The entrance to the Iron Peaks was not marked by a gate or a sign, but by a profound and unnerving silence. The moment Ren stepped past the last of the hardy foothills and into the first of the great, rust-coloured canyons, the world seemed to hold its breath. The chirping of insects, the call of birds, the very whisper of the wind through the grass—it all ceased. All that remained was the crunch of his own boots on the brittle, iron-rich gravel and the sluggish gurgle of the red river.
The landscape was a masterpiece of desolation. Jagged peaks of red and black stone clawed at a sky that was a strange, bruised grey, even at midday. There were no trees here, only skeletal, twisted bushes that looked as though they had died of thirst a century ago. It was a place stripped of all softness, all life, all sound.
Ren felt the change immediately. The air was thin, cold, and carried a dry, static charge that made the hairs on his arm stand on end. The blight here was different. It wasn't the wet, teeming rot of the Mire, but a sterile, sucking emptiness. It was a blight of desiccation. He pressed his hand to a large boulder by the riverside, and a chunk of it flaked away into a fine, lifeless grey dust in his palm. The Stone-sickness.
He clutched the Mire-stone from Kasai, its gentle, living warmth a precious comfort against the draining atmosphere. The stone's magic worked, easing the cold ache of his scar, but it felt like holding a single candle in a vast, dark, and hungry cavern.
He followed the red river deeper into the mountains, Shiro a nervous, watchful presence tucked inside his tunic for warmth. The further he went, the more the land's sickness became apparent. He saw the remains of mountain goats, their bodies not decayed, but perfectly preserved and mummified, as if every drop of moisture had been violently ripped from them.
Then he found the feather. It lay in the middle of his path, a single plume longer than his own arm. It should have been a magnificent thing, a feather from a wing that commanded the sky, but its edges were frayed and brittle, its colour a faded, sickly grey. A faint, corrupt energy clung to it. He gently touched its tip, and it crumbled into dust. Kaelara. This was a piece of her, a sign that she had fought, and that she was wounded.
A new sound began to intrude upon the silence as he climbed higher. It was the whisper the travelers had spoken of. At first, it was a faint hissing on the edge of his hearing, but it grew into a low, discordant hum that seemed to be carried on the wind itself. It wasn't a natural sound; it was magical, rhythmic, and it grated on the mind, stirring feelings of anxiety and paranoia. This was their weapon. A psychic poison broadcast on the air.
The whispers and the pull of his scar led him towards a high, secluded pass, flanked by two towering spires of black ironstone. He moved with extreme caution, climbing the last ridge on his stomach. He peered over the top and looked down into a wide, bowl-shaped canyon. His breath caught in his throat.
There was no single Blight Heart. Instead, the entire canyon floor was a massive, intricate array of dark, rune-etched monoliths, some as tall as a man. There were dozens of them, arranged in a complex spiral. Each stone pulsed with a faint, sickly light, and at the center of the spiral, the whispers were almost a physical force, distorting the air. This was a Blight Forge, a great engine designed to pump corruption into the very stone and sky of the Iron Peaks.
He could see a handful of robed Hollow moving between the monoliths, their movements precise, like priests tending a dark and unholy temple. They were adjusting runes, placing what looked like a fine, grey powder at the base of each stone. They had learned from their failures. This system was decentralized, far harder to destroy with a single, decisive blow.
Ren scanned the entire canyon, his heart pounding. He saw the Hollow. He saw their terrible machine. But he did not see their prisoner. Kaelara, the Great Storm-Eagle, was nowhere to be seen. Had they already killed her? Or was she somewhere else, trapped, slowly being driven mad by the incessant, poisonous whispers on the wind? He had found the source of the sickness, but the Guardian of the Peaks was missing, and the enemy's methods had evolved into something far more complex and insidious than he had ever imagined.