First and foremost, this world is sick. There is an illness that is very similar to the like — the Hanahaki trope but it has nothing to do with love or soulmates or anything and is much worse because like. It starts in the lungs, yes — plants and some flowers do take root there but this sickness is something that takes over the entire body until the person simply isn’t able to breathe anymore. It was believed, for a while, that burying the person and letting them rest was for the best but lately there have been scarecrow-like husk monsters that are blowing into towns and they resemble those who have died. Investigations has lead to an understanding that when the host dies, the plants do not. They somewhat-mindlessly roam around and try to infect other towns and while there are rumors of Husks that are sentient, there is no proof and any findings were lost in The Great Archive Burning of Fall — which was an incident where one of the world’s libraries burned to the ground without any understanding of as to why it happened. A lot was lost in this fire and research has dipped back a few years because of this.



Towns are the safest place to be and all towns are filled with windchimes to signal when winds are strong enough to carry these Husks nearer and into the towns themselves. Windchimes are also often worn on people as they travel and act as a way to identify each other as human — as the Husks hate the sound.

People live complicated lives constantly on edge; there is no known cure for this illness and once the spores settle into a town it is very difficult to … uh … weed out, so to speak. People can inhale these spores but they can’t really give them to each other? It’s almost as if there is a basic little seed that implants itself and then, over time, the specific body it is in provides it with different nutrients that allow for different “types” of plants to grow — which in turn means that there are different types of Husks when they emerge.



A lot of people are just trying to live their lives but there are also some who dedicate their lives to making things better. There are apothecaries trying to ease people’s pain and extend life-expectancies or, during the worst, make things comfortable when someone becomes too ill. There are scholars studying the Husks and the spores. There are hunters who specifically track down and destroy these creatures. The world is trying to adjust to this way of life … but there are also rumors and a comfort in an understanding about something that is called The Final Dawn.

The Final Dawn is, as they say, a means of restarting everything. A reset of the world with the promise of being able to keep one’s own memories. A literal do-over. Many people find peace in knowing that this Final Dawn is going to happen — while others are going out of their way to try and make it happen.