# Chapter 566: The Inquisitor's Pursuit
The air in the Bloomblight zone was a thick, soupy miasma that clung to the lungs like wet ash. Isolde pulled the high collar of her Synod-issued coat tighter, the fabric treated with sacred oils that did little to ward off the penetrating chill of corruption. It did not smell of death, not in the way a battlefield did. It smelled of wrongness, a cloying, sweet scent of rotting magic that made the teeth ache and the eyes water. Every breath was an act of will, a small defiance against a world that wanted to unmake her.
"Status on the tracker," she commanded, her voice a low rasp that was swallowed by the oppressive silence.
Inquisitor Kael, a man whose face was a roadmap of old scars and whose faith was as unyielding as granite, knelt. He held a polished silver disc etched with complex sigils. The disc, a resonance tracker keyed to the unique energy signature of the obsidian flower, flickered weakly. A single, wavering point of light indicated their quarry's position, miles ahead. "The signal holds, High Inquisitor. But the interference… it's like nothing I've ever seen. The very air fights us."
Isolde nodded, her gaze sweeping over the nightmare landscape. They had been pursuing the rogue Sableki and her accomplices for two days. The chase had led them into the heart of the world's wound, a place only spoken of in hushed, fearful sermons. The Synod's doctrine was clear: the Bloom was a divine punishment, a holy fire that cleansed the world of sin, and the blight that remained was the lingering stain of that sin, to be avoided, not entered. Yet here she was, on a direct order from High Inquisitor Valerius himself. The target was not just a traitor; she was a heretic who carried a relic of immense and dangerous power.
Their progress was agonizingly slow. Where Nyra's party had moved with a strange, almost supernatural ease, Isolde's squad of twelve elite Inquisitors was forced to fight for every yard. The ground itself was hostile. Tendrils of shadow, slick with an oily residue, would lash out from the corrupted earth, seeking purchase on flesh and armor. The skeletal trees would sometimes shudder and release clouds of spores that induced hallucinations—visions of loved ones calling from the darkness, of the Synod's grand cathedrons crumbling to dust.
"Form up! Shield wall!" Isolde barked.
Her Inquisitors moved with practiced precision. They were the best, handpicked for their unwavering faith and formidable Gifts. Kael slammed a gauntleted fist into the ground, and a ripple of solid force expanded outward, cracking the earth and temporarily dispersing the shadow tendrils. Another Inquisitor, a young woman named Lyra with eyes the color of a winter sky, began to chant, her Gift a low, resonant hum that pushed back the psychic pressure of the blight. It was a constant, draining battle.
As they crested a ridge of what looked like fused bone, Isolde saw it. A path, perhaps twenty feet wide, cut through the blight. It was unnaturally clean. The writhing shadows and violet pustules receded from it as if burned. The air above it shimmered with a faint, green-tinged light. The tracker in Kael's hand pointed directly down this path.
"This is their trail," Lyra said, her voice filled with a mixture of awe and revulsion. "The flower… it's not just shielding them. It's purifying the ground they walk on."
Isolde dismounted, her boots crunching on the sterile, grey soil at the path's edge. She knelt, running a gloved finger over the ground. It was cold, but not with the necrotic chill of the surrounding blight. It felt… neutral. Like stone. She looked up. The path stretched for miles, a sterile scar on the face of corruption. It was a testament to a power that defied Synod doctrine. The Bloom was a punishment, a final judgment. It was not meant to be healed. It was not meant to be undone.
"High Inquisitor," Kael said, his voice tight with concern. "This power… it feels… alive. Not like our Gifts, which are blessings granted through righteous suffering. This feels like something else. Something wild."
Isolde stood, her expression unreadable. "It is the power of the Bloom itself, twisted to a new purpose. A perversion. That is why we must retrieve it. Valerius was clear. It cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the Sable League." The words sounded hollow even to her own ears. She had been taught that the magic of the Bloom was inherently corrupt, a poison that could only be contained or destroyed. But this… this was creation. This was order imposed on chaos. It was a miracle wrapped in a heresy.
They continued their pursuit, the clean path a damning guide. The contrast between the sterile trail and the raging corruption on either side grew more pronounced. At one point, they saw the remains of a massive, multi-limbed creature, its body half-dissolved into a shimmering, crystalline dust. It had been one of the blight's guardians, a terror that could shred a squad of Crownlands Wardens. Here, it lay broken, its form dissolving where it had touched the edge of the purified path.
"They didn't even have to fight it," Lyra whispered, her face pale. "They just… walked past it."
Isolde felt a cold knot form in her stomach. Her mission was to hunt down a traitor and recover a dangerous artifact. But what if the artifact wasn't dangerous? What if the Synod's entire history, their entire reason for being, was built on a lie? The thought was a treasonous spark in the dark of her mind. She stamped it out. Her duty was to the Synod. To Valerius. Her faith was her shield.
The tracker led them onward. Hours bled into one another, a monotonous cycle of trudging and fighting. The Inquisitors were growing weary, their Gifts strained to the limit holding back the relentless psychic assault of the blight. The clean path was their only salvation, a lifeline in a sea of damnation. Isolde found her gaze drawn to it again and again. The sheer scale of its power was breathtaking. It wasn't just a shield; it was a statement. A declaration that the world's greatest wound could, in fact, be healed.
They were forced to stop as night fell, a concept that was merely a deepening of the perpetual twilight. They made camp in the center of the purified path, the sterile ground a small island of safety in an ocean of horrors. As Lyra meditated, replenishing her energy, and Kael stood first watch, Isolde found herself walking to the edge of their sanctuary. She stared out into the writhing darkness. A creature, all teeth and too many joints, scuttled just beyond the invisible barrier of the path, its malevolent eyes fixed on her. It couldn't cross. It was afraid of the lingering residue of the flower's power.
She thought of the sermons. The Bloom was the final judgment. The blight was the deserved punishment of the unworthy. The Gifted were the chosen, those who suffered for the sins of the world and were granted a fraction of divine power in return. It was a neat, simple narrative that gave the Synod its power. It justified their control, their Inquisitions, their rigid hierarchy.
But this path was a refutation. It was a question written across the landscape in letters of pure, clean light. If the Bloom's corruption could be so easily pushed back, so effortlessly undone, then what was the Synod's purpose? Were they the guardians of humanity, or were they just the jailers of a prison that no longer needed to exist?
The seed of doubt, planted earlier, now sent down a root. It was a small, fragile thing, but it was there. She remembered Valerius's words. *"The Sableki woman carries a seed of the Bloom itself. It is an abomination that must be purged. Its power is a seduction, a lie that promises healing but will only bring a second, more final apocalypse."* He had been so certain, so absolute. But looking at the evidence before her, his certainty felt like fanaticism.
"High Inquisitor."
Isolde turned. It was Kael, his face grim. He held the tracker. "The signal has stopped moving. It's holding steady, a few miles ahead. At the edge of a… a disturbance."
"A disturbance?"
"The tracker can't make sense of it. A massive void. A place where the blight's energy is… concentrated. Focused. It's like the eye of a storm."
Isolde's heart hammered against her ribs. The crater. The epicenter. They had reached the heart of the world's wound.
They broke camp at first light, a grim determination settling over the squad. The final stretch of the path felt different. The air grew heavier, the silence deeper. The blight on either side seemed to recoil, not just from the path, but from the destination ahead. It was as if the entire corrupted landscape was afraid of what lay at its center.
Finally, they arrived. Isolde stood at the edge of a vast, perfectly circular crater, so immense that the far side was lost in haze. The walls were sheer, made of a black, glassy rock that seemed to drink the light. It was a place of absolute desolation, a hole punched in the world. And at its center, a faint, pulsing green light beat in time with the tracker in Kael's hand.
"The flower is down there," Lyra breathed, her voice filled with a terrifying reverence.
Isolde's mission was clear. Retrieve the artifact. Eliminate the heretics. But as she stared into that abyss, at the single point of life beating in the heart of death, her certainty crumbled. This was not a den of evil. This was a sanctuary. The power she had witnessed, the path of purification, the light at the center… it was not a perversion. It was a cure. A cure the Synod had spent centuries trying to suppress.
Her duty warred with her conscience. Her oath to Valerius warred with the evidence of her own eyes. She was an Inquisitor. Her life was her faith. But what if her faith was a lie?
She saw movement on the crater wall far below, tiny figures beginning a descent. Nyra and her companions. They were going down there. Toward the light.
"High Inquisitor, your orders?" Kael asked, his hand resting on the hilt of his consecrated blade. He was ready to fight, to kill, to die on her command. He saw a heresy to be purged. Isolde saw a miracle to be protected.
The seed of doubt in her mind blossomed into a terrible, unavoidable realization. Valerius hadn't sent her here to retrieve a dangerous artifact. He had sent her here to destroy a threat to his power. A threat that could heal the world and render the Synod obsolete. Her entire life, her every sacrifice, had been in service to a lie.
She opened her mouth to give an order, but no words came. What could she say? *Attack*? And destroy the only hope this blighted world had? *Retreat*? And be branded a traitor, hunted by the very organization she had dedicated her life to? She was trapped, suspended between her duty and the truth.
It was Lyra who broke the silence. The young Inquisitor, her face streaked with grime and tears, stepped forward. She had seen the same things Isolde had. She had walked the path of purification. She had felt the wrongness of the blight and the rightness of the flower's power.
Her voice was shaking, but it was clear and loud in the dead air. She looked not at Isolde, but at Kael and the other Inquisitors, her eyes pleading.
"High Inquisitor," she said, her voice cracking with the weight of her revelation. "We are destroying the world's only hope. Is this truly the Synod's will?"