The villagers were heading back to their homes. Fast. They abandoned tools where they lay, save for the edged weapons. A scythe…Cara stared at the old woman’s grim face as she brought it into her home.

Then shut the door and locked it.

Violetta was already unlocking the door and hurrying inside when Idelt and Cara arrived. The [Singer]

strode in.

“The Gloomwrens are going to be fine?”

“I made sure. They’re all inside.”

“And everyone’s staying in their homes? Why not stick together if these…the undead break in? Isn’t that safer?”

A click. The two young women turned. Idelt had locked the door. He had wedges of wood and drove them under the door in two places with his hammer. The man stood up and turned to Cara.

Idelt had been expressionless, reserved, but not without emotion at first. Just harder to read. Now—

there was an animation about him. A nervous, suppressed energy. His expression was grim. His movements direct as he went around, double-checking the windows. Then—the chimney. There were two seals, Cara realized. One in the top and one at the bottom.

“You climbed up and shut the top shutter?”

“Yes, father.”

He looked up the fireplace anyways, then at Cara.

“If someone dies—that’s one more zombie. But if many people die, it becomes a horde. Hundreds—

thousands—in the past, there were outbreaks of hundreds of thousands of dead. Animals, people.”

An apocalypse. Cara’s hair was trying to walk off her body. The [Singer] licked her lips, remembering the giant made of mice bones.

“How did people stop it?”

“There are warriors. Adventurers. The Hunter’s Guild of Noelictus fights the undead. This—this is just a herd. By tomorrow, Hernon will have alerted Lord Lantal. He will bring his retainers and end the undead.

We just have to wait the night. The walls are thick. The undead won’t get in.”

He said it for his daughter as much as Cara. The young woman was white-faced, more terrified than anyone else. Cara looked at her. At Idelt, putting a wood-cutting axe, his hammer, and other weapons together. And she wondered how Violetta’s mother had died.

Then—night fell. And the dead walked through Landsmecht.

——

Cara O’Sullivan sat in Idelt’s room, on the ground. The man had offered her the use of his bed. But even if she’d been comfortable with it, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep.

It was dark. A single lantern was lit, but Cara found the scarce light weak and only made the shadows dance more. She closed her eyes—but that was worse.

She felt like she was back in the crypt. Among the dead. Or trapped with—

Slap. The sound made someone jump. There was a sound—a voice made of fear. Then another one from behind her.

“Is everything alright?”