By the time Aurelian returned to Larkspur Haven with Solenne and Rhoswen, the planet below had already begun to look different.
Not back to how it was before, per se, not even close, but changed.
Elowen's plan had worked.
After reaching an agreement with the Whiteheart, she combined its silver sap with a medicinal dispersal agent and used controlled artificial rain to spread it across the most infected regions of the planet.
The effect was immediate on the weaker infected. Whole swarms of low-level monsters suffered genetic collapse the moment the rain soaked through them, their bodies breaking down where they stood, while the stronger ones did not die as easily but were weakened badly enough that Astra's ground forces and Caelan's surviving local troops could hunt them down much faster than before.
What had once looked like a months-long extermination war had suddenly become something manageable.
