The graveyard breathed. Not with lungs, not with life—but with rot.
The bones shifted under the breeze. Wind here didn't feel like air. It scraped. It whispered. It dragged fragments of ash and bone like a thousand crawling teeth over the old stones and forgotten names. Xiang Zainan hovered inches from the ground, weightless, eyeless, faceless—and more alive than he'd ever felt as a man.
He watched the boy weep.
A thin figure draped in rags, curled up beside the decaying remnants of someone he'd once loved. Mucus streaked his face. His shoulders trembled as he pleaded with his parents and begged gods that would never hear.
'Since I am in a fantasy world, I don't think I can rule out religion here as some made up fairy tale, but should keep moving with caution.'
Zainan didn't move closer. Not yet.
He observed the way the plague clung to Felix's skin like a parasite with tendrils made of flame. The disease wasn't natural. It pulsed with mana, almost intelligent in its hunger. The boy's breath rattled. His eyes were sunken. Death was knocking, and it wouldn't take long.
But this... was opportunity.
"Let's test you," Zainan whispered. Not aloud, but through thought—his thoughts now had weight in this form, heavy as rusted chains.
He raised one tendril of dark, writhing spirituality.
High above, one of his newest mutated birds responded instantly.
It was larger than the others—sleek, its black feathers oily and iridescent, like blood pooled beneath moonlight. Aetherborne Strain Zero lived in this one. This bird was already big, but with Xiang Zainan's bacteria in it, it mutated into a creature with 3 eyes and 5 feet tall now. It's wingspan is now an impressive 8 feet.
It had responded well to his rewritten viral instructions. Not too violent. Not too passive. It resisted the magical corruption of the plague just enough. A counterforce. A parasitic protector.
Zainan sent the command.
The bird descended in a blur of silent wings. It banked hard above Felix's head, then dipped down—talons tucked—and its razor-edged feather sliced the back of the boy's neck so fast he didn't flinch.
A pinprick.
Just enough.
The bird vanished into the fog.
Zainan felt the moment the infection took root.
The bacteria—his bacteria—nested into the boy's bloodstream like a key fitting into a sacred lock. Mana in the plague began to recoil. Aetherborne Strain Zero pushed against it, unwinding symptoms, devouring residue, replacing magic with something else entirely.
The boy coughed.
Then... stillness.
Then, the miracle.
Felix slowly looked up, blinked. Breathing deep. The pain—gone. The tremors—gone.
The plague had receded. It didn't recognize the boy anymore.
It had been dominated, though not completely. Even though this can be considered a failure it was his first test run with an actual human of this world and the intended effects can be counted as satisfactory.
Xiang Zainan pulsed with dark satisfaction.
And then—he saw it. The mist.
That dark green mist.
Spirituality. A siphoned echo of life and memory and emotion, rising from the bacteria now nested in the boy's blood, drifting upward and flowing straight to him. A thin stream at first, then more.
This was the moment he had been waiting for.
Xiang trembled. Not from weakness.
From pleasure.
This was sustenance. Essence. A soul-born fuel. It entered his mass and thickened it, soothed the scorched gaps the sun had burned in him earlier. The decay inside him responded with glee, sharpening his focus, mending frayed thought.
Only he could see it. This mist.
No one else.
It spiraled from the birds, too—those infected with the strain. They were his eyes, his ears, his food.
'How beautiful,' he murmured internally, watching it swirl like incense around him, 'What are you but walking vessels now?'
Felix stood now, blinking in disbelief. He touched his own face, his chest. Confusion warred with joy.
Zainan didn't show himself.
The boy was never supposed to see him. Not yet.
Let him think it was divine mercy.
Let him think the gods had listened.
The graveyard was quiet again, the wind dragging a child's footprints through ash and bones as he stumbled away.
Zainan remained in the shadows, letting the dark green stream pour into him. Sustaining him. Feeding him.
This was the answer. The birds had been prototypes.
Felix?
Felix was the real test.
'Aetherborne Strain Zero…' Zainan said to himself. 'First of many.'
He turned back toward the center of the graveyard, his spirituality trailing behind him like smoke.
'Now,' he thought, 'let's see what you become.'