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-Chapter 41: Arthur's Span
+Chapter 35: The Outbreak
 
-The first shovelful of dirt didn’t make a sound against the wool of Arthur’s burial shroud, but the second hit the wooden floor of the grave with a hollow, final thud that echoed off the riverbanks. It was a sound that seemed to stop the flow of the Cypress Bend entirely, chilling the air until the humid morning felt like the teeth of winter. 
+The thermometer in little Toby’s mouth didn’t just beep; it hissed a death sentence in the form of a 104.2-degree reading. Helen didn’t look up at the boy’s mother, Sarah, because she didn’t want to see the reflection of her own mounting dread in the woman’s eyes. Instead, she adjusted her glasses, the bridge of which was slick with the humid, recycled air of the Cypress Bend infirmary, and looked at the boy’s throat. It was a landscape of raw, angry red—pustules the color of curdled cream clung to the tonsils like barnacles on a rotting hull.
 
-Silas held the shovel with knuckles so white they looked like carved ivory. He didn’t pass the tool to the next man. He couldn’t. His boots were sunk two inches into the red clay at the edge of the pit, his breathing heavy and ragged, pulling in the scent of damp earth and the metallic tang of the river. Behind him, the community of Cypress Bend stood in a silent semi-circle, a wall of frayed denim, black cotton, and eyes that refused to meet the sun.
+"Is it the water?" Sarah’s voice was a brittle wire, ready to snap under the slightest tension. Her fingers were white-knuckled where they gripped the edge of the examination cot.
 
-"Steady, Silas," Elara whispered. She stepped forward, her hand hovering just an inch from his trembling elbow. She didn’t touch him; she knew he was held together by a fragile, crystalline tension that would shatter if disturbed. 
+"The water is triple-filtered, Sarah. You know that. Silas checks the levels every four hours," Helen replied, her voice steadying even as her pulse thrummed in her fingertips. She reached for a wooden tongue depressor. "Open up, Toby. Just a little more. Be a brave scout for me."
 
-Silas didn’t look at her. He drove the blade back into the mound of discarded earth. "He hated the mud," Silas said, his voice grating like stones in a tumbler. "Always complained about how it gummed up the gears. Said if the world was built right, it would all be greased lightning and polished brass."
+The boy made a wet, gurgling sound as he complied. The smell was the giveaway. It wasn't the metallic tang of a common virus or the sourness of a simple cold. It was the scent of wet earth and copper—the unmistakable heavy sweetness of a virulent bacterial infection. 
 
-"Then we’ll make sure the bridge is as polished as he wanted," Elara said, her gaze shifting to the massive timber structure rising behind them. 
+"Get him to the isolation ward in the West Wing," Helen said, finally meeting Sarah’s gaze. She kept her face an iron mask of clinical neutrality. "Now. Don't stop to talk to anyone. I’m calling a Code Amber."
 
-The bridge—Arthur’s bridge—loomed over the water, a skeletal giant of seasoned oak and iron bolts. It was nearly finished, a testament to the man currently being returned to the soil. Arthur had spent his final months obsessed with the span, mapping the stress points and the way the current lashed against the pilings. He had died with the scent of sawdust in his hair and the blueprint of this very crossing clutched in a hand that had grown too thin to hold a hammer.
+"Helen, you’re scaring me. You only call a Code Amber for—"
 
-Silas threw another heap of earth down. Then another. He worked with a frantic, rhythmic desperation, as if he could bury the grief if he worked fast enough. The sweat began to bead on his forehead, dripping onto the red clay, mixing the living with the dead. 
+"I’m calling it because I need to keep the other twenty children in this settlement from ending up like Toby," Helen snapped, then immediately softened her tone. She placed a gloved hand on Sarah’s shoulder. "Go. I’ll be right behind you with the first round of tinctures."
 
-The crowd remained motionless. There were no hymns yet. In Cypress Bend, you didn't sing until the hole was filled. To sing over an open grave was to invite the damp into your own lungs. Only the river spoke, a low, churning growl as it fought against the new stonework of the piers.
+As Sarah hurried the feverish boy down the hall, Helen didn't move. She leaned against the heavy oak desk that served as her station, closing her eyes for exactly five seconds. In those five seconds, she did the math. The settlement’s supply of shelf-stable Amoxicillin had expired three years ago. The last of the Ciprofloxacin had been used on a puncture wound back in October. They were a closed system, a bubble of humanity surviving on the edge of the cypress swamps, and the bubble had just sprung a leak.
 
-Caleb moved to the other side of the grave, picking up the second shovel. He was a younger man, one of Arthur’s apprentices, and his face was a mask of poorly concealed terror. He mirrored Silas’s movements, though with less precision. 
+She turned to the wall-mounted intercom and pressed the button for the greenhouse. 
 
-"He told me once," Caleb said, his voice breaking the heavy silence, "that a bridge isn't just a way to get across. He said it was a promise. A promise that the people on both sides mattered enough to be connected."
+"Silas, drop whatever you're doing," she said, her voice echoing in the small room. "The *Hydrastis canadensis*... the Goldenseal. I need the entire harvest from the north bed brought to the lab immediately. Not the leaves. I need the rhizomes. Scrubbed, diced, and ready for the solvent."
 
-Silas paused, leaning heavily on the handle of the shovel. He looked across the river to the far bank, where the dark treeline of the uncharted territories pressed against the water’s edge. For years, Cypress Bend had been an island in spirit, isolated by the volatility of the currents. Arthur had changed that. Or he was supposed to.
+There was a pause, the static of the line crackling like a dying fire. "Helen? The Goldenseal isn't fully mature. We were supposed to wait another three weeks for peak berberine levels."
 
-"He died for a bridge," Silas muttered. 
+"We don't have three weeks, Silas. We have about six hours before the second child shows symptoms. Move."
 
-"He died for us, Silas," Elara corrected firmly. She stepped to the very edge of the pit, reaching into her pocket to pull out a small, intricate gear—a piece of a clockwork mechanism Arthur had been tinkering with before the fever took his hands. She dropped it. It flared gold in the morning light before vanishing into the shadows of the grave.
+She cut the connection and moved toward the back of the infirmary, her boots clicking a frantic rhythm on the concrete floor. The "lab" was a repurposed walk-in pantry, now filled with glass carboys, copper stills, and drying racks that looked more like an apothecary’s shop from the seventeenth century than a modern medical facility. 
 
-One by one, the others stepped forward. Mothers with children, old men with gnarled hands, the weavers and the smiths. They didn’t bring flowers; flowers died too fast in the heat. They brought tokens of the work. A scrap of sanded wood. A river stone polished smooth. A lead weight from a plumb line. 
+She began pulling jars from the shelves with surgical precision. Willow bark for the fevers. Echinacea for a desperate, flailing move at immune support. But the core of what she needed sat in a dark amber bottle at the back: a concentrated extract of *Usnea barbata*, the Old Man’s Beard lichen she’d spent months culturing from the swamp trees. It was the closest thing they had to a broad-spectrum antibiotic.
 
-The pile grew over Arthur’s shrouded form, a collection of the mundane and the meaningful. Silas watched every item fall. His chest felt tight, as if the very air of the valley was being compressed by the weight of the loss. 
+A knock at the door startled her. It was Marcus, the settlement lead, looking ragged and smelling of diesel and sweat. 
 
-When the mounding was finally done, and the red earth sat in a raw, angry heap against the green of the grass, Silas dropped the shovel. It clattered against a stone, the sharp ring of metal on rock signaling the end of the labor.
+"Two more down, Helen," he said, his voice low. "The Miller twins. Same thing. High fever, throat swelling so fast they can barely swallow. The parents are starting to panic. Word is getting out that the 'old world' meds are gone."
 
-"The bell," Elara commanded softly.
+Helen didn't stop weighing out dried thyme. "Word is correct. Tell them to stay in their quarters. Anyone who has been in the communal play area in the last forty-eight hours is under mandatory quarantine. If they fight you, remind them what happened to the colony at Marrow Creek when the flu hit."
 
-High above them, perched on the temporary scaffolding of the bridge’s western tower, stood the iron bell. It had been salvaged from the old ruins upriver, a heavy, soot-stained thing that Arthur had insisted be mounted before the first plank was even laid. He wanted the sound of the bridge to be the first thing people heard when they approached the Bend.
+"They're scared, Helen. They think you're just playing with weeds."
 
-Bennet, the strongest of the remaining apprentices, climbed the ladder. The wood groaned under his weight, a sympathetic vibration that seemed to run through the ground and into the soles of Silas’s boots. 
+Helen paused, a handful of dried leaves suspended above the scale. She looked at Marcus, her eyes sharp enough to draw blood. "These 'weeds' have been fighting bacteria since before humans crawled out of the mud, Marcus. My greenhouse isn't a hobby. It’s a munitions factory. Now, either give me a hand with the alcohol extraction or get out of my way so I can save these children."
 
-Silas looked up. The sky was a pale, washed-out blue, empty of clouds. 
+Marcus hovered for a moment, then stepped forward, reaching for a mortar and pestle. "Tell me what to grind."
 
-*Clang.*
+For the next four hours, the lab became a blur of steam and sharp, herbal odors. Helen worked with a feverish intensity, her mind a frantic library of botanical chemistry. The challenge wasn't just finding the right compound; it was the delivery system. The children's throats were too swollen for pills, even if she could press them. She needed a concentrated glycerite—something sweet enough to go down but potent enough to coat the infection site.
 
-The first strike hit like a physical blow. The iron bell didn’t have a sweet tone; it was a deep, resonant roar that vibrated in the marrow of the bone. It was the sound of industrial birth and human ending.
+She watched the clear liquid in the flask turn a deep, muddy gold as the Goldenseal rhizomes gave up their medicine. Berberine. It was a natural alkaloid, a yellow-tinted warrior that could bridge the cell walls of the bacteria. 
 
-*Clang.*
+"Is it enough?" Marcus asked, his brow furrowed as he watched the slow drip of the condenser.
 
-The second strike sent a flock of crows screaming from the nearby oaks, their black wings stippling the sky like ink blots. 
+"It has to be," Helen whispered. She was staring at a petri dish she’d swabbed from Toby’s throat an hour ago. Under the microscope, the slide was a chaotic battlefield of chain-link bacteria—Streptococcus. But it was a strain she hadn't seen before, likely a mutation from the damp, stagnant air of the swamp fringes. It was aggressive. It was hungry.
 
-*Clang.*
+A scream from the hallway shattered the concentration in the room. 
 
-With each toll, the community bowed their heads lower. Silas remained upright, staring at the bridge. He saw the way the sunlight caught the grain of the oak. He saw the precision of the joints. It was a masterpiece. It was a ghost.
+Helen was out the door before Marcus could react. She found Sarah in the isolation ward, clutching Toby as the boy thrashed against the sheets. He wasn't just feverish anymore; he was seizing. His face was a terrifying shade of dusky purple, his breaths coming in short, agonizing rasps.
 
-"From this day," Silas said, stepping toward the base of the tower, his voice gaining a sudden, jagged strength that cut through the fading resonance of the bell. "This isn't just the river crossing. It isn’t the New Way. It’s Arthur’s Span."
+"He can't breathe!" Sarah shrieked. "Helen, he's choking!"
 
-He reached into his belt and pulled out a heavy wood-burning iron he had kept heating in a small brazier nearby. The metal glowed a dull, angry orange. 
+Helen dived for the bedside, her hands moving with a clarity born of pure adrenaline. She felt the boy’s neck. The lymph nodes were the size of golf balls, pressing inward on his trachea. This wasn't just an infection; it was an inflammatory cascade. His own body was strangling him.
 
-The crowd parted as Silas approached the main support beam, the heart of the structure. He didn't hesitate. He pressed the iron into the fresh wood. 
+"I need the kit!" Helen yelled back at Marcus, who had followed her into the room. "The blue roll in the second drawer! And get me the ice—all the ice we have in the kitchen!"
 
-The smell of searing oak filled the air—sweet, pungent, and sharp. Smoke curled around Silas’s hands, rising in a white plume toward the bell tower. He moved the iron with the practiced hand of a man who had spent his life marking timber, but there was a ferocity in it today. 
+She pinned Toby’s shoulders down with her forearms, her weight keeping him from rolling off the bed. "Toby, listen to me. Look at my eyes. Focus on me."
 
-*ARTHUR’S SPAN.*
+The boy’s eyes were rolled back, showing only the whites. He was drowning on dry land.
 
-The letters were deep, charred black against the honeyed gold of the wood. When he pulled the iron away, the mark remained, smoking slightly, an indelible scar on the face of their progress.
+Marcus slammed the medical roll onto the nightstand. Helen ripped it open, revealing a row of stainless steel instruments she’d kept polished and sharpened for a day she hoped would never come. She bypassed the scalpels and grabbed a thick, hollow needle—a makeshift trocar she’d fashioned from a salvaged IV line.
 
-"He would have hated the fuss," Caleb said, wiping his eyes with a grime-streaked sleeve.
+"What are you doing?" Sarah gasped, reaching out to stop her.
 
-"He would have hated the spelling," Elara added with a ghost of a smile, though her eyes remained wet. "He always said 'Span' was a bit too poetic for a hunk of wood and iron."
+"If I don't give him an airway, he dies in three minutes," Helen said, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm register. "Marcus, hold his head. Don't let him flinch."
 
-"It's not just wood and iron anymore," Silas said. He turned back to the grave, then to the bridge, then finally to the people of Cypress Bend. "It’s him. Every time we walk across, we’re walking on his shoulders. Every time a wagon crosses to bring supplies from the south, he’s the one holding the weight."
+The room went silent, save for the harrowing sound of Toby’s desperate, whistling gasps. Helen palpated the space between the thyroid and cricoid cartilage. She felt the dip. The spot. 
 
-He walked to the center of the bridge, his footsteps echoing on the unfinished planks. There was still a gap in the middle, a ten-foot drop where the two sides had yet to meet. He stood at the very edge of the drop, looking down at the churning water below. The river was high, white foam licking at the stone piers as if trying to taste the new intrusion.
+She didn't hesitate. She plunged the needle downward with a swift, practiced motion. 
 
-"We finish it," Silas called out over the roar of the water. "We don't go home. We don't mourn in the dark. We finish the Span today."
+A sharp *pop* echoed in the small room. A hiss of air followed, then a wet, bloody cough. Toby’s chest suddenly heaved, a deep, shuddering lungful of air rushing through the needle. The purple hue in his cheeks began to recede, replaced by a ghostly, waxy pallor. 
 
-A murmur went through the crowd—not of hesitation, but of a grim, shared resolve. They had been tired. They had been ready to lock their doors and weep for the man who had been the brain of their operation. But Silas was right. To leave the bridge unfinished was to leave Arthur’s work undone.
+"He's breathing," Marcus breathed, his hands still trembling on the boy's temples.
 
-"Bennet, get the winch!" Elara shouted, her mourning veil already being tucked into her belt as she stepped onto the timber. "Caleb, find the iron pins! We need the center-stone seated before the sun hits the peak!"
+"He's stabilized. For now," Helen said, her own hands finally starting to shake. She wiped a bead of sweat from her lip with the back of her glove. "But the infection is still winning. Sarah, take this ice. Wrap it in those towels. We need to get his core temperature down or his brain is going to cook."
 
-The funeral transformed. The black coats were cast aside, revealing the work shirts beneath. The silence was replaced by the familiar symphony of the construction site—the rasp of saws, the rhythmic thud of mallets, the shouting of orders. 
+She turned back toward the lab, but her legs felt like they were made of water. She stumbled, catching herself on the doorframe. 
 
-Silas stayed at the lead. He took the heavy end of the central beam, his muscles screaming as he helped guide the massive piece of oak into place. The wood was slick with his sweat, the grain biting into his palms, but he welcomed the pain. It was better than the hollowness that had settled in his gut when he saw the shroud.
+"Helen, you haven't slept in twenty-four hours," Marcus said, stepping toward her.
 
-"Easy now!" Bennet yelled from the winch. "Lower it down... an inch to the left! Silas, watch your footing!"
+"I'll sleep when the stills are empty," she replied, pushing him away. "The Goldenseal-Usnea blend should be ready for the first reduction. I need to get it into the nebulizer."
 
-Silas ignored the warning. He leaned out over the void, his hand guiding the tongue of the beam into the waiting groove of the pier support. It was a delicate dance of tons of pressure and millimeter precision. 
+Back in the lab, the air was thick with the scent of alcohol and resin. Helen worked through the haze of exhaustion. She filtered the dark liquid through layers of fine silk, then combined it with a saline base. She wasn't just relying on tradition anymore; she was using every scrap of her pre-Fall pharmacology training. She added a drop of peppermint oil—not for the scent, but for the menthol, to soothe the spasming tissues of the throat.
 
-"Now!" Silas roared.
+By midnight, she had six doses ready. 
 
-The beam dropped into place with a definitive, bone-shaking *thunk*. 
+She moved from bed to bed in the isolation ward like a ghost. Toby was first. She attached the makeshift mask to the trocar, letting the herbal vapor drift directly into his lungs. Then the Miller twins. Then a young girl named Maya who had started coughing an hour earlier.
 
-The bridge groaned, settling into its joints. For a second, the entire structure seemed to sway, testing the strength of the pins and the integrity of the design. Silas held his breath, his hand still resting on the wood. He could feel the vibration of the river through the timber—a low, constant thrumming. The bridge wasn't fighting the water; it was straddling it, absorbing the energy, redirecting the force. 
+The hours bled into a singular, grueling blur of monitoring vitals and reloading the nebulizer. Helen sat on a plastic stool in the center of the ward, a notebook on her knee, recording every dip in temperature, every change in heart rate. 
 
-It held.
+Around 3:00 AM, the cooling system in the West Wing groaned and died. 
 
-The cheers were brief. There was too much work left for a celebration. They spent the next several hours bolting down the secondary planks, reinforcing the railings, and clearing the debris from the footpaths. 
+"Is it the generator?" Helen hissed as Silas entered the ward, his face streaked with grease.
 
-As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the Cypress Bend, the last bolt was tightened. 
+"No, it's the compressor. It’s shot, Helen. I can’t fix it without parts from the city," Silas whispered, looking at the sleeping children. "It’s going to get sweltering in here within the hour."
 
-The community gathered at the western entrance. They looked tired—exhausted down to the soul—but there was a new light in their eyes. They looked at the grave, now a quiet mound under the shade of the oak, and then they looked at the bridge.
+"We can't have heat," Helen said, her voice rising in panic. "Heat breeds the bacteria. It’ll turn this room into an incubator."
 
-Silas stood at the very front. He looked down at his hands. They were covered in a mixture of red clay from the grave and sawdust from the bridge. He didn't want to wash them.
+"We can open the windows," Silas suggested.
 
-"Who goes first?" Elara asked softly.
+"And let the swamp humidity in? That’s worse." Helen stood up, her mind racing. "Go to the pantry. Get every jar of honey we have. The raw stuff, not the filtered. We’re going to coat the walls of their throats. We’re going to create a sugar-based osmotic barrier."
 
-Silas looked at the Span. It looked different now that it was complete. It looked like a permanent part of the landscape, as if it had always been there, waiting for Arthur to find it within the trees.
+"Helen, you're talking like a madwoman," Marcus said, appearing in the doorway. "Honey?"
 
-"We all go," Silas said. "Together."
+"Honey is hygroscopic! It draws water out of bacterial cells. It dehydrates them! It's been used since the Pharaohs for a reason!" she shouted, her exhaustion finally boiling over into rage. "If we can't keep them cool, we make the environment uninhabitable for the pathogens. MOVE!"
 
-He took Elara’s hand. On his other side, he took Caleb’s. The line formed, a human chain stretching across the width of the road. They stepped onto the first plank.
+They moved. For the rest of the night, Helen didn't use needles or inhalants. She used silver spoons. She moved from child to child, tilting their heads back and coaxing a thick, dark slurry of Manuka-style honey mixed with high-potency Echinacea down their throats. It was slow. It was messy. It was primitive.
 
-The wood felt solid. It didn't creak. It didn't give. They walked slowly, their footfalls creating a rhythmic drumming that competed with the sound of the water. When they reached the center, directly over the deepest part of the Cypress Bend, Silas stopped.
+As the sun began to bleed over the horizon, casting a bruised purple light over the cypress trees outside, the infirmary fell into a strange, heavy silence. 
 
-He looked down. Through the narrow gaps in the planks, he could see the dark, racing water. It looked powerful, deadly, and indifferent. 
+The frantic whistling of blocked airways had stopped.
 
-"Goodbye, Arthur," he whispered.
+Helen stood over Toby’s bed. She reached out and touched his forehead. It was cool. Damp, but cool. She checked his throat. The angry, curdled pustules had begun to grey and shrivel. The swelling in his neck had gone down enough that she could see the outline of his jaw again.
 
-He felt the others squeeze his hands. For a moment, it felt like the bridge was breathing with them. The iron bell above gave one final, unprompted toll—perhaps moved by a rogue gust of wind, or perhaps by the settling of the tower. 
+She walked to the window and pushed the heavy curtain aside. The swamp was waking up, a chorus of frogs and night-birds marking the transition to day. She looked at her hands. They were stained yellow from the berberine, the color etched into the callouses of her palms. 
 
-They crossed to the other side, stepping off the wood and onto the grass of the far bank. They were the first people in the history of the Bend to cross the river without a boat, without a risk of drowning, without the mercy of the current. They were on the other side.
+Marcus walked up behind her, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "They're all sleeping naturally now, Helen. Even Maya. Her fever broke ten minutes ago."
 
-Silas turned back to look at the town. From here, Cypress Bend looked small, nestled in the crook of the valley. It looked vulnerable. But the bridge—Arthur’s Span—tied it to the rest of the world. It was a lifeline.
+Helen didn't speak. She couldn't. The knot in her chest, the one she’d been carrying since Toby first walked in, was finally beginning to loosen, and she knew if she opened her mouth, she would start to sob.
 
-As the dusk settled in, turning the river to a ribbon of liquid silver, Silas noticed a figure standing near the entrance of the bridge. It was a man he didn't recognize, dressed in heavy traveling greys, holding the reins of a horse that looked as tired as the people of the Bend.
+"You saved them," Marcus said quietly. "With weeds and honey."
 
-The stranger looked at the freshly charred letters on the beam—*ARTHUR’S SPAN*—and then looked at the crowd on the far bank.
+"I bought us time," Helen corrected him, her voice a raspy whisper. "But the bacteria is still out there, Marcus. It’s in the soil. It’s in the air. This was a skirmish. The war is just beginning."
 
-"Is the way open?" the stranger called out, his voice carrying easily over the water.
+She turned away from the window, her eyes falling on the empty jars and the stained mortar and pestle. She felt a profound sense of isolation. She was the only thing standing between these people and the relentless, microscopic hunger of the natural world. 
 
-Silas felt a surge of something that wasn't quite joy, but was a far cry from the despair of the morning. He looked at Arthur’s grave, then back at the traveler. 
+She walked back to her desk and sat down, pulling a fresh sheet of paper toward her. She didn't head for her bed. She didn't seek out a meal.
 
-"The way is open," Silas shouted back.
+She began to write a list of every medicinal plant they hadn't yet successfully cultivated, her pen scratching fiercely against the paper.
 
-The traveler nodded, led his horse onto the wood, and began the crossing. The rhythmic clip-clop of the hooves against the oak was the most beautiful sound Silas had ever heard. It was the sound of the world coming to them.
+"We need more Willow," she muttered to herself, the light of the rising sun catching the silver in her hair. "And we need to find a way to stabilize the Usnea without the high-proof alcohol. If the still breaks next time..."
 
-But as the traveler reached the midpoint, he stopped, his horse whinnying and tossing its head as it stared at the shadows beneath the western tower.
+A soft sound came from the ward—a child’s voice, small and clear.
 
-Silas frowned, stepping forward. "Is there a problem?"
+"Mama? I’m hungry."
 
-The traveler didn't look at Silas. He was staring at the base of the bell tower, where the smoke from Silas’s branding iron was still thin and ghostly in the evening air. 
+Helen dropped the pen. She stayed in her chair, her head bowing as she finally allowed the first tear to track through the dust on her cheek. She didn't move until she heard Sarah’s sob of relief, a sound more beautiful than any symphony.
 
-"I thought you said the way was open," the traveler said, his voice dropping to a low, uneasy rasp.
+But as she looked out at the dark, encroaching green of the cypress bend, she knew the victory was temporary.
 
-"It is," Silas said, heart beginning to hammer against his ribs.
-
-"Then tell me," the traveler said, pointing a trembling finger toward the dark mouth of the bridge. "Who is that standing guard at the end of your span?"
-
-Silas looked. The entrance was empty. There was nothing there but the settling dust and the cooling brand. But then, the bell tolled—not a roar of iron, but a soft, melodic chime that shouldn't have been possible.
-
-In the guttering light, Silas saw a shadow move against the wood, a shape that had no business being there, and his blood turned to ice as he realized the bridge wasn't just a way across for the living.
+The swamp was patient, and the next shadow to fall over the settlement wouldn’t be nearly as easy to cure.