The Blight announced itself with smell.
Spencer noticed it before any change in the landscape became visible — a sweetness that had no right existing, cloying and wrong, like fruit left to rot in summer heat. The horses sensed it too, their ears flattening, their steps becoming reluctant. Even Mandarb, Lan's warhorse, tossed his head with unease.
"We cross the border in approximately one mile," Moiraine said. "Once inside, stay close. Touch nothing. Eat only what you brought with you. The Blight corrupts everything it touches."
"Even air?" Mat asked.
"Especially air." Moiraine's silver-blue thread dimmed slightly, as if preparing for assault. "The corruption seeps into lungs, into blood, into dreams. The longer we stay, the more it costs us."
Spencer engaged Thread Sight and immediately wished he hadn't.
[WARNING: Shadow-corrupted territory detected. Ambient Pattern corruption at 87%. Stamina regeneration reduced to 50%. Recommend minimal Thread Sight usage.]
The landscape ahead was visible now — twisted trees that seemed to writhe even in stillness, grass that gleamed with an oily sheen, a sky that held a sickly yellow tinge despite the morning sun. Through Thread Sight, it was worse. Every thread was black-red, pulsing with sickness, reaching toward the group's clean signatures with hungry intent.
The Blight doesn't just corrupt. It feeds.
And we're walking straight into its mouth.
---
Lan led them across the border with the confidence of someone who'd done this before.
The Warder chose paths that Spencer couldn't have found with a map and a guide — narrow corridors between corrupted growth, rock formations that provided cover from the things that hunted this territory. His gray-green thread moved with instincts honed by a lifetime of war.
"You move through this like you were born here," Spencer said quietly, falling into step beside Lan's horse.
Lan didn't turn. "I was."
"Malkier."
"What's left of it." The Warder's voice carried no emotion, but his thread pulsed with something ancient and painful. "The Blight consumed my homeland before I could walk. I've been fighting it ever since."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Pity doesn't help anyone." Lan's pale eyes scanned the terrain ahead, reading signs that Spencer couldn't interpret. "But if you want to be useful, tell me when you see something moving that shouldn't be. Your impressions have been accurate so far."
[Skill Archive: Recording. Category: Navigation — Hostile Territory. Entry: Blight Pathfinding. Comprehension: 0.]
Spencer watched Lan's movements, trying to understand the patterns — how the Warder read corrupted growth, how he knew which paths were safe and which led to death. The knowledge flowed into the Skill Archive, fragments of expertise that would take years to truly master.
But fragments are better than nothing. Fragments might keep me alive.
---
Three hours into the Blight, the Codex leveled up.
[LEVEL UP: Level 6 → Level 7. Stat allocation: PER +1, VIT +1. New maximum Stamina: 36. Thread Sight enhancement: Luminosity reading enabled.]
Spencer felt the change immediately — a sharpening of his perception, a deepening of the Codex's integration with his awareness. Thread Sight gained a new dimension: not just color and thickness, but brightness. Active threads glowed; dormant threads dimmed; corrupted threads pulsed with a sickly, flickering light.
The Blight's threads were all pulsing. Dim, irregular, hungry.
Level 7. One level from Thread Tracing. One level from being able to follow threads through time as well as space.
But first I have to survive long enough to use it.
They stopped for a brief rest at midday, sheltering beneath a rock outcropping that Lan had identified as safe. Spencer distributed food from his Inventory — the supplies he'd stored at the Queen's Blessing, untouched by the Blight's corruption.
"Where did you get fresh bread?" Egwene asked, accepting her portion with surprised pleasure.
"I packed carefully before we left Caemlyn."
"That was weeks ago. It should be stale by now."
Spencer shrugged. "Must have been better preserved than I thought."
Egwene's thread flickered with curiosity but not suspicion. She was too exhausted, too focused on survival to question the small miracle of fresh food in the heart of corruption.
The Inventory preserves things perfectly. Time doesn't pass inside it.
Another advantage I can't explain to anyone.
---
The afternoon brought the first Blight creatures.
Spencer sensed them before Lan did — corruption-threads moving through the twisted undergrowth, converging on the group's clean signatures with predatory intent. Stingers, the books had called them. Wasp-like creatures the size of dogs, with venom that paralyzed prey for later consumption.
"Contact," Spencer said quietly. "Eight o'clock, thirty meters, moving fast."
Lan's sword cleared its sheath in one smooth motion. "How many?"
"Four. Maybe five."
"Get behind me."
The Stingers burst from the undergrowth, chitinous bodies gleaming black-red in the filtered light. They moved in perfect coordination, spreading to flank the group, their compound eyes reflecting nothing but hunger.
Lan killed two before Spencer finished drawing breath. His sword became a blur of motion, cutting through corrupted chitin like paper. The Stingers' threads winked out — black-red fading to nothing — and their bodies collapsed into twitching heaps.
Moiraine took the third with fire. The creature shrieked as flames consumed it, the sound somewhere between a whistle and a scream.
The fourth reached Perrin. The young blacksmith's axe came up in a reflexive swing, splitting the Stinger from thorax to abdomen. His golden eyes blazed with something that wasn't quite human — the wolf coming to the surface, the predator meeting predator.
The fifth never appeared. Either Spencer had miscounted, or it had retreated when its packmates died.
"Move," Lan ordered. "Where there are five, there are fifty. This territory is hunting ground."
They mounted and rode, leaving the corpses for whatever scavengers called this hell home.
---
That evening, they camped in a narrow ravine that Lan declared defensible.
The sky had turned purple as the sun set — not the gentle purple of twilight, but something bruised and sick. Spencer sat with his back to stone, watching the Blight's threads pulse in the gathering darkness.
His Codex Stamina had dropped to 24/36. The ambient corruption was draining him even when he wasn't using Thread Sight actively. At this rate, he'd be running on empty within another two days.
The Eye is two days away. Maybe less if we push.
I just have to hold out that long.
Loial settled beside him, the Ogier's massive frame somehow finding comfort on the rocky ground. His deep green-brown thread was the healthiest in the group — something about Ogier physiology resisted the Blight's corruption better than humans.
"You look troubled," Loial said quietly.
"Observant."
"I have been told that before." The Ogier's rumbling laugh was soft, meant not to carry. "What troubles you, Aldan Maeren? Beyond the obvious dangers of our situation?"
Fain knows what I am. The Shadow is tracking me. I'm planning to steal saidin from the Eye of the World, and I have no idea if I'll survive the attempt.
"Everything and nothing," Spencer said. "The usual."
"That is a very human answer." Loial's ears twitched with something between amusement and sympathy. "We Ogier tend to be more specific in our worries. Perhaps that is why we move so slowly through life — we must examine each concern individually before we can proceed."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It can be. But it is also thorough." Loial was quiet for a moment, his thread pulsing with slow, patient thought. "Whatever burdens you carry, you do not carry them alone. I have seen how the others look to you — how they trust your awareness, your warnings. That is not nothing."
Spencer looked at the Ogier — at this gentle giant from a race that had been tending the Pattern since before humans built their first cities. "Thank you, Loial."
"You are welcome." Loial's smile was visible even in the darkness. "Now try to rest. Tomorrow will require everything we have."
Spencer closed his eyes, but sleep was a long time coming. When it finally arrived, it brought dreams of black-red threads reaching for his soul.
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