Once, our lands were alive. Our pastures were green and rich. Our rivers were clear and our towns were teeming with life. Life was simple, and the land gave us everything we needed - grain, meat and water as pure as the mountain snow. Our towns were filled with music and laughter. With families working the fields and merchants calling out in the busy streets. 

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But then it came... the infection. No one knows where it actually started, only that it spread faster than a fire in the summer wind. It poisoned our pastures, withered our crops and turned our animals into husks of what they once were. It spread through the meat, through the soil, through the very air we breathed - until every breath was a gamble with death. 

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People fled their homes, abandoning their fields and homes. Some believed it was a curse, others a punishment from the heavens. 

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But one man stood against it. A scientist - stubborn, unyielding. He searched the swamps, the hills and the deep wild for answers. He walked through lands no sane person would tread, armed with little more than his knowledge and the will to save what was left. And he found it. 

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The cure is fragile and incomplete - but enough to give us hope. It did not erase the infection, but it gave us the means to fight back. 

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Slowly, life began to return to Green Valley. The fields once again turned green, the rivers cleared and laughter was reborn in its towns. 

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We rebuild, scar by scar, dream by dream. But the infection is not entirely gone. It clings to the earth like a scar that will not heal. As suspected, the scientist traced its origins - and now, the waters of Elysian Pool are still feared, the place where it all began - a wound on the land that will never close. Masks are still worn there and no one dares drink from its waters.

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The swamps, the river beds, the blackened soil are all quiet now. But silence does not mean safety.

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We tell ourselves the sickness is gone, but deep down we wonder - will it ever truly be gone?

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Now, we fight to keep it at bay every day, every hour. We fight with masks, with shots, with trembling hands, and with the quiet fear of what lurks beyond the tree line. Because we know, that the infection is not just in the land - it is in us. Waiting for us to grow careless. 

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The infection may be quiet now, but it is not truly gone.

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It breathes when we breathe, it waits when we sleep. And one day, when we forget to fear it...

 

It will rise again.