The northern road out of Emberwood was little more than a cart track, worn smooth by generations of farmers taking their goods to the larger market town of Oakhaven. For the first few miles, it was a path Kael knew intimately. He passed Hemming's boundary stone, the twisted oak where the children played, and the overgrown ruins of a watchtower from a forgotten age. Each landmark was a stitch in the fabric of his peaceful life, and with every step, he felt those stitches straining, threatening to unravel.
He walked with a steady, ground-eating pace that belied his age, the rhythm a deliberate mantra to silence the echoes of his dream. Elian matched his stride with surprising ease, the scholar's robes seeming less a hindrance and more a part of the landscape he moved through. They spoke little. The morning was alive with the sounds of a world still untouched: birdsong, the rustle of unseen creatures in the undergrowth, the whisper of a breeze through the tall grass. It was a beautiful, cruel contrast to the purpose of their journey.
By midday, the familiar sights began to change. The vibrant green of the grasses took on a yellowish, sickly hue. The trees showed patches of brittle, brown leaves. The birdsong grew sparse, replaced by an uneasy quiet. The very air began to taste different—less of life and damp earth, more of dust and a faint, acrid tang that Kael recognized from his vision of the Ashen Weald. It was the scent of the blight's breath, carried on the wind.
They crested a low hill, and the change became starkly visible. Below them, the road dipped into a shallow valley. The far side of the valley was a wall of grey. It was not a mist, but a permanent, sickly haze that clung to a line of trees whose branches were skeletal and bare. The ground leading up to this line was patchy, the grass struggling, the soil showing pale, dry patches like a fever rash on the land. This was the edge. The beginning of the end of the world Kael knew.
"The Blightline," Elian said softly, his usual calm demeanor tempered with a scholar's grim fascination. "It moves slowly, but it never recedes. It consumes. It is the physical manifestation of the metaphysical wound you struck."
Kael did not reply. His hand had gone to the hilt of his sword, his knuckles white. The weapon was silent, but he felt a pull, a magnetic draw towards the grey devastation. The Scale in his soul was tilting, the weight of the corruption ahead an almost physical pressure.
It was then they heard the cry. Not a bird, not an animal. A human sound, sharp with panic.
They exchanged a glance and broke into a run, cutting off the road and heading towards the source of the sound. They pushed through a thicket of struggling saplings and emerged into a scene of despair.
A small farmstead, much like those in Emberwood, was in its death throes. The fields were a lost cause, the crops withered to grey straw. The farmhouse itself was a sorry sight, its timber walls stained with a strange, lichen-like growth that pulsed with a faint, sickly green light. A man and a woman—the farmers—were frantically trying to hook a pair of terrified oxen to a cart already piled high with meager possessions. Their faces were etched with a grief that went beyond loss; it was the horror of watching your life be unmade before your eyes.
The source of their panic was immediately clear. From the treeline of the blighted forest, three figures emerged. They were once wolves, but the blight had remade them. Patches of fur had fallen away to reveal weeping, grey flesh. Their eyes glowed with the same vile green as the lichen on the house. Saliva, thick and black, dripped from jaws lined with needle-sharp teeth that seemed too long for their skulls. They moved with a twitching, unnatural gait, their snarls sounding like the tearing of rotten cloth.
"Blight-wargs," Elian hissed, pulling a short, surprisingly well-made dagger from his robe. "Their bite carries a fever that can turn a man's blood to pus."
The lead warg lunged for the man, who raised a pitchfork with trembling hands. He was brave, but he was a farmer, not a fighter. The warg would have torn out his throat if not for the silver light that suddenly filled the clearing.
Kael did not draw his sword. He simply moved. He placed himself between the farmer and the beast, and as the warg leaped, his left fist, wreathed in a nimbus of hard, silver light, met its jaw. There was a crack like splitting stone. The warg was thrown sideways, its neck broken, its body already beginning to dissolve into a foul-smelling black sludge before it hit the ground.
The other two wargs hesitated, their green eyes fixed on the silver energy that now radiated from Kael. They sensed a power that was the antithesis of their own.
The farmers stared, their panic momentarily frozen by this new, shocking development.
"Get behind me," Kael commanded, his voice the low rumble of an avalanche. This time, he drew the sword. The light that sprang from the blade was a focused, angry beam, cutting through the gloom of the blighted air. It was a declaration of war.
The two remaining wargs attacked in unison, a pincer movement of corrupted instinct. Kael met them with the cold geometry of Theron's justice. He was not a man fighting beasts; he was a principle enacting itself. His sword moved in a short, devastating arc, shearing through the shoulder of the first warg. The creature did not scream; it simply came apart, its form disintegrating into nothingness under the purifying light.
The second warg lunged for his flank. Kael didn't even turn. The ethereal shield on his arm flared, and when the beast's teeth met the silver energy, they shattered. The warg recoiled, a high-pitched whine of agony and confusion escaping its throat. Kael finished it with a thrust so precise it seemed almost surgical. Another pile of dissipating sludge was all that remained.
The silence that returned was heavier than before, thick with the reek of ozone and decay. The silver light faded from Kael's blade, leaving the clearing somehow darker.
The farmer, a man named Pello, stumbled forward, his wife, Anya, clinging to his arm. Their faces were pale, their eyes wide as they looked from the dissipating stains that were the wargs to the man who had unmade them.
"You… you are from the temple? A paladin?" Pello stammered, his gaze fixed on the sword.
"No," Kael said, sheathing the weapon. The finality in his voice brooked no further questions on the matter.
Elian stepped forward, his demeanor calming. "We are travelers, heading north. How long has the blight been this active?"
"A month… maybe more," Anya whispered, her voice trembling. "It's been creeping closer for years, but now… now things come out of it. The wargs. Other… shapes. We held on as long as we could. This was my grandfather's land." Her voice broke.
"You are doing the right thing by leaving," Elian said gently. "There is no shame in retreating from a flood."
Pello's eyes, full of a desperate, helpless anger, found Kael's. "Where are you going? Into that?" He gestured wildly towards the grey wall of the Weald.
"The sickness has a source," Kael said, his voice low. "I go to cut it out."
For a long moment, Pello just stared at him, as if trying to comprehend a madness beyond his understanding. Then, the farmer's shoulders, once proud and strong from a life of labor, slumped in a gesture of profound defeat. He wasn't looking at a savior; he was looking at a dead man walking.
"Then take this with you," Pello said, his voice thick with emotion. He walked to his cart and pulled out a small, cloth-wrapped object. He unfolded it to reveal a simple, hand-carved wooden symbol—a sheaf of wheat bound by a cord. The sign of a harvest-home. "This hung on our door. It represents everything that place," he jerked his head towards the blight, "has destroyed. Everything you are walking into. Take it. Remember what you are fighting for. Remember that there are people out here, living people, who are losing everything."
He pressed the carving into Kael's hand. The wood was smooth, worn by weather and touch. It felt impossibly fragile.
Kael looked from the symbol of a peaceful harvest to the grey, skeletal trees of the Weald. He closed his fingers around the carving and tucked it into a pouch on his belt, next to the whetstone from Orwin.
"I will remember," Kael said.
He gave a final, grim nod to the farmers, then turned his back on their fleeing cart and faced the Blightline. The humble weight of the carving in his pouch was a heavier burden than any sword. It was the weight of a world worth saving. Without another word, he crossed from the fading green into the permanent grey, Elian a silent shadow at his heels. The pretense of a journey was over. The pilgrimage into damnation had begun.