The air in the Blighted Wood grew ever more viscous, like solidified poison. Every breath carried a weighty, nauseating sweetness that rasped against the throat. Gnarled trees reared their limbs like fanged jaws, and the shadows they cast writhed as though alive. A deathly stillness hung over everything—save for faint, indistinct whispers, like swarms of tiny insects burrowing into the skull.
Raine staggered, bracing himself against a grotesque tree oozing black sap. Cold sweat beaded on his brow; his temples throbbed like drumbeats. The embers of the Star‑light backlash still smoldered within him, and the forest's malevolent will gnawed at his mind like carrion‑eating worms. He needed direction—they couldn't wander headlong like lost moths in this accursed place.
He closed his eyes, forcing back the rising nausea, and summoned what little starlight remained in his veins—igniting a spark in the mire of his spirit. He yearned for a glimpse of a path ahead, however fleeting or blurred.
The starlight responded with agony. Instead of a clear vision, Raine's mind filled with snow‑flurry static, crackling with broken images that crashed in like tides of torment:
Screams not of human shape rent the silence, tears of sound that shredded the mind. A gallery of warped faces—features askew, flesh rotting, empty eye‑sockets leaking dark ichor—silently howling in accusation and curse. Then, in a flash, his sister Lillia's pale face appeared: terror and despair etched in her eyes, lips parted as though she were calling his name, though no sound emerged. Behind her floated the shattered silhouette of Fallen Star City—its edges consumed by a spreading, viscous darkness.
"Ugh—!" Raine uttered a pained grunt, yanking his eyes open. A brutal headache hammered at his skull, and his world spun with golden sparks. The fractured visions scorched his mind rather than guiding it, obliterating any sense of direction.
"Raine!" Thalia's urgent voice steadied him as she caught his arm. Her fingers were ice on his flesh, bringing a moment of clarity.
"What's wrong?" Karriion wheeled around, hammer in hand, eyes flicking over the poisoned wood. "Something coming?"
"No… illusions," Raine rasped, voice raw. He shook his head, desperately brushing away the sickening afterimages. "Worse than before… nothing but chaos…"
He met Thalia's gaze. "I… I thought I saw Lillia…"
Under her hood, Thalia's brow tightened, but she offered no immediate comfort—only a firm grip on his arm as she scanned their surroundings with haunted caution.
"You sure it's only illusion?" Karriion frowned, moving to inspect a nearby tree. He kicked aside the rotting leaf‑litter to expose slick black earth beneath. "This place spawns nightmares that can kill you. Better trust what you can see, not what your mind's conjuring."
Karriion's foot struck the trunk of a colossal, half‑charred tree. He traced the smooth line where living bark met blackened rot. "Look at this."
Raine and Thalia joined him. The trunk bore ancient etchings—curving lines of an unfamiliar script, now almost obliterated by corrosion, as if acid had dripped over them. Where the carving remained, it hinted at a broken star motif ensnared by twisted vines—a warning? A seal?
"I don't know," Karriion muttered, rubbing soot from the grooves. "Not dwarf‑runes. Some lost language, maybe a warning… or a lock." He tapped the deepest cut. "Hard to read through all this rot."
Thalia studied the scars too. She felt a faint echo of the power those runes once held—star‑borne magics now perverted by corruption. Only despair lingered where light once lay.
She met Raine's distant stare. His breathing was ragged; his spirit frayed by the earlier visions. She sensed his fragile Star‑blood thrashing against the wood's psychic assault, like molten rock against cold steel.
Gently, she wove a slender veil of shadow magic from her core, forming a fragile ward around the three of them to mute the worst of the forest's psychic howling. It drained her reserves—each heartbeat accompanied by a stab of pain in her chest. She fought a rising dizziness, determined not to let them see her falter.
"We must press on," Raine insisted, voice hoarse though firm. He gestured toward a direction different from Karriion's. "I can feel… Lillia that way… she's calling me."
Karriion bristled. "You just said those were all scrambled visions!" He slammed a gauntleted fist into the rotten trunk. "I'd trust this tree's scars before your head's illusions!"
"That's not all illusion!" Raine shot back, pain flaring at his temples. "I sense her!"
Thalia held up a calm hand, stepping between them. "Karriion's find is real—those runes mark something tangible. But Raine's feeling… it may be corrupted, yet not entirely false."
"So which way?" Karriion demanded, frustration showing in his stance. "We can't stand here until those things swarm us!"
Thalia's gaze flicked between Raine's clenched jaw and Karriion's iron will. Both paths brimmed with peril: one marked by desecrated runes, perhaps warning of sealed horrors; the other bristling with seductive dread, a psychic snare. The forest's malicious will whispered strongest that way…
"Neither path is safe," Thalia finally admitted, voice low and urgent. Her words cut through the tension.
Raine's chest tightened. His sole purpose—finding Lillia—hung between trust in vision and fear of deceit. Karriion's dwarf‑honed instincts sounded equally compelling.
They stood at an impasse, trapped in the forest's malignant nexus. Its cunning whispers probed at their doubts, at their fears—seeking to shatter their fragile trust.
In the gathering gloom, the choice of direction would mean the difference between escape or eternal perdition…