Chapter 13: The Clearing
The Blight-Wood released them like a throat spitting out a stubborn seed. One step they were in the cloying, fungal twilight; the next, they stumbled into the harsh, grey light of the Marches proper. The air, though still tainted, felt clean by comparison.
No one spoke. The ordeal in the Wood had left its mark deeper than any physical wound. Kael's arm was bandaged, the flesh beneath still angry. Borus moved like a man made of stone, his vitality slow to return. Lin's eyes held a new, haunted depth as she glanced at Feng. And Scholar Wen... he simply watched, his silence more profound than ever.
They made camp on a rocky hillock overlooking a valley of twisted, grey-green trees. A thin, toxic stream gurgled below. Feng sat apart, as usual. The dead Sky-Silver rod lay across his knees. It was cold, inert, but when he focused, he could feel the ghost of its song locked inside the metal, now harmonized with the discordant symphony of his own power.
He was different. The violent chaos within him had found a center, a point of stillness. It made his control sharper, his presence more focused. Less like a feral storm, more like a drawn blade.
Wen approached, sitting on a rock nearby. He did not look at Feng, but at the bleak landscape.
"The Blight-Wood called you 'Flux,'" Wen said quietly. "A fitting name. You are not a cultivator in any traditional sense. You are a process. A transformative catalyst."
Feng said nothing. He ran a thumb over the smooth, cool metal.
"The memory it gave you," Wen continued. "The battle. The white-robed spearman, the black-scale dragon. That is the seed of the truth I seek. The Heart-rot Caverns are said to be the dragon's burial mound. Its decaying heart is the source of the Marches' corruption. And the spear-fragment you hold... it is a key."
A key. Feng looked at the rod. It made sense. The Wood had not just paid a debt; it had given him a tool to move forward, to solve a problem that troubled even it.
"Why?" Feng rasped, his voice rough. "Why help me move toward your goal?"
Wen smiled thinly. "Because you are the only one who can walk into the dragon's curse and not be unmade. You don't resist corruption. You converse with it. You are the perfect archaeologist for a tomb of blight."
It was a cold, logical answer. Feng was a living tool.
Lin walked over, handing Feng a strip of dried meat. She didn't meet his eyes. "The debt is paid," she said, her voice firm. "But I'll see this through. That Wood... I want to be far away from anything like it ever again."
Her debt was paid, but her fear bound her to him more tightly than any obligation. He had been her shield in the belly of the nightmare. She would stick close to the shield.
Kael watched from across the camp, his expression unreadable. The greed was still there, but tempered by a deep, unsettling fear. Feng was no longer just a strange kid; he was someone who bargained with sentient forests and won.
That night, the dreams came.
Not memories. Not his own. The ghost-song of the Sky-Silver rod, mingled with the Blight-Wood's ancient impressions, played behind his eyelids.
He saw the dragonfall from a new angle—not from the Wood's perspective, but from the land's. The impact was not just physical. It was spiritual. The dragon, a being of immense pride and volcanic wrath, died not in surrender, but in a final, curse-laden roar. Its blood was not just poison; it was a willful act of vengeance. If I cannot have this sky, none shall have this land.
The corruption of the Marches was not an accident. It was a dying emperor's edict.
And the white-robed figure... he did not leave in victory. He left in sorrow. He looked at the falling shard of his spear, at the spreading blight, and made a gesture of sealing before vanishing. He had contained the worst of it, but could not cleanse it.
Feng woke before dawn, the taste of ozone and dragon's blood on his tongue. The dream was a message. The Caverns were not just a tomb. They were a prison. And the dragon's heart was not just dead; it was a still-beating engine of hatred.
The next few days were a trek through a dying land. They avoided the sluggish, metallic rivers. They skirted fields of crystalline flowers whose pollen induced waking nightmares. They fought off a pack of Blight-Wolves—emaciated, crazed creatures whose bites carried a fever that made the blood boil.
Each encounter was a lesson. Feng learned to use his new, stabilized power with precision. A touch could drain the frenzied life from a wolf, leaving it confused and docile. A focused emission of his harmonized Qi could disrupt the nightmare-pollen, rendering it inert.
He was learning to not just consume tribulation, but to administer it. To use his unique nature as a weapon of control.
On the fifth day after the Wood, they found the Caverns.
It was not a cave. It was a wound. A vast, jagged tear in the side of a colossal, black-boned mountain. From it seeped a visible, bruise-purple mist that stained the air. The ground around the entrance was not earth, but a brittle, porous crust that crackled underfoot like broken glass. The very stone seemed diseased.
At the mouth of the tear, half-buried in the crust, stood a stone stele. Ancient, weathered script was carved into it.
Wen approached, tracing the characters with a reverent finger. "A sealing marker," he translated, his voice hushed. "It says: 'Here lies the wrath of the Blackscale. Its heart dreams of ruin. Enter not, lest you become part of the dream.'"
He looked at Feng, then at the dead spear-shard in Feng's hand. "The key. The seal was made by the spearman's power. This fragment should resonate with it. It should allow passage... for one."
The implication hung in the toxic air. Only Feng could go in.
Lin shifted her weight. "That's a death sentence."
"Not for him," Wen said, his eyes gleaming. "For anyone else, yes. For the Flux? It is an invitation."
Feng stared into the purple mist. He could feel it from here. It was the concentrated essence of the Marches' curse. The source. It whispered to him, not in words, but in a language of resonant decay. It recognized the Blight-Wood on him, the Rot-Dao, the devouring void. It recognized a piece of the spear that had wounded it.
Most of all, it recognized his hunger.
He stepped forward, past the stele, the dead Sky-Silver rod held out before him like a torch.
The mist did not part. It swirled. It reached for him, eager, curious, hungry to see what this strange, small thing would do.
As it touched him, the world dissolved into the dragon's dream.