Chapter 8: The Sun Goes Out

On Day 7, the sun went out in front of a hundred thousand players.

It did not fade.

It was a white circle overhead, and then there was only the black.

The temperature readout in the corner of my panel fell as I watched.

[Ambient: -12. -25. -40.]

The chat was one long scream.

A player: [WHAT IS HAPPENING]

TinyTurnip, on the plank beside me, grabbed my sleeve.

"You said cold," TinyTurnip whispered.

"I said cold," I said.

[The Long Winter has begun. Ambient: -60. Open flames extinguish in 20 minutes.]

Every fire in the zone started to shrink.

I could see them dying across the dark, small orange lights going out one at a time.

Mine did not.

I pressed my hands to the white-gold log at the center of our street of planks and poured half my Ember Points into it.

[Hearthfire: Ember Points 14. Infuse the ooze wall? Yes / No.]

I tapped Yes.

The gray wall around us began to glow from the inside, a low, steady gold.

Warmth poured out of it, and Dee gasped.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, that's a house."

It was.

Four people on four patches, joined by planks and ringed by a wall of glowing slime.

It was the warmest place in the realm.

Everyone could see it.

Across the dark, in the cold, a thousand dying fires turned toward us.

I did not save them.

I could not save them.

But I had sold forty-two lumps of ooze to forty-two strangers, and forty-two small fires still burned out in the dark.

They had listened.

Then I heard planks.

Not mine.

Out on the far edge of the street, something heavy clattered into place, and a thin figure ran across it with its arms over its head.

"Lacey!"

Brett had bought planks with the six hundred logs I paid him.

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