The first day’s travel away from Oakhaven was a journey from one world to the next.

  The lush, green life of the valley clung to us for the first few miles, a fond memory of birdsong and the smell of rich, damp earth. It was a lie we were happy to believe in.

  Then, slowly, the world began to die.

  The trees grew more sparse. Their branches twisted into gnarled, arthritic shapes, shedding their leaves to reveal black, cankerous bark. The grass became patchy and grey, crumbling to ash under our boots.

  The air, once sweet with pine, grew heavy and still. It carried a cloying, metallic scent of decay and old blood—the smell of a butcher’s shop left open in the summer heat.

  “By my ancestors’ forge, what is that smell?” Faelar’s voice, a booming complaint that shattered the oppressive silence, came from the rear.

  He stopped, sniffing the air theatrically. “It smells like a goblin died inside a troll’s boot. A week ago. In a swamp.”

  “It’s the smell of corruption, Faelar,” Liam’s voice drifted back from the trees where he was scouting ahead. He was a shadow moving through the dead branches. “The land itself is rotting. Try to breathe through your mouth. Though, given the state of your beard after that stew last night, that might not be much of an improvement.”

  “There’s nothin’ wrong with my beard, you pointy-eared twig!” Faelar retorted, stroking the braided red hair defensively. “It’s a fine, noble beard! It retains flavor! And I’d rather smell it than this cursed air! At least my beard doesn’t smell like… like failure.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The air did smell of failure. A deep, profound sadness seemed to hang over the landscape, a grief that had settled into the very soil.

  Willow walked with her hand pressed to her stomach. Her usual cheerful demeanor was gone, replaced by a pale, grim cast. She looked like she was walking through a funeral.

  “It’s not just rotting,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath of sound.

  She reached out and touched the black, weeping bark of a twisted willow tree. The sap was thick and dark, like tar.

  “It’s grieving,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “The earth is crying here. Something beautiful was murdered, and no one ever sang it to sleep. It’s angry, Kaelen. It wants to hurt something.”

  Elmsworth, naturally, saw the apocalypse as a grand academic opportunity.

  He strode over to the tree, pulling a small brass magnifying glass from a pouch. He leaned in until his nose was almost touching the black sap.

  “A fascinating hypothesis!” he chirped. “Anthropomorphizing the metaphysical decay of the ley lines! While the concept of ‘terrestrial grief’ is largely poetic nonsense, the symptoms are undeniable.”

  He scraped a bit of the black sap onto a glass slide and held it up to the grey light.

  “Look at this cellular necrosis!” he exclaimed, delighted. “It’s a textbook case of demonic miasma corrupting the local flora’s bio-arcane matrix! I haven’t seen a specimen this potent since the Blighted Plains of G’Tharr! Wrote a paper on it, you know. ‘The Necrotic Properties of Demon-Dung.’ It was very well received in certain circles.”

  “Circles of insufferable old bores, I imagine,” a sneering voice whispered from Liam’s belt as the elf dropped down from a tree to join us.

  Liam looked down at his hip, annoyed. “Quiet.”

  “This landscape is pathetic,” the dagger hissed, its voice audible only to Liam, though the elf’s grimace was visible to all of us. “Barely a hint of soul-devouring torment. I’ve seen more menacing vegetable patches. Utterly third-rate.”

  “If you don’t be quiet,” Liam muttered to the dagger, “I will use you to chop roots for the rest of this journey. And I won’t clean you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare! The indignity! I am a weapon of legends!”

  I tried to ignore the bickering. My focus was on the small, obsidian ward-stone in my palm.

  It was warm—a steady, reassuring heat that pulsed faintly in a northeasterly direction. It was our compass in this wasteland.

  “Stay alert,” I called out, my voice sounding harsh in the dead air. “This is their land now. Don’t assume we’re alone.”

  We walked for another hour. The terrain grew rockier, the trees turning into skeletal husks.

  We stopped for a brief rest in a small, rocky clearing. It was a natural amphitheater, surrounded by high, jagged ledges of grey stone.

  On the highest ledge, overlooking the path we had just walked, sat a massive, spherical boulder. It looked precariously balanced, held in place by a wedge of smaller stones and time.

  “That looks safe,” Liam noted dryly, eyeing the rock. “I’m sure gravity has taken the day off.”

  “Structural instability is a hallmark of this region,” Elmsworth noted, following his gaze. “Erosion rates are accelerated by the necrotic atmosphere. I wouldn't sneeze near it.”

  We sat on the lower rocks. The silence pressed in, a physical weight. There were no birds. No insects. Nothing.

  “I hate this,” Faelar declared. He reached for his flask of ‘marching water,’ shook it, realized it was empty, and looked profoundly sad.

  “A proper place has noise,” the dwarf grumbled. “The ring of a hammer. The echo of a song in a great hall. The sound of meat sizzling. This quiet… it’s dishonest. It’s lying to us. Like it’s waiting for something bad to happen.”

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  He had barely finished the sentence when the ground erupted.

  It wasn’t an earthquake. It was an ambush.

  The dry, cracked earth in the center of the clearing burst upwards in five different places at once. Dust and rocks flew into the air as monstrous creatures, all teeth and claws, launched themselves into our midst.

  They were badgers. But calling them badgers was like calling a hurricane a breeze.

  They were the size of wolves, corded with unnatural, shifting muscle. Their fur was a mangy, black mat that oozed the same dark ichor as the trees. They had six powerful legs, each tipped with long, barbed claws that tore through the rocky soil like butter.

  Their mouths were nightmarish collections of needle-like teeth that dripped venomous saliva.

  “CONTACT!” I roared, scrambling for my spear.

  The fight was a chaotic, bloody brawl before we could even form a line.

  The creatures were incredibly fast, staying low to the ground, moving with a fluid, liquid speed that defied their bulk.

  One of them latched onto Faelar’s leg before he could even lift Bessie. Its teeth sank deep into his leather greave, finding the flesh beneath.

  “Get off me, you six-legged rat!” Faelar roared.

  He tried to bring his great axe around, but the creature was too close, too low. He slammed the flat of the axe shaft against its side, a blow that would have broken a man’s ribs.

  The badger just growled, its red eyes burning with hate, and bit down harder, shaking its head like a terrier with a rat.

  Another one shot towards me.

  I dropped my center of gravity, meeting it with the point of my spear. The shaft shuddered in my hands as the creature’s momentum carried it forward.

  It impaled itself on the spear tip, but it didn't stop. It clawed at the wood, pulling itself up the shaft, its snapping jaws inches from my face. Its breath smelled of old graves.

  I kicked it back, ripping the spear free, and thrust again, keeping it at a distance.

  “Liam! Flank!” I shouted.

  Liam was a blur of motion. His daggers flashed in the grey light. He was perfectly suited for this kind of fight—quick, precise, mobile.

  He dodged a lunge from one badger, spun, and sank both his blades into its flank.

  The creature shrieked—a high-pitched, unnatural sound that grated on the bone—and turned on him, snapping at his heels.

  “Willow, a little help!” Liam grunted, parrying a snap of its jaws with one dagger. “They’re fast!”

  Willow was standing near the back, her face a mask of panicked resolve. She saw Faelar struggling. She saw Liam cornered.

  She didn’t cast a healing spell. There was no time for gentleness.

  She thrust her hands towards the ground.

  “Hold them!” she cried.

  Thick, thorny vines erupted from the cracked earth. They weren't the lush green vines of the valley; they were grey and woody, mimicking the dead landscape.

  They snaked around the legs of two of the badgers, holding them fast.

  The creatures shrieked and began to tear at the vines with their claws, shredding the magical wood.

  “Somatic Stasis is a poor choice against a creature with a decentralized nervous system and high torque!” Elmsworth announced from the edge of the clearing.

  He was standing on a rock, observing the carnage with academic interest, tapping his chin.

  “One requires a more… decisive solution! A kinetic application of force!”

  He began to chant, his hands weaving a complex spell.

  But Nugget, as always, had a simpler idea.

  The chicken had hopped up a series of rocks during the initial confusion. She was now perched on the high ledge overlooking the clearing—right next to the precariously balanced boulder Liam had noticed earlier.

  Nugget’s feathers shifted color. She turned a mottled, granite-grey that blended perfectly with the stone.

  She walked over to the small wedge-stone holding the massive boulder in place. She tilted her head. She looked at the badger alpha—the biggest of the pack—which had just broken free of Willow’s vines and was charging toward Elmsworth.

  “Nugget, no, that’s not a stable…” Elmsworth began, looking up.

  Nugget pecked.

  Clack.

  With a final, decisive strike, the wedge-stone skittered away.

  The large boulder teetered for a fraction of a second. It groaned.

  And then, with a deep, grinding crunch, it tipped over the edge.

  It fell.

  It crashed down into the clearing with the force of a catapult stone. It landed squarely on top of the charging alpha badger.

  CRUNCH.

  The sound was wet and final. The creature was flattened in an instant, turned into a black stain on the rocks.

  The remaining two badgers froze. They saw their alpha turned into a bloody paste. They looked up at the grey chicken preening on the ledge.

  They faltered. The unnatural aggression broke, replaced by animal terror.

  Liam didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and dispatched one with a quick, brutal stab to the throat.

  Faelar, finally getting his leg free as the creature released its grip, brought Bessie down in a furious overhead arc that split the last one’s skull.

  The fight was over. The silence that rushed back in was even heavier than before.

  That night, we made a nervous, hidden camp in a shallow cave. We didn't light a fire.

  Willow, her face grim, tended to the deep, ragged bite marks on Faelar’s calf.

  “It’s unnatural,” she whispered, her hands glowing as she knit the flesh back together. “Their blood… look at it. It’s black and thick, like tar. They aren’t just animals. They’re… sick. They’ve been made into monsters.”

  Liam sat near the cave entrance, keeping watch. He was kneeling by the corpse of the badger crushed by the boulder, which we had dragged out of the camp.

  He pulled the barbed claw he had looted from the Cultist Commander out of his pouch.

  He held it up next to one of the creature’s six feet. The claws were identical.

  “Well,” Liam said, his voice a low, grim rumble. “I guess we know what the cultists are using for guard dogs. And probably for digging the tunnels in the quarry.”

  “So they’re not just summoning demons,” I said, piecing it together. “They’re corrupting the local wildlife. Turning them into weapons.”

  “A sound tactical decision, from a certain point of view,” Elmsworth mused. He was eating a spoonful of his glowing green moss-paste. “The Meles Sepulcrum, or Grave Badger, is a notoriously aggressive creature even before demonic enhancement. Their natural burrowing ability makes them ideal for excavation. It’s actually quite brilliant, in a deeply evil sort of way.”

  “Brilliant?” Faelar grumbled, testing his newly-healed leg. “There was nothin’ brilliant about that thing chewin’ on my calf! It was a six-legged, furry barrel of teeth! At least with a cultist, you can have a decent conversation before you chop ‘em in half!”

  “Hardly a conversation,” Soul-Drinker chimed in from Liam’s belt. “More of a brief, pathetic plea for mercy. Disappointing, really. These modern zealots have no flair for the dramatic. I remember the Blood Priests of Yore… now they knew how to scream.”

  Liam slapped his belt. “Quiet.”

  “I just feel sorry for them,” Willow said quietly, staring into the darkness. “They weren’t born evil. Malkor’s magic… it’s like a poison that’s seeped into the very bones of this land. Do you think… do you think they could be cured?”

  Elmsworth stroked his beard. “An interesting metaphysical conundrum! Curing demonic corruption on a biological level would require a complete cellular and spiritual realignment. The process would be agonizingly painful and would most likely result in the subject’s spectacular, and likely explosive, disintegration. I would very much like to test the theory, if we can capture a live specimen.”

  “No live specimens,” I ordered. “We kill them.”

  I took the first watch. I stood at the mouth of the cave, looking out at the vast, cold ocean of darkness.

  The Vorash ward-stone in my pouch pulsed with a steady, reassuring heat. It was a promise of a destination.

  But after the day’s bloody welcome, the journey to that end felt longer and more dangerous than ever before.

  And somewhere in the dark, I knew, more of those things were digging.

  and more dangerous than ever befor