The battle for Roann had barely begun, and already the city looked like it had lost. Smoke crawled between the rooftops in thick, greasy ribbons, rising from fires no one bothered to extinguish. Debris and rubble were everywhere. Bodies lay where they had fallen in the streets, left rotting for weeks. There were no frantic families fleeing our coming, nor merchants driving wagons out the back alleys.
Those things belonged to people who expected there to be a tomorrow. Who cared about a tomorrow.
Men and women crowded the streets with crude swords, makeshift spears, and even shovels and pitchforks. Their faces were pale and streaked with fear, but souls burned with unnatural devotion. Others knelt amid the rubble and prayed toward the distant towers of the Divine Throne.
The sight made me sick. Not a single one of them was free of the curse.
"There must be thousands of them," Korra muttered in a dark voice.
