Contagion of Shadow Defeated, but Villages and Villagers Vanish Without Trace

Dateline: Still Waters, West Volsin County, Duchy of Elkur - 7 Bretranel's Month: Catastrophe and shock characterize the mood today in Volsin County as the two settlements affected by the Contagion of Shadow have utterly vanished. The only on-site survivor from the town of Thistle HIll is a single Gnome miner who locked himself in the Sun Quartz mine and was able to use the properties of the stone to keep the shadow infection at bay. No survivors have been found in Still Waters, though a dozen or so were able to escape the contagion alive and flee to the stronghold.
The entire village of Still Waters down to the paving stones is simply gone, with only the indentations of empty basements and walking paths to mark where the village and its people were. Likewise the normal fauna of the forest seems to have disappeared, leaving only plant life intact, though sickly and wan within the circle. The forest outside the contagion has remained unaffected, though a massive fish kill has been pushed down the Feylween river and mostly deposited on the banks in otherwise unaffected areas. The river is now running clear again for the first time in over a week.
Imperial Authorities are conducting extensive investigations in the area to determine if the villages and their people - approximately 50 - 70 people in each settlement at the time of total contagion - are truly gone and lost forever. While some hold out hope this was a transmaterialization, and the villages disappered here because they appeared elsewhere (The Plane of Shadow, if such a thing exists, being the obvious suspect), but the Varangian investigators stress that they have no evidence to suggest this is actually the case. Further, even if such a thing did happen, bringing an entire town back from the plane of Shadow would reasonably require at least as much power as was entailed in moving it there in the first place, and how this would be accomplished is unknown.
Equally troubling is the arbitrary nature of the contagion and the reason for the abrupt end of the contagion, "...like a black curtain just fell from the ceiling to the floor and was gone," said the Gnome survivor. His name is being withheld pending further investigation. He is not currently under suspicion but the Varangians have made clear they are ruling nothing and no one out at this point. This has led to additional speculation by some that there is yet some connection to the former Archduke of Zauzet province, and/or his daughter Camilla, who are also mysteriously and conveniently missing at this time.
The emotional impact of the loss of these cities is accompanied by an economic impact, as the county of Volsin was already one of the poorest in all of Khazig, and these two villages contributed most of the positive cash flow in the region, along with the Dwarven Town of Nockling Barrows which was thankfully unaffected. The growing settlement at the refurbished Volsin Stronghold has housed the refugees for the week or so of the event, but they appear to number fewer than thirty people all together who escaped before the contagion overwhelmed them in a process that must have taken a matter of hours at most.
The Order of the Platinum Dragon has issued a statement that they dispatched a Knight Agent to seek out the cause and identify the solution, and Gerom, Duke of Elkur, confirmed that he sent the Baron Council to investigate the issue directly, so it's likely that the cure was initiated by one or both of them, but unfortunately in such a way that the towns were not converted back to solid buildings and living people. Until we speak with them, we of the Archivist's Guild can do no more than speculate.
No plans for rebuilding exist at this time, as the two settlements and all but a handful of their settlers are totally gone.