Time in the Vale didn't flow; it crawled, fractured by the constant, oppressive hum of raw magic.
Six weeks.
Kael repeated the words like a mantra, but his body screamed it had been six months, maybe a year. The air itself was a physical weight, thick with the taste of ozone, burnt copper, and something older - the metallic tang of primordial creation. Lightning didn't just strike; it lived. It writhed in serpentine coils through the perpetually bruised sky, pulsed within the obsidian-black bark of the Ironwood trees, and crackled underfoot on paths paved with shattered, magnetized stone.
Kael stood at the edge of a clearing, breathing hard. He wasn't the boy who had stepped timidly into the crackling gloom weeks before. Lean muscle corded his frame, honed by relentless travel and constant vigilance. His storm-grey cloak, Lira's gift, was singed in places but intact, the frost-wyrm down repelling stray arcs of energy that lashed out like whips. Windstrike and Skyrend hung at his hips, their familiar weight a grounding comfort, but the true anchor was the heavy presence of Frostbite strapped across his back. The axe no longer felt like a burden or a cage for something terrifying; it felt like an extension of his own thrumming core.
He'd learned the hard way that running was death in the Vale. Hiding invited worse predators. The ghost-bears Talin had joked about were real - semi-corporeal horrors drawn to fear, their claws passing through rock only to solidify within flesh. He'd faced one head-on in his second week, cornered in a lightning-scarred ravine. Panic had surged, urging flight, but the memory of Roran's words - "The Vale doesn't reward bravery. It rewards survival." - had crystallized into action. He hadn't drawn Frostbite then, not trusting the storm within.
Instead, he'd used Windstrike and Skyrend in a desperate, whirling dance, deflecting ethereal swipes, using the terrain, the crackling energy in the rocks, to confuse the beast until a rogue bolt of actual lightning had vaporized it inches from his face. He hadn't run. He'd fought. And survived.
Since then, he'd stopped flinching from the thunder. He'd learned to read the pre-storm pressure, the way the air ionized moments before a strike. He'd used Skyrend's brutal point to shatter magnetized rocks blocking his path, sending shrapnel flying. He'd faced packs of spark-wolves - feral creatures crackling with static - not by hiding, but by channeling a fraction of Frostbite's ambient energy through his blades, making them hum with disruptive power that shorted out the wolves' natural defenses before he cut them down. He wasn't wielding the storm yet, not truly, but he was no longer its terrified victim. He was learning its rhythms, its dangers, and meeting them with steel and grit.
Ahead lay the boundary Wrynn's cryptic, map-scrawled instructions had indicated: the Rust Woods. True to its name, the forest here was dominated by colossal trees with bark the colour of dried blood and oxidized iron. Thick, rust-coloured moss choked the ground, muffling sound. The air hung heavier, charged with a different kind of energy - less the frenetic violence of the outer Vale, more a deep, resonant thrum, like the heartbeat of the earth itself. Strange, metallic lichen glowed faintly on the trunks. This felt... contained. Purposeful. The map had simply marked a cairn of thunderstone at the heart of the Rust Woods.
Taking a deep breath that tasted like old iron filings, Kael stepped into the gloom beneath the rust-colored canopy. The constant roar of the outer Vale's storms faded to a deep, pervasive hum. Silence pressed in, thick and watchful. He moved cautiously but without hesitation, senses stretched taut. He scanned the strange moss, the glowing lichen, the gnarled roots like petrified arteries. His hand rested lightly on Windstrike's hilt.
He'd covered perhaps half a mile when the ground shifted. Not an earthquake, but a localized surge. The rust-moss directly in front of him bulged upwards violently, coalescing into a hulking, vaguely humanoid figure over eight feet tall. It had no discernible features, just a rough torso, stumpy limbs, and a head like a jagged boulder of compacted rust and iron-rich soil. Glowing, magma-like veins pulsed within its crude form. It raised a massive, club-like fist, the air crackling with static discharge.
Kael didn't freeze. He didn't try to skirt the edges. He moved. He ducked under the whistling arc of the club-fist, rolling to his feet behind the elemental. Skyrend flashed out, not at the dense body, but at the glowing seam where its leg joined the mossy ground. The punching dagger struck true, biting deep into the pulsing energy vein. A guttural, grinding roar erupted from the creature as sparks flew. It stumbled, its connection to the ground momentarily disrupted.
Instead of pressing the attack, Kael leaped back, putting distance between them. He drew Windstrike, holding it low. The elemental turned, enraged, its magma-veins flaring brighter. It charged, a slow but terrifyingly powerful avalanche of rust and earth.
Let the storm answer. Wrynn's supposed words echoed. Not just the steel.
As the elemental closed, Kael planted his feet. He didn't raise his blades to block the impossible force. Instead, he reached inwards, towards the low thrum of Frostbite on his back, towards the storm-sense he'd been cultivating. He didn't try to grasp it, to control it. He focused on the pressure building in the air, the charge radiating from the elemental itself. He focused on the connection.
He slammed Windstrike, point-first, into the rust-moss at his feet, not to damage, but to ground. At the same moment, he visualized not a shield, but a lightning rod.
CRACK!
A bolt of pure white lightning, drawn from the charged atmosphere and the elemental's own furious energy, lanced down from the canopy above. It didn't strike Kael. It struck the tip of Windstrike buried in the moss. Energy surged through the blade, into the ground, and up into the charging elemental via the conductive rust-moss beneath its feet.
The creature didn't just stop; it exploded. Compacted earth and rust erupted outwards in a shower of sizzling fragments. Glowing magma-veins sputtered and died. The massive form collapsed into a steaming, inert pile of scorched earth and metal.
Kael stood amidst the settling debris, breathing heavily, smoke curling from Windstrike's tip. His arm tingled from the residual energy. He hadn't summoned the lightning. He hadn't controlled it. He'd guided it. He'd understood the flow and provided the path. A fierce, wild grin split his grime-streaked face. He yanked Windstrike free, the blade humming softly.
"Head on," he muttered to the smoldering remains, wiping sweat and ash from his brow. "Always head on."
He scanned the suddenly silent woods. From the direction of the deeper gloom, a low, gravelly chuckle echoed, seeming to come from the rust-colored trees themselves.
"Took you long enough, Stormboy. Almost thought the moss-men got you. Tidy trick with the spark. Now stop admiring your handiwork and get your hide over here. Supper's getting cold, and cold venison tastes like despair."
---
The air in the Root Chamber hung heavy with the cloying scent of decay, undercut by the desperate sweetness of green life fighting a losing battle. Queen Nymeria stood before the vast, living map woven from bioluminescent fungi and intertwined roots. The healthy, pulsing green that once depicted Sylvaris and its neighboring lands was marred by spreading tendrils of inky blackness - the Rot. It pulsed slowly, like poisoned blood through veins, thicker now around the borders of Sylvaris itself.
Prince Orlan knelt beside a young Heartwood sapling, his hands buried deep in the soil at its base. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead, and his arms trembled with strain. Tendrils of pure, vibrant green energy flowed from his palms into the earth, forming a fragile barrier against the insidious black tendrils creeping towards the sapling's roots. The air vibrated with his effort and the sapling's silent distress.
"It gains ground, Mother," Orlan gasped, his voice raw with exhaustion. "Slowly, but relentlessly. Every moonrise, it claims another inch. Every inch feels like... a piece of Sylvaris dying." He shuddered as a strand of blackness recoiled from his green light, only to snake sideways towards another vulnerable root. "It devours life, Mother. It leaves only... emptiness."
Nymeria watched, her face a mask of grim resolve etched with deep lines of worry. Her fingers traced the blackened veins creeping across the fungal map. "The scholars argue. Some whisper of a creeping plague, others of a curse born from lands far away. Theories crumble like dead leaves." She sighed, a sound like wind through dying branches. "All we know is its hunger. Its slow, patient advance."
Orlan wrenched his hands free as the black tendril retreated momentarily. He slumped back, chest heaving, wiping grime and sweat from his face. The sapling shuddered but stood, a small halo of healthy green preserved around its base - a temporary victory. "It's spreading beyond our borders too," he panted. "Whispers from the Sun Steppes speak of blighted grasses. Durahn miners find cracks weeping blackness. Marinos divers report kelp forests turning to sludge. It's... everywhere. Creeping."
He looked up at Nymeria, his eyes haunted by the scale of the unknown. "What is it? Where did it come from? We fight it root by root, but without understanding its source... it's like holding back the tide with bare hands."
Nymeria placed a hand on his shoulder, her touch heavy. "We fight because we must, Orlan. Because Sylvaris endures. But the weight of this creeping doom... it feels like a shadow falling across the entire world." She stared at the encroaching blackness on the map, a stain spreading across the vibrant green. "We go to Grey Spire. Not just for the fractured Accord, but to see if others face this silent blight. To share what little we know... and to learn what we can." Her gaze hardened, looking towards the north. "A great tragedy gathers on the horizon, my son. This Rot... it feels like the first, chilling symptom of a deeper sickness we cannot yet name."
Orlan pushed himself wearily to his feet, looking at the valiant, struggling sapling. "Then let us hope," he said, his voice thick with exhaustion and a dread he couldn't fully articulate, "that someone finds answers before the shadow consumes us all."
---
Following the direction of the disembodied voice, Kael pushed deeper into the Rust Woods. The thrumming grew louder, vibrating in his bones. The rust-colored moss gave way to a large clearing dominated by a massive, stepped cairn built from rough-hewn blocks of thunderstone. The stones pulsed with a deep, internal blue light, casting long, shifting shadows. A crude lean-to built of ironwood branches and cured hides nestled against its base. A small fire crackled nearby, over which a haunch of venison sizzled.
Seated on a flat thunderstone slab, whittling a piece of ironwood with a knife that shimmered like captured lightning, was a man who looked carved from the Vale itself. Old Man Wrynn was a knot of sinew and scar tissue. His hair, long and wild, was the colour of ironwood ash. His beard was braided with thin strips of conductive metal. One eye was a milky white, blinded; the other was a startling, electric blue that fixed on Kael with unnerving intensity. He wore simple, hardened leathers, scarred by countless burns and claw marks.
"Took your sweet time, pup," Wrynn rasped, not looking up from his whittling. His voice was like rocks grinding together. "Saw you dancin' with the moss-man. Flashy. Wasteful. Coulda just stomped on its connection point 'fore it fully formed. Saved the spark for somethin' useful." He pointed his knife, crackling faintly, at the venison. "Food's there. Eat. Then we talk about why you're wastin' my time playin' with toothpicks when you've got a storm-hammer on your back."
Kael met the electric blue gaze without flinching. He walked to the fire, the weariness of the journey settling in now that immediate danger had passed, but his posture remained straight, his eyes alert. He'd faced sentient moss, ghost-bears, and lightning serpents. He'd walked through living storms. He wasn't the boy who left Blackhold. He pulled Frostbite free, the runes along its thunderstone haft flaring briefly in response to the cairn's energy, and planted it head-down in the rust-colored earth beside the fire. It stood like a standard.
"I'm here to learn," Kael stated, his voice steady, carrying over the deep hum of the stones. "To stop wasting time. To stop hiding. Teach me."
Wrynn's whittling paused. The single blue eye flickered from the planted axe to Kael's resolute face. A slow, grim smile, like a crack forming in granite, spread across his weathered features.
"Finally," he grunted. "Took six weeks just to get you to show some spine. Now that's a start worth eatin' to. Dig in, Stormborn. Tomorrow, the real work begins. And leave the fancy blades sheathed. Tomorrow, you and the thunder get acquainted. Properly."
The deep, resonant thrum of the thunderstone cairn seemed to pulse in agreement. Kael sat by the fire, the scent of venison mixing with ozone and ancient stone. He looked at Frostbite, then at the ancient warrior who embodied the Vale's harsh lessons. He wasn't hiding anymore. He was ready to face the storm. Head on.