A bone-chilling cold still lingered in the archive's depths—colder, somehow, than the blighted woodlands outside. Karrion's confession about Stoneheart had settled over them like a massive iron anvil, and even the crackling campfire could not dispel that weight of sorrow. Faint, ashen light filtered through the fissured ceiling, casting the room in a sickly gray.
It was time to move on.
Thalia rose first, her motion soundless and seamless, as if she were part of the darkness itself. She wrapped her cloak tighter around her gaunt frame, her pale cheekbones nearly translucent in the dim light. Karrion carefully refolded the precious blueprint of the Starflame Blade—Stoneheart's grief and hope inked into brittle parchment—and slipped it back into the hidden pocket of his cloak. He flexed his broad shoulders; the crack of shifting bones was the only indication of his tremendous bulk.
"According to those ruined charts and the star-maps in the archive," Karrion rumbled, voice raspy with fatigue and faint drink, "the leyforge must lie near the volcanic ridge deeper in the forest—to the southeast."
Raine gathered the scattered remnants of their finds: battered vellum maps imprinted with half-legible runes, star-survey instruments whose lenses were cracked, and the scant provisions left in their packs. Each movement—bending to retrieve a map, lifting a pack—sent sharp reminders of his weakness, lingering aches from the forging of the Blade and Thalia's cryptic healing rituals.
They extinguished the fire, letting one thin curl of smoke vanish into the gloom, then waded through the frigid floodwater toward the archive's overgrown exit. The fetid tang of corruption—sweet, rotting, as if the forest itself exhaled decay—grew thicker with every step. The twisted tree-shadows outside seemed to gnarled arms eager to pull them back into despair.
Just as they reached the threshold, Raine froze, every hair on his neck standing on end.
"Wait." His voice was a bare whisper.
Thalia and Karrion halted beside him. Raine's gaze had fixed on a nearby withered trunk streaked with oozing, ebony sap.
An arrow was lodged in the bark, its shaft quivering in the slight wind. The fletching—feathers dyed a deep, sinister red—marked it unmistakably: the blazing sun above two crossed swords, the emblem of the Templar Order of the Radiant Sun.
"A curse." Karrion spat the words out, knuckles whitening as he gripped his greataxe.
Thalia's eyes went ice-sharp. She raised a single hand in a silent command for them to stay back, then melted into the underbrush, moving toward the arrow's point of origin like a wraith.
Raine and Karrion pressed against the cool stone of the doorway, listening to the forest's oppressive hush—only the mournful wind in crooked branches and some distant inhuman croak disturbing the stillness.
Time stretched taut.
At length, Thalia returned. Her face was grim beneath her hood.
"A small camp," she reported in a near-inaudible murmur. "Three to five riders, at most. There's a makeshift firepit—still warm within the last few hours. They stashed their mounts nearby, cleverly hidden."
"Three to five Templars," Karrion growled. "Even in our state, that's enough to bury us."
"They tracked someone," Thalia continued. "Their trail leads the same way we've been heading."
Her gaze locked onto Raine. "They're hunting you, Raine."
Raine's chest tightened. The Church had already branded him the "Blight-Bringer," the spark they blamed for the spreading corruption. Now their zealots had found his trail.
"We must move," Karrion concluded without hesitation. "We can't face them here."
"But which way?" Raine asked, voice dry.
"Not the straight path," Thalia answered swiftly. "Turn east, then slip south beneath the volcanic ridges. The broken terrain, the fissures and caves—that's where we can shake them off. And once we reach the leyforge, finish forging the Starflame Blade, we'll have a chance."
Raine and Karrion both nodded. There was no time for doubt. They slipped beyond the archive's ruined walls, weaving into the dense, twisting foliage.
Behind them, the Order of the Radiant Sun's shadow followed—a blade poised ever above them, ready to descend.
From this moment on, their journey grew more perilous still, for the forest harbored dangers beyond its warped beasts: fanatics in holy armor, pursuing them under the guise of divine mandate, and the very land itself yearning to drag them into oblivion. Their only hope lay in forging the weapon born of starlight—before the hunt ended in blood.