The rivers of rodents flowed through the endless stretches of scorched crops and streets littered with corpses.  Rumours of unnatural omens began spreading across the land. Those dying from the pestilence whispered of their visions. A pale figure of a young woman appeared in their fever dreams, wandering the forests with a book bound in black leather pressed against her chest.

And this is something the Inquisition could not accept. They were after the book, their weapon to enslave.

She was betrayed, by one of her own. The soldiers seized her at dawn. As she stumbled from the iron chains binding her feet, the sentence of the priests was even heavier; she was declared cursed.

They took her to the well. A pit once used to dispose of the plague-ridden dead. God knows how many of her tribe met their fate in its depths. She can hear their feverish squeals echoing in the walls.  But as she approached, she saw that the screams were not human.

A maelstrom of rats was writhing in the pit, a whirlwind of disease. She was thrown in the well, swallowed by the verminous abyss. They watched as she disappeared, yet no scream followed…

The rats crawled across her flesh without biting, gathering around her as if sensing an ancient stirring within her blood. Above her, the soldiers recoiled as a cold wind rose from the darkness below.

They left. But then came the weeping.