Ian curled up in the cramped isolation room.
There was barely enough space for a few worn straw mats and one or two stiff blankets.
The air reeked of damp and decay, as though death itself hung in the room.
Everything around him was dim.
Muffled sounds reached his ears without pause.
Some people coughed, some groaned, and others wept quietly.
Others rambled deliriously, murmuring names that did not exist or endlessly recounting strange dreams.
This was already the late stage of the illness. Ian guessed they did not have long to live.
Ian pulled his ragged blanket tighter around himself, shivering.
Though the air was hot and humid, he felt as if he lay naked in the snow, every inch of his skin numb with cold.
His head throbbed viciously, like a sheet of paper being slowly torn to shreds.
Even moving a finger had become too much to hope for.
Ian knew he did not have an ordinary illness. This was the "Snow Spirit's Curse."
It was a nightmare long known throughout the Northern Frontier, a tide of death that inevitably swept through every decade or so.
Ian closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, but it was too cold.
Every breath felt like inhaling shards of ice.
His blood seemed to have stopped flowing, and even his heart beat sluggishly, as though frozen.
Suddenly, in the blurred darkness before his eyes, he saw Erin.
She was his wife.
There she stood in the doorway of the isolation room, wearing that familiar, gentle smile and beckoning softly to him.
"Ian..." she called.
Her voice was as ethereal as a dream, yet heartbreakingly real.
Ian's eyes burned, and he almost tried to drag himself over to her.
But reason held him firmly in place.
No, this wasn't real.
*All