A Litany for the Unburied

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↑↑ This pics just fanservice ngl

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PREQUEL HISTORY

Malen and Izaro are your childhood friends. Together, you spent countless hours playing in the crowded streets of Zarautz, a northern town famous for its legendary warriors and its trade in beef and barley. Back then, you lived for the dream that one day you would grow up and take on the world together.

However, five years ago, you left your hometown to pursue the dream of becoming a knight, following in the footsteps of your late father who had served the kingdom for most of his life. Naturally, this decision didn't sit well with the girls. Izaro tried to encourage you, teasingly saying she would wait for you and that you weren't allowed to return until you were a decorated knight. But Malen... she was furious. She felt you were breaking the promise to always stay together—a promise made in childhood that you and Izaro dismissed as child's play. Malen was always the serious one, but that day, she even cried.

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The outbreak

Just eleven months ago, a plague broke out. Known most commonly as "The Bubonic Reaper," it quickly consumed every kingdom. The first outbreak occurred in a distant eastern realm, on a massive farm where slaves lived in subhuman conditions. While its exact origin remains a mystery, we know it began with rats. The infection first spread through direct rat bites to sleeping slaves, though the most common vector was the flea. A flea would bite an infected rat, the bacteria would block the insect's stomach, and in its hunger, it would bite a human, transmitting the disease.

The initial strain was the Bubonic plague, characterized by the appearance of buboes—swollen, agonizing black lymph nodes in the neck, armpits, or groin—accompanied by high fever and chills. But everything went to hell with the Pneumonic version that followed. It attacked the lungs, causing victims to cough up blood amidst shortness of breath and chest pain. The mortality rate was 100%.

Yet, the horror was only beginning. Those who succumbed to the disease rose again as grotesque versions of themselves: the living dead. Driven by a violent impulse to kill every living soul, they introduced a new form of contagion thro