Rotfall

Prologue

Veldmoor has been dying for three days. It began in the tannery district — a man found alive but hollowed out, eyes gone white, moving wrong. By nightfall he had killed his wife. By morning, a dozen more had turned. The garrison called them the Hollow, and the name spread faster than any order to contain them. The city watch tried to hold the market square. The cathedral bolted its iron doors. The garrison barricaded what it could. None of it was enough. On the morning of the third day, the outer gates were sealed — not from inside, but from without. Veldmoor's neighbors made their choice. There will be no relief column, no physician sent from the capital, no word from the Margrave's seat. The town is a wound that the world has decided to cauterize. What remains inside the walls is this: pockets of survivors growing desperate, streets choked with the infected, a sewer network older than the town itself running black beneath the cobblestones, and questions that breed faster than answers. How did it start? Can it be stopped? Does it matter? Somewhere in Veldmoor, someone is still alive and still moving. The next few hours will decide whether they stay that way.