The blighted lands stretched before me like a wound on the world's skin.
Three months I'd spent here, in this small village at the edge of corruption, tending a Heartwood sapling that most said would never grow. The soil was poisoned. The air tasted of rot. The few remaining villagers looked at me like I was either a fool or a saint, and I wasn't sure which was closer to the truth.
But the sapling grew.
Slowly, painfully, its roots drinking the corruption and transforming it into something fertile. Each new leaf was a victory. Each inch of root a miracle. The villagers had started planting small gardens near it—vegetables, herbs, flowers—and for the first time in years, things grew.
I was sitting beside it when the letter came.
Not by messenger—by root. A thin tendril of green emerged from the earth beside me, unfurling to reveal a rolled parchment sealed with gold wax. The Academy's dragon. Thalion's seal.
I broke it open and read.
Roy,
The seal on the Dark Forest has broken. The Necromancer's armies march. The Five have gathered at the ancient battlefield, preparing for a war that will decide the fate of this world.
They're asking for you.
Come quickly. Bring the Heartwood. Bring your party. Bring whatever you've grown in these months of wandering.
The world needs its gardener.
I read it twice. Then a third time, letting the words sink in.
The seal had broken. The war had begun. And the Five—the monsters, the heroes, the destined saviors—were asking for me.
I looked at the sapling. It had grown strong in these months, its trunk thick as my arm, its leaves a permanent gold. But it wasn't ready. It needed years, decades, to reach its full potential.
The world didn't have years.
"Can you come with me?" I asked it.
The leaves rustled, and I felt its answer—not words, but understanding. It was rooted here, in this corrupted soil, doing the work it was meant to do. But it could give me something. A piece of itself.
A single golden leaf detached and floated into my palm. It was warm, alive, pulsing with the same energy that had cleansed Malachar's chamber.
I tucked it carefully into my pocket, next to Kaelan's journal and the Greenwarden's text.
Then I stood, looked toward the horizon where the blight thickened into true darkness, and began to walk.
---
The journey took two weeks.
I passed through villages emptying as their people fled east. I crossed fields blackened by corruption, streams running thick with rot. I saw the first signs of the Necromancer's army—not soldiers, but the things they left behind: scavengers twisted by dark magic, plants grown wrong, earth that seemed to breathe with malevolent intent.
On the twelfth day, I found the first of my party.
Vance stood atop a hill overlooking a burning village, his sword drawn, his face a mask of fury. Below, his family's forces fought a rearguard action against a tide of twisted creatures—corrupted beasts, shambling corpses, things that shouldn't exist.
He didn't look away as I approached. "You got the letter."
"Obviously."
"Then you know this is just the beginning." He pointed at the chaos below. "That's a scouting party. A scouting party. If this is what they send to test us, what happens when the real army arrives?"
I watched a moment longer. Then I drew my sword. "We fight."
Vance glanced at me, surprise flickering across his features. Then he grinned—that familiar, reckless grin.
"Party 147 rides again?"
"Party 147 walks. We couldn't afford horses."
He laughed, and together we charged down the hill.
---
The battle was short, brutal, and strangely beautiful.
Vance's flames, useless in the Grove, burned bright here—purifying fire that consumed corruption wherever it touched. I moved among the twisted creatures, not fighting but listening, finding the tiny sparks of life still trapped within them, encouraging them to fight back against the dark.
One by one, they fell.
When it was over, Vance's family surrounded us, their expressions a mix of awe and disbelief. His father, a grizzled warrior with Vance's features weathered by age, clasped my shoulder.
"You're the plant mage. The one my son won't shut up about."
"Guilty."
"He said you could do impossible things." He looked at the battlefield, at the creatures that had turned on each other, at the patches of ground already sprouting green. "I believe him now."
Vance's mother—a sharp-eyed woman who reminded me of Mira—embraced me without warning. "Thank you. For bringing him back. For giving him purpose."
I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded.
That night, we learned that Dorn had been seen in the northern passes, holding a bridge against a thousand-strong company of the Necromancer's soldiers. Elara was in the eastern refugee camps, healing wounds both physical and spiritual. And Mira... Mira was a ghost, as always, but rumors placed her deep in enemy territory, hunting the Necromancer's lieutenants one by one.
We left at dawn.
---
The northern passes were a slaughterhouse.
Dorn stood alone on a stone bridge, his shield a wall of battered metal, his body a mountain of wounds that refused to fall. Behind him, thousands of refugees streamed to safety. Before him, corpses piled so high they formed a ramp.
He was still fighting when we arrived.
Vance's flames cleared a path. My roots pulled enemies from the bridge, sent them tumbling into the gorge below. Together, we reached him just as his shield finally shattered.
He looked at us, blinked, and grinned through a mask of blood.
"Took you long enough."
Elara found us on the road east, surrounded by children she'd refused to abandon. They clung to her robes, trusting, hopeful, and she moved among them like a mother hen with a sword.
She saw us, and her face broke into a smile I'd never seen before—confident, warm, whole.
"You came."
"We always come."
She hugged me, then Vance, then Dorn, who lifted her off her feet. The children cheered.
---
Mira found us.
Not in person—she never did, not anymore. But a message, delivered by a bird that landed on my shoulder and dissolved into shadow, leaving a single sheet of parchment.
I've found something. Something the Necromancer is protecting. Something at the heart of the blight.
Come alone. Come quickly. Come if you trust me.
—M
Vance read over my shoulder. "She wants you to go alone? Into enemy territory? After everything?"
"She trusts me."
"I trust her too. That doesn't mean I trust the situation." He grabbed my arm. "We go together. Party 147. That's the deal."
Dorn nodded. Elara stepped closer. Even the children, sensing the shift, fell silent.
I looked at them—my party, my friends, my family in a world that had given me nothing but took everything.
"She asked for me alone. That means something." I pulled free gently. "I'll find her. I'll bring her back. And then we'll finish this together."
Vance started to argue, but Elara touched his arm.
"Let him go," she said quietly. "He knows what he's doing."
I hoped she was right.
---
The blight thickened as I traveled east.
The sky turned grey, then black. The air grew thick with ash and the smell of decay. Plants withered at my approach—not from me, but from the corruption that saturated everything.
And yet, beneath it all, I felt something. A pulse. A heartbeat. The same ancient rhythm I'd sensed in the dungeon, in the Grove, in the Heartwood.
Something was alive in the darkness. Something waiting.
On the third day, I found Mira.
She stood at the edge of a vast crater, her back to me, her blade bloody. Below, in the crater's depths, a structure rose—black stone, green fire, walls that seemed to breathe.
"Took you long enough," she said without turning.
"Traffic."
She almost smiled. Then she pointed at the structure. "That's where he is. The Necromancer. Not his army, not his lieutenants—him. Alone. Waiting."
"Why?"
"Because he wants to meet you." She finally turned, and her eyes held something I'd never seen before. Fear. "He knows about you, Roy. About the Heartwood. About the Sylvan Circuit. He's been waiting for this moment."
I looked at the structure, at the darkness pulsing at its heart.
The gardener had grown.
The garden was burning.
And the one who set the fire was waiting.
I started walking.
Mira fell into step beside me.
"Together?" I asked.
"Together."
---