I rocked back on my heels, staring at my hands as if they belonged to someone else. The tremor running through them matched the one in my voice. "This is going to sound insane," I whispered, barely able to force the words past my lips. "But I think I'm looking at smallpox."
"Smallpox?" The unfamiliar syllables rolled awkwardly off his tongue. I could hear him testing the weight of the word, trying to understand why it had drained all the color from my face.
"It can't be. It's impossible." I shook my head hard enough to make my vision blur, as if I could physically dislodge the diagnosis forming in my mind. "We eradicated this disease in the seventies—wiped it off the face of the Earth. The only samples left exist in two maximum-security labs." I finally looked up at him, and the confusion in those dark eyes mirrored the chaos screaming through my thoughts. "What I'm seeing right now? It shouldn't exist. Itcan'texist."
But denial changed nothing. The evidence surrounded us, undeniable and damning. That characteristic rash—pustules all in the same stage of development across each patient's body, like some horrific synchronization. The distribution pattern, concentrated on faces and extremities exactly as the textbooks described. The fever, the complete prostration, the timeline thatmust have begun days ago with headaches and backaches before the rash erupted like a declaration of war.
Every clinical case study I'd ever memorized was playing out before my eyes in vivid, suffering, impossible color.
"Jordan!"
I looked up to find Morg threading her way through the sick, and my heart clenched at the sight of her. The village healer—usually so formidable, so unshakeable—looked like she'd aged a decade overnight. Purple shadows bruised the skin beneath her eyes, and her shoulders curved inward as though the weight of every failing treatment pressed down on them.
When she finally reached us, relief flickered across her weathered face, chased immediately by something rawer. Something that looked like fear.
"Thank the ancestors." Her voice came out sandpaper-rough, scraped raw by exhaustion or grief or both. "I've tried everything I know—every herb, every poultice, every fever tea my grandmother taught me—and nothing touches this. They just keep..." She swallowed hard. "They just keep getting worse."
Ruka's hand shot out to steady her shoulder. "How many?"
"Nearly everyone." The words fell like stones. "And Thraxon..." Her eyes closed, just for a heartbeat. "One of our eldest. He passed last night."
The silence that followed felt heavy enough to suffocate. I'd never met Thraxon, but I could read the loss in the rigid line of Ruka's spine, in the way Morg's breath hitched before she forced it steady again.
"Ardin?" The name burst from Ruka like a wound opening. "Ryhain?"
"Your nephew's sick," Morg said quickly, her fingers tightening on his arm. "But he's fighting it better than most—only fever, no pustules yet. He's young. Strong." Somethingalmost like hope ghosted across her exhausted features. "And Ryhain shows no signs yet, thank the gods. She's with Zuhra at the spring, fetching clean water."
I watched some of the terror drain from Ruka's face, though his jaw remained tight as a bowstring. Small mercies. We'd take them where we could find them.
"Morg." I kept my voice gentle, the way you'd approach a spooked animal. "Show me the worst cases first. Then we'll figure out what comes next."
She straightened, pulling her healer's dignity around her like armor despite the bone-deep weariness. "This way."
The hours that followed became a whirlwind of controlled chaos, my medical training kicking in like muscle memory while my mind reeled with worry. With Morg’s help I transformed the common room into something between a field hospital and a war zone triage center. High ceilings meant better air circulation. The cooking fires could boil water by the gallon. It would have to do.
"Move them carefully," I instructed the handful of villagers still on their feet helping to wrangle the sick, my voice carrying that particular brand of calm authority that made people listen even when panic clawed at their throats. "Space them out. At least three feet between the pallets. We need to slow this thing down."
The sickness came in waves—some barely yet running a fever, others bleary-eyed and barely breathing. Each one a story of suffering I didn't have time to fully absorb. Not yet. Later, maybe, when this was over. If we made it through.
"Clean linens!" I called out, already moving to the next patient. "Everything—and I mean everything—that's touched the sick gets boiled. Water hot enough to scald. Add bleach if you have it."
Morg materialized at my elbow like she'd been doing this dance with me for years instead of minutes. Her healer's instincts made her worth her weight in gold. I showed her the angle to prop patients up so their lungs could expand fully, how to read the subtle signs of someone circling the drain.
"The rash," she murmured, staring at the angry pustules erupting across a young man's forearms like a grotesque constellation. "I've seen fevers, infections, but never this."
"I have." The words tasted bitter. "In textbooks. This is smallpox, Morg. It's a human disease highly contagious and extremely dangerous."
Her face went pale beneath the exhaustion, but her hands stayed steady. "Tell me what to do."
"Isolation. Immediately." I swept my gaze across the room, my brain already running logistics like a battlefield commander. "Anyone not showing symptoms stays locked down in their homes. This building becomes ground zero—no one enters except designated caregivers. And those caregivers wear masks, gloves, whatever protection we can cobble together."
When Ryhain and Zuhra returned, water vessels sloshing against their hips, I intercepted them before they could venture deeper into the sick room. Ruka's sister had his same fierce intensity burning in her eyes, now fixed on me with laser focus.
"The three of you are my team," I said, looking between them. "My only team. No one else comes through that door. Everyone else quarantines. No exceptions."
"Ardin—" Ryhain's voice cracked on her son's name.
"We'll take care of him," I promised, meeting her eyes so she could see I meant it. "But I need you healthy and strong to help me take care of everyone else. Can you do that?"