Lyra moved through the Ashen Weald like a ghost along a familiar, haunted corridor. She did not walk so much as flow, her steps silent and precise, her body weaving through the skeletal trees and around patches of deeper ash that seemed to whisper with a faint, hungry pull. Kael and Elian followed in her footsteps, a difficult task that required their full attention. The ground was a treacherous mosaic. What looked solid would sometimes crumble like sugar, while seemingly unstable piles of petrified wood could bear their weight without a sound. Lyra knew its language, and they were merely stumbling students.
The journey was a descent into a deeper circle of hell. The air grew colder, the ash-fall thicker. Strange, phosphorescent fungi clung to the dead trees, casting a sickly, greenish glow that did nothing to illuminate, only distort. Whispers seemed to coil at the edge of hearing, not words, but sensations—despair, hunger, a cold that sank into the bone. Kael felt Theron's power like a low-grade furnace in his chest, a constant, vigilant burn holding the pervasive wrongness at bay. For Elian, it was a greater trial. He breathed in shallow gasps behind his damp cloth, his scholarly eyes wide, not with fear, but with a horrified fascination as he documented the anatomy of damnation.
After what felt like hours, the character of the landscape changed again. They came upon a wide, shallow river—or what was left of one. The water was a sluggish, viscous black slurry, moving with a syrupy reluctance. A bridge of thick, woven ropes and weathered planks spanned the gap, looking fragile against the oppressive gloom. On the far side, the Weald was dominated by a massive, fortress-like outcropping of black rock, its surface unnaturally smooth, as if it had been flash-melted and cooled.
Nestled against the base of the rock was Last Hope.
It was less a settlement and more a desperate scar on the face of the blight. A high palisade, fashioned from the petrified trunks of the Weald's trees and reinforced with jagged pieces of the black rock, formed a defensive crescent. Watchtowers made of the same materials stood at intervals, and Kael could see the glint of arrowheads and the shadows of sentries. The air here was different—still tainted, but with the faint, stubborn scents of woodsmoke, cooked meat, and unwashed humanity. It was the smell of life, refusing to be extinguished.
Lyra led them to a heavily fortified gate. A password was exchanged with a guard whose face was as grim and lined as the wood he stood upon, and the massive, counter-weighted door swung inward just enough to admit them.
Inside was a scene of stark, brutal pragmatism. The buildings were dug into the base of the rock or built from its shards, their roofs low and steep to shed the ash. There were no children playing, no animals in pens. The people who moved between the structures were all adults, their faces hardened by a perpetual struggle, their eyes holding the same flinty resilience as Lyra's. They moved with purpose, carrying water, sharpening weapons, or tending to small, covered gardens under glowing crystals that provided a feeble substitute for sunlight. Every resource was precious. Every action was about survival.
A man with a grizzled beard and a missing arm, the stump neatly cauterized, approached. His gaze swept over Elian with dismissive curiosity before locking onto Kael, lingering on the sword.
"Lyra. Found more strays?" his voice was a gravelly rumble.
"These are different, Bor," Lyra said, pulling down her hood. Her face was younger than Kael expected, sharp-featured and pale, with a network of fine scars across one cheekbone. Her steel-grey eyes were ancient in their calm. "The man with the sword. He cleansed the Blight Hounds at the Sunken Glade. His light… it's not like the others."
Bor's single eye narrowed. "What light?"
"Silver," Lyra said. "It burned the corruption away. Completely."
A flicker of something—not hope, but a kind of desperate calculation—passed over Bor's face. He gestured with his head. "The Captain will want to see you. All of you."
They were led to the largest of the rock-hewn structures, a hall that served as both command center and infirmary. Makeshift cots lined one wall, and Kael's stomach tightened. The injuries here were not from blades or arrows. They were the work of the blight itself. A woman's arm was covered in the same pulsing, green lichen they had seen on the farmhouse, the flesh beneath swollen and black. A man coughed, spraying black phlegm into a rag. The air smelled of despair and the sweet-rot stench of corrupted flesh.
At the far end of the hall, standing over a map carved into a massive slab of stone, was the Captain. She was a tall, stern-faced woman with iron-grey hair cropped short and eyes the color of a winter storm. She wore practical, hardened leather armor, and a long, notched sword rested against the table beside her. She looked up as they entered, her gaze sweeping over them with the weary assessment of someone who has seen too many would-be saviors come and go.
"Captain Isolde," Bor grunted. "Lyra's back. With… guests."
Isolde's eyes fixed on Kael. "You are a long way from any temple, Paladin. If that is what you are. Your armor is lacking."
"I am what I need to be," Kael replied, meeting her gaze evenly.
"He wielded a silver light, Captain," Lyra interjected. "At the Sunken Glade. It unmade three Blight Hounds. No fight. Just… dissolution."
Isolde's stern expression did not change, but a new intensity came into her eyes. She picked up a small, black shard from her table. It was the same material as the surrounding rock, and it seemed to writhe in her hand, a faint green energy coiling around it like a serpent.
"Silver light," she mused. She held the shard out to Kael. "Show me."
Kael understood. This was not a request for a performance. It was a test. He reached out, not with his hand, but with his will, channeling a thread of Theron's power to his fingertips.
The moment his energy touched the shard, the reaction was violent. The green energy flared, hissing like a cornered animal. A wave of psychic feedback—a torrent of hatred, despair, and a will to dominate—slammed into Kael's mind. It was the voice of the blight itself.
But Theron's power was the unyielding anvil to its hammer. The silver light at his fingertips did not flare; it condensed, becoming a needle of pure, focused judgment. It did not fight the corruption; it adjudicated it. There was a sound like a shattering chord, and the green energy around the shard vanished. The black stone itself turned a dull, inert grey, the malevolent presence within it completely and irrevocably erased.
The silence in the hall was absolute. The coughing man had stopped. All eyes were on the now-dead shard in Isolde's hand.
She stared at it for a long moment, then slowly lowered her hand. When she looked back at Kael, the weariness in her eyes had been joined by something else. A fragile, dangerous thing.
"Hope," she said, the word tasting foreign on her tongue. She looked from Kael to the suffering people in the cots. "We have prayed to Lysander for years. His priests come, their golden light can soothe the pain, slow the spread… but it cannot cure. It cannot cleanse." She gestured with the dead shard. "This… can."
She stepped closer to Kael, her voice dropping, forged in the fires of a losing war.
"Your light is a weapon we have never had. The things that hunt us… the Corrupted, the Blight-walkers… they are drawn to life, to the golden light. It is a beacon they seek to extinguish. But your light… yours is a poison to them." She looked him dead in the eye. "We can barely hold this line. We are being bled white. So I will ask you only once, stranger. What is your purpose here?"
Kael's hand rested on the hilt of his sword. The humble carving from the farmer felt like a brand against his skin. He saw the desperate hope in Isolde's face, the silent suffering in the hall.
"I go to the Soul-Queen's Bastion," he said, his voice echoing in the tense quiet. "I go to kill Corvus and sever the root of this blight."
A ripple of shock went through the hall. Bor let out a low whistle. Lyra simply watched him, her head tilted, as if seeing him clearly for the first time.
Isolde did not flinch. She simply nodded, a commander accepting a tactical report.
"Then you will need a guide who knows the paths that are not on any map," she said, her gaze shifting to Lyra. "The paths through the heart of the nightmare."
The scout met her Captain's eyes and gave a single, sharp nod. The decision had been made. The lone warrior now had an army of the desperate at his back, and a guide into the deepest dark. The weight of their survival settled onto his shoulders, heavier than any sword.