It started with a cough.
Not loud. Not alarming. Just a dry sound that lingered too long after a joke or a sip of tea. The kind people dismissed as dust in the throat or chill in the bones.
The traveler who'd passed through the village gate had long since moved on, but his breath remained—hidden in the soil, the air, the warm closeness of Miren Hollow's homes.
By the end of the week, four villagers were sick.
"It's nothing," said Elder Callen to the gathered circle. "Seasonal. The kind of thing that comes and goes."
But the coughs deepened. Chests grew tight. Sleep became restless. No one had died—not yet—but Elira watched the way her neighbor, old Mira, struggled to light her hearth, her hands trembling with effort.
Eon noticed too.
"Something's wrong," he said one morning as they walked the edge of the woods, gathering herbs.
Elira tried to smile. "It's just the cold creeping in. Happens every year."
"But it feels different."
She stopped. Looked at him. "You feel it?"
"I don't know what I feel. But it's heavy. Like the ground is holding its breath."
That night, Nivi was quieter than usual. She lay curled by the fire, her doll clutched to her chest, face flushed.
"She played too long in the wind today," Elira said, tucking her in with practiced calm. But her eyes lingered a moment too long on the girl's cheeks. On the tiny sheen of sweat that shouldn't have been there.
Eon didn't sleep. He sat by the fire long after Elira had gone to bed, his gaze fixed on the embers. They reminded him of stars—distant, dying, unreachable.
He felt useless. More than that—he felt afraid.
Not the way mortals feared monsters or storms.
This was the fear of something simple and unstoppable. Something he couldn't command.
Loss.
And somewhere in the hollow, the sickness continued to bloom.