The Soul Scry had been a tactical error. It did not provide closure; it opened a new, complex front in Elias's internal war. He had traded a phantom limb of loneliness for the very real, grinding weight of consequence. His act of salvation was now a source of conflict for the child. Her social standing was a new variable in his Primary Objective, one he had no logical way to influence from a distance.
For cycles, he fought the urge to scry again. He threw himself into his work with a renewed, almost manic intensity. His cabin became a small, formidable compound. He built a smokehouse for curing meat, a small forge with a hand-pumped leather bellows where he could heat and crudely shape bog iron he found by the stream. He was no blacksmith, but the System's intuitive knowledge downloads from his Survivalist proficiency allowed him to craft crude but effective spearheads, arrowheads, and knives that were far superior to sharpened flint and bone.
His flock of raven-spies grew. He no longer needed to see the world through their eyes; he had learned to interpret their caws. A sharp, singular cry meant ground predator. A series of rattling croaks meant aerial danger. A soft, rumbling coo meant a source of clean water or docile prey. His territory now had an early-warning system. The Grave Warden's eyes were everywhere.
The days settled into a routine of grim productivity. He would rise, check his traps, work the forge, expand his fortifications, and manage his resources. He was self-sufficient, powerful, and utterly alone. And every night, the same cold logic would plague him: the girl's social distress was a destabilizing factor for the village, and an unstable village on his border was a threat. It was a flimsy excuse, a transparent rationalization for a desire he refused to name, but it was the hook he used to justify his actions to himself.
On the tenth cycle since returning Elara, he broke. He performed the scry again.
This time, the scene was different. The view coalesced outside the Sunstone palisade. A group of villagers was gathered around a sick cow, their life-signatures flickering with anxiety. Jorn, the chieftain, was there, his face grim. An older woman, clearly a healer or shaman, was chanting and waving smoking herbs over the animal, but it did not stir. Its life-force was a dim, guttering ember.
"...the third this moon-cycle," Jorn was saying. "The Blight is spreading."
"The earth feels wrong," the old shaman replied, her voice thin and reedy. "The water from the eastern tributary tastes of rust."
Elias felt a prickle of alarm. The Blight. A disease. He shifted his scrying view to the eastern tributary she mentioned. It was a different stream from the one near his camp, a smaller offshoot that fed directly into the village's fields and livestock pastures. As he focused, he could Sense it. The water wasn't just water. It had a taint. A faint, sickly, almost Death -aligned signature that was cold and wrong. It wasn't necrotic like his prowlers; it was more like decay. A poison.
His mind immediately made the connection. Sick animals. Tainted water. Rust. It wasn't a curse. It was a contaminant. Likely a mineral deposit upstream, heavy metals leaching into the water source. Something like that could wipe out the entire village, starting with their food supply and ending with the people themselves.
And Elara was in that village.
His Primary Objective flashed with an urgent, red light. The threat was no longer social ostracism. It was extinction.
The pragmatic response was complex. He could do nothing. Let them perish. It would remove the variable of the village entirely. But that would also mean Elara perishing. Outcome: Unacceptable.
He could warn them. But how? Walk to their gate and lecture them on toxicology and geology? The Grave Warden, the bone-shaman, suddenly a civil engineer? They would think it a new form of curse or a mad prophecy. The Narrative would shatter.
No, he had to operate within the framework of his persona. The Grave Warden did not offer advice. He intervened. He did not explain; he acted. He would have to solve the problem for them, in a way only a monster could.
First, he needed intelligence. He sent out his ravens, commanding them to follow the eastern tributary to its source. The Soul Essence cost was significant, but necessary. He sat in his cabin, a grim puppet master, receiving fragmented, bird's-eye views. The stream twisting through the woods... a patch of oddly discolored, red-orange soil... and then, the source.
It was a small cave, partially collapsed. From its mouth trickled the water that fed the stream. The rocks around the cave mouth were stained a deep, angry crimson. But the most alarming discovery was what his ravens sensed at the entrance. A cold spot. A Death signature, but dormant. Something was inside that cave, something dead or undead, and it was poisoning the water.
This was the source. This was the enemy.
He prepared for an expedition. He donned his bone-armor, sharpened his new iron-tipped spear, and filled a pouch with iron arrowheads. He hesitated, then made a choice. He spent three of his hoarded Skill Points at once.
System. Allocate three points to Necromancy.
[Necromancy Proficiency LVL 10 Unlocked.]
[Milestone Reached! Proficiency Evolved to Tier 1: Lord of the Silent.]
[New Skill Unlocked: Corpse Marionette.]
[Existing Skill Upgrade: Animate Dead (Minor) -> Animate Dead (Major). Host may now animate up to four vessels simultaneously. Increased duration and complexity of commands.]
[Corpse Marionette (LVL 1): Instead of binding a soul-print, temporarily possess a single undead vessel directly. Grants the host direct control over the vessel's motor functions and limited access to its physical attributes (strength, toughness). Host's body remains in a vulnerable trance state during possession.]
He now had four undead slots. And he could pilot one directly. The tactical implications were immense.
He walked to the edge of his camp where he had buried the two prowler skeletons after butchering them, preserving the bones. They were resources. He unearthed the larger of the two and laid the bones out on the ground. This time, his Animate Dead was a more potent act. He didn't just pour essence in; he wove it intricately into the skeletal structure, rebuilding the beast not with flesh, but with pure necrotic energy and packed earth.
The creature that rose was not a shambling zombie. It was a monster of bone and shadow, cracks of green light showing between its ribs. It was stronger, faster, and more durable than its fleshy counterparts. He created a second one, and then a third. He now commanded a small pack of skeletal hunters.
He was delving deeper and deeper into his dark power, all in the service of a goal they would never understand.
From the outside, the scene was one of pure, escalating terror. The Grave Warden, not content with his solitary fortress, was raising an army of bone-monsters. He was preparing for war. Anyone from Sunstone who saw him would think their darkest fears had come true, that the dark spirit of the woods was finally ready to march on their village and claim it.
The reality was the exact opposite. Elias Thorne, the misunderstood necromancer, was marching to save them all. He would venture into a poison-filled cave to fight an unknown horror, flanked by his skeletal abominations. He was going to perform another great and noble good, and in doing so, he would undoubtedly become the most terrifying thing their world had ever seen. The whispers of rust had forced his hand, and the price of their salvation would be their absolute, unwavering terror of his name.