NOVEL NEXT B3. Ch 13. The Lonely Bones
The road south from Haven is a thing of dust and silence. Each step carries me further from the walls I am sworn to protect, yet closer to a truth that must be faced. The Hallowed Legion holds the line.
The Wild Hunt culls the wastes. The Graveking's forces march on the Endless Rot. My lieutenants, extensions of my will yet independent in their purpose, carry the war to different fronts. They are the shield, the blade in the dark.
I am the spear aimed at the heart.
Their connection to me is a silver thread in the darkness, a distant echo of shared will.
I feel their victories, their vigilance. It is enough.
Behind me, the first shoots of green pierce the mud where Drowned Kingdom blood has soaked into the earth. Strange alchemy, that corruption's defeat should birth new growth. Tiny blades of grass emerge where the Leviathan fell, where the herald's magic unraveled.
Life claiming victory amidst death. The sight stirs something in Carida within the hollow space. The flower that blooms in battlefield mud is proof that darkness does not own the world entire.
But this miracle is a small one, an island of life in an ocean of ash. The green fades quickly as I march on. Beyond the reach of Haven's hope, the shoots thin and die.
The earth returns to its familiar barren gray, cracked and poisoned by years of corruption. No grass grows here. No trees cast shade. Only the ancient road remains, its stones worn smooth by countless journeys that no longer have destinations.
The silence is all there is, a profound emptiness broken only by the steady rhythm of my footsteps on dead stone, a sound that defines what the world has become beyond the small, guarded circles of light. I walk through a graveyard that spans continents.
Each mile severs another thread of connection to the living world. Soon, even the silver link to my lieutenants will stretch.
The dragon fragments within my frame remember when these plains were golden with wheat. When the road was busy with merchants and pilgrims, when way-stations offered hot meals and warm beds.
The memories taste of honey wine and summer festivals, of children's laughter echoing from village squares. All dust now. All silence. All graves unmarked and unmourned.
Old ghosts. Market towns reduced to foundation remnants. Bridges spanning empty air where rivers once flowed. Things meant for a living world, maintained by no one, serving nothing.
All roads lead to the same destination.
Emptiness.
I choose the southern path and continue walking. The connection to my Legion pulses steady and strong, a reminder that duty continues even when I am not there to witness it. The Captain leads patrols around Haven's perimeter.
The Hunt's alpha has already begun ranging further, seeking threats before they can organize. They do what I cannot. They protect what I must leave behind.
Each step away from Haven begets regret, yet I know the greater truth. The corruption spreads from distant sources. The Demon King builds power in his southern realm.
The World Tree still bleeds poison into the earth. No amount of defensive vigilance will heal these wounds. Only direct assault on the source.
Only the hunt carried to its ultimate conclusion. The road stretches endless ahead, an endless procession through a broken world. Somewhere beyond the horizon, fate awaits.
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Only two essences remain distinct within the hollow space. The Vigilant Sister, a steady point of light, an anchor of unwavering morality. And the Arkashoth fragment, a sliver of primordial darkness that observes, catalogs, and offers knowledge without judgment.
They are the twin poles of my being now, the vow and the void.
I walk for two days, crossing recent battlefields where the bones of lesser creatures lie scattered after violent struggle. The skirmishes here were not between corruption and purity, but corruption consuming itself. Demon fought demon, beast devoured beast, and the stronger claimed the territories of the fallen.
Territorial disputes in a kingdom without a present king.
It is the silence that draws my attention.
The corrupted lands should teem with horrors. Demon spawn should prowl these wastes. Twisted beasts should challenge my passage. Yet I encounter nothing.
The road remains empty. The silence stretches unbroken.
The Arkashoth fragment stirs, ancient knowledge surfacing like oil on dark water. It remembers when this emptiness had meaning. In the deepest past, before mortals raised cities, before gods walked among the living, silence meant preparation.
The predators were gathering elsewhere.
On the second evening, I reach a Crossroads. The dragon fragments recognize this place. Ancient memories surface of great flights assembling here, of councils held when the world still had hope.
Seven standing stones mark the junction, each taller than two men, and carved with directions.
Back then, the crossroads buzzed with activity. Merchants, pilgrims, armies on the march. Now only dust swirls between the weathered stones.
I pause beside the central stone, the largest of the seven. Its surface bears newer markings, crude scratches left by recent travelers. Most are pleas to gods who no longer answer. Some are warnings about what lies ahead. One, etched deeper than the rest, simply reads, "He dreams of other worlds."
I count the roads that branch away like arteries from a still heart. Three lead east toward territories I know are lost. Two wind north to regions claimed by lesser demons.
One curves back toward Haven and the territories under my protection. The seventh road leads south. Into the heart of darkness itself.
The Demon King's road.
Carida's essence pulses with warning. We are not ready for that path. Not yet. The power I have gained, the forces I command, would be insufficient against what waits at its end.
The Arkashoth fragment agrees, its ancient knowledge confirming what Carida fears. Down that road lays only an ending.
The Demon King commands legions that shattered the combined armies of the Old Kingdom. His power rent the very foundations of the world, corrupted the Wards themselves, brought an ending to gods.
A single Duke's death should have warranted immediate and overwhelming retaliation. Yet I walk these empty roads unmolested.
No demonic armies march toward Haven in vengeance. No greater horrors descend from the corrupted skies. Twice heralds of the Drowned Kingdom perished beneath my blade, yet no true threat came after.
The Flesh Sculptors' ritual lies in ruin, their constructs scattered to decay, but no master arrives to restore their work. Silence where there should be war.
Emptiness where there should be retribution.
The wind carries no scent of sulfur, no whisper of approaching wings. Even the corruption itself seems subdued. As if waiting for permission to act, or instruction on how to proceed.
The Arkashoth fragment offers insight. A lion does not mourn the death of mice. An eagle feels no rage when rats perish in their holes.
But I am no mouse. Haven is no isolated burrow. I have claimed the bones of creatures that served the King's dark purpose.
Built an army from the Field of Broken Banners itself. If the Demon King views such acts as beneath his notice, then maybe something else claims his attention. Something that makes my victories irrelevant noise.
The scratched message on the stone echoes in my awareness. "He dreams of other worlds."
Not metaphor. Not poetry.
The thought chills even these dead bones. What threat could be so vast, so urgent, that the King ignores open rebellion in his own territories? What force could demand the full focus of a being who reshaped the world itself?
I need answers. The dwarves of Maha Marr were a closed book, their knowledge limited to the deep dark and their own survival.
My own generals, the Graveking and the Hunt's alpha, were instruments of war, not espionage. Their purpose was direct, their understanding narrow.
Only Pan, the creature of pure opportunism, would have his ears to the ground, listening for the tremors of shifting power in the infernal courts. He was a risk, but a calculated one.
I head toward the lands I granted to him. The three-armed demon who bound himself to my service. Who spoke of territories and hierarchies, of the careful balance that keeps corruption from consuming itself.
If anyone comprehends the King's silence, it would be him. Pan owes me truth as much as allegiance.