The last smoldering embers of the crimson light winked out in the darkness. Oozing black ichor hissed against Karrion's battered shield, scorching ugly pits into its surface. The dwarf panted heavily, leaning his warhammer into the cracked stone floor for support.
"Done for now?" Raine's voice trembled with exhaustion, his dagger's grip whitening his knuckles. The brief, brutal skirmish had nearly drained them of all strength—those malformed beasts had proved far more formidable than the shadow-eaters they'd fought before. Though the wounds of their faith in one another still ran deep, survival instincts demanded unity above all else.
"Until the next wave," Karrion rasped, wiping sweat and gore from his brow. His eyes darted through the tangled silhouettes of warped trees. "We've made too much noise. We'll draw more of those creatures if we linger." He pointed toward a gloomier patch of forest—in that direction, the very air felt stifling. "Move!"
Without hesitation, Raine and Thalia stumbled after him. The argument and sudden ambush were quickly swallowed by the need to press onward.
They forced their way through clotted, resinous vines that exuded a foul black sap, stepping onto a dense mat of lifeless moss that muffled their footsteps. Here the atmosphere shifted. The rank sweetness of corruption gave way to something more complex—notes of oxidized iron, the faint decay of withered blooms, and an indescribable ache that pressed down on their spirits.
Winds through the twisted boughs died away, replaced by a soft, unending sobbing—an echoing lament as if countless unseen ghosts wept beneath the canopy.
"What place is this?" Raine whispered, scanning the dim surroundings. Sparse, dying starlight filtered through the thick, oily haze overhead, landing in droplets like frozen tears upon the ground and tree trunks. These fragments of celestial energy, weak though they were, shone back defiantly, tangling in uneasy harmony with the encroaching corruption.
"Starwept Grounds," Thalia murmured, her voice barely more than a breath. "Ancient Starborn lore speaks of strongholds lost to the Blight, where the last echoes of stellar magic mingle with the mournful spirits of the fallen, twisting the land into this mournful realm." She pressed a cold hand once more against her chest. The very air seemed to strike a chord in her heart—one of sorrow and quiet torment.
Karrion frowned and stamped at the dead moss. "Of all the blasted places to lead us…" he muttered, attempting a jest to cut through the oppressive dread. But his tone carried a heavy undercurrent of sorrow that no humor could erase.
Raine's eyes caught something half-buried in the choking mildew of dead earth—a length of jagged metal rod, draped in shredded, rotting rags. He knelt and brushed away the fetid black moss, revealing the tattered remnant of a banner. Fingers trembling, he lifted it free.
Even in its decay, the family crest—an open crescent cradling a solitary star—gleamed faintly in star-silver thread. "By the Gods…" Raine breathed, tracing the ragged emblem. It was unmistakably Morningstar heraldry.
The instant his skin touched that cold, star-forged cloth, agony slammed into Raine's mind with the force of a burning brand.
——
He stood atop a vast citadel built of pure starstone, its battlements crowned by flickering cosmic embers rather than fire. Armored warriors etched with starlight clashed desperately against writhing tendrils of shadow that ebbed and surged like tides. Their swords hummed with celestial energy, carving swaths of brilliance through the darkness, only to be consumed moments later by living blackness.
Raine saw banners bearing his family's phoenix crest, tattered and dirtied by corruption. He heard the clash of steel, the crestfallen prayers of dying men, and the silent collapse of once-mighty walls. A commanding figure—bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Morningstar lords of old—struck down foe after foe, only to be overtaken by unseen darkness, his light snuffed in an instant.
Agonized pleas, defiant roars, last cries to distant heavens… they all pounded in Raine's skull until he cried out, stumbling backward, clutching his head.
——
Back in the real world, Raine collapsed onto the blackened moss, hands clamped over his bleeding nose, body wracked with tremors. Sweat plastered his hair to his brow as the phantom echoes of that ancestral massacre faded but never fully left his mind.
"Raine!" Karrion was instantly at his side, lashing out a supportive arm. "By Moradin's forge, are you mad? What in the Nine Hells—?"
Thalia knelt beside Raine, her own face drained of blood, dark circles etched beneath her eyes. She pressed a cool palm to his shoulder, her gaze reflexively flicking to the tattered flag.
"I saw… them," Raine gasped, fighting to steady his ragged breaths. "My forebears… fighting… then swallowed by darkness."
Karrion's normally impenetrable demeanor cracked at last. His broad shoulders slumped, and for a fleeting moment, grief hardened the lines of his face.
Thalia drew in a sudden, shuddering breath as her hand fell away from her chest. Beneath her cloak, the faint azure glow of her star-fragment pulsed erratically, drawing the faded starlight flakes in uneasy harmony—and draining her strength in equal measure.
Those little motes of star-magic, long scattered and forgotten, seemed drawn into an invisible current at her behest. The pulsing light coalesced into a path, a sliver of hope tracing a hidden route deeper into the Blight Forest—toward the shattered ruins of the Fallen Star Citadel.
But Thalia's body convulsed with pain as her star-fragment strained to focus that power, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Raine…" she whispered hoarsely, "I… see the way. The route… to the Citadel."
Raine's head swam, torn between horror at the relic's vision and desperate gratitude for this revelation. Karrion helped him to his feet, and together they half-supported Thalia as she pointed into the black labyrinth beyond.
"I'll lead," Karrion said, voice heavy with resolve. "But let's move before this place drags us under."
With that, they pressed onward, guided by Thalia's trembling hand and the battered Morningstar banner—a beacon in the creeping dark. Each step carried them closer to the heart of corruption, and each breath was a battle against the desperate echoes of a doomed lineage.
Yet despite the scars in their trust, they now shared a single purpose: to reclaim that ancestral stronghold from the Blight Forest and, perhaps, to restore a glimmer of hope upon the shattered legacy of Morningstar.