The wind carried an unease across the outer northern town of Tharnholt. Once vibrant and bustling with beastkin craftsmen, trade merchants, and newly settled cultivators, the streets now held a kind of uneasy stillness. The market square, usually humming with barter and music, was vacant—save for a lone fruit cart overturned, its contents slowly rotting beneath the sun.
It began with one family—beastkin migrants who had arrived from the shattered coastal realms only weeks earlier. The children were the first to fall ill, exhibiting symptoms that made no logical sense. Their spiritual veins twisted and shivered violently, their skin flushed an unnatural gray-green, and their breath reeked of copper and sulfur. Their cries weren't merely pained—they resonated with something feral and wrong, as though their inner beast souls were fighting to flee their corrupted vessels.
By the third day, five families in the northern quarter had collapsed into madness, their transformations partially completed. And then, on the dawn of the fourth day, the town bell tolled in agony. Beasts emerged—no longer sentient, no longer natural. Fused with corrupted essence and madness, they tore into livestock and tried to claw their way into homes.
Within hours, the skies turned dark with choking spiritual fog.
Yune Yashara, Director of the Sanctuary of Beasts, arrived with two battalions of beast-harmonizers. Behind her rode Miren Vos, the Soulbinder from the Shrine of Echoing Souls, and two dozen channelers prepared for mental subdual. The State of Records, alerted through emergency astral scripts, dispatched neutral observers and sent structural stabilizers from Tianzhen City's outer bureau.
Yune leapt from her crimson wyrm-mount, the wind snapping her robes back as she landed before the gates of Tharnholt. Her senses immediately screamed—this was no ordinary infection. Her attunement to spiritual resonance, long-honed through decades of taming wyverns and ancestral manticores, recognized the pattern.
This was artificial.
"This plague…" she muttered, fangs bared, "It was made."
Her voice, calm yet thunderous, echoed across the open square. The channelers behind her readied their soul veils.
"Begin subdual protocol. Target all semi-transformed units. Do not kill unless absolutely necessary."
Within minutes, the air erupted in a clash of howls, radiant wards, and the soft whimpers of still-human cries. The corrupted beasts were vicious—more powerful than their base species should've been. One wind-hound tore through a marble barricade like parchment. A moss-backed direwolf exploded into spores when slain, poisoning the air with illusory dread.
Yune engaged three mutated variants at once, her dual glaives spiraling in mirrored arcs, resonating with her beast partner's harmonics. But one of the creatures—a three-eyed spirit bear with corrupted quartz horns—landed a strike that launched her across the plaza. Her spiritual root nearly shattered from the blow. Blood spilled from her mouth as she coughed, legs buckling.
Miren Vos caught her before she fell, soul veils extending outward to suppress the beast's rage.
"They are decaying… but not dying," he said grimly. "Their essence is laced with something more than disease."
It took another full day of combat, chanting, and spiritual suppression to subdue the outbreak.
At dusk, Su Mengtian stood at the center of Tharnholt, flanked by Yueying and four of the Hallmasters—Xuan Le, Ji Yeyan, Yue Mei, and Kai Chan. A protective dome shimmered faintly around the town's perimeter, cast by combined efforts of the Hall of Aegis and the Hall of Astral Command. Inside, the air still pulsed with tension.
"Director Yune's injuries are severe," Yueying whispered, her hand gently touching the inner pulse node on Mengtian's wrist. "Another few minutes… she might've died."
Su Mengtian looked towards the still form of the beastmaster being treated by elite healers. His gaze hardened.
"Begin full quarantine. No person or beast leaves this town until we know the origin."
Bael Trin, called via urgent soul script, soon joined them, personally descending from the Library of Treasures.
He handed Mengtian a sealed crystal vial containing ash-gray dust.
"Found it near the center of the outbreak—beneath the foundation stones of the migrant housing blocks. The essence here is… rotten. It isn't natural decay. Someone planted this."
Su Mengtian took the vial and passed it to Kai Chan.
"Your Hall's audio resonance paths—can you detect any spiritual frequency memory left inside?"
Kai pressed a silver listening orb to the vial. Moments passed, and a strange hum echoed—a screeching pulse, like a soul screaming backward through time.
"A beast's cry… corrupted. Fused with spirit-stone remnants… decayed." He turned pale. "This is engineered."
Yue Mei knelt beside the quarantined beastkin. Her Veilborne Radiants were casting multi-spectrum healing arrays around the infected.
"Someone tried to turn beasts into living bombs."
Su Mengtian clenched his fist. "And they used spirit-stone dust. Not cores. This was meant to spread slowly, unnoticed."
At the heart of Tianzhen's Core Zone, Su Mengtian convened an emergency meeting beneath the Heavenly Soul Palace's war dome. The eight department directors stood alongside the Hallmasters and regional governors.
Miren Vos's voice cut the silence. "This technique isn't unknown. During the war of the Hollow Wyrm Tribes, similar fusion plagues were used—corrupting beast lineage through cursed essence binding. But that knowledge was lost. Or so we thought."
Yueying nodded grimly. "Someone recovered it—or never lost it to begin with."
Xuan Le stepped forward. "There is only one known clan capable of manipulating spirit-stone corruption at this level while evading leyline detection."
A silence fell.
"The Great Crimson Flame Clan," he said finally.
Gasps rippled through the chamber.
"They've been silent since the Island Conflict," Yue Mei said. "But if they're resorting to biological sabotage, then this is no longer a political standoff."
Su Mengtian rose.
"Enough," he said. "We cannot descend into paranoia or strike without certainty. We will root this out—but first, we ensure it never happens again."
He stepped forward, eyes flashing.
"Effective immediately, I am enacting the formation of a joint civil-military unit under the Eight Pillars, with special cooperation from the Hall of Luminousveil."
A new name emerged on his lips, its resonance echoing through the chamber.
"The Immune Resilience Corps."
Heads lifted.
"This unit will act as our frontline defense against spiritual plagues, beastborne corruption, and bloodline-based bioweapons. They will be granted authority to bypass standard hall clearance when responding to a crisis and may requisition elite healers, battlefield medics, and tactical enchanters across all ten Halls. The Veilborne Radiants will serve as the primary medical vanguard."
Yueying stepped forward and added: "We will divide our specialists into four rotating deployment teams. Each Outer Zone town and inner buffer settlement will have an Immune Anchor Post by next cycle."
Miren Vos smiled faintly. "A wise step."
Sorin Ma, the director of the Truehold Financial Bastion, grimaced.
"We will need budget clearance."
"Draft the figures," Su Mengtian replied without missing a beat. "It will be reviewed by the State of Records. Director Phairos Den will update the Eternal Remembrance archives to account for plague casualties. We'll ensure the families are honored."
Ji Yeyan added coolly, "And I will activate the Nightshard shadow-nodes. If the Crimson Flame Clan is behind this, we'll know soon."
Back in Tharnholt, under a dusk of heavy clouds, Yueying stood beside Su Mengtian watching a beastkin child recovering from the illness.
The girl opened her eyes, blinking weakly.
"I… saw fire," she whispered. "But it wasn't bad. It was sad."
Su Mengtian crouched beside her.
"Did the fire speak?" he asked gently.
The girl nodded slowly. "It said… 'not all flames burn the same.'"
Su Mengtian rose. "It's a message. This isn't over. Someone's watching."
And far away, in a chamber of ruby and obsidian, the patriarch of the Crimson Flame Clan tapped a spirit-stone, watching the flickering image of the girl vanish.
"So the Sovereign has chosen defense over retaliation," he murmured. "Let's see how long he can hold to that ideal."
The next move was already in motion.