*Day 8 - Between the ruins and the Sylvan border*
The farmhouse had been beautiful once.
Ora could see it in the bones of the place—the careful stonework of the foundation, the hand-carved wooden beams that still held despite fire damage, the remains of what had been a garden where someone had grown herbs with love and patience. Now it was a corpse of domesticity, another casualty of a war that made no distinction between armies and families.
She stood in the doorway for a long moment, her corrupted Vital Echo searching for threats. Nothing. The family who'd lived here had fled days ago, maybe weeks. Or they'd died. The echo couldn't tell the difference between absence and death anymore. Everything felt like ending.
The main room was mostly intact. A table set for four—two adults, two children by the size of the chairs. Bowls still in place, their contents long since rotted to black slime. A child's wooden dragon toy on the floor, one wing broken.
The toy caught her corrupted senses strangely—it felt *quiet* in a way nothing else did. The wood was odd, grain running in impossible spirals, warm to the touch despite the cold room. Heartwood. She'd read about it once—wood from juvenile Silvanime trees, so rare most thought it mythical. Said to absorb and remember magical signatures, then nullify them. Why would a farmer have such a thing?
Above the cold fireplace, a painting—the family probably, though water damage had turned their faces into smears of color.
The fireplace still had embers. Fresh ones—maybe two hours old. Someone had been here recently. She knelt, holding her hand over the coals. Nothing. She pressed her palm directly onto a glowing ember. It should have burned. Should have made her scream. Instead, it felt like touching lukewarm water. She watched her skin not blister, not react, just... exist against the heat that wasn't heat to her anymore.
She was always cold now. Had been since the corruption took hold. Three degrees below human normal, always. Snow didn't melt on her skin. Her breath didn't fog even in winter air. The cold wasn't uncomfortable—it was just fact. She was cold. The world was warm. They didn't meet properly anymore.
Ora picked up the toy dragon. It was crudely made, probably carved by a parent who loved their child more than they understood wood. Nothing like the perfect crystal sculptures of Crysillia. But it had weight. Presence. Someone small had held this, had made it fly through the air, had given it adventures.
The Heartwood hummed against her palm—not sound but sensation. It was drinking in her corruption, nullifying it in a small radius. For the first time in days, her hand felt... normal. Human temperature. The corruption was still there, but muted, sleeping.
She should set it down. Leave it for the child if they ever returned.
Instead, she slipped it into her pack. A practical choice—Heartwood might be useful against magical enemies. That's what she told herself. Not that she wanted to hold something a child had loved. Not that she needed proof innocence had existed.
Just practical.
The kitchen still had food. Most of it spoiled, but she found preserved meat in salt, hard cheese wrapped in wax, a jar of honey that would outlast empires. She ate mechanically, standing at the counter, staring at nothing. The honey was perfect—golden summer captured in sweetness. It made her want to cry. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried. Maybe when Lyra—
No.
She moved to the second floor. Three bedrooms. The parents' room held nothing of interest—clothes, a few coins hidden under the mattress, a love letter yellowed with age. But the children's rooms...
The first belonged to a girl, maybe twelve. Her diary lay open on a small desk:
*"Papa says the dragons won't come this far south. Mama doesn't believe him. I see her crying when she thinks we're asleep. Thom keeps asking if the dragons will be friends like in his stories. I don't tell him what I heard at market. About the cities turned to glass. About the people who—"*
The entry ended mid-sentence. Ora turned the page. Blank. They'd fled that day, probably.
The second room was the boy's—Thom. Maybe six years old. Drawings covered one wall, tacked up with proud irregularity. Dragons, but friendly ones. Knights. A house that might have been this one, with four stick figures holding hands in front of it. In the corner, a small bed with blankets still rumpled, as if he'd just gotten up.
On the pillow, a stuffed rabbit. Worn. Loved. One ear nearly falling off from being held too tight too many times.
Ora sat on the bed. It creaked under her weight. She picked up the rabbit, and something inside her—something the corruption hadn't touched yet—broke a little.
This boy, Thom, had been real. Had been afraid of the dark, probably. Had needed this rabbit to sleep. Had drawn those dragons before he knew what dragons really were. Had trusted that his parents would keep him safe.
Where was he now? Dead? Alive but broken? Growing up too fast in some refugee camp, his rabbit forgotten, his drawings burned, his innocence murdered by a war he'd never understand?
She held the rabbit to her chest and, for the first time since Lyra died, let herself feel the full weight of what was happening. Not just to her. To everyone. Every house like this. Every child like Thom. Every family shattered, every life ended or ruined.
Without thinking, she began to hum. Her mother's lullaby—the one she'd sung to both daughters on nights when thunder shook Crysillia's perfect towers.
*"Nel cristallo dorme la luce,**Nel cuore dorme la pace..."*
The notes came out wrong. Dissonant. Her corrupted throat couldn't form the pure tones anymore. What should have been crystal clarity was now broken glass grinding against itself. The melody that once meant safety now sounded like a dirge played backward.
She tried again, forcing her voice to remember.
*"Piccola stella, chiudi gli occhi..."*
Worse. The corruption had taken even this. She couldn't sing Lyra to sleep anymore. Couldn't hum the tune that meant home. The lullaby died in her throat, replaced by something that sounded like crying made of static.
The corruption in her veins pulsed, feeding on her grief, growing stronger. She could feel it spreading, another inch, another piece of her humanity dissolving. But she didn't fight it. What was the point? The world was ending. Children's toys lay abandoned in empty houses. Dragons sang cities to death. She was becoming something that would make it all worse. And now she couldn't even sing the songs that once made it better.
A sound from outside. Footsteps. Multiple people, trying to be quiet.
She set the rabbit gently back on the pillow, exactly where she'd found it. Whoever they were, they'd find her downstairs. She wouldn't bring violence to this child's room. Some places should stay innocent, even if nothing else could.
She descended the stairs, each step deliberate. The corruption had sharpened her senses. Three people. Two men, one woman. Armed but not soldiers. Survivors, probably. Looking for shelter or food.
They entered through the same door she had, weapons raised. When they saw her, they froze.
She knew what they saw. A figure in torn robes, covered in road dust and dried blood—not all of it hers. Eyes that glowed with wrong light. An aura of death that made the air around her shimmer like heat waves, but cold.
"Please," the woman said. "We don't want trouble. We're just... we're just looking for food."
"Take it," Ora said, her voice hollow. "I'm leaving."
"You're... you're an elf."
"I was."
She walked past them, and they pressed against the walls to avoid touching her. Smart. Outside, she could see they had a cart. In it, bundled in blankets, two children. Young. Younger than Thom.
One of them, a girl with dirt-smeared cheeks, clutched a wooden doll.
For a moment, Ora stood there, staring at those children. At what the world had been. At what it was becoming. At what she was becoming.
Then she reached into her pack and pulled out the preserved meat, the cheese, the honey. Everything she'd taken. She set it on the ground.
"For them," she said, nodding at the children.
The woman's eyes widened. "We... thank you."
Behind them, one of the men muttered something about seeing the same faces everywhere since the fall. "That builder Sicc'ius who never stops working. The healer Ky'arah who appeared from nowhere. That dwarf S'pun-duh with his mushrooms. The scholar Thom'duhr who keeps asking about the nature of reality. Even that strange one who calls himself F.D. Like they're following us. Or we're following them."
"The Five Constants," his companion said absently. "In every chaos, there are five constants. The builder, the healer, the dwarf, the scholar, and the mystery. Sicc'ius, Ky'arah, S'pun-duh, Thom'duhr, and F.D. - they appear wherever survivors gather."
"Don't." Ora turned away. "Don't thank me. I'm the reason you're running. People like me. Things like me. We're why the world is ending."
"You didn't destroy Crysillia. The dragons did."
Ora laughed, bitter as winter. "No. We destroyed ourselves the moment we thought perfection was achievable. The dragons just finished what we started." She began walking away, then stopped. "The boy who lived here. Thom. If you find him..."
"Yes?"
"Tell him his rabbit is still waiting."
She left them there, a family trying to survive in a world that had forgotten what survival meant. Behind her, she heard them enter the house, heard the children's excited voices at finding food. Normal sounds. Human sounds.
Sounds that reminded her of what she'd lost. Not just Lyra. Not just her city. But the ability to be part of that normalcy. To sit at a table set for four. To draw bad pictures of friendly dragons. To hold a stuffed rabbit and believe the dark wasn't really scary.
The corruption pulsed, fed by her sorrow, and she felt another memory slip away. The name of her first teacher. Gone. Payment for power she didn't want but couldn't refuse.
She walked on, leaving the farmhouse to its new temporary occupants. In a few hours, they'd move on, taking what they could carry. The house would be empty again. Waiting for the next desperate family. Or waiting to finally collapse, to join the rest of the broken world.
But for now, for this moment, children were eating honey and feeling safe.
It wasn't redemption. It wasn't even kindness, really. It was just a recognition that some things should be preserved, even if she couldn't be one of them.
The farmhouse had been beautiful once.
For a few more hours, it would be again.
---
*End Chapter 7.5*
---