# Chapter 546: The Bloomblight
Dawn broke over the southern plains, a pale, anemic light that did little to chase away the deep gloom clinging to the land. The air, usually crisp and clean, grew heavy and foul miles from their destination. It was a sweet, cloying scent, like overripe fruit left to rot in the sun, cloying at the back of the throat and coating the tongue with a greasy film. Nyra reined in her horse, the stallion snorting in distress and dancing nervously on the packed earth. Beside her, Cassian's face was a grim mask, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Finn, a few paces behind, was pale but resolute, his eyes fixed on the horizon as if he could will the truth into being.
The ten soldiers of the Crownlands' elite guard who accompanied them formed a loose perimeter, their own unease evident in the way they gripped their polearms and scanned the unnaturally still landscape. The village of Oakhaven should have been visible by now, a cluster of rooftops and a wisp of smoke from morning fires. Instead, there was only a faint, sickening purple haze that clung to the ground like a low-lying fog. It pulsed, a slow, rhythmic beat that was almost subliminal, a diseased heart pumping corruption through the veins of the earth.
"The light," Cassian said, his voice low. "It's coming from the ground itself."
Nyra dismounted, her boots sinking slightly into the soft, damp earth. It felt wrong, yielding, like flesh. She knelt, touching the soil. It was cool, but a faint vibration traveled up her fingers, a thrumming energy that made the fine hairs on her arm stand on end. The purple light seemed to intensify around her hand, a slow swirl of malevolent luminescence. "This isn't residual energy from the Bloom," she murmured, standing and wiping her hand on her trousers. The foul scent clung to the fabric. "This is active. It's alive."
Finn pushed forward, his gaze frantic. "Where are they? The people?"
"They're here," Nyra said, her voice flat. "We just have to go in."
They left the horses tethered to a skeletal copse of trees, the animals too terrified to approach the corrupted zone. On foot, the sensory assault intensified. The sweet smell of decay was overwhelming, a physical presence that made their eyes water and their stomachs churn. The ground grew spongier, and with every step, the purple light pulsed brighter, as if responding to their presence. The silence was absolute. No birds sang. No insects chirped. The world was holding its breath.
The first building they came to was a smithy, its door hanging from a single hinge. Inside, the forge was cold, but the tools were arranged with an eerie precision, as if the smith had just stepped out. A half-finished horseshoe lay on the anvil, its surface coated in a fine, black dust that shimmered with the same purple light. Cassian ran a gauntleted finger over it, and the dust flaked away, leaving behind a pitted, corroded scar on the metal.
"It's consuming everything," he breathed.
They moved deeper into the village, the soldiers fanning out with practiced discipline, their faces grim beneath their helms. The houses were intact, but the signs of life were twisted into something grotesque. A garden of once-healthy vegetables was now a tangle of black, weeping vines that pulsed with internal light. A child's wooden doll lay in the street, its painted smile warped into a silent scream, its wooden body soft and dark with rot.
Then they saw the first one.
A woman, clad in a simple farmer's dress, stood in the middle of the main lane, her back to them. She was perfectly still, her head tilted at an unnatural angle. As they watched, she took a shuffling step forward, then another. Her movements were jerky, puppet-like. Finn made a small, choked sound.
"Hello?" Cassian called out, his voice ringing with authority. "We're here to help. Are you alright?"
The woman froze. Slowly, with a grinding of bone and cartilage that was audible even from a distance, she began to turn. Nyra's Gift, a subtle talent for discerning patterns and intent, screamed a silent warning. This was not a person. It was a trap.
When the woman faced them, the true horror of the Bloomblight was revealed. Her skin was the color of old parchment, stretched taut over a frame that seemed both swollen and emaciated. Her mouth was agape, the lips peeled back from blackened gums. But it was her eyes that held the nightmare. They glowed with the same malevolent, amethyst light as the ground, burning with a mindless, infectious rage. There was no recognition, no humanity, only a consuming hunger.
"Husks," Nyra whispered, the word a curse.
The husk let out a sound that was not a scream but a wet, tearing rasp, and lunged. It moved with a terrifying, spasmodic speed, its limbs flailing in impossible directions. Two soldiers moved to intercept, their polearms leveled. The first one drove his weapon into the husk's chest. There was no spray of blood, no cry of pain. The spearhead sank into the body as if into thick mud, and the husk kept coming, its claw-like hands scrabbling for the soldier's face.
"Back!" Nyra commanded, her voice sharp as a whip. "Don't let them touch you!"
The second soldier, thinking fast, swung his polearm like a staff, smashing it into the side of the husk's head. The creature's skull caved in with a sickening crunch, and it collapsed to the ground. But it did not die. It twitched and spasmed, a broken puppet, its limbs jerking as the purple light in its eyes flickered and dimmed. A thick, black ichor, the consistency of oil, seeped from the wound, sizzling as it touched the ground and eating away at the dirt like acid.
More figures were emerging from the houses now. A man with a farmer's build, a young woman clutching a warped broom, an old man leaning on a cane that had become a twisted club. All of them shared the same dead eyes, the same glowing purple hatred, the same shuffling, predatory gait. They were not an army; they were a plague given form.
"Form a line!" Cassian roared, drawing his sword. The blade, a masterwork of Crownlands steel, gleamed in the dim light. "Shields up! Defensive perimeter! Do not break contact!"
The soldiers obeyed with drilled precision, locking their shields together to form a solid wall. The husks threw themselves against the barrier, not with tactics, but with a relentless, mindless force. Their clawed hands scraped against the wood and steel, the sound like nails on a slate. Each touch left a smear of black ichor that began to smoke and corrode the shields.
Finn was a whirlwind of desperate energy. His Gift, a minor talent for kinetic bursts, was usually suited for unsettling an opponent or creating an opening. Now, he unleashed it with raw, panicked force. A husk lunged at him, and he thrust his palm forward, a concussive blast of air throwing the creature back ten feet to slam into a wall. But it simply got up and shambled forward again, its body seemingly immune to anything but wholesale destruction.
"They don't feel pain!" Finn yelled, his voice cracking. "They don't stop!"
Nyra's mind raced, cataloging every detail. The infection spread through touch. The husks were relentless. The ichor was corrosive. This wasn't a battle to be won; it was a contagion to be avoided. "We can't fight them all here!" she shouted over the din. "We need to find the source! The scout said the shadow was liquid. There has to be a central point!"
Cassian fought at the apex of their defensive line, his sword a blur of silver. He was not a killer by nature, but he was a protector, and he moved with the grim efficiency of a man defending the last bastion of hope. He didn't aim for killing blows; he aimed for incapacitation, severing tendons at the knee and elbow, bringing the husks down in heaps of twitching limbs. It was a temporary solution, but it bought them time and space.
"Finn, with me!" Nyra commanded, her eyes scanning the buildings. "The well! Every village has a central well. If this shadow is liquid, that's where it would pool!"
Finn nodded, his face set with a desperate determination. Together, they broke from the defensive line, weaving between the shambling forms. Nyra used her Gift not as a weapon, but as a guide, sensing the faint currents of malice that flowed through the village like an underground river. The pull was strongest toward the central square.
The square was a scene of utter desecration. The stone well in its center was no longer a source of life. It was a vortex. The liquid shadow the scout had described bubbled and churned within it, a thick, amethyst sludge that gave off the sickening purple light and the cloying scent of decay. It pulsed in time with the light from the ground, the heart of the corruption. Tendrils of the stuff snaked out from the well's base, crawling across the ground like veins, feeding the blight.
"There," Nyra breathed, a mix of horror and triumph in her voice. "That's the source."
As they stared, a figure emerged from the churning well. It was not a husk. It was something worse. It was formed entirely from the liquid shadow, a vaguely humanoid shape with no defined features, only two burning points of light where eyes should be. It was a Bloomblight given consciousness, a pure embodiment of the Withering King's residual hatred.
The creature glided toward them, silent and swift. The soldiers, seeing this new, more potent threat, redoubled their efforts, but the tide of husks was relentless. One of the soldiers stumbled, his shield slick with corrosive ichor. A husk fell on him, its clawed hands tearing at his helmet. He screamed, a sound of pure terror that was cut short with a wet, final gurgle.
Cassian saw the fall and roared in fury, abandoning his defensive posture to carve a path toward the fallen man. He fought like a lion, his sword cleaving through husk after husk, but for every one he cut down, two more seemed to take its place. He was a beacon of light and defiance in the encroaching darkness, but the darkness was endless.
The shadow-creature reached Finn first. The young man stood his ground, his hands raised. He unleashed a full-force kinetic blast, a wave of pure force that should have shattered stone. The wave struck the creature and passed through it, causing it to ripple and distort, but it did not slow. It flowed around the blast and continued its advance.
Nyra acted on instinct. Her Gift was not one of direct power, but of influence. She focused her will, not on the creature, but on the air around it, trying to disrupt its cohesion, to turn its own substance against it. The air grew thick and heavy, and the creature's form wavered, struggling to maintain its shape. It was a small effect, but it was enough to make it hesitate.
That was the opening Cassian needed. He reached the fallen soldier, kicking the husk aside and hauling the man to his feet. "Fall back! To the well!" he yelled, his voice raw.
It was a tactical error, born of compassion. In turning to save his man, he had exposed his back. A husk, a former village baker by the look of its flour-dusted apron, lunged from the side. Cassian twisted, his sword coming around in a deadly arc, but he was a fraction of a second too slow.
The husk's clawed hand, its fingers blackened and dripping with ichor, did not find flesh. It found the gorget of his armor, the steel plate protecting his throat.
There was no clang of metal on metal. There was no screech of claws on steel.
There was only a soft, sizzling sound, like water on a hot griddle.
The point of contact between the husk's claw and Cassian's armor instantly turned to black dust. The corruption did not scratch or dent the metal; it unmade it. The dust fell away, revealing a hole the size of a fist. The Bloomblight, the infection, was spreading. The purple light of the husk's eyes seemed to flow into the armor, the black corruption crawling like lightning across the polished steel. A patch on his breastplate, near his heart, began to darken and smoke.
Cassian cried out, a sound of shock and agony, stumbling back. He clawed at his own armor, his fingers finding the edges of the corrupted patch. The metal flaked away at his touch, disintegrating into fine, black powder. The infection was not just on the surface; it was in the armor, consuming it from within. The prince of the Crownlands, the symbol of their new hope, was being consumed by the King's final, spiteful curse.