The stench of decay and unrelenting silence had not lifted after their recent skirmish—instead, it had congealed, growing heavier and more viscous, as though the forest itself exhaled a fetid miasma that clung to their lungs. The air seemed to stand still, each breath tasting of iron and rot, scraping their throats raw.
All around them, the warped silhouettes of corrupted flora blurred at the edge of vision, like countless crouching beasts poised to spring. Raine's nerves were stretched taut as drawn steel, his grip on the dagger so fierce his knuckles whitened. The aftershocks of his earlier hallucination—waves of nausea, the metallic tang of blood—still pulsed in his head, reminding him how desperately weak he had become.
Something was wrong. Not merely the maddening presence of twisted creatures, but a deeper, colder threat—an unseen gaze, as numerous and patient as starving predators lingering just beyond the flicker of their torches. It was not an immediate desire to kill but a calculated curiosity, an assessment of weakness before the kill.
Raine leaned close to Karrion. "Do you feel it?" he rasped, voice low, parched. He dared not specify what "it" might be.
Karrion's stout frame stiffened; he swept his eyes across the shadow-clotted undergrowth. "I do," he growled. "It's like being stripped naked on a frozen plain, surrounded by wolves licking their chops." He forced a humor he did not feel. "But don't fret—I'm tougher than dwarf leather."
His attempt at levity fell flat. Raine glanced back at Thalia—pallid as moonlight, lips a colorless slash—her head bowed in wary concentration, fingers pressed to the seal at her breast.
"Thalia?" Raine whispered.
She lifted her head with startling swiftness, eyes glinting like chips of obsidian. "They are here," she confirmed, her tone so calm it quelled the hairs on the back of his neck. "Continuously trailing us."
"Those filthy creatures again?" Karrion snarled. "The rats and ravens?"
Thalia shook her head. "Not them." Her gaze drifted around the gloom, pausing on one spot where the shadows pooled darkest. "Something else. More… silent."
Before they could ask more, a subtle shiver rippled through the gloom at their six o'clock. As though the darkness itself had inhaled, the very shadows quivered—water ripples on a still pond.
Raine spun, dagger at the ready, but found only unyielding blackness.
"Where?" he panted.
Thalia's voice was a whisper, yet each word struck like ice. "There—in the coil of shade behind us."
Karrion's brows shot up. "Are you saying we're surrounded by invisible things?"
"No," Thalia replied, voice cold as steel, "they are of the shadows. They merge with it… become it." She breathed a name on trembling lips: "The Shade-Eaters."
Raine had never heard the term.
"A predator of these woods," Thalia went on, voice steady despite the weariness in her eyes. "They contain no fixed form. They feed on light… on life itself. They toy with their prey—probing, waiting for terror to unmask a weak spot before the final strike."
Karrion spat a curse. "Damnation! More nightmarish beasts!"
No sooner had the word left his lips than a sudden, icy draught swept across the forest floor—so cold it felt like poison coursing through his veins. Karrion staggered and would have fallen if not for Thalia's hand on his arm.
Raine lunged to his side. "Karrion!"
The dwarf reeled, catching his breath in sharp, strangled gasps. His shield arm twitched as though branded by frost. "That… that was no animal!" he croaked. "They strike from the dark!"
Raine's heart pounded. He scanned the black expanse, spotting nothing—yet every rustle of leaf or twitch of shadow set his blood to ice.
"They test us," Thalia explained, voice like a winter wind. "Measuring our essence… searching for what they can prey upon."
Their fear was a living thing, weaving around them. Karrion's impatience dissolved into grim determination. The dwarf's stature bristled with steel; he hefted his hammer as if daring the unseen to appear.
Raine swallowed the fear knotting his throat. He dared not summon his star-blood now—star-light magic would scorch him with vengeance in his fragile state. He could only grip his dagger tighter and trust in the frantic rhythm of his heartbeat.
In the hush that followed, the forest seemed to hold its breath. Then, without warning, Karrion let out a strangled curse and reeled again—this time, clawing at his tarnished armor where a jagged gouge had appeared, the metal shredded as though scraped by claws unseen.
"Karrion!" Raine cried, but the dwarf was already swinging his shield in a frantic arc at empty air.
All at once, Thalia stood and her presence rippled through the gloom. Two pinpricks of ice-blue light flared where her eyes met the darkness. She lifted an arm, fingers splayed, and from her palm coalesced a tendril of living shadow—delicate as silk yet heavy with arcane weight.
The very darkness writhed beneath her command. It shivered as though called by a hidden harbinger. In a faint, tearing ripple, a shape emerged: an amorphous lump of shifting blackness, dotted with writhing, tentacle-like filaments.
Raine recognized the warning in Thalia's stance: the Shade-Eater.
Seizing the moment, Raine hurled his dagger with all his strength, guided by the merest hint of form. The blade cut through the void with a sharp hiss and sank home into the heart of that writhing mass.
A scream rent the silence—a sound no living beast could produce. The shape convulsed, recoiling in agony, then collapsed inward like a punctured balloon. In an instant, it evaporated into a thin wisp of acrid smoke, leaving only a dank, cloying odor in the air.
The threat was gone… at least for now.
Karrion leaned on his hammer, chest heaving. "By Moradin's beard, thank the mountains you stepped in," he wheezed, turning to Thalia with raw gratitude. "Again, you've saved me—saved us."
Thalia's ice-white face betrayed exhaustion more than triumph. She bowed her head, hiding the ghost of a wince. "It… was nothing," she murmured, voice distant. "Shadows heed my will. They are my birthright—my burden."
Raine retrieved his dagger, the black vial of ichor still sliding off the tip. He stared at Thalia's fading shadows, questions simmering in his eyes: Who was this woman, mistress of darkness? How had she come to bear such power? Why was her heart forged from star-light and yet so bound to shadow?
But his doubts would wait. For now, their safety lay in unity, and unity demanded silence.
Karrion dismissed the unease with a grunt. "Enough chatter," he barked, "we push on before more of those curses stew in the dark."
Thalia nodded once, expression unreadable—neither apology nor invitation.
Raine cleared his throat. "Then let us press forward."
He led the way deeper into the forest's ravenous heart, Karrion close behind, hammer raised, and Thalia bringing up the rear, every step a testament to their fragile resolve.
All around, the shadows pulsed as though watching, waiting for the next note in the forest's deadly symphony. The Corrupted Wood's echo had found them once more—and this time, its whisperers in the dark would not be so easily banished.