Finishing the job brought a sense of relief reading the map was supposed to be the next hard part .The road home was supposed to be the easy part.
They put back their magical swords in their arms . But the scenery changed real quick not giving them time to recover .Now continued
Mith wiped a smear of blackened ichor from his cheek, his breath coming in ragged gasps that misted in the freezing air. Beside him, Jis leaned heavily on her sword. It was a magnificent weapon, its steel folded a thousand times and etched with anti-curse runes that usually glowed with a purifying blue light, but now they pulsed weakly, like a tired heart.
They were ankle-deep in the sucking mud of the Whispering Moor, a desolate expanse only a day's march from the sanctuary of their citadel. They were exhausted, their reserves drained dry from the three-day siege at the Shadow Gate.
"Another one," Jis warned, her grip tightening on the hilt of her blade.
Ahead, the swirling gray fog thickened, coalescing into a nightmare shape. It was a Skitter-Stalker—a construct of solidified darkness, all sleek chitin and whipping razor-tail, four glowing red eyes burning with predatory intelligence. It chattered, a sound like grinding stones, scenting their weakness.
Mith forced his aching muscles to respond. He curled his fingers into a fist, feeling the heat gather in his palm. "I hate these things. No finesse. Just hunger."
"Save the commentary for when we aren't about to be eaten," Jis muttered, stepping forward. She raised her magical sword, the runes flaring to life as the blade sensed the curse-energy of the beast.
The Stalker lunged. It slammed toward them with the force of a falling boulder. Jis met the charge head-on, swinging her blade in a practiced arc. The sword cut through the air with a singing sound, clashing against the creature's claws. Sparks of blue magic erupted where the steel met the darkness, the sword's enchantment fighting to sever the curse binding the creature together.
Mith thrust his hand forward, releasing a condensed ball of roaring orange fire. The fireball struck the creature's flank, scorching the shadowy carapace, but it barely slowed the beast. It shrieked, thrashing its tail, forcing Jis to parry a strike that would have taken her head off.
Every impact jarred them, and with every jar, the memory surfaced. It was always there, hovering just behind their eyes, but violence brought it into sharp focus.
Tuk.
They had been a trio once. Mith, Jis, and Tuk. While Mith and Jis had spent their youth training—Mith mastering the flame and Jis learning the sword-forms to break curses—Tuk had been the one dragging them out to see the world. He was the one who made sure they ate when they were obsessing over techniques, the one whose terrible jokes were the only thing that could break the tension before a battle. He didn't have their supernatural gifts, but he was the glue that held them together.
As the Stalker's tail battered against Jis's guard, driving her boots backward into the mud, Mith remembered the High Bridge at Argentis.
The memory was suffocatingly vivid. The sky had been bleeding violet with the encroaching dark. A horde of these very creatures, hundreds of them, swarming up the canyon walls.
Tuk stood in the center of the narrow stone span. Behind him crouched his younger sister, Lyra, sobbing, clutching a satchel containing the artifacts they had come to retrieve.
"Go!" Tuk had roared over the din of the horde, shoving Lyra toward Mith and Jis on the far side. "Get her out of here!"
"Not without you!" Mith had screamed, already weaving a spell to pull them both across.
But the bridge was crumbling under the weight of the shadows. Tuk looked back at them. He didn't look like a warrior or a hero then; he just looked like their friend. He gave them that familiar, lopsided smile—the one he used when he beat them at cards or found an extra flask of wine.
"Someone has to hold the line," he shouted, his voice cracking just slightly. "Tell Lyra… tell her to be brave."
He turned his back on safety to face the black tide alone, using his own body as the final barricade. Mith's spell fizzled as Jis physically dragged him away just before the center span exploded into dust. They watched Tuk disappear under a wave of claws and teeth. They watched him fall into the abyss.
Back in the moor, reality crashed in. The Stalker's tail whipped around Jis's guard, striking her shoulder and knocking the magical sword from her hand. It spun away, hissing as it landed in the muck.
The impact threw Jis onto her back. The Stalker loomed over her, its tail raised like a scorpion's sting, ready to impale her.
"No!" Mith scrambled forward, slipping, desperation overriding his exhaustion. He couldn't lose another one. Not again.
He didn't have the mana for a complex spell. He only had rage, and grief. He tapped into the raw, volatile core of his magic.
He roared, a sound tearing his own throat, and clapped his hands together. A massive, unstable fireball, larger than anything he had ever conjured, erupted from him. It wasn't a controlled attack; it was a blast furnace of pure energy.
The Stalker shrieked as the fire engulfed it. The darkness that formed its body boiled away instantly. It writhed, disintegrating into acrid smoke before the heat could even reach Jis, who lay beneath it, shielding her face.
Mith dropped to his knees, gasping, his hands smoking. The silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
Jis slowly sat up, wiping mud from her pale face. She looked at her sword lying a few feet away, then at Mith. "That was… reckless."
"It worked," Mith wheezed. "We're alive."
"Are we?" Jis whispered. She wasn't looking at him. She was staring at the dissipating smoke of the dead creature. The faint, violet particles hung in the air, refusing to fade completely.
"What is it?" Mith asked, sensing the sudden shift in the atmosphere.
Jis stood up shakily, retrieving her sword. As she walked toward the lingering smoke, the runes on her blade began to hum—not with the blue light of purification, but with a strange, sorrowful resonance. She extended a hand toward the smoke. The violet motes danced around her fingertips before finally dissolving.
"Mith," she said, her voice trembling so hard he could barely understand her. "When that thing died… when its energy released…"
"It was just a Stalker, Jis. Let's just get home."
"No." She turned to him, her eyes wide in the gloom. "My sword… it resonates with curses, Mith. It identifies the source."
She swallowed hard, the memory of the bridge assaulting them both again—the smile, the sacrifice, the fall.
"The signature in that creature," she whispered, clutching the hilt of her blade until her knuckles turned white. "It felt like Tuk."
Mith stared at her. The cold of the moor seemed to seep straight into his marrow. "That's impossible. We saw him fall. We saw the horde take him. He died saving Lyra."
"We saw him overwhelmed," Jis corrected, her voice gaining a terrible strength. "We saw him fall into the dark. We assumed death. But Mith... what if the dark didn't kill him?"
She looked back toward the way they had come, toward the distant Shadow Gate, toward the abyss where their friend had vanished months ago.
"What if it kept him?"
The wind howled across the moor, sounding suddenly like a distant, corrupted laughter. Mith looked at the scorch mark on the ground, then at the path leading home. It no longer felt like the way to safety. It felt like they were walking away from a truth they were too afraid to confront.
Tuk had died fighting the dark.
Or so they had thought.