The trail begins to ascend once more, leading us through a narrow, winding gully. The mists here are thicker, clinging to the ancient trees like shrouds. The faint scent of burnt fur and dark magic intensifies, now accompanied by another, more sickening aroma—that of decaying flesh. Ahead, the gully opens into a wider, bowl‑shaped clearing, drowned in a thick, dark smog of corruption. The air hangs heavy and wet, the kind of suffocating damp that clings to skin and blurs the shapes within it. From inside that murk, faint, rhythmic chanting rises — a low, guttural sound that vibrates with malevolent intent. It is joined by the metallic clang of chains and the distressed whimpers of captive human voices.
Shineah freezes beside me, her head snapping up as the guttural chanting and faint, despairing whimpers drift through the haze. I let out a sigh. "Please don't tell me that's your mother keeping those people captive," I say with a suppressed smile. "I know you've described her as pagan, but dang…"
She whirls on me so fast I almost stumble. Her eyes are wide with horror, her face sharp with offense. "My mother? Captive? No, Tormack—never!" Her voice is a harsh whisper, trembling with fury. "She would sooner die than hold innocents prisoner, let alone take part in sorcery like this."
She steps forward, hand tightening around the hilt of her dagger. The smog pulses with the rhythm of the chanting, sickly and wrong. Shineah's gaze hardens. "That chanting is not Direfang," she says, low and certain. "It's corruption. Twisted power. And those whimpers…" Her jaw clenches. "That is my family. Or what's left of them. The Master's influence has reached these lands, and it has them in its grip."
Through the shifting haze, a squat iron cauldron comes into view — half‑buried in coals, its tar‑black contents bubbling thickly. Each pop sends another oily wave of smog rolling outward, feeding the choking fog that blankets the clearing.
She moves ahead like a predator scenting blood, every muscle taut with purpose.
I shake my head. "Good. I was starting to think she might be some kind of pagan witch doctor. I really hope she's like you."
Shineah stops dead. The look she gives me is half exasperation, half disbelief, all fire.
"My mother is a healer," she says sharply. "A guardian of these woods. Not whatever insult you're trying to make of her faith." Her voice drops to a fierce whisper. "And yes—I hope she is like me. Strong. Resilient. Able to see the true enemy when it stands before her."
She gestures forward, her hand still on her dagger's hilt. "We must move carefully. That smog suggests potent, corrupting magic. And the chanting... it needs to be silenced. Stay close, Tormack. Your faith, my knowledge. Now is the time for both." Her focus is entirely on the clearing, her body coiled, ready to spring into action.
"Magic…" I huff as I stride forward, annoyed and unafraid. I shove the cauldron hard. It topples with a crash, spilling its vile contents across the ground. "What part of immune do you not understand?!"
The gloomy smog of corruption evaporates instantly, vanishing in a sharp hiss. The chanting cuts off and four cloaked figures whirl toward us, fury blazing in their eyes. Behind them, five bound Direfang stare at me in terror, their chains rattling in the sudden silence.
Shineah's breath catches — a raw, broken sound.
Her eyes lock onto the captives that sit bound next to the cauldron, and whatever color she had drains from her face.
"Mother…?" The word is barely a whisper, strangled by fear.
One of the bound figures lifts her head — silver‑streaked hair matted with sweat and grime — and Shineah staggers as if struck. Her dagger hand trembles. For a heartbeat, she looks like she might collapse.
Then the moment shatters.
As the cauldron crashes, Shineah jerks toward me, eyes wide with horror. "Tormack—!" The word tears out of her, half fury, half fear. Her hand flies to my arm as if to drag me back, but it's too late — the haze is gone, the chanting dead, and the cloaked figures are already turning.
Her breath shudders. "You reckless—" She cuts herself off, blade lifting as she steps in beside me, shoulder to shoulder despite everything.
"Hey, you told me to do something!" I glare.
The Direfang captives gasp, a sharp ripple of hope breaking through their fear as the cauldron lies overturned and the haze vanishes. Their chains rattle as they strain toward us, desperate and trembling.
I bare my teeth and shout to Charlie and Grizz, "SICK EM!" — but for some reason they are nowhere to be seen. It's just me, Shineah, and the four cloaked figures turning toward us with renewed fury.
The first one steps forward — a man wearing a rough wooden mask, the wood warped and cracked as if scorched from within. One of the cracks splits across his eye, revealing a bloodshot pupil that twitches like it's trying to escape his skull. His fingers curl like talons, stained dark from too many rituals. He whispers something under his breath, and the air around him seems to shiver.
My axe ignites as I raise it, the fire along the blade flaring bright. I forcefully bring it down on the metal chains which snap cleanly, clattering to the ground. The Direfangs sit and stare stunned for a moment until I yank the chain away and swing my head, gesturing for them to get out of here. Immediately, they scatter into the trees, wide‑eyed and grateful.
The masked man jerks his hands up. The crack across his mask pulses like a dying ember catching a breath of air. A heartbeat after, his palms erupt with an explosion of darkness that surges outward, veined with twisting iridescent streaks that crackle with malevolence. The air tears open around it, howling like something alive and starving.
The blast slams into my chest with the force of a battering ram. The world detonates in color and sound.The Direfangs shriek and throw themselves to the ground. Shineah's voice rips out of her — raw, terrified, my name breaking in her throat.
The corruption surges over me, clawing, gnawing, trying to burrow into bone— and then it dies. Instantly. Like it hit a wall it didn't know existed. The monstrous column gutters out in a hiss of steam and ash.
I blink through the fading smoke and shrug it off, unphased.
The cultist stares at me in open stupor — frozen, disbelieving — and that's all the time I need. I rush forward and swing my flaming axe down in a blazing arc, crashing it into his chest. He drops instantly, smoke curling from the cracks in his mask.
A hiss of sickly, iridescent corruption streaks toward me.. It comes from a broad‑shouldered woman whose face is marked with spiraling tattoos in purples and sickly greens. The symbols pulse as she mutters, her voice low and rasping like someone who's swallowed too much smoke. The blast slams into my arm. It is cold, but there is no sting.
Behind me, Shineah's breath catches again — softer this time, almost disbelieving. Watching it fail twice. Watching the truth of my words unfold in front of her. My words echo through her memory. *"By your devotion, you are immune too!"*
Another cultist — a jittery man with ritual etchings across his shaved scalp — lifts his hand. His jaw trembles, but he forces himself to mimic the others. His curse sputters like a dying candle and lashes into me with no effect.
Behind me, Shineah moves. But this time, there's no hesitation. No fear. Only a gathering resolve — a decision forming in the space between heartbeats.
The fourth cultist — an older woman with silver hair braided tightly down her back — gathers a tight knot of corruption that sizzles and smokes between her fingers. Thick, oily sludge drips from her palms as she hurls a streak of purple toward my back.
Shineah steps into its path shielding her face with her arms. Not out of instinct, not out of desperation, but out of belief.
The spell hits her forearms and dissolves like it struck stone. Shineah stares at her arms in bewildered awe. She then looks back to the silver‑haired woman whose eyes widen, as my flaming axe flies through the air and slams into her chest with a loud crack felling her in an instant.
Terror floods the jittery man's features. He stumbles back, trips on his own robes, and goes sprawling in the dirt before scrambling upright and bolting into the trees with a strangled cry.
I take a step toward my fallen weapon — but Shineah moves first. Her breath trembles as she steps past me toward the remaining tattooed woman. Her forearms still shimmer faintly where the corruption should have consumed her. She looks at her hands as if they were brand new.
The tattooed woman staggers back, trembling. Dark magic gathers in her palms — a roiling mass of corrupted spiritual force. It pulses with sickly color, twisting like something alive and starving.
But the moment Shineah steps toward her, the corruption falters.
The woman tries to force it into shape anyway, muttering under her breath, willing the darkness to obey. It sputters. Flickers. Then collapses in on itself as panic flashes across her face.
Shineah doesn't stop. She doesn't shout. She doesn't rage. She doesn't look like a warrior. She looks like someone who finally believes she can protect the people she loves — someone who understands the weight of what she's about to do, and accepts it.
"Stay back," the woman rasps, though still trying to gather more darkness with shaking hands.
But Shineah keeps moving.
The woman's fear spikes — not because Shineah looks wrathful, but because she doesn't. Because the light clinging to Shineah's skin is stronger than anything the cultist has ever touched. The darkness is a lesser thing, and she knows it.
The corruption in her hands fizzles out completely.
Shineah strikes once. A single, clean thrust of her dagger. No flourish. No hesitation. Just the brutal certainty of someone defending the people she loves.
The tattooed woman collapses.
Shineah goes still.
Her breath catches, sharp and uneven. She stares at the fallen body, then at her own hands — the dagger slick with blood, her fingers trembling around the hilt. A question flickers across her face, quick and painful.
*Was there another way?*
Her gaze lifts — to the bound Direfangs shaking in their chains, to her mother's bruised face, to the memory of the shattered wolf totem left like a warning in the woods. The whimpers she heard through the smog echo in her ears.
Something hard settles behind her eyes. A quiet, focused fury — the kind that rises when someone threatens your family. It burns cold, steady, and deeper than she expected.
And that edge inside her… unsettles her.
She steps back, breath unsteady, as if she's trying to understand the person she just became. The light on her skin flickers, then steadies as she forces herself to breathe.
She squares her shoulders. No triumph. No pride. Just a woman who crossed a line to protect her own — and knows she would do it again.
Silence follows — thick and heavy, broken only by my breathing and the fading crackle of fire along my axe.
The chanting is gone. The ritual is broken. And the clearing belongs to us again.
We scan the area. Beyond the clearing lie the ruins of an old watchtower half‑swallowed by the forest. Its stone walls have collapsed inward, leaving only a jagged shell of broken arches and leaning pillars. Tucked into the shadowed recess where the tower's back wall still stands, something shifts. The darkness there feels thicker, as if it's holding its breath, waiting for us to notice. A faint, sour reek drifts out from the gloom — the smell of rot clinging to something that's still alive.
A dragon crouches there, half‑hidden in the collapsed alcove. It's small for its kind, roughly the size of a bear, but twisted in ways no natural creature should be. Oily black corruption smokes from the seams between its scales, dripping in slow, viscous trails that hiss when they hit the stone. Its wings hang in ragged strips, twitching with restless agitation. Its eyes glow faintly in the gloom, following our every movement with a cold, predatory focus.
Five Direfangs lie bound in front of it, arranged like offerings at the foot of an altar. Ropes bite into their wrists and ankles. Their chains clatter softly as they tremble. They weren't prisoners — they were meant to be fed to this thing.
The dragon shifts again, dragging its claws across the stone with a scraping sound that crawls up my spine. The bound Direfangs flinch as one, chains rattling in a frantic, hopeless chorus. One of them lets out a thin, keening whimper — the kind that comes from someone who knows they can't run, can't fight, can only wait to die.
A low, rumbling growl rolls out of the dragon's chest. The sound vibrates through the broken stones beneath my boots — wet, guttural, animal. It digs its claws into the earth, muscles coiling beneath corrupted flesh. Every movement is primal and brutal, driven by instinct twisted by whatever the Master has been doing here.
Its eyes narrow on us — on me and Shineah — and the air seems to tighten as it lowers its head, preparing to strike.
As the dragon lunges, I shove Shineah back on instinct and dive to the side. Its jaws snap shut where my head was a heartbeat ago, teeth clacking together with a sound like breaking stone. The force of the strike sends dust and loose mortar raining from the ruined archway above us.
I hit the ground hard and scramble up, hands empty. My axe is still somewhere behind me, buried in the chest of the silver‑haired cultist. I feel naked without it — exposed in a way I haven't felt in years.
The dragon wheels toward me, claws gouging deep trenches in the dirt. The oily corruption dripping from its scales, hisses where it lands. The smell burns my throat.
"Back!" I shout at Shineah, though she's already moving — circling, dagger raised, eyes locked on the creature with a mix of terror and resolve.
The dragon snaps at me again. I dodge, barely, the wind of its passing brushing my cheek. My heart slams against my ribs. I can't keep this up. Not unarmed.
I scan the ground for anything — a shield, a spear, a rock, anything — but the cultists left nothing useful. Just scraps of cloth, broken chains, and the bodies of the fallen. My hand closes around a filthy cloth — some kind of table covering, stiff with dried ritual grime. I rip it free, sending bowls and bones clattering across the stone, and kick the table aside as I fling the cloth at the dragon's face.
The makeshift projectile flutters through the air, a desperate, gambit. The dragon simply blinks. The cloth hits its snout, slides off, and crumples on the stone like a discarded rag. Its reptilian gaze, cold and ancient and utterly unimpressed, never leaves me.
The dragon lunges again, and I grab the nearest thing I can reach — the corpse of one of the cultists. I swing it by the arms with a grunt and hurl it straight at the dragon's face.
"You wanted a sacrifice?" I roar. "Take that!"
The body hits with a wet smack. The dragon recoils, shaking its head in disgust, oily corruption splattering across the stone. It's not hurt — but it's distracted.
"RUN!" I bark.
Shineah doesn't argue. We bolt through the broken archway, boots pounding over uneven stone. Behind us, the dragon shrieks — a raw, animal sound — and lunges after us. As it surges forward, its head whips sideways in a furious snap. Something jagged — a horn or a broken scale — slams into my ribs with bone‑cracking force.
The world tilts. I'm airborne for a heartbeat before I hit the ground hard, the breath blasted out of me in a single, helpless grunt. Pain flares along my side — sharp, deep, broken — but adrenaline drags me upright before I can feel the full shape of it. I stumble after Shineah, vision swimming, every breath a hot knife under my ribs.
We sprint into the trees, weaving between roots and fallen logs. Branches whip my arms. My lungs burn. The dragon crashes after us, snapping branches like twigs, its breath hot on my back.
I risk a glance over my shoulder — and see nothing but teeth and fury.
I veer left, skidding down a slope of loose earth. Shineah follows, her breath ragged. The dragon overshoots, slamming into a tree with a crack that echoes through the forest.
"Shineah!" I gasp. "Keep moving!"
But I can't run forever. I need my axe.
I pivot hard and sprint back toward the clearing, legs screaming in protest. Shineah shouts my name, but I don't stop. I can't. Without that weapon, I'm dead. We're all dead.
I burst back into the ruins, lungs burning, and spot the axe and the fallen cultist. I dive for it, fingers closing around the familiar leather grip. Relief floods through me as I yank it free with a sickening SLUK.
The dragon crashes back into the clearing a heartbeat later, corruption dripping from its jaws.
I turn to face it, axe blazing to life in my hands.
Fear claws at my throat — real fear, fearing for my life. I whisper a desperate prayer under my breath, begging for strength, for protection, for anything.
Then I roar. A raw, primal sound tears out of me, echoing through the ruins. The dragon hesitates — just for a moment — startled by the sudden defiance.
It's enough.
I charge. My axe blazing as I hurl it with all my might. It strikes with a deep fiery thud bites deep into its side, carving through corrupted flesh. The dragon shrieks, staggering back, black ichor burning as it spills across the stone. It snaps at me wildly, but I dodge, adrenaline drowning out the pain in my ribs.
"CHARLIE, GRIZZ! WHERE ARE YOU?!" I shout into the trees, voice cracking.
For a moment, there's nothing.
Then — movement. A rustle. A growl.
Grizz bursts from the undergrowth, Charlie right behind him, both of them snarling, eyes locked on the wounded dragon.
The creature turns toward them, bleeding, trembling, desperate.
Grizz doesn't hesitate. He barrels forward, rearing up with a roar that shakes the trees. His full weight crashes into the dragon's neck, claws sinking deep as he drives it sideways.
Charlie hits a heartbeat later — lower, faster — jaws clamping around the exposed throat. The dragon thrashes, choking on its own corrupted breath as Charlie digs in, teeth tearing through scales slick with black ichor.
The dragon shrieks, a strangled, gurgling sound, its long neck whipping wildly as it tries to shake them off. Grizz holds on, muscles bunching, claws raking for purchase. Charlie's jaws tighten, refusing to let go.
For the first time, the creature looks afraid.
Its legs buckle. The massive body lurches sideways, slamming into the stone with a shudder that rattles the ruins. A final, broken rasp escapes its throat — half breath, half gurgle — and the long neck sags to the ground. The last twitch runs through its wings, then everything goes still.
I stand there, chest heaving, axe dripping with black ichor. The clearing sways. My vision blurs. The adrenaline drains out of me all at once, leaving only pain — sharp, deep, blooming across my ribs.
I look down. *Blood… my blood…* The truth hits me like a hammer. I'm hurt. Badly. My knees buckle. The axe slips from my fingers. The world tilts sideways. What felt like a hard, breath‑stealing blow in the heat of the fight now erupts into a white‑hot bloom across my chest. My vision blurs, the ruined clearing pitching and swaying as my legs give out beneath me. A heavy darkness presses in at the edges of my sight, swallowing sound, swallowing breath, pulling me down into a deep, dreamless void.
Somewhere far away, Shineah cries out — a sharp, choked sound that cuts through the ringing in my ears. Grizz's triumphant snarl dies instantly, replaced by a low, mournful whimper as he nudges at my shoulder. Shineah drops to her knees beside me, her hands fumbling at my wound, her face drained of color.
"Tormack! No — Tormack, stay with me!" Her voice cracks, thin with panic.
Shapes move at the edge of my fading vision. The Direfangs, freed only moments ago, creep out from their hiding places among the trees. Their relief at surviving the cultists melts into wide‑eyed fear as they see me collapse — their would‑be savior sprawled in the dirt, unmoving.
And then the darkness takes me.