams outside growing louder, more desperate. The fragile society of the Iron Banners was tearing itself apart. He had to do something. He had to find an answer, a cure.

He turned back to his microscope, his mind racing. What kills it? Heat? Cold? Light? He needed to experiment.

Suddenly, a new sound cut through the din—the guttural snarl of a Gravehound. Then another. The beasts, drawn by the scent of fear and chaos, were attacking the camp. The shouts of panic turned into screams of battle and death.

The tent flap was torn open. It wasn't Kaelen or Valerius. It was Bryn, the fierce warrior woman Leo had seen on the cover of his own imagined life. Her axe was covered in black blood; her face splattered with it.

"We're being overrun!" she yelled, her chest heaving. "A pack of them! More than I've ever seen! They came out of the woods as if summoned!"

Behind her, another adventurer stumbled into the tent, clutching his throat where a Gravehound's claws had torn it open. He collapsed to the ground, blood gurgling from the wound. His eyes, wide with the finality of his death, locked onto Leo.

The same look. The same terror.

The world dissolved.

The Echo hit Leo like a physical blow, stronger and more violent than ever before. The tent, the battle, Bryn's frantic face—it all vanished, replaced by the screaming wind and shrieking metal of the bridge. The red and blue lights strobed, nauseatingly fast. The image of Mia's face, her eyes wide with betrayal as the car fell, was burned onto the inside of his eyelids. He was completely, utterly paralyzed, a prisoner in his own skull.

"Healer! Do something!" Bryn screamed at him, but her voice was a distant echo from another world.

From his paralyzed perspective, he saw a massive Gravehound, larger than the others, burst through the tent's entrance. It ignored the dying man on the floor. It ignored Bryn. Its intelligent, malevolent eyes were fixed on the small, feverish child in the bed.

It's not a random attack; a part of Leo’s mind screamed through the storm of the Echo. The pathogen... the curse... it's calling them. Liana is a beacon.

The beast lunged for the bed.

Bryn threw herself in its path, her great axe swinging. The beast was too fast. It batted her axe aside with a bony claw and slammed its body into her, sending her crashing into the tent's main support pole. The pole cracked, and the roof of the tent began to sag.

The Gravehound was now unimpeded. It loomed over Liana's bed, its fangs dripping with saliva. Death was coming for the child.

And Leo could only watch.

The failure was absolute. It was the bridge, all over again. A dying child he couldn't reach. A promise he couldn't keep. The guilt and the horror were so immense, so all-consuming, that something inside him didn't just break. It shattered.

No.

The word was not a thought. It was a command that originated from the deepest, most primal part of his soul.

NO. NOT. AGAIN.

And the Echo... changed.

The torment didn't stop. The screaming wind, the falling car—it was all still there. But it was no longer a prison. It became a forge. All the pain, all the guilt, all the raw, agonizing energy of his greatest failure... it began to coalesce. He wasn't just reliving the memory. He was harnessing it.

The white-gold light that had been a faint aura around his hands during the surgery erupted from his entire body. It was not a gentle, healing glow. It was a violent, explosive blast of pure, refined energy.

The blast wave of golden light slammed into the Gravehound just as it was about to bite down on Liana. The beast was thrown backward as if struck by a battering ram, slamming into the far wall of the tent. It shrieked, a sound of agony and confusion, its dark hide smoking and sizzling where the light had touched it.

Leo stood up, his body trembling, his eyes wide. The Echo was still raging in his head, but he was no longer its prisoner. He was its master. His right hand, which he held outstretched towards the beast, was blazing with a light so bright it was painful to look at.

The Gravehound, snarling, scrambled to its feet. It looked at the glowing figure of the paramedic, at the raw, holy power he was now wielding, and for the first time in its monstrous existence, it knew fear.

Leo took a step forward. The fight was just beginning.