Karion's workshop was more cramped than the most chaotic dwarven mine.
The stench of cooled metal mixed with mineral dust and acrid chemicals hung thick in the air.
Lian, Selya, and Karion gathered around a hastily cleared worktable, inspecting their assembled supplies:
Hardtack, waterskins, bandage rolls, herb pouches, whetstones, rope, and tinderboxes.
And Karion's new creations.
Several crude but razor-sharp daggers. Metal plates etched with basic protective runes for sewing into clothing linings.
Karion sniffed at a bag of rock-hard biscuits. "Dwarven trail rations. Fills the belly or cracks a goblin's skull." He tossed it to Lian. "Make it last."
He picked up Lian's ornate sword and hefted it with undisguised disdain.
"Decoration," he declared, letting it clatter back down. "Might as well bite enemies with your teeth."
Lian flushed but held his tongue.
Turning to Selya, Karion watched her inspecting vials of colored powders and liquids in her belt pouches.
"Your witchy brews seem slightly less useless than his jewelry," he grunted. "Try not to poison us by accident."
Ignoring the jab, Selya handed Lian a small crystal vial filled with deep purple liquid.
"Diluted shadow moss extract," she said tonelessly. "Applied sparingly to the skin, it masks living scent from lesser blightspawn. Limited duration. Mildly toxic."
The vial chilled Lian's palm.
With a snort, Karion retrieved something from under the table and shoved it at Lian—a black iron bracer etched with fresh, still-rough runes. Its inner surface held a faintly pulsing crimson crystal.
"Wear this," Karion said, uncharacteristically solemn. "Blood-activated basic wards. Won't stop a charging troll, but might filter some ambient corruption."
Gripping the bracer, Lian felt a faint connection to his lifeblood. The runes glimmered weakly in the dim light.
"Best I could manage," Karion added. "No time. No materials."
Selya did a final inventory sweep, her gaze piercing both men.
"Remember," her voice was quenched steel, "absolute silence in the forest. Speak only when necessary."
"Touch no unfamiliar plants—especially brightly colored or sap-seeping ones."
"Drink only purified water, no matter how clear it appears."
"Watch your footing. The ground betrays."
"Most importantly," her eyes flashed dangerously, "stay close. Lose sight of me, and you're already dead."
Nods all around.
Ahead lay the unknown. Their only armor—this fragile trust.
The night became their ally.
Avoiding main thoroughfares, Karion led them through stinking back alleys where the city's underbelly festered.
Past reeking garbage piles that sent rats scurrying.
Beneath precarious wooden arches where chamber pots emptied without warning.
The air tasted of despair and resignation—a world Lian, despite his family's fall, had never truly known.
This darkness unsettled him more than the forest's mysteries.
Karion navigated like a mole through familiar tunnels. Selya moved as shadow-given form. Lian followed, clutching his bracer like a talisman.
He glanced back once.
The city's silhouette blurred against the night—spires and scattered lights like distant stars. Once his home. Now just another danger behind him.
Ahead—only void.
Dread and longing warred in his chest.
They reached the derelict outer wall where smugglers once plied their trade. Karion pried loose some bricks, revealing a cramped tunnel exhaling damp earth and decay.
"After me," he said, vanishing inside.
Selya slipped in after.
Lian inhaled deeply, committing the city's outline to memory, then bent into the darkness.
The passage swallowed them whole—air thick with mildew, footing treacherous. Only Karion's faint magelight pierced the gloom as they shuffled forward, their breaths and footsteps echoing.
An eternity later, faint light beckoned.
They emerged through the dense brush into open country.
No more city lights. No more safety.
Just endless wilderness under indifferent stars.
Lian had never felt so small.
"Move," Karion broke the silence. "Dawn's hours away yet."
They set out toward the blight.
The land grew rougher. Healthy trees gave way to gnarled sentinels.
The air curdled—first just damp rot, then thickening into something cloying and wrong.
Like sweetened gangrene.
Lian's lungs rebelled. Selya passed out bitter herbs to chew, dulling the stench.
The forest itself twisted around them:
Tree trunks bent in agony, oozing black sap.
Moss turned necrotic gray, clinging like dead flesh.
Fungi glowed faintly—some blood-clot red, others corpse-pale.
The worst was the silence.
No insects. No birds. Just wind through crippled branches—a sound like dying breaths.
Even the light sickened—dawn's glow filtered through the canopy into a ghastly green twilight.
Lian's spine prickled with primal terror.
He gripped his sword (useless, Karion claimed) and the bracer (its weak pulse his only comfort).
Selya led with lethal grace, her ice-blue eyes missing nothing.
Karion brought up the rear, his axe's weight a grim counterpoint to the forest's hush.
Then Selya stopped.
Ahead, the trees became nightmares—branches strung with fungal webs, earth blanketed in stinking black muck.
A green-gray mist coiled between them, obscuring the path forward.
"Here," Selya rasped, her voice roughened by the blighted air. "The Corrupted Woods begins."
Lian's heart hammered against his ribs.
The malice radiating from those trees was palpable—a hunger to unravel all life into rot and void.
Karion exhaled sharply, knuckles cracking around his axe haft. Hatred and fear warred in his eyes.
Selya turned, her pallor ghostly in the sickly light but her gaze unshaken.
"Ready?" she asked—not a question, but a call to arms.
Lian looked at Karion. The dwarf managed a ghastly grin.
"Not like we can turn back now," he muttered. "Church'd burn us for kindling."
Lian drew a shuddering breath.
For Lya. For his family's truth. For survival itself.
No retreat remained.
He met Selya's eyes and nodded.
No more words were needed.
Resolve solidified between them like forged steel.
Lian stepped first into the mist-shrouded nightmare.
The muck squelched like rotting flesh underfoot.
The fog coiled around him—clammy, reeking, alive.
Selya followed her form dissolving into the gloom.
Karion brought up the rear, his heavy footfalls the forest's death knell.
The twisted trees loomed like tormented specters, their fungal veils swaying in a nonexistent wind.
Within moments, the blight swallowed them whole.
Ahead—only the hungry dark.
The Corrupted Woods had opened its maw.