The lull in the warehouse was sacred. The air, once thick with the iron scent of blood and the cacophony of ragged coughs, was now still and clean. The unified light of the shards had not just healed; it had sanctified. The survivors slept the deep, untroubled sleep of those pulled back from the absolute brink. Finn and the others were not just cured of the Blood Plague; they were restored, their vitality humming with a faint, grateful echo of the radiant unity that had saved them.For a day, Silverhold held its breath. The story of the "Triune Light" spread through the city in awed whispers, overshadowing even the legend of the Dawn-Bringer. Archon Theron, for once, was speechless, his political machinations utterly irrelevant in the face of such a miracle. Justiciar Valerius watched Kaelen’s team with a new, calculating respect, the kind a general reserves for a newly discovered, unstoppable siege weapon.But the cult of the Deep was not done. They had learned a brutal lesson: direc

The hush in the wake of Veridia’s fall was a physical presence in Silverhold, a pall of despair that smothered the city more effectively than any plague. The air itself felt heavy, tainted by the knowledge of the blight spreading across the sea. The vibrant, life-filled magic that had once whispered from the south was gone, replaced by a void that sucked at the edges of perception. In the Citadel, strategies were now discussions of triage and last stands. The fall of a kingdom had made their previous victories feel like the flailing of insects in a closing fist.Sophia felt the weight more than anyone. The Shard of Depths, once a warm comfort at her hip, now felt like an accusation. Its power to heal individual bodies was a moot point against an enemy that poisoned the very air, water, and soil. Compassion was useless if there was no life left to receive it. She spent hours staring at maps of the blighted continent, her mind tracing the inevitable path of the necrosis toward Silverhol

The hush in the Citadel was thicker and heavier than any that had followed a battle. Ethan lay in the healing ward, trapped in a slumber so profound it was a hair’s breadth from death. The best physicians in Silverhold could find no physical injury, no poison, no plague. It was a wound of the spirit, a psychic violation that had cauterized his connection to the waking world. He was a book whose pages had been brutally read and then slammed shut.Kaelen stood watch over him, his face a granite mask of fury and self-recrimination. The prophet’s words were a worm in his ear: Your constraints are your weakness. He saw the logic of the cold, political mind: Ethan was a liability now. A compromised asset. The mission to Veridia was impossible. The rational choice was to cut their losses, fortify, and prepare for the final assault.But when he looked at Sophia, he saw no politics. He saw a tempest brewing in her eyes. The gentle botanist, the compassionate healer, was gone. In her place was

The blight was not just a physical corruption; it was a spiritual vacuum. It leached color, sound, and hope from the world, leaving behind a hollowed-out silence that pressed in on the mind. For Sophia, that silence was now internal. Her doubt was a nullity, a void where her purpose had once been. She moved through the grim preparations for the inland trek like an automaton, her hands checking supplies, her eyes scanning the grey, fungal wastes, but her spirit was elsewhere—trapped in the recursive, terrifying logic of her own thoughts.Amelia’s sacrifice caused this. Compassion prolongs the agony. To care is to create a target.The Shard of Winds felt alien at her hip, a relic of a faith she could no longer afford. When Kaelen laid out the route—a treacherous path following a dead riverbed toward the pulsating heart of the blight where Sylvanthol lay—she merely nodded. There was no argument, no fire. She was a tool to be directed, and a flawed one at that.They made camp that first n

The blight had a sound. It was not the howling wind or the guttural chants of the Blessed Affliction, but a deep, sub-audible hum that vibrated in the teeth and bones. It was the sound of the world being unmade, a frequency of negation. In the lee of the collapsed watchtower, surrounded by that hum, the team huddled around a single, fragile point of light: a magelight stone cupped in Lyra’s hands, its glow a defiant sun in a universe of encroaching night.Ethan was at the center, his journal open on his knees. He looked different. The hollowed-out terror was gone, replaced by a feverish, focused intensity. The Shard of Echoes, which Sophia had placed in his care for this task, lay on the open page. It wasn't glowing, but it seemed to pull the faint light toward it, a lens for understanding.“The prophet’s violation… it was like being thrown into a dark ocean,” he murmured, his fingers tracing the lines of his own handwriting. “But the Shard of Echoes… it’s like it gave me a raft. Wors