The descent into the valley was a slide into a nightmare. The air down here was so thick with the scent of rotting flesh and sulfur that it tasted like copper on the tongue. The ground was slick with purple slime, making every step a gamble against gravity.
"Stay close," Kael ordered, his voice barely a whisper, yet cutting through the groans of the corrupted beasts. "Aarav, take the left. I have the right. Mara, watch our backs. Liora, you are the payload. Do not stop. Do not fight. Just run."
Aarav tightened his grip on his sword. His palm burned. The Blade Sigil wasn't just humming now; it was screaming. He could feel the enemies before he saw them. He felt their twisted, agonizing heartbeats.
Thump-thump... squelch.
"They know we're here," Aarav said, sensing the shift in the air.
A split second later, the silence shattered.
A howl—distorted, layered, as if three throats were screaming at once—tore through the valley. From the grey mist, the first wave hit them.
They were wolves, but wrong. Their fur had fallen out, replaced by hardened bark. their eyes burned with violet fire, and massive, jagged crystals protruded from their spines.
"CONTACT!" Mara yelled.
BANG! Her steam-gun roared, blowing the head off the leading wolf. Purple blood sprayed into the air.
The element of surprise was gone. Now, it was just slaughter.
"Forward! Push forward!" Kael commanded.
He became a blur of steel. He didn't just kill; he dissected. A wolf lunged at him; Kael sidestepped, severing its forelegs in one fluid motion, then ended its misery with a reverse thrust. He moved with a cold, terrifying efficiency.
Aarav found himself in the thick of it. A massive boar, its tusks replaced by jagged black glass, charged him.
Fear tried to grip him, but the Sigil burned it away. Time seemed to warp. Aarav saw the boar not as a monster, but as a collection of vectors and weak points. The neck is armored with bark. The belly is soft. The leg joints are stiff.
He dropped to one knee, sliding through the mud. As the boar thundered over him, Aarav thrust his sword upward. He felt the resistance of muscle, then the release as the blade pierced the heart.
He rolled out from under the collapsing beast, coated in hot, violet gore. He stood up, panting.
"Aarav! Left!" Liora screamed.
He spun around. A corrupted bear was swiping at him. He brought his sword up to block, but the force was like being hit by a train. CRACK!
He flew backward, slamming into a dead tree trunk. Pain exploded in his ribs. The air left his lungs.
The bear roared, raising its claws for the killing blow.
"Hey, ugly!"
Pshhh-BOOM!
A canister of pressurized steam exploded against the bear's face, searing its eyes. Mara had fired a distraction shot.
"Get up, kid! No napping!" she yelled, reloading with frantic speed.
Aarav gritted his teeth, swallowing a scream of pain. He forced his body to move. He scrambled to his feet just as Kael arrived, slicing the blinded bear's hamstrings. The beast fell, and Aarav finished it with a thrust through the skull.
They were moving, but they were slowing down. The ocean of enemies seemed endless. For every one they killed, two more crawled out of the mud.
"We're getting bogged down!" Kael shouted over the din of battle. "We won't make it to the tree at this rate!"
They were halfway across the valley, but the Elder-Tree still loomed far ahead. Between them and their goal stood a wall of monsters.
Liora, who was in the center of their formation, looked at Aarav. She saw the blood on his face, the way he was favoring his side. She saw Mara's steam-gun running hot, glowing red. She saw Kael's movements slowing by a fraction of a second.
They were going to die here. Unless she did something.
"Clear me a line of sight!" Liora yelled. Her voice wasn't weak anymore. It was the voice of a woman defending her lover.
"What?" Mara shouted.
"I said clear me a line! I can't reach the tree, but I can reach the earth!"
"Aarav, Kael! Wedge formation! Open a path!" Mara commanded, trusting the mage.
Aarav and Kael locked eyes. They didn't need words. They surged forward, fighting back-to-back, carving a V-shape into the horde.
"NOW!" Aarav roared, decapitating a corrupted stag.
Liora stepped into the opening. She didn't aim at the monsters. She dropped to her knees and slammed both palms into the corrupted, grey mud.
"Awaken!" she screamed.
She didn't use healing magic. She used growth magic. But she poured every ounce of her anger and desperation into it.
The ground began to rumble.
RUMBLE... CRACK!
From beneath the mud, massive, thorny roots exploded upwards. They weren't the corrupted roots of the Elder-Tree; these were wild, frantic roots responding to Liora's call.
The roots lashed out like whips, impaling the corrupted beasts, wrapping around them, dragging them down into the earth. It was chaotic, brutal nature fighting back.
A path opened up. A corridor of thrashing roots that held the monsters at bay.
"GO! RUN!" Liora gasped, stumbling as she stood up. The effort had drained her.
Aarav grabbed her arm, pulling her forward. "I've got you."
They sprinted through the corridor of roots. On either side, monsters clawed and screeched, held back by Liora's magic.
They reached the base of the Elder-Tree.
Up close, it was terrifying. The bark was black and oozing. The massive crystal shard—the source of the corruption—was embedded high up in the trunk, about twenty feet above the ground. It pulsed with a heartbeat that made Aarav's teeth ache.
"There!" Aarav pointed. "The shard!"
"I need to get up there," Liora panted. "I need to touch it to break the connection."
"Climb!" Kael ordered, turning to face the horde that was breaking through Liora's root barrier. "We hold the line here!"
Aarav looked at the tree. The bark was slick with slime. Climbing it would be difficult.
"I'll carry you," Aarav said to Liora.
"Aarav, your ribs..." Liora hesitated.
"I said I'll carry you!" He grabbed her waist and hoisted her onto his back. "Hold on tight."
He began to climb.
It was agony. Every time he pulled himself up, his broken ribs screamed. The purple sap burned his hands. But he didn't stop. He focused on the rhythm. Reach. Pull. Step. Reach. Pull.
Below him, the battle raged. Kael and Mara were fighting back-to-back against a tide of nightmares.
"Just a little more..." Aarav gasped, sweat stinging his eyes.
They reached the level of the shard. It was massive, jagged, and black, humming with malicious energy.
Liora slid off his back onto a thick branch. She stood facing the shard.
"Do it, Liora!" Aarav yelled, drawing his sword to defend her from any climbing beasts.
Liora raised her hands. Green light gathered in her palms, pure and bright. She prepared to strike the shard.
But then, the tree moved.
A massive, root-like appendage shot out from the trunk, not wood, but muscle and bark fused together. It slammed into Aarav, pinning him against the tree trunk.
"Aarav!" Liora screamed.
From the dark hollow of the tree, right above the shard, a face emerged. It wasn't human. It was a face made of wood and rot, with glowing purple eyes.
"The parasite... protects... itself..." a voice like grinding stones echoed in their minds.
This wasn't just a corrupted tree. The corruption had developed a consciousness. A Guardian.
The Guardian raised a wooden spear-like limb, aiming it directly at Liora's exposed back.
Aarav was pinned. He couldn't move his sword arm. He watched the spear pull back, ready to impale the woman he loved.
No.
He didn't think about physics. He didn't think about balance. He thought about the fire in his veins. He thought about the kiss in the forest.
He dropped his sword.
His free hand, the one with the Blade Sigil, shot out and grabbed the Guardian's wooden wrist.
Skin touched corruption.
"BURN!" Aarav screamed.
He didn't use the Sigil to find a weak point. He poured his own life force, his own Aether, directly into the Guardian through the Sigil. He treated the Guardian like a weapon he was overloading.
The Sigil flared white-hot, brighter than the sun.
The Guardian screeched—a sound that shattered glass. The white light raced up its wooden arm, turning the purple corruption into ash instantly.
The limb holding Aarav disintegrated. He fell to the branch, gasping.
The Guardian recoiled, stunned by the pure energy.
"LIORA! NOW!" Aarav roared, his voice breaking.
Liora didn't hesitate. With tears in her eyes, she slammed her glowing hands directly onto the black shard.
"BREAK!"
Green light collided with black crystal. A shockwave blasted outward, shaking the entire valley.
CRACK... SMASH!
The shard shattered into a thousand pieces.
The purple light in the valley vanished instantly. The Guardian froze, turning into lifeless grey stone. Below, the corrupted beasts collapsed, their puppet strings cut.
Silence returned to Verdance.
Aarav lay on the branch, his chest heaving, his vision blurring. He felt light. Too light.
Liora crawled over to him, her hands trembling. She touched his face.
"Aarav...?"
He smiled weakly. "Did we... did we win?"
Then his eyes rolled back, and the darkness took him. This time, it wasn't the darkness of a tunnel, but the deep, quiet void of total exhaustion.