Chapter 23: The Sickness in the Stone
The air in the crystalline cave was now thick with tension, the silence broken only by the faint, discordant hum of the corrupted ley-lines. The dust of the vanished Deep-Dweller settled around them, a grim testament to the unnatural nature of their enemy.
"A wound?" Thora's voice was a hushed whisper, her knuckles white on her bow. She looked at the pulsing blue veins in the walls with new horror. "In the world itself?"
Alistair placed a hand against the cold, smooth rock. A jolt of wrongness shot up his arm, a static screech against his senses. His connection to the planetary core, usually a source of steady power, felt strained here, like a clean stream trying to flow through poisoned ground.
"The energy here is chaotic. Broken," he said, pulling his hand back. "These 'Deep-Dwellers' aren't creatures born of this world. They're symptoms. Like a fever dream given form."
He opened his Admin interface. The scan of the area was a mess of conflicting data, but one new, glaring notification dominated his vision.
WARNING: LOCALIZED PLANETARY CORRUPTION DETECTED.
SOURCE: UNKNOWN. NATURE: PARASITIC/ENTROPIC.
EFFECT: DEGRADATION OF LOCAL LEY-LINE INTEGRITY. GENERATION OF HOSTILE ENERGETIC PHANTOMS (DEEP-DWELLERS).
ADMINISTRATOR AUTHORITY INEFFECTIVE WITHIN CORRUPTED ZONE.
The last line was a punch to the gut. His power was useless here. He was just a man with a spear in a place that defied the natural order.
"We cannot fight a sickness of the spirit with spears," Kael said, echoing Alistair's own thought, his face pale.
"No," Alistair agreed, his mind racing, adapting. "But we can diagnose it. We need to find the source. The heart of this corruption."
He looked deeper into the tunnel, where the pulsing blue light grew stronger, the hum more intense. It was a fool's errand. To go further was to venture into a place where his greatest asset was nullified.
But he was the Steward. This was his responsibility. The Graxians' problem was now his own, magnified a thousandfold.
"We pull back," he announced, the words tasting like ash. "We don't have the tools for this. Not yet."
The retreat from the crags was a somber, silent affair. The triumphant feeling of their earlier economic victory over the Graxians had evaporated, replaced by the chilling weight of a much larger threat. The unspoken war for dominance felt trivial now. The very land they were fighting over was sick.
When they arrived back at Vance Haven, the sight of the sturdy walls and the gentle hum of the Edict of Sanctuary was a profound relief. It was a bubble of health in a world that was revealing itself to be deeply wounded.
Alistair went straight to the foundation stone, the place where his connection to the Core was strongest. He sat, placing both palms on the warm stone, and pushed his awareness out, not to build or to sense his territory, but to *listen*.
He followed the ley-lines north, back toward the crags. The further his consciousness traveled from Vance Haven, the more the clean, vibrant energy frayed. By the time he reached the mountains, it was like listening to a beautiful song being played on a broken instrument, all dissonance and static. The corruption was a cancer, and it was not static. He could feel its slow, insidious creep.
He opened his eyes. Thora was waiting, her expression grim.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"It's contained to the northern crags for now," Alistair said. "But it's spreading. Very slowly, but it's spreading." He looked at his hands, then at her. "If it reaches the river… if it reaches our Core…"
He didn't need to finish the sentence. The fate of the Vine-Tail Serpent, a creature twisted and empowered by an *unstable* core, was a stark enough warning. A *corrupted* core would be the end of everything.
The priorities of Vance Haven had just been violently upended. The watchtowers and reinforced walls were meaningless against an enemy that could phase through stone and poison the world itself.
He had secured an alliance, stabilized his economy, and gained a tactical advantage over the Graxians. He had been playing a game of chess, thinking he was so clever.
Now he had discovered the board was on fire.
The true battle was no longer against monsters or rival clans. It was against a creeping sickness in the stone. And for the first time since becoming the Admin, Alistair had no idea how to fight it.