It has been mere hours since the asteroids impact but a massive tree has suddenly sprout up in the center of the crater. It is tree like in appearance but looks fleshy, pulsing with a life of its own.

The tree is adorned with various glyphs and marks with no terrestrial similarities or origins. Many are terrified what this tree is for. Everyone speculated that it could rejuvenate the world while others condemned it as a potential threat that could end it.

It didn't take long for any of those speculations to be laid to rest when people around the tree began to die. No one was quite sure but a mandatory evacuation and quarantine was put into effect.

Three months have passed since the impact. Millions across the globe have died at a rapid rate, most attributing it to the trees presence. The total somewhere in the upwards of nine-hundred million world wide.

Many panicked, some deaths were mass suicides or the result of social breakdown and ensuing chaos. Governments put any rioting down quickly and lethally. Most people would think times like this it was OK to go crazy, but that didn't seem to be the case.

I am one of the trees researchers and, despite peoples terror, proximity or exposure wasn't why people were dying. I've studied everything from spores to virus', ruled out any foreign or unfamiliar agents that our machines could detect.

And yet... nothing. It merely pulsed and beat, throbbed with an oddly soothing rhythm. It was then I realized, when an old buck was treading through the pasture half a mile out that it suddenly died.

An opportunity...

Quickly I rushed over to the deer, studying it as fast as I could before death itself adulterated any evidence I could find as to why the deer died.

Nothing...

It was healthy, though old, but no where near in the scope of dying from age. I had to get more invasive and perform an autopsy.

....

What...? Is this?

I began researching the mass 'natural' deaths. Compiling everything from across the globe the nature of peoples deaths.

Died: XXX, Causes 'Natural'.

It was the same for every single death... except...

I realized it as I circled each 'condition' each person had. Every single one of them had a terminal condition. The deer had a massive tumor in the back of its eye. Had it grown any more, it would have died.

Is this... the Tree of Mercy? But how does it discern those who are sick... and why?