Everything looked gray and lifeless, like the world itself was sick.
Viktor walked down the muddy path from the manor, his boots squelching with each step. Helena followed close behind, her eyes scanning the village ahead with growing unease.
"Young master, perhaps we should return and prepare better," she said quietly.
Viktor didn't answer.
His gaze was fixed on what used to be Millbrook village—a sprawling expanse of forty, maybe fifty huts scattered across dead fields that stretched for miles into distant regions, existing as isolated pockets around separate patches of land with their own varying fertility, wells, and whatever resources the harsh terrain allowed, rather than unified in a single place.
Here in the early portion, barely five or six houses huddled loosely near what passed for a center, while the others lay miles away.
Half the roofs had collapsed inward, mud walls cracked like dried riverbeds, thatch rotting in clumps.
