Winter came to Ashenvale with brutal efficiency, transforming the frontier settlement into a landscape of ice and hardship.The training yard at the Silvermane estate became treacherous, frost making every step a calculated risk. But Aldric insisted we continue our sessions regardless of weather, arguing that enemies wouldn't wait for comfortable conditions. So we trained in the freezing cold, our breath forming clouds in the air, our fingers going numb around sword hilts despite heavy gloves.I was in the middle of a particularly vicious exchange with Aldric when Lord Silvermane appeared at the edge of the yard, accompanied by a figure I'd never seen before. The stranger wore the crimson robes of a High Scripture Reader, one of the Church's elite, blessed with the ability to interpret Scripts in greater detail than common priests.Aldric noticed them too and immediately called a halt to our sparring. We approached together, though I hung back slightly. Church officials made me nervou

woke three days later in the estate's medical wing, wrapped in enough bandages to make me look like an amateur mummy.The healer, a middle-aged woman with the Script of Merciful Hands, sat beside my bed, her expression a mixture of professional concern and deep confusion. When she saw my eyes open, she immediately began checking various indicators of health with practiced efficiency."Welcome back to the living," she said. "Though I'll confess, for the first day I wasn't certain you'd make that return trip. You had three cracked ribs, severe internal bleeding, and something I've never seen before, Script-backlash, except you don't have a Script to backlash from.""What happened?" My voice came out as a croak."You tell me. Your body was rejecting itself at a cellular level, like reality couldn't decide whether you should exist or not. I've seen Script corruption before, but this was different. This was an existence rejection." She poured water and helped me drink. "Whatever you did du

The training that followed made Garrick's brutal sessions feel like gentle encouragement by comparison.Every day for the next month, I reported to the eastern chapel at dawn. Every day, Commander Thane presented me with a new corrupted Script-bearer to practice on. And every day, I pulled the corruption into myself and felt a piece of my humanity dissolve along with it.Subject Eighteen had been a mother of three whose Script of Nurturing Care had inverted after Church officials forcibly removed her children for "proper Script-aligned upbringing." Subject Twenty-One was a soldier whose Script of Loyal Service corrupted when he was ordered to execute his commanding officer for questioning Church doctrine. Subject Twenty-Five was just fourteen, a girl whose Script had broken under the weight of an arranged marriage to a man three times her age.Each one had a story. Each one had been driven to corruption by circumstances that made their Scripts incompatible with their reality. And each

Morning came with the smell of pine and the sound of water rushing over stones.I woke to find Aldric already up, rummaging through the cabin's storage chest with the enthusiasm of someone on a mission. He pulled out two fishing rods that had seen better days, their lines tangled and their hooks rusted from years of neglect."Perfect," he declared, holding them up like trophies. "These are absolutely terrible, which means we're guaranteed to catch nothing. It's going to be wonderfully frustrating.""You're surprisingly excited about guaranteed failure.""That's because failure doesn't matter when there's no Script dictating the outcome." He tossed me one of the rods. "Out here, we can be incompetent without it meaning anything about our destinies. It's liberating."We spent the next hour attempting to untangle the lines, a task that should have taken ten minutes but stretched longer because neither of us really knew what we were doing. Aldric's fingers kept slipping on the thin cord,

Dawn arrived cold and gray as I prepared for the journey to Millbrook. Aldric insisted on coming despite my protests, and Lord Silvermane surprisingly agreed. We rode out with Commander Thane's full team, the mood grim and professional.The corruption announced itself long before we reached the village. Reality felt wrong here, like the air had soured and light came from incorrect angles. Plants grew in twisted patterns, their leaves blackened and stems bent unnaturally. No birds sang, no insects buzzed, nothing living wanted to be near this wrongness.As we crested a hill, Millbrook came into view, and my breath caught. The village was dying. Buildings sagged like melting wax. Purple black clouds churned overhead, and even from half a mile away, I could hear people screaming."At least forty corrupted visible," Lyra reported. "Survivors barricaded in the church."Thane turned to me. "Go to the epicenter, the building where this started. Absorb the corruption at its source. Once the p