Acravirus

CW: Graphic descriptions

They say the skies were black with dust. Wherever the wind flowed, it would carry the remains of everyone we once held close. Streets littered with rotting dust as people collapsed from their bodies turning black from death.

I don't know why the world chose me to live. I watched my mother, my father, brothers and sisters, everyone dear to me get snatched away by this plague. First their skin grew dry and wet. Then their bones began snapping. Next, their head dropped off. I wish it killed me before I had to see it for myself.

— Plague survivor

Sixteen billion years ago, the acravirus swept its way through the Yonderverse. This devastating plague wiped out 99.9% of life in the Milky Way, and ravaged through neighbouring galaxies.

The virus could be transmitted if a spaceship was within a mile of another. It is the most fatal pandemic in all of history, having wiped out a confirmed number of 192 quintillion, with possibly twice as many undocumented.

Symptoms

A person will contract the acravirus weeks before symptoms first appear. After around five weeks, the skin around the neck and shoulders dries up and cracks, while the hands and feet sweat profusely.

Symptom Summary

Skin dries and sweats

Bones grow brittle and break easily

Necrosis of the neck

Collapsing into a pile of dust

Bones will then start to deteriorate, causing fractures and breaks throughout the body. Joints in particular will weaken and infected often become immobile due to knee and shoulder breaks.

The last symptom to appear is necrosis of the neck. The skin blackens and falls apart as cells die, and the neck eventually breaks under the pressure. Once the neck collapses, the infected will disintegrate in a cloud of foul-smelling dust.

History

Exact dates are argued between historians, but the acravirus swept through the galaxies sixteen billion years ago. It is believed acravirus, a mutated form of the relatively harmless virus acrotorovirus, emerged around the Densen Quadrant of the Lesser Field. It first spread through fleets under asotamian and golloperian civilisations, two of the dominant peoples in the region at the time.

Consequences

Having annihilated almost all life in the Milky Way, most planets were left completely uninhabited. For millions of years these planets were left unchecked, ecosystems left to re-balance and domestic animals to fend for themselves.

Due to the aggressive nature of the virus and how busy the spaceways of the Lesser Field were, the virus had spread to other Quadrants in days.

In weeks, it had spread throughout the entire Lesser Field, and it took just two months for the entire Milky Way to have caught the virus. It ravaged further galaxies over the next several hundred years; most unreliable sources agree the virus died out after roughly a thousand years. The virus only died out due to infecting every last possible person, leaving only those with natural immunities.

Most planets were left void of civilisation. It took millions of years for new people to evolve on these planets. Some never bounced back to what they were, while others eventually blossomed into worlds far more advanced than they had ever been. Those that survived the virus were left with the monumentous task of repopulation. It took millions of generations to forget the trauma of this near-yonderversal extinction event.

Rarity
Extinct

Type

Viral

Origin

Alien

Cycle

Short-term

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