Deus Necros

She pushed one finger into the mud at the edge and lifted it. The moisture coating her fingertip vanished within seconds, leaving a trace of pale dust behind.

Celine knelt beside the channel. "If the soil isn’t retaining the water, where is it going?"

"We don’t know," Misty said. "There is no drainage beneath the field, and nothing is collecting farther downhill. The water disappears after the earth absorbs it."

A worker standing nearby raised a waterskin and drank deeply. His wife watched him swallow, then caught his wrist when he lifted it again.

"Joren, slow down. That’s your fifth skin since sunrise."

The man pulled against her grip. His lips were wet, though the skin around them had begun to crack. "I know how much I’ve had. I’m still thirsty."

"You made yourself sick twice yesterday."

"And I was thirsty afterward."

Ludwig crossed the distance and held out his hand. "Give me the skin."

Joren obeyed immediately. Ludwig smelled the remaining liquid and tasted a small amount. It was ordinary water, clean enough that he could detect nothing unusual.

"How long has this been happening?" Ludwig asked.

"The thirst started yesterday morning. I’ve been drinking whenever I can, but it never lasts. Food is the same."

His wife folded her arms. "He ate three breakfasts yesterday, then finished an entire loaf before midday. He woke during the night and emptied what I had prepared for this morning."

Joren lowered his gaze. "I wasn’t eating for pleasure, my lord. My stomach kept telling me it was empty."

Misty joined them. "We examined him and five others with the same symptoms. Their bodies show signs of dehydration and hunger despite everything they consume. They aren’t producing additional waste, and their stomachs never remain full for long."

"What did the Order find?" Ludwig asked.

"No poison, disease, possession, or recognizable curse. We tested the wells three times and received the same result."

Ludwig looked from Joren to the full irrigation channel and the hollow wheat beyond it. He had encountered this principle before, though never in this form. A natural need had been stripped of its ending. Water entered the body without relieving thirst. Food entered the stomach without providing nourishment. The earth drank continuously while its roots remained dry.

The Usurpers took ordinary concepts and pushed them beyond every natural limit. Wrath turned anger into violence that consumed judgment. Pride became a state of completion so absolute that change itself was treated as a flaw. Sloth robbed living creatures of the will to move even while danger closed around them.

Here, consumption continued after satisfaction had been removed.

Celine met Ludwig’s eyes, and he saw that she had reached the same conclusion.

One of the priests approached them with his face drained of color. "My lord, this cannot be residual corruption. Whatever the Moonflayed King left behind is gone from this section."

"We know," Misty said. "Every marker is stable, and none of the old symptoms have returned."

A heavy impact sounded from the neighboring pasture before Ludwig could answer. Everyone turned as one of the cattle collapsed onto its side.

Ludwig had seen the herd several days earlier. The animals had been large and healthy, with enough weight on them to survive a poor season. The fallen cow now looked as though it had been starving for months. Its ribs pressed against loose hide, its hips jutted sharply from its body, and the muscles in its legs had wasted until they could no longer hold it upright.

Its jaw continued moving.

The cow chewed with slow, desperate motions despite having nothing in its mouth. Each empty movement tightened the loose skin along its face while its eyes remained fixed upon the feeding trough beyond the fence.

The golden wheat shifted behind it, thousands of hollow heads swaying beneath the morning wind.

Only a week earlier, Ludwig might have welcomed a clear threat. His own uselessness during the recovery of Bastos had driven him toward construction sites, fishing rods, and a boar nobody had asked him to kill. He had spent weeks searching for a problem simply because he understood problems better than peace.

That relief never came.

His attention moved beyond the fields toward the repaired roads and distant roofs of Bastos. Families had left their temporary shelters and moved into homes along those roads. Children played near wells the Holy Order had declared safe. Farmers had planted these fields believing they would finally harvest something from land that had spent years beneath the Moonflayed King’s influence.

Ludwig had also begun to believe the quiet might last. He had wasted a day in the Imperial capital, bought useless objects, and lost track of time without regretting it. He had sat beneath night blooms with Celine and kissed someone for the first time in his life.

Somewhere during those ordinary days, he had stopped waiting for the next disaster. He had failed to notice until the disaster arrived.

Noctivex responded to the change in him before he gave a conscious command. Black metal flowed across his wrist and climbed over his arm, shoulder, and chest. Plates locked together with quiet clicks while Thomas, Misty, and the surrounding workers watched.

The armor felt strange after weeks spent in ordinary clothes. Its weight and movement remained familiar, yet Ludwig had changed enough to resent how easily it returned.

He turned toward Thomas. "Contact master and tell him I’m asking for every report connected to Gluttony. Include disappearances, livestock behaving strangely, crops growing too quickly, unexplained droughts, and settlements consuming more food or water than their population should require."

Thomas’s flames sharpened. "How far back do you want me to search?"

"As far as his records allow. Contact him now and keep the connection open. I want each report as soon as he finds it."

Thomas nodded and departed toward the manor.

Ludwig faced the priests. "Continue the cleansing operation, but document these effects separately from the Moonflayed King’s corruption. We need to know whether the two influences are interacting anywhere in Bastos."

Misty understood immediately. "I’ll divide the teams. One will continue following the red veins and contaminated ground. The others will test every farm, well, and herd for unexplained hunger, thirst, accelerated growth, or depletion."

"Start here and work outward. Nobody drinks from an affected well until we understand what the water is doing to them." Ludwig said.

Celine called one of her attendants forward. "Send riders along the eastern and southern trade roads. Have them speak directly to farmers, innkeepers, millers, and village healers. Ask about food stores vanishing too quickly, animals refusing feed, empty harvests, and people who remain hungry after eating. I want dates, numbers, and locations rather than rumors."

The attendant bowed. "How far should the riders travel?"

"Every settlement connected to Bastos. If the reports continue beyond our borders, send word to the neighboring lords and instruct the riders to keep going."

As the others moved to obey, Ludwig looked across the field again. He had walked into ruined kingdoms and fought through cities after their people were already dead. Bastos forced him to watch the first signs appear while everyone still believed they could prevent the ruin.

That made it personal. He had made sure to keep himself busy when there were no trouble, but now trouble came knocking at his own door when he decided tor rest.

This was Celine’s home and his territory, regardless of how often he complained about the title. The people gathering along the field belonged to both of them now. The word their entered his thoughts so naturally that he only recognized its importance after it had settled there.

Something had reached into their land and begun consuming it. Death would follow if the process continued, but the first stage was simpler and crueler. The people would drink their wells dry and remain thirsty. They would empty their stores and continue starving. Their fields would exhaust the soil to produce harvests filled with nothing.

Celine stepped beside him and closed her hand around his. The contact lasted only a second, hidden from most of the people moving around them, yet Ludwig felt the pressure long after she released him.

Necros had forced him to stop because endless fighting had narrowed his sight. Every place became a battlefield, every crisis became another task, and every person behind him blurred into someone he was supposed to save before moving on.

The quiet weeks in Bastos had given those people faces. They had given him meals beside Celine, pointless arguments, failed attempts at fishing, and evenings with nowhere else to be. He finally understood what waited behind him whenever he walked toward another enemy.

A scream rose from deeper within the fields.

Ludwig turned as Noctivex finished sealing around his body. Celine moved with him while Misty shouted for the clerics to follow. Workers abandoned the wheat and ran toward the sound.

Ludwig started after them. The rest had taught him what he could lose, and Gluttony had chosen to reach for it.

Somewhere beyond the golden fields, the Usurper had taken its first bite.