Their clothes had long since rotted away, hanging off them like strips of rags and exposing the grayish-white, wrinkled skin beneath.
That skin was neither the skin of the living nor the skin of the dead. It lay somewhere in between.
It looked like rotten flesh that had been soaked in water for too long, or cured meat dried by the wind. It had no elasticity, no warmth, no luster.
It was covered in scars, some new, some old.
The old ones had scabbed over, but the scabs would never fall away, because the skin would never heal. The scabs remained stuck there forever, growing thicker and harder.
The new wounds were still bleeding. The blood was dark red and thick, like jam about to congeal, yet it never did.
The flesh around the wounds had turned outward. It was not bright red, but grayish-white, like overboiled chicken breast.
Their faces had sunk in.
Their cheekbones jutted high, their eye sockets were deeply sunken, their lips cracked, and their teeth lay exposed.
Not all their teeth remained. Some had fallen out, but the roots were still embedded in their gums like nails.
Their gums were black—not naturally black, but blackened by prolonged bleeding, decay, and infection.
Their eyes were grayish-white, their pupils unfocused, their gaze fixed on nothing in particular.
A faint light still remained in some people's eyes. It was not the light of hope, but the scarlet madness that, having reached its extreme, had burned a dim flame deep within their pupils.
Their bodies were slowly aging.
Not normal aging, but the kind that felt like a curse—irreversible aging that forced them to stay awake and feel every inch of skin sag, every bone grow brittle, every joint stiffen.
The muscles of their youth had vanished, leaving only