A Plan of Action

The silence that followed Mali’thra’s departure felt alive. The air seemed to shiver, tasting of iron and ozone. Oliver stood motionless in the echo of her voice, his pulse still hammering from what was supposed to be a fight but had turned into a game. The others still hung suspended in the shimmering veil Mali’thra had left behind, frozen mid-motion. Lilith’s face was caught in an expression of both determination and terror, her hand reaching for him through the gossamer web of the spell. Fernwyn’s had an almost resigned look on her own.

Oliver swallowed hard and stepped closer. The barrier hummed when he touched it. It felt warm, almost alive, like touching the surface of a heartbeat. The air rippled beneath his palm. He could see faint runes drifting across its surface, curling and fading with each second, the wards holding them in place.

“Hold on!” The young man said desperately trying to think of what to do. All he could think of was press harder. The magic resisted, but the pattern in it was flawed, a remnant of a spell left incomplete. He focused his will, recalling the way Mali’thra had once taught him to align his aura to another’s flow. He reached into the trembling current of the barrier, found its pulse, and broke it apart with a single sharp pull. The air cracked like glass under stress, and the spell shattered.

Lilith stumbled forward with a gasp. She caught herself on his shoulder, warm and trembling, and then gave a soft laugh that held both relief and disbelief.

“Trophy,” she breathed hard.

He blinked down at her. The exhaustion in her voice carried affection rather than mockery.

“Take it easy. We’re still alive,” he tried to comfort but wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

Fernwyn emerged behind her, quieter, her face smudged with ash but composed. “She could have killed us,” she said softly. “All of us.”

Oliver looked down the tunnel where Mali’thra had disappeared. The air still glowed faintly green, the remnants of her power lingering like mist. “She didn’t.”

They gathered what little strength they had and began to move upward, following the winding passage that climbed toward the surface. Every step felt heavier. The walls seemed to close in, the stone whispering faintly as they passed but having begun to die.

When they finally reached the surface, the light blinded him. The ever present moon above burned down bright white almost cutting away all the shadows of the Breach Between. The city lay in ruins behind them. The crooked towering spires leaned at impossible angles, their foundations sunk into blackened earth. The air carried a faint green haze, glowing in pockets that pulsed faintly like the veins of some enormous creature buried beneath the land.

Lilith took his hand without a word. Her touch was warm, grounding. Fernwyn knelt nearby, touching the soil with her fingertips, then shaking her head. “The Land is sick. The Plague King’s essence has corrupted everything.”

“I can’t believe she was a Blight Sister,” Oliver muttered to himself.

“You didn’t know, Trophy. How could you?” Lilith offered flopping on the ground in exhaustion. “Everything went to hell when we lost you at the river.”

The city of Gloom was dead. The corrupted creatures that they had encountered on the way in were nowhere to be found along with its citizens. Gloom was just a skeleton laying decaying on the land.

“Mali…Mali’thra said something about the Mirror Seed,” Oliver started. “Something that could defeat her?”

“I’ve only heard of it in passing. It’s a religious artifact located in Vexmore. People can look into it and see possible futures or the past.”

Oliver nodded. “So some sort of divination?”

“Maybe. Nobody visits much anymore,” Lilith said.

“How far is it from here?”

“That’s at least two days on foot,” Fernwyn replied. “If the roads still exist.”

The young man nodded, stared up at the brilliant moon again and then nodded. “We’re going to get it before her. If we can, we can stop her.

“And we’ll beat her up in the process!” Lilith added excitedly. She hopped up with the help of her bat wings and excitedly pulled on Oliver’s arm.

“You make it sound easy.”

She laughed. “You keep saving us, I keep calling you my prize. Fair deal.”

“Let’s go.”

***

The trio found the road that they had originally came on. The Breach Between always had a spooky, jagged look but everything seemed so much worse surrounding where Gloom had once been. The ground was cracked and uneven, streaked with deep gauges. Every few steps, a faint vibration passed through the soil, like a pulse from deep underground. The trees were skeletal, their bark gray and brittle instead of their strange black sheen. Some bore scars where vines of blight had crawled up their trunks and burned them from within.

They passed a ruined farmhouse where the walls had melted into a shape that resembled dripping wax. A rusted plow lay half-buried nearby, twisted by heat. Oliver said nothing, but he felt Lilith’s hand tighten slightly in his. She said nothing either, though he could sense the weight behind her quiet.

By dusk, they reached a hill where an old building that may have been a chapel stood leaning against the roots of a massive dead oak. The stained glass in its windows had cracked but not fallen, its faded colors catching what little light remained. Oliver pushed open the door, and it groaned like an old wound reopening.

Inside, the air smelled of dust and long-burned candles. A single pew remained intact near the front. The altar had collapsed, and a pool of green liquid shimmered where rainwater had mixed with residue from the sky.

‘Oh, god. Not more water.’

He was never going to trust water at all in this world. Oliver led them to the back corner away from the liquid and with some of the broken furniture started a small campfire on the exposed ground.

Lilith sat beside him, wrapping her cloak around her shoulders. The orange light caught the curve of her face, softening the exhaustion there. Fernwyn sat opposite, unmoving with eyes closed. He could see that some of her roots had sprouted into the soil though it didn’t look comfortable. There was probably very little nutrients left.

For a while, no one spoke. The crackle of the fire filled the chapel, its warmth fragile against the chill.

“Why leave us alive?”

That was the question. Mali’thra had demonstrated that she could have ended them each with ease but she had chosen not to. Oliver stared into the fire, watching it bend and flicker. “I don’t know.”

As they settled down to rest, Fernwyn took the first watch. Oliver lay on his back, staring at the flickering ceiling. He could not sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Mali’s face. The eyes that had once softened when she spoke to him now burned like twin stars. Her voice still lingered in his mind, quiet and haunting. Only the Mirror Seed can stop me.

He turned his head. The reflection of the fire danced in a shard of broken glass near the altar. For an instant, he thought he saw movement within it. His reflection stared back, but the eyes were wrong. Too bright. Too knowing. The mouth moved, forming a word he could not hear.

He sat up quickly, heart pounding. The shard was still. Fernwyn looked over from her watch, her expression calm but questioning.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just tired.”

She studied him for a moment, then nodded and turned back toward the door.

Lilith murmured something in her sleep beside him, curling closer, her fingers brushing his arm. The gesture steadied him more than he wanted to admit. He leaned back again, letting the fire’s warmth lull him, even as unease lingered at the edge of his thoughts.

Outside, the wind picked up. It whispered across the broken fields, threading through the cracks in the chapel’s walls. For a moment, Oliver could almost hear it speaking his name.

He closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe evenly. For now, all he could do was sleep.