Communal Sin

The fever spread through the village so quickly, everyone was sick before the first child died. The wise one said they'd been forsaken by the gods. No one listened. They were too busy dying.

In an earlier age, the epidemic, though tragic, would have passed quietly. The village would have been swallowed by the forest and forgotten. But these days, the village sat next to a gold mine, and many of the workers had come to the village for sex, then carried the fever back to the city. Soon the entire world was infected. Sin can no longer be contained.