The road north from Branker led us to a quiet, misty town called Gromireston, `a humble settlement wrapped in pine and fog. The people spoke in whispers, as though the trees were listening.
The quest board stood outside the tavern, plastered with parchment curling from old rain. Only one posting was new.
Quest: Retrieve the Governor's Daughter's Bracelet Beads
Reward: 400 gold.
Lost in Gromo Forest. Caution advised.
Vikra squinted at the notice and grunted. "Four hundred gold for a bracelet? Someone's either desperate or stupid."
Before I could answer, the tavern door swung open. A man stepped out with broad shoulders, dressed too richly for this place, but his eyes sank with sleeplessness. "Not just a bracelet," he said. "A ward. My daughter Melby's. It keeps her curse at bay."
"Curse?" I asked.
He nodded. "Sleepwalking. My father~her grandfather, crafted the bracelet to bind her dreams. It's enchanted, built with ten jade beads carved in old runes. Without it, she wanders in her sleep. One night, the thread broke. She woke deep in Gromo Forest… surrounded by it's infestation… crawlers."
"Crawlers." Vikra's jaw clenched, and a flicker of disgust rippled across his face like an old nightmare had suddenly stepped out of memory and into the present.
The governor's voice dropped. "Gangrenous ones. Men who drained their mana to dust, with their rights of mana wielding taken from them by the Saints, and who now rots in the forest. Their skin blackens, their veins rotted, and their bodies at a constant rate of decay. They feed on mana users to feel alive again."
I felt my stomach twist. "How did Melby escape?"
"Someone shot arrows from the shadows, covering her retreat. She made it home but dropped the beads." He exhaled shakily. "Every adventurer I've sent since… never came back."
Vikra folded his arms. "You're paying four hundred gold total, now."
"I'm paying for courage, not graves."
"Then double it," I said before Vikra could speak. "Four now, four when we return with all ten beads."
The governor hesitated, then nodded. "Done. Please, bring my daughter peace back with you."
Vikra shot me a look as we walked away. "You really enjoy bullying nobles, don't you?"
I smiled faintly. "I enjoy survival. And if we're walking into a forest full of mana-draining corpses, I intend to get paid accordingly."
*
The forest loomed before us like the open jaws of a beast. Gromo's canopy was thick, sunlight struggled to bleed through the leaves, and the air clung damp and heavy onto my skin.
I took a long breath, feeling the hum beneath the soil. There. A faint pulse of mana, rhythmic and steady. "The beads resonate," I told Vikra. "If we follow the frequency, we'll find them."
For hours, we searched. One bead lay caught in moss, another wedged in the crook of a fallen tree. Each one pulsed with its own distinct hum, a heartbeat of magic calling to its kin.
By the seventh bead, the light had faded into green dusk. My shoulders ached from fending off beasts, trying to survive in whatever this habitat could give them. Vikra wiped his sword clean and muttered, "Three more beads and we call it a day."
"Agreed." I answered.
We found the last bead near a stream that ran too still, too dark. As soon as my fingers brushed the jade, the forest went silent.
And then came the whispers.
Not wind, but voices. Dozens. No, hundreds.
Figures slid from the shadows, cracking and shuddering as they moved. Their skin was split open, blackened veins pulsing. Eyes glowed faint red from hollow sockets. The smell of decomposition hit first… mold and mildew with a wet rot mixed in.
"Are these the crawlers," I asked Vikra with haste.
Some moved fast, too fast to be named crawlers.
Vikra swung his sword, cleaving one in half. It didn't even scream, it just gurgled, black ichor spilling onto the ground. But before I could react, I felt it, something pulling at my chest, tugging very hard. My mana.
"They're draining us!" Vikra shouted.
I forced a breath and flung both palms outward. Air cracked like thunder, sparking lightning as electricity spiraled around us in a defensive ring. "Back!" I yelled.
The galvanic currents roared, electrifying half the horde, but more crawled out of the dark. No matter how many I strucked down, more replaced them, each one hungrier and faster than the last. My lungs ached with the pressure, but oddly, my mana… replenished itself. They couldn't drain me. Ether sang with delight as it hummed into my veins, pulling in mana from god knows where.
Vikra wasn't so lucky. His steps grew heavy, his skin pale, as sweat beaded down his temple.
"Hold on—" he grunted as he paused to take a knee.
Before I could reach him, an arrow sang through the air, burying itself in a crawler's skull. Then another. And another. Each shot was precised, clean, merciless.
"Someone's helping us!" I called out, but Vikra was too drained to even look up.
The barrage of arrows continued as I resumed my lighting defense, thinning their ranks until the horde faltered. But then, silence. Did the reinforcement leave us?
The next moment, a man burst through the thickets, sprinting toward us. He carried a longbow but no arrows left in his quiver. "Move!" he shouted.
Behind him, dozens of crawlers poured from the darkness like a flood.
Vikra tried to lift his sword, but collapsed onto his knees again, this time choking on his vomit.
The stranger didn't hesitate. He swung his bow like a club, smashing a crawler's jaw, kicked another in the chest, and forced his way through the mass. I lowered my lightning defense to allow the man to reach us. Then he helped pull Vikra onto his feet. The man's breath came out like a demand, "Help me!"
Shock seized me in the moment and I stood there, frozen, not even conjuring a new form of magical defense. Who is this man and why was he helping us?
"Do something!" He yelled as the horde closed in on us.
Reality kicked in and I immediately pressed a hand into the dirt. "Magnesiusm, IGNITE!"
The ground burst upward, pulling long pikes of magnesium from the ground, emitting blinding white fire. The light was pure and sharp as it seared through the air, turning the forest a white silver. The monsters screamed and retreated into the shadows, their flesh smoking, some of their bodies unraveling into ash.
When it was over, silence fell once again.
The man slumped to his knees, panting. "Holy Saints," he muttered. Then, looking up at me, "You just lit up the whole forest. You're a Myriador."
"Myriador?" I asked.
He gave me a long look, as if examining me and then said, "Fletch. Name's Fletch. What are your names?"
*
After our little introduction, we built a camp away from the stench of the dead. Vikra lay consciously, his face pale but he was still breathing and that was all that mattered. I mixed herbs into a paste for his wounds while Fletch cleaned his bow, his movements methodical and calm.
"You handle light like a god," he said finally. "That wasn't fire…that was alchemy."
"That… was chemistry," I murmured.
He gave me a sidelong look. "Eridan, you're not like other mages, are you? You're a Myriador…"
" Myriador?"
"Yes, Myriador. It's the word of my family. It means someone who wields more than five elements. What I want to know is, how many elements can you actually wield?"
I froze. " Myriador…that's a pretty word, but that information is not something I share openly."
He smiled faintly, eyes half-lidded. "Don't worry. I can keep a secret."
I raised a brow. "Why should I trust a stranger?"
"Because I saved your friend," he said simply. "And because I'm mana-less. You are all safe here with me. Those crawlers can't syphon anything from me… so unless they have a death wish, then tend to leave me alone in these woods. "
That made me pause. "What do you mean, you don't have mana?"
"I was born without it." He said it like a confession and a curse. "Came from a line of powerful wielders, Myriadors to be exact. When they found out I was empty, they gave me away to my servant's quarters. I was to be raised like a slave whose only benefit is breeding. They said I was a disgrace to the family bloodline. I made the hard decision to run away. Away from my family and everything I've ever learned. I learned to survive against the odds. And when I heard about this place… where no mana wielder dare ventures, I knew this is where I can really learn how to survive the world."
I studied him carefully, the faint scars, the lean muscle, the calloused hands of someone who had lived every day fighting to survive. "You've lived here ever since."
"Close enough. Gromo's forest is home. I know every sound, every shadow." He looked at me then, really looked. "Until you, I thought I'd seen everything that could live here."
Before I could respond, Vikra stirred, groaning."I could use some water."
Fletch grinned and passed him the flask. "He's alive. Good. Means I didn't waste arrows for nothing."
Vikra took a slow drink. "Who's the archer?"
"Fletch," I said. "And apparently, our new savior."
"Temporarily," Fletch added. His eyes darkened. "I didn't come here to play hero. I came here hunting for something."
Vikra raised a brow. "Let me guess… the thing that commands those crawlers?"
Fletch's mouth tightened. "Voryna. The master who made them. It feeds off their addiction, using them to drain others to build its own strength. That thing has been rotting in that forest for years, making and gathering its own army."
I felt the name settle like ash in my chest. "And you've been tracking it."
"Trying," he said. "But I can't take it alone, especially without any mana. I need help." His gaze flicked between us. "You two have what I don't. You have power. I have what you don't. Knowledge."
Vikra groaned. "We just crawled out of that nightmare, and you want to dive back in?"
I looked at the firelight flickering across the jade beads in my hand. All ten, glowing faintly like captured moons. Melby's safety. The governor's reward. The lingering stench of death in that forest that would keep spreading if no one stopped it.
"No," I said softly. "I don't want to go back."
Fletch tilted his head. "But you will."
I met his eyes. "Yes. I will."
Vikra groaned, dropping his head back against the ground. "You two are going to get us killed."
"Not if we kill Voryna first," I said, extending my hand to Fletch.
He clasped it firmly, the firelight glinting off his bowstring. "Deal."
And that night, under the hush of the forest and the hum of ten jade beads, we formed a new promise, one born not from greed or glory, but from something heavier.
Retribution.
We left Gromireston at dawn, well prepared with the equipment needed to defeat crawlers. The governor paid us double, exactly as promised. Though the gold felt hollow compared to what waited for us ahead.
The edge of Gromo Forest loomed like a bruise against the sky. Mist curled through the roots, thick enough to hide footsteps. Birds had abandoned this place long ago. Even the wind hesitated before crossing the treeline.
Vikra tightened the strap across his sword. "Last chance to turn back."
Fletch adjusted his bowstring, tapped the bottom of his quiver to confirm its fullness, and narrowed his eyes. "You'd have better luck convincing the sun not to rise."
I smiled faintly. "Then we go forward."
The trees swallowed us whole.