With the midnight blossoms in hand, Clive and Lucia made their way back to Marblehaven. The landscape around them told the story of Titan's brief awakening. Cracks split the earth, as if the god had drawn boundaries with his fingers. Trees were torn asunder exposing the Twilight zone to the sun. The shadow ether that had permeated the land lessen.

  By late afternoon, they crested the final hill before the border checkpoint. Clive stopped walking.

  The military encampment that had blocked their path was gone. In its place, a disaster zone stretched across the valley. Watchtowers leaned at drunken angles, their support beams snapped cleanly in half. Supply wagons had been hurled against hillsides with enough force to embed their wheels in solid rock.

  "Titan's earthquake reached this far?" Lucia stared at the destruction.

  Across the ruin, the site crawled with activity. Soldiers in San'Dioral colors worked in teams, clearing debris and salvaging what equipment they could. Some hauled broken timbers into neat piles while others sorted through scattered supplies. A few mounted riders moved between work crews, coordinating the cleanup effort.

  "At least they survived," Lucia said, watching the organized recovery.

  They picked their way down the hillside, stepping carefully around fissures that split the road. The checkpoint's main gate had been reduced to splinters, its iron bands now decorating a crater twenty feet wide.

  A familiar voice barked orders from the wreckage.

  "Careful with those signal mirrors! Just because the world ended doesn't mean we can waste good equipment!"

  Captain Jackal stood near what had been the command tent, his gold rank insignia still gleaming despite the dirt coating everything else. He was directing two soldiers who were attempting to extract a strongbox from beneath a collapsed beam when he spotted the approaching travelers.

  "You," he said when he saw Lucia's face, his voice carrying across the work site. "The Thornwald girl. And the artist." Several nearby soldiers looked up from their salvage work. Jackal strode toward them, his expression shifting from recognition to suspicion. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd given up and gone home."

  "We found another way," Lucia said carefully, glancing at the soldiers now watching their exchange.

  “Another way eh…” Captain Jackal looked at them suspiciously.

  The soldiers were moving now, forming a loose circle around them. Hands rested on weapon hilts. The organized salvage work had transformed into something that felt dangerously like an arrest.

  "Captain," one of the soldiers called out. "Should we detain them?"

  Jackal stared at Clive for a long moment, his eyes occasionally drifting to the wreckage around them.

  "Stand down," he said finally. "They're not our enemies."

  Jackal walked up to Clive with an intimidating stare. "In another time, I would have you both clapped in irons for defying my orders and sneaking past my checkpoint. But as you can see, I have more pressing matters to attend to at the moment."

  He gestured at a team of soldiers struggling to extract supplies from beneath a collapsed watchtower. "Two of my men are dead, half my equipment is scattered across god knows where, and I'm supposed to explain to my superiors how a border checkpoint just... disappeared."

  His gaze swept over them again. "You look like you've been through hell."

  "We have," Clive said.

  "And what exactly happened up there?" Jackal's tone shifted to curiosity. "The last thing we saw was some sort of massive figure rising from the earth—looked like a mountain come to life. Then the earthquakes started, and the ground split open like parchment." He pointed toward a fissure that ran straight through what had been the checkpoint's main courtyard. "My men swear they saw a giant walking through the clouds before everything went to pieces."

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  “It’s a long story.” Lucia stepped forward. "Captain, perhaps we could speak privately?"

  Jackal studied her for a long moment, then gestured toward a section of cleared ground away from the salvage teams. "Five minutes. And this better be good."

  They followed him to a spot where the earthquake had created a natural depression, shielded from prying eyes by an overturned supply wagon. Jackal crossed his arms and waited.

  And so they explained what happened. How they had ventured deep into the Shadowfen's corrupted heart, seeking the midnight blossoms that could cure the stone curse. How they discovered the land was ruled by a necromancer called the Warden, who commanded legions of undead and fed on the despair of the living. How they met Nydalea, a druid huntress trapped within the grove.

  Lucia spoke of the final battle—how the Warden's power seemed insurmountable, how their weapons and magic proved useless against his undead army. Clive described Nydalea's desperate prayer to Titan, the Earth Father, and how the ancient god had answered at the ultimate cost.

  Jackal listened in silence, his face growing darker with each revelation. When they finished, he let out a long breath and rubbed his temples.

  "The Warden." He shook his head slowly. "We've been getting reports for years—patrols that never came back, scouts who returned babbling about voices in the mist, entire survey teams just... vanishing. Never imagined it was something like that."

  Jackal was quiet for a moment, staring at a crack in the earth. "If what you're telling me is true, then half the Twilight Zone just became explorable again. The Grand General's been interested in that territory for years, but we kept losing men to whatever was lurking in there."

  He turned back to them, and they could see him wrestling with the implications. "But how in the seven hells am I supposed to explain this in my report? 'Sir, the border checkpoint was destroyed when an ancient god rose from the earth to defeat an immortal necromancer.' They'll think I've lost my mind."

  Having passed the checkpoint, they continued their journey back to Marblehaven. The next few days passed without incident, though the landscape still bore hints of Titan's awakening. Fissures split the road at irregular intervals, forcing them to detour around holes.

  On the morning of the fourth day, they crested a familiar hill and saw the humble farm spread out below them. The cottage where they met Martha and her father who was slowly turning to stone.

  "A chance to test out your cure," Clive said, gesturing toward the homestead.

  “Not yet.” Lucia shook her head, patting the precious midnight blossoms secured in her pack. "It's not that simple. I'll need my laboratory, my equipment. The extraction process requires precise temperatures, specific distillation techniques. These flowers are just the raw ingredient. Creating the actual cure will take days of careful work."

  Still, Clive felt a sense of hope. He couldn’t wait to see the smile on their faces when they realise a cure is possible.

  As they descended toward the farm, something felt wrong. They reached the cottage yard and found it deserted. The wooden shutters were latched tight, and when Clive knocked on the door, only silence answered. He tried the handle and found it locked.

  "Where is everyone?" Lucia asked, quickening her pace.

  "They must have left," he said.

  Lucia was already moving toward the small garden plot beside the house. What she found there made her breath catch in her throat.

  In the center of the garden. The figure was perfectly rendered in gray stone—an elderly man in simple farmer's clothes, one hand raised as if waving goodbye. The stone captured every detail, even the gentle smile that had characterized Gregor in life.

  At the base of the stone figure, someone had placed a wooden board propped against small rocks. On it was the portrait Clive had drawn, the family portrait showing Gregor whole and smiling, surrounded by his loved ones. Protective stones had been arranged around it, as if someone had tried to shield it from the elements.

  "We're too late," she whispered.

  Clive stood beside her, studying the makeshift memorial. Fresh flowers had been scattered around the base—cornflowers and wild roses that couldn't have been there more than a day or two. “They must have fled the area."

  "Probably, it’s what I would have done. Head to the larger towns where they can start over."

  Clive gently adjusted the portrait, ensuring it was secure against the wind. "This is why they left it. So he wouldn't be alone."

  The wind picked up, rustling through the abandoned wheat fields and stirring the edges of the portrait. For a moment, it almost seemed as if the stone figure nodded in acknowledgment.

  They stood in silence for several minutes, paying their respects to a good man who had deserved better. The morning sun climbed higher, casting the stone figure's shadow across the abandoned garden.

  Finally, Lucia shouldered her pack with renewed determination. "We need to get back to Marblehaven. Every day we delay, more people become like Gregor."

  As they walked away from the farm, Clive looked back once at the stone figure standing guard over the empty homestead. The portrait remained at its base, a reminder of the family that had loved him and the artist who had seen his true worth despite the curse that claimed him.

  "We'll save the next one," Clive said, as much to himself as to Lucia.

  "We will," she replied.

  Behind them, Gregor's stone form stood sentinel in the morning light, watching over fields that would never again know the touch of his careful hands, but surrounded by tokens of love that would endure far longer than flesh ever could.

  The artist's true medium is not pigment or clay, but memory itself. Transforming the fleeting into the eternal, ensuring that what we love endures long after flesh has failed. In every stroke lies defiance against forgetting, in every portrait a promise that someone was here, that they mattered, that they were seen.

  —The Legendary Moonlight Artist