The air in the study felt like setting glue, so thick it was suffocating.
The cheers and sea breeze outside were sealed off by the thick glass, leaving only the sharp rustle of papyrus being flipped with rough haste.
Velin's gaze was fixed on the words "Clover Village." It was in the heart of his territory, far from the coast and the borderlands.
How could the embers of a plague that had already been extinguished defy all logic, leapfrog a dozen miles of safe zone, and land in an almost completely isolated farming village?
'Is it Hector?'
Such a vicious, covert method was too much like his "old friend's" style. Striking while the White Tower Territory was celebrating its victory, its guard lowered, and stabbing him right in the heart… the possibility was all too high.
Velin tried to find any clues from those few lines of scrawled report—a suspicious vagrant, a contaminated water source, or the residue of some Alchemy Potion.
But there was nothing.
