The truth about his parents' murder had changed everything. The manor, once a symbol of what he had lost, was now a monument to the treachery he had to avenge. The glowing aether-veins in the stone walls seemed to pulse with a new, furious energy, a mirror to the cold rage that now burned in Mehandi's heart. He was no longer just the heir; he was the executioner.
He found Elara in the glass-house, tending to the shimmering, light-infused roses. The old gardener was the last link to a life of innocence Mehandi could barely remember.
"Elara," Mehandi said, his voice flat. "Tell me everything you know about the Lord of the Wailing Barrows."
Elara's hands stilled, a shiver running through his aged frame. "My Lord, that is a name whispered only in fear. He is a defiler of the dead. He can raise them, not as flesh and blood, but as puppets of shadow and bone." He looked at Mehandi, his eyes filled with a desperate plea. "Your brothers have lost all honor. To ally with such a creature... they have made a pact with damnation itself."
Mehandi felt the star spirit's gentle nudge, a quiet voice of caution in the storm of his rage. Do not let their darkness become your own.
He spent the next two days in the library, not reading of spells, but of geography. He found an old, tattered map that marked the Wailing Barrows in a desolate, shadowed region far to the east. He made a vow to the manor, placing a hand on the library wall, feeling the aether pulse a silent promise. The house would be safe. He would not leave it to his brothers' fate. He would return.
He left at dusk, a solitary figure cloaked in dark linen. He carried nothing but a small satchel of dried provisions and a worn compass that had once belonged to his father. He was no longer the boy who had relied on the land's gentle magic. He was a hunter, and he used his powers with a new, chilling purpose. He didn't just walk; he became a part of the wind and the earth, his movements as silent and fluid as a ghost's.
He reached the village where Elara said his brothers had been sighted. The place was silent, the villagers' fear palpable even in the stillness. He placed a hand on the cobblestone, reaching out with his mind, and felt the lingering, sickly magical resonance of his brothers' passage. It was laced with a foul, corrupted energy—a taste of the necromancer's power.
As he followed the magical trail, he found a child's rag doll on the side of the road, a simple, forgotten toy. He reached for it, and the doll's head turned to look at him, its stitched eyes glowing with a faint, malevolent red light. A small, chilling voice, not of a child, but of an angry, ancient spirit, hissed from within it: "He knows. He's coming."
Mehandi crushed the doll under his boot, its spiritual essence dissipating into the air with a faint shriek. He had his proof. His brothers weren't just running; they were learning. They were weaponizing their desperation. The Lord of the Wailing Barrows was teaching them how to turn what was once innocent into a tool of hate.
Mehandi continued his journey, the image of his parents' betrayal and his brothers' new, twisted power burning in his mind. He was no longer on a journey of vengeance. This was a war, and for the first time, Mehandi Volkov was ready to fight.