On the 28th of September of the year 10 of the new Era, some inhabitants of the village of Kafas, near the border with Xadia, fell ill with a strange disease. After a few days, half the village was infected. The governor of the nearby town of Vadrato sent his doctors to help, but they could not find a cure. Many of them became ill in turn, bringing the contagion to the city. From there, the disease began to spread throughout Katolis.
Ezran sent Nirion, his personal physician, to inspect the situation. In his report, he describes the symptoms of the disease:
"I've never seen anything like it. At first, it looks like a simple fever. Around the fourth day, the skin becomes greenish, and the breath begins to become difficult. On the seventh day, the patient begins to lose sensitivity to the limbs. After two weeks, three at most, death comes." Nirion himself fell ill, dying a few days later.
The Green Plague, as people began to call the disease, spread within a few months throughout the Empire, and soon reached Del Bar and Neolandia. Evenere tried to block the borders, but it was useless: a smuggler ship managed to avoid the blockade imposed by the fleet of Queen Vilaasi, bringing the disease to the island.
The mortality was high, even higher than that of the Aditian Pox that had scourged Lux Aurea six hundred years before. Entire villages were completely wiped out.
King Ezran summoned the best doctors, magicians, and healers of the kingdom to find a solution: in vain. The dark magicians of Neolandia had no better luck: although there were some powerful dark healing spells, none of them had been developed to cure this kind of infection.
In the streets of the cities, the corpses piled up and remained to rot for days because no one dared to approach to burn them.
The plague spared no one: rich and poor, nobles and plebeians, men and women, old and children, all equally perished.
In Neolandia, half of the Council of Magicians was infected. Lord Policar barely survived, after a month of terrible suffering. Taleq, the first High Director, was not equally lucky: he died on January 10, a few months after he finished writing his Chronicle. King Vigimer of Del Bar was also killed by the disease on February 2, leaving the throne to his young son under the regency of his wife, Liutberth. His sharp mind and his money could not save him from the plague.
The tragedy, however, did not affect Xadia; elves were, in fact, completely immune to the Green Plague.
This, coupled with the fact that the disease had begun near the border with Xadia, gave rise to the rumor that the plague had been created by the Elves: a voice without any foundation, but that soon spread throughout the kingdom. Ten years of peaceful coexistence were thrown away in a few weeks.
King Ezran naively underestimated the problem. Busy looking for a cure, he did not give weight to it until it was too late. The capital of Katolis housed the largest Elven community outside of Xadia: almost three thousand elves, mostly merchants and magicians, inhabited the so-called "Xadian district", one of the new areas of the city between the old and the new city walls.
On February 7, the situation precipitated. It is not known what triggered the rage of the crowd: we only know that, in hundreds, the Katoleans poured through the alleys of the Xadian district, massacring all the Elves who they met to the cry of "death to the poisoners!". It is estimated that three hundred elves were killed before the Emperors were able to restore order.
King Ezran was completely shocked by the news.
"I haven't seen my brother cry in years." Callum writes. "He did not cry even when he heard of the death of his father: yet in the face of such a ferocious, stupid and barbaric act, he could not hold back the tears."
Luckily, the Empress had enough presence of mind to intervene before the situation worsened. Followed by her Guards, she reached the Xadian neighborhood and put an end to the uprising, arresting and hanging thirty-seven random troublemakers, since it was not possible to identify a leader in that mob of rioters. It was a drastic solution, but it managed to restore order in the city and prevented similar events from happening in the rest of the kingdom. But after returning from the expedition, the Empress felt ill: the Green Plague had entered the castle.
The emperors had at their disposal the best doctors and healers of the kingdom, despite this the disease caused many victims among the population of the castle. Callum describes the atmosphere in the city:
"Old Barius died this morning. I want to cry, but I don't have the strength. No one has it: even in the city, you can no longer hear the cries. Only the silence of Death reigns over everything."
Even the Imperial Councillors were not safe: Lady Opeli died on February 21. The gods that she had so honored did not succeed in protecting her from the terrible disease. Shortly before also Lord Vrigel had died: without heirs to whom to pass his immense fortune, in his will he left all his possessions to the Crown, on condition that they were spent for the welfare of the poor of the kingdom.
"Hypocrite to the end. That greedy smuggler never gave a beggar a coin in his entire life, and now he's going down in history as the greatest benefactor of this century. I'm gonna miss him so damn much!" writes Callum.
The Empress fought with the disease for weeks. Despite the efforts of the magicians, her condition continued to worsen.
It was at that moment that Callum and Rayla moved away from the castle, without telling anyone either where they were going or why. Not even the diaries offer us any clarification: they abruptly interrupt on February 15th, to start again only two months later, without making any mention of what had happened in the meantime. King Ezran was the only one in the court who did not seem concerned about his brother's disappearance; he may have been aware of his destination, but if so, he did not tell anyone.
On the night of March 10, a blinding light, visible from miles away, shone on top of Mount Kalik.
Then, suddenly, just as the disease had arrived, it disappeared. At the same time, across the continent, the sick began to improve and heal. The Empress herself regained her strength within a week.
The Great Healing, even more than the mysterious eclipse of 1244, is an event that has aroused the curiosity of historians for centuries. Again, it was seen by everyone as a real miracle. The Emperor also publicly supported this thesis, proclaiming a month of extraordinary religious celebrations and instituting a new feast, the Day of Purification, in honor of the gods.
Other unexplained events followed in the following weeks. At Silvergrove, the main village of the Moonshadow elves, the former Chief Runaan reappeared after twenty years of absence. No one could explain how, not even he: during his remaining seventy years of life he always claimed (or, as I believe, pretended) to have lost the memory of everything that had happened in that time.
But the surprise of the kingdom was even greater when, on April 20, Callum and Rayla returned to the castle. They were not alone: along with them, there was a young girl of about fifteen years, with five fingers on the hand and small brown horns. After fourteen years, Tiadrin had returned home.
