Sael looked at the girl kneeling in front of him.
She didn't look like Bushy Brows at all, which was a silly thing to think, considering centuries separated them.
Still, the thought came automatically, the way comparisons did when you'd known someone well enough that their features became a permanent reference point. Bran had been stocky, built like someone who'd spent his youth hauling fishing nets and his adulthood swinging a sword. Square jaw. Perpetually sunburned nose. And those eyebrows—thick enough that they'd been the first thing anyone noticed about him.
This girl was slight. Sharp-featured. Amber eyes instead of Bran's muddy brown.
No resemblance whatsoever.
Except maybe the posture. The way she held herself even while kneeling. Bran had always carried himself like he was ready for something—a fight, a journey, a terrible joke he was about to inflict on everyone in earshot.
Sael realized he'd been staring for several seconds.
He looked away.
It had been a while since he'd thought about Bushy Brows. Not deliberately, anyway. The man had a habit of showing up in his thoughts at inconvenient times—usually when Sael was trying to sleep or focus on a spell matrix. But actually thinking about him, remembering specific details, that required effort he usually avoided.
The girl had said House Eryndor.
Bran had founded that house. After their fifteen-year-long quest to defeat the Corrupted One.
Sael pulled his pipe from his coat and tapped it against his palm, not lighting it. Just holding it.
Bran had died 334 years ago. Give or take a few months. Sael had been in Aleria at the time, chasing down a rumor about a lich that turned out to be a very elderly necromancer who mostly just wanted to be left alone.
He'd found out about Bran's death two years later.
Stopped in a tavern. Overheard someone talking about the old Duke of Orlys, how he'd passed peacefully in his sleep. Surrounded by family. A good death, as deaths went.
Sael had left the tavern without finishing his drink.
His hand tightened on the pipe.
The thought wasn't productive. It made him sad. So he stopped thinking about it.
He exhaled, the sound rougher than he meant it to be. The girl was still kneeling and the boy stood beside her, silent. Both of them watching him.
Right.
He wasn't alone.
Sael tucked the pipe back into his coat without lighting it.
"You don't look like him," he said.
The girl's head tilted slightly. "Sir?"
"Bran. Bushy Brows. You don't look like him at all."
Silence.
The girl and the boy glanced at each other.
Hmm. Perhaps that had been an odd thing to say aloud. But it was already said, and taking it back would only make it worse. He could have erased their memories entirely and skipped the embarrassment, but that seemed excessive and unethical, hence he'd decided to take an alternate path.
Move on and pretend it hadn't happened.
"...So," he cleared his throat. "Why were you looking for me?"
The girl was hesitating.
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Her eyes flicked to the boy beside her, then back to Sael. She was gathering her thoughts, or maybe her courage, and taking far too long to do it.
"Out with it, girl."
The words came out sharper than he'd intended.
Both of them flinched. The boy actually took half a step back, and the girl's shoulders went rigid.
Sael winced internally.
He should apologize. Probably. Say something about not meaning to sound harsh, that he just wanted her to get on with it, that standing around waiting made him uncomfortable and—
She started talking.
"We wanted to ask if you'd come with us to the west," she said quickly, words tumbling over each other. "To the continent of Marrix. We're heading there to investigate, and we thought—we hoped—that if you were real, if you were still alive, you might be willing to help us—"
Right. Well.
The moment for apologies had passed.
He'd do it later. After she finished talking. That would be more natural anyway. Yes, good plan.
Sael crossed his arms. "The west?"
He hadn't meant to say it aloud. It was supposed to stay in his head as a question he'd ask once she was done. But apparently his mouth had other plans.
The girl understood anyway. Her expression shifted, not annoyed, just refocusing, like someone who'd been interrupted mid-thought and was adjusting their explanation.
"For the past two years," she continued, "events have been happening on the continent of Marrix. Strange events. House Eryndor has interests there—trade agreements, a few settlements, some of our bannermen oversee holdings in the eastern provinces. We've received reports. Concerning ones."
She paused, glancing at the boy.
He stepped forward slightly, like he'd been waiting for his cue.
"One year ago," the boy—Orion, Sael reminded himself—said, "we received a traveler from Marrix. One of house Eryndor's bannermen. He said things were wrong. People going missing. Livestock found dead in ways that didn't make sense. House Eryndor sent six expeditions to investigate," Orion continued, his voice quieter now. "Six separate groups. Scouts, mages, experienced fighters. None of them came back. Not a single person. That's when we knew something was seriously wrong. And... and..."
He hesitated.
Ilsa didn't. "Corruption," she said. "We have reason to believe there is Corruption."
Sael's attention snapped to her immediately. His arms uncrossed. His posture straightened. The casual detachment he'd been maintaining evaporated like mist under sun.
"Are you sure?" His voice was flat. But something in his chest had gone very tight.
"Yes," Ilsa said. She didn't hesitate or waver. Just met his eyes and said it again. "We're sure."
"Absolutely sure," Orion added. His voice was quieter but just as certain. "The bannerman described the signs. Black veins in the soil spreading like infection. Mana disruption, wild fluctuations that made simple spells fail or backfire. Animals that moved wrong, like their bodies didn't quite belong to them anymore. And the people who disappeared, some of them came back. But they weren't right. They spoke in ways that didn't make sense, said things they shouldn't know."
Sael stared at them.
Corruption.
He hadn't heard that word used seriously in four hundred years. Not since the Corrupted One had been put down at Mount Yrsult. Not since the great war had ended and the world had collectively decided that some knowledge was too dangerous to pursue, some powers too terrible to invoke.
But the word itself was older than that. Much older.
Twelve thousand years older.
Before the Age of Ash, before the great kingdoms rose and fell, before recorded history began in any meaningful way, there had been the Primordials. Not gods, the distinction mattered, though most people didn't understand it anymore. Gods were worshipped, prayed to, given offerings in exchange for favor.
Primordials were different.
They were aspects of fundamental concepts made manifest. Truth given form. Order. Chaos. Life. Death. Light. Darkness. Each one embodied a principle so essential to reality that they didn't require worship or belief—they simply were, whether anyone acknowledged them or not.
They existed in their own realm, separate from the mortal plane, and they had established the System itself. The levels, the stats, the structured progression of power that governed every living being. Their gift to creation, given freely and maintained without interference.
They never intervened in mortal affairs.
None of them.
Except one.
Corruption.
Twelve thousand years ago, a mage—whose name had been deliberately stricken from every record, erased so thoroughly that even Sael didn't know it—had done the unthinkable. Through methods that were still debated by scholars who studied that dark period, he had managed to summon the Aspect of Corruption into the mortal realm.
Neither a fragment nor a lesser manifestation.
The Primordial itself.
What followed was the Age of Ash.
Six thousand years of darkness. Civilizations crumbling. Magic itself becoming unstable as Corruption spread like a disease through the fundamental fabric of reality. Entire continents rendered uninhabitable. Species driven to extinction. The very mana that powered the System becoming tainted, unreliable, dangerous to touch.
The Aspect of Corruption didn't conquer through force. It didn't need armies or weapons. It simply existed, and its existence poisoned everything around it. Wherever it went, the natural order broke down.
Plants grew in unnatural configurations, turning into masses of twisted vegetative flesh that consumed anything they touched. Animals changed, their bodies warping as the Corruption rewrote their fundamental nature into something that should never have lived. People who came into contact with it—through proximity, through corrupted mana, through the spreading environmental taint—would begin to change as well.
The process was always the same. Black veins spreading through their bodies like infection. Their speech becoming disjointed, wrong, as if something else was using their voice. They would know things they shouldn't know, speak truths they had no way of learning. And eventually, they would stop being themselves entirely.
For six thousand years, the world burned.
Then, approximately six thousand years ago, something changed. The Aspect of Corruption vanished. Not defeated—you couldn't defeat a Primordial, not truly—but somehow removed from the mortal plane. Sent back to its realm, or sealed, or bound through methods that were never fully recorded.
But the damage had been done.
The taint remained. Lingering in the soil, in the mana flows, in the deep places of the world where Corruption had taken root. It never spread the way it had when the Aspect itself was present, but it never fully disappeared either. It became something the world learned to live with. Pockets of Corruption that wise people avoided. Zones where mana behaved strangely and life twisted into forms that shouldn't exist.
The Age of Ash didn't truly end with the Aspect's removal. It continued for another fifty-six hundred years, during which civilization slowly clawed its way back from near-extinction. Kingdoms rose and fell. Magic was relearned. People adapted to a world where some places were simply too dangerous to inhabit.
And then, a little more than four hundred years ago, someone found a way to harness it.
A mage—later known only as the Corrupted One—had discovered one of those deep pockets of ancient taint. Instead of avoiding it like any sane person would, he'd studied it. Experimented with it. And eventually, through a process that Sael still didn't fully understand even after fighting the man for fifteen years, he'd absorbed it into himself.
Not the Aspect. The Aspect was gone, sealed away in its own realm where it belonged.
But the remnant. The residue of its presence. Six thousand years of accumulated taint, concentrated and wielded like a weapon.
The Corrupted One had nearly destroyed the world.
It had taken everything Sael and his companions had to stop him. Fifteen years of hunting, fighting, learning. Studying the enemy. Understanding how Corruption worked, how it could be countered, what principles governed its spread.
Sael had personally killed the Corrupted One, ending the long age of darkness.
And now Ilsa was standing in front of him, telling him it might be back.
Sael's jaw tightened.
"How widespread?" he asked.
His voice came out rougher than he'd intended. The question felt inadequate—too small for what he was really asking, which was how close are we to another Age of Ash and do I need to start preparing for war immediately.
"We don't know," Ilsa said. "The reports are inconsistent. Some areas seem untouched. Others—" She shook her head. "We need to see for ourselves. That's why I'm going. I obtained a Right of Quest from my father. I'm authorized to investigate, to form a party, to take whatever action is necessary."
She straightened slightly.
"I have Bran the Brave's journal," Ilsa continued. "He wrote about you. About the Corrupted One. About how you fought it, how you ended the Age of Ash. I thought—if you were still alive, if I could find you—you'd understand what we're dealing with. You'd know what to look for. And maybe..." She hesitated for the first time since she'd started talking. "Maybe you'd come with us."
Sael opened his mouth to respond.
Then stopped.
Something had just entered his awareness. Faint. Distant. But distinct.
A mana signature.
He knew it immediately. Not the specific identity of the caster—he'd never met them—but the nature of it. Cold. Hollow. The particular texture that necromancy left on the world, like frost patterns on glass.
The necromancer.
They'd come back.
Of course they had. You didn't send a necro-dragon into a populated area and then just leave without checking. They'd probably been watching from a distance. Waiting to see if the construct succeeded. And when it had exploded in a ball of superheated light, they'd crept closer to investigate.
Sael's focus shifted.
Ilsa was still talking. He could hear her voice, see her mouth moving, but the words were filtering through a layer of divided attention.
"—decided to head west before it might be too late," she was saying. "I've gathered what supplies I can. Orion agreed to come with me, and we've been following the trail from Bran's journal. Looking for you."
Sael raised his hand slightly and cast the spell without speaking.
[Detection]
The world expanded.
It wasn't sight, exactly. More like awareness. A sphere of perception radiating outward from him in all directions, pushing through trees and earth and stone. Within seven miles, any mana signature became as visible to him as a candle in a dark room.
Most of what he sensed was background noise. Residual magic. The faint glow of enchanted items. A few small animals with barely perceptible auras.
And there—
Two miles northeast. Moving slowly. Cautious.
The necromancer.
"—tried to gather information in the villages along the way," Ilsa continued. She sounded more confident now, settling into the rhythm of her explanation. "Orion helped cross-reference the sightings with historical records. We found patterns. Every ten years, on Sael's Day, you appeared in Gatsby. And this year—"
Sael focused harder.
The signature was clearer now. Stronger. Not particularly powerful, which was interesting. Maybe level 400? 500 at most?
"—we arrived three days early," Orion said. He'd stepped forward again, adding details Ilsa had skipped. "We didn't want to miss you. We've been asking around, checking the cemetery, watching for anyone who matched the descriptions in the journal."
One mile and three-quarters now.
The necromancer was moving toward the impact site. Slowly. Carefully. Probably using detection spells of their own, though nowhere near as effective as Sael's.
"We know it's a lot to ask," Ilsa said. Her voice had softened slightly, grown more earnest. "We're strangers. You don't owe us anything. But if Corruption is back—if it's spreading again—we thought you'd want to know. That you'd—"
One and a half miles.
Sael could sense the details now. The necromancer was alone.
"—want to stop it before it becomes what it was before," Ilsa finished. "Before it spreads beyond Marrix. Before—"
There.
One mile, exactly.
Sael could pinpoint the location now. A clearing. The same one where the dragon had crashed, or close to it. The necromancer had stopped moving. They were standing still, probably examining the crater. Looking for their dragon. Trying to figure out what happened.
Ilsa had stopped talking. She was looking at him now, waiting for a response. Orion was doing the same, though he looked more nervous about it.
Sael lowered his hand. The detection spell faded, but he kept the location fixed in his mind.
"I'll be back soon," he said.
Ilsa blinked. "What?"
Sael didn't answer. He was already forming the spell matrix in his head. Spatial coordinates. Distance calculation. He looked at his destination.
"Wait," Orion started. "Where are you—"
"[Teleport]."
The world folded.
Then reality snapped back into alignment.
He was in the clearing.
The air still smelled like smoke and charred wood. Ash crunched under his boots. The trees around him were blackened, some still smoldering faintly where embers had burrowed into the wood and refused to die. The crater where the dragon had hit was directly behind him—a shallow depression in the earth surrounded by scorched grass and scattered debris.
And ten feet in front of him, frozen mid-step like a deer that had just heard a branch snap, was the necromancer.
A woman.
Younger than Sael had expected. Maybe mid-thirties by the look of her. Thin. Pale in the way people got when they spent too much time indoors surrounded by corpses and questionable decisions. Dark robes, practical rather than dramatic—no skull motifs or unnecessary spikes, which he appreciated. Her hood had fallen back at some point, revealing a gaunt face and wide eyes that were staring at him like he'd just materialized out of thin air.
Which, to be fair, he had.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then she did.
Her hand shot up, fingers already forming the beginning of a spell matrix—something defensive, probably a ward or a barrier, the kind of panic reaction mages defaulted to when surprised.
Sael moved faster.
He closed the distance in a single step. Not a spell. Just movement. His Agility stat was high enough that crossing ten feet took about as much effort as blinking.
His hand came up, thumb pressing firmly against her sternum—just slightly upward from her stomach, right where the mana core sat.
She gasped.
Her spell matrix collapsed. The half-formed ward flickered once and died.
"[Bind]."
The spell took hold immediately.
Her mana core locked. Not destroyed—he wasn't trying to kill her—just sealed. Wrapped in magical constraints that cut off her access to the well of power that made her what she was. It was like closing a door and bolting it shut. The mana was still there, still present, but she couldn't reach it anymore.
She tried anyway.
He felt it. The desperate attempt to channel, to pull power from a source that was no longer responding. Her breathing quickened. Her eyes went wide with the kind of panic that came from realizing you'd just lost the one thing you'd relied on your entire life.
Most mages were like that. They leaned so heavily on their magical abilities that they forgot—or never learned—how to function without them. Which wasn't inherently a problem. Magic was powerful. When you could level a castle with a thought or reshape a mountain with the right spell, why would you bother learning how to throw a punch?
But it created a vulnerability.
A fundamental one.
The mana core was the heart of a mage's power. And with the right spell, it could be bound. And when that happened, a mage became about as dangerous as a particularly angry librarian.
The woman stared at him, speechless.
"What—" Ah. not so speechless after all. Her voice came out hoarse. Shaky. "What did you—"
"Sealed your core," Sael said calmly. He lowered his hand but didn't step back.
She was still trying to process what had just happened. He could see it in her eyes—the disbelief, the growing terror as the reality of her situation settled in.
"Who—" She swallowed hard. "Who are you?"
Sael didn't answer immediately. He studied her instead. Took in the details he'd missed during the initial confrontation.
She was young. Not just in appearance, but in the way she carried herself. Inexperienced. The kind of mage who'd probably spent most of her training reading books and practicing spells in controlled environments. Her robes were well-made but worn at the edges, suggesting travel but not hardship. No visible weapons. No backup enchantments woven into her clothing.
She'd relied entirely on her magic.
Which meant she'd made a mistake coming here alone.
"I should ask the same of you," Sael said finally. His tone was measured. Not hostile, but not friendly either. "What manner of fool sends a necro-dragon into a populated village and then returns to examine the aftermath?"
She flinched at the word 'fool.'
"I didn't—" She stopped. Started again. "It was just supposed to—"
She cut herself off, clearly realizing that explaining her intentions to the person who'd just disabled her was probably not the wisest course of action.
Sael waited.
She didn't continue.
"Supposed to what?" he prompted.
Her jaw tightened. She looked away, staring at the scorched ground rather than meeting his eyes.
Stubborn, then. Or frightened enough that self-preservation was overriding the instinct to cooperate.
Sael sighed quietly.
This was going to take longer than he'd hoped.
Sael was about to press the issue when he felt the familiar signatures approaching from behind. Two of them, moving quickly through the forest. He didn't turn around. Didn't need to. He knew who it was.
A few seconds later, Ilsa and Orion emerged from the tree line, slightly out of breath. Ilsa's hand was on the hilt of her sword—not drawn, but ready—and Orion was half a step behind her, looking uncertain about whether he should be preparing a spell or staying quiet.
Ilsa's eyes swept the clearing, taking in the scene quickly. Then her gaze landed on the woman's face, and she stopped dead.
"Shaye?"
The necromancer—Shaye, apparently—went rigid. Her expression shifted from fear to something worse, recognition mixed with shame and the desperate kind of panic that came from being caught by someone who knew you. She turned her face away sharply, hunching her shoulders like she wanted to disappear into the ground.
Sael sighed again, deeper this time.
Yes. Definitely going to take longer than he'd hoped.