The wind had changed. Drier. Harsher. Laden with dust, the stench of iron, and the residue of dead magic.

  The fortress emerged in the distance, perched atop a ridge of black stone. Once a bastion of light, it was now only a ghost of itself. Towers split in half, walls gnawed by necrotic runes. A thick haze crawled from the dried moats up along the walls. No torches. No guards. Only silence—broken now and then by distant, metallic groans.

  Garlan and Marenna advanced cautiously, every sense on edge. Brenuss stayed behind them, growling low.

  — Something doesn’t want us here, Garlan muttered.

  The main gate stood ajar, as if waiting for them.

  They pushed it. The screech of rusted hinges echoed through the emptiness.

  The entrance hall lay in ruin. Empty suits of armor. Weapons twisted. Scars of battle—claw marks, warped magic, and blood long since dried. The ambient mana was unstable, as though the place refused to choose between life and death.

  They descended a side staircase, following faint aftershocks of mana. The deeper they went, the more the stone itself seemed to weep.

  And there they found him.

  Arcalion.

  He lay sprawled across a stone slab, bound by shadow-fangs of cursed magic. His skin was branded with necromantic sigils, his arms torn, his chest split to the bone. His eyes half-open, dulled. His breath rattled in jagged gasps. Black maledictions slithered through his veins like living leeches.

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  Marenna rushed to him at once, pressing her hands against him. Garlan turned, standing guard over the corridor. He knew healing this would not go unnoticed.

  — He’s alive… but it’s devouring him from the inside, she whispered. Something won’t let him die. And yet… everything in him wants to.

  She released her life-mana. The clash was brutal. The runes shrieked like wounded beasts. Some exploded in piercing cries. Others coiled around her wrists, writhing.

  — I can’t heal them, she gritted through clenched teeth. But I can drive them back.

  She shifted her stance. One hand to his forehead, the other to his chest. She exhaled—just as she once did for dying plants.

  A circle of purification spread around Arcalion. The curses screamed, voices of darkness now echoing through the stone.

  Brenuss snarled endlessly. Garlan felt the demonic mana leaking through the walls, like a warning.

  Marenna trembled, but held.

  — There’s a core… an anchor. A necromancer’s signature. Some kind of hook tied to his soul. I have to break it from inside.

  Her breathing slowed. Her aura pulsed.

  Then, a raspy voice hissed through Arcalion’s cracked lips:

  — He… is coming… Don’t let him… take…

  And he collapsed into unconsciousness.

  Marenna screamed as a black thorn burst from his ribcage. She seized it barehanded, summoning a vortex of pure mana.

  The struggle was long. Violent. But the rotten spine cracked at last, dissolving in a flash of green light.

  Arcalion slumped, limp—but freed.

  Marenna collapsed against him, gasping.

  Garlan returned to them, laying a hand on Arcalion’s shoulder. The paladin’s eye fluttered open, weak but alive.

  — You’re not dead, Garlan breathed.

  A faint smile. Almost imperceptible.

  — Not yet… but he is close. And he’s waiting for you.