I gaped at the glass ball in the center of the cave.

I could feel the hope leaving me in tendrils.

“There was never a prophecy, it was all a lie,” I muttered.

Agnes let out a cry.

“No, no no no,” Brion said, “it would be impossible to falsify the cure. That glass orb is the cure to the Crimson Plague!”

Yet, even Brion knew it wasn’t true.

The glass orb, said to cure the Crimson Plague, was a hoax.

Agnes cried, her knees bleeding from the horrid plague. “I’m going to die.”

I shook my head. This couldn’t be real.

Brion grabbed the glass ball and chucked it to the ground. It splintered into small shards.

It was just glass; no cure was within.

The prophecy said on the third full moon of the 7th year of King Philip’s reign, a cure would develop from the pure light of the moon. It would collect within an orb in the center of a cave atop Mount Steel.

It was all a lie.

“Who would’ve lied,” Brion said, his fingers bleeding. “This was supposed to save humanity. Who would dare mess with our hope?”

I shook my head in disbelief, bloody tears falling down my cheeks.

We would all die from the Crimson plague.