into wispy tendrils, which were then absorbed into the whole.
“Oh, wow,” I murmured, astonished by the microscopic view.
Sofia took my place and looked through the lens, as well. “My God, that’s… that’s the Black Fever. It’s… Jeez, now I see what you meant by concentrated death.”
“It doesn’t look like that in the blood samples we collected from the newer patients,” Amane explained. “From those batches, we were only able to ascertain that it’s some kind of death magic. But it’s… I don’t know, it’s more than that.”
“Whatever is fueling the Black Fever must be coming from some kind of obscure, primordial death magic. The kind that the dark lady herself would likely work with,” Amal said.
“Or one of the First Tenners, maybe?” I asked, the Spirit Bender’s name popping into my head. He was the only one I knew with nefarious enough intentions to pull off something like this. But then that brought up the question of why. Why would the Spirit Bender do this? Or Death? Why would they do any of this? It didn’t make sense.
“I’m not sure,” Amane replied. “But we can back up our conclusion with previous studies. A while back, Taeral let us collect energy samples from Thieron’s blade, and we saw something similar then.”
Sofia raised an eyebrow. “Wait, you found traces of this… concentrated death on Thieron’s blade?”
“We think so,” Amal said. “It looked an awful lot like what we’re finding in these blood samples. This pitch-black entity that just lingers, with no biological sense whatsoever. It was nowhere near as intense and dangerous as what we’re seeing in the Black Fever, but it’s similar enough to consolidate our conclusion. This is death we’re dealing with. The purest and most final kind of death.”
I sucked in a breath, trying to ascertain the depth of what we’d gotten ourselves into when we’d accepted the Aeternae’s request for help in vanquishing the Black Fever. The situation had grown increasingly complicated.
“Who or what could’ve caused it?” I asked, though I wasn’t expecting any of us to actually know. But Amal wasn’t deterred by the lack of information.
“You didn’t sound that far off in suspecting a First Tenner. Then there is Death herself, too,” she said. “A powerful entity has to be behind this for it to linger like a disease, so destructive, so cyclical.”
Sofia ran both hands through her long auburn hair, the hypothesis too much even for her. “This is insane. Why would Death do something like this, if she is behind it? Even if it’s one of those first Reapers or whatever. What’s the point? What was the endgame with this thing?”
Amane smirked. “Death is final, right? It’s the end. To every beginning, there must be an end. At least, that is how things usually work in this universe. It’s nature’s own rhythm,” she said. “Maybe Death or the Reapers didn’t like the Aeternae… cheating, I guess. Living forever. Maybe they worried it might put them out of business, especially since other creatures can be turned.”
“That sounds reasonable, and I would accept it as a theory,” I replied. “Had it not been for vampires and Maras, as well. No one’s gotten us sick with this pure death thing. The Black Fever specifically targets the Aeternae. It seems very personal. I think we’re missing something.”
“Oh, we’re certainly missing a substantial amount of history here,” Sofia said. “The problem is, where do we go for answers? Who do we ask?”
Amane stifled a chortle. “Death herself would be my first option. I’m pretty sure she can fill in the gaps. She can confirm or deny whether she’s involved in the propagation of Black Fever. She can even make some assumptions on the matter. I mean, we can keep talking about this with absolutely no end in sight, but if we are to help the Aeternae cure the Black Fever, we’ll need the input of death experts.”
“And there’s no greater expert on death than Death.” I sighed.
That meant addressing this with Taeral again. He was the only one who could reach out to her, who could talk to her about it. The problem was that we had yet to get all the details from his last meeting with Death—since she had sworn him to secrecy—so even if he did go talk to her, there was the possibility he might not be able to tell us what they discussed. We didn’t know whether she already had Reapers on Visio, investigating the Darklings’ affairs. Taeral had simply told us that she