The next forty-eight hours were a frantic, desperate symphony. Finn's weariness seemed to melt away, replaced by the sharp focus of a commander with a final, last-ditch battle plan. He was no longer just a guardian; he was an engineer of water and will.
He and Kaelen stood on the riverbank, the roaring rapids between them. "They are called Silt-Walkers," Finn explained, his voice cutting through the mist. "Lesser Blight-spawn than the knights, but more insidious. They do not unmake with a blast; they poison with a touch. They will walk into the current, their bodies leaching corruption, turning the water to a thick, toxic sludge that kills everything it touches. Our goal is not to defeat them in battle. It is to prevent a single one from touching the water."
Kaelen looked at the wide, powerful river. "How?"
"By changing the song," Finn said, a glint in his pale blue eyes. "You will speak to the stone of the riverbed. I will speak to the water itself. We will weave our songs together. We must make the river itself a weapon."
The plan was audacious. Kaelen's task was the foundation. He waded into the icy water, the current tugging at his legs, and placed his hands on the submerged rocks. He sank his consciousness into the riverbed, feeling the ancient, water-smoothed granite. He sang the Second Note, the note of distinction, but with a new purpose. He didn't ask the stone to split, but to reshape. He found the hidden seams and flaws, and instead of cleaving them, he persuaded them to rise.
Guided by his will, the riverbed began to change. Just downstream of their position, a jagged, comb-like ridge of stone erupted across the width of the river, its teeth sharp and angled. It was a deterrent, designed to snag and hold.
Further down, he created a different structure: a series of massive, bowl-shaped basins carved into the bedrock. "The settling pools," Finn had called them. "Their poison must have time to coalesce. Here, it will gather and stagnate, contained."
But the centerpiece of their defense was at the bend itself, where the current was strongest. Here, Kaelen performed his most complex work. He sang to the largest boulders mid-stream, asking them to remember their core, their immense, foundational weight. Then, with a combination of the Second and Fourth Notes, he conducted their mass, shifting them with glacial slowness into a precise, interlocking maze. The water, forced through these new, narrow channels, accelerated from a roar to a thunderous scream, becoming a crushing, relentless torrent.
While Kaelen sculpted the stone, Finn worked the water. The Weaver stood in the center of the raging flow, his hands conducting the current like a maestro. He didn't fight the river; he refined it. He gathered the force Kaelen's stone maze had created and focused it. In the narrowest channels, he spun the water into violent vortices, underwater tornadoes that could disorient and trap. He pulled threads of mist from the surface, weaving them into a dense, permanent fog bank that clung to the river, limiting visibility to a few feet.
It was the first true Synthesis Kaelen had witnessed from another. Finn's power was a beautiful, terrifying dance of pressure and flow. He wasn't just a mender; he was a strategist.
The survivors were not idle. Under Elara's direction, they gathered every vine and flexible branch they could find. Roric, despite his pain, used his knowledge of wood to direct the weaving of these into massive, buoyant nets, which Finn then anchored with strands of solidified water to the riverbed, creating hidden snares just below the surface.
On the second evening, as the sun set, they stood back and observed their work. The river was unrecognizable. What was once a natural waterway was now a deadly, churning gauntlet of razor-sharp stone, hidden nets, crushing currents, and blinding fog. It was a masterpiece of defensive weaving.
But as the darkness deepened, so did the dread. Kaelen could feel it—a familiar dissonance creeping at the edge of his senses. The Silt-Walkers were coming.
He found Finn standing at the water's edge, his face pale, his hands trembling slightly. The effort of the last two days had cost him dearly.
"You should conserve your strength," Kaelen said.
Finn shook his head, a grim smile on his lips. "There will be no conservation. Only expenditure. This is the last stand of the Clearwater River. I intend to make it a song they will remember." He looked at Kaelen. "Your part is mostly done, Stone-Singer. The riverbed is your work. The rest… the rest is mine."
"There has to be another way," Elara said, joining them, her face etched with worry. "A way to win without you… without this."
Finn's gaze was distant. "The Blight does not understand sacrifice. It only understands consumption. That is its weakness." He looked at Kaelen, a sudden, intense fire in his eyes. "Remember that. When you face the heart of it, remember that it knows only how to take. It has forgotten how to give."
Before Kaelen could ask what he meant, a new sound cut through the night. Not the roar of the river or the whisper of the wind, but a dry, scraping rustle, like a million insect legs moving in unison. From the dark tree line on the far bank, figures emerged.
Silt-Walkers. They were humanoid, but crafted of compacted, grey mud and rotting vegetation. Their forms shifted and dripped with every movement. Where they stepped, the grass withered and the soil turned to barren clay. Their eyes were empty pits that glowed with the same sickly green as the Blight-knights. They moved toward the riverbank, a silent, shuffling tide of decay.
Finn took a deep breath, his whole body tensing. He raised his hands, and the river seemed to hold its breath with him.
The first of the Silt-Walkers reached the bank and stepped into the water. The moment its foot touched the current, the river erupted.
The battle for the Clearwater had begun. It was not a clash of swords, but a horrific ballet of elemental forces. The Silt-Walkers, mindless and single-minded, pushed forward. The first line was shredded on Kaelen's stone teeth. Others were caught in the hidden nets, and Finn, with a grunt of effort, would clench his fist, causing the water around them to harden into a crystalline prison before shattering, scattering their muddy forms.
But there were too many. They began to clump together, forming larger, more stable masses that could withstand the current. The clear water began to cloud with their toxic residue. Kaelen could feel the song of the river growing panicked, pained.
Finn was everywhere, a blur of motion. He stood on the water's surface, directing whirlpools, creating watery rams to knock the Walkers off balance, solidifying patches of river into temporary walls. But with every exertion, he grew paler. He was burning his own life force to fuel the defense.
A large group of Walkers broke through, bypassing the worst of the traps. They were halfway across the river, their touch turning the water around them into a thick, grey slurry. The poison was reaching a critical mass.
"It's not enough!" Kaelen yelled over the din.
Finn met his eyes across the churning water. There was no fear in them. Only a profound, sorrowful resolve.
"I know," Finn said, his voice carrying with an unnatural clarity. "My song was only ever the prelude."
He raised his arms high above his head. All the water in the river, for a hundred yards in each direction, went perfectly, impossibly still. The roaring ceased, replaced by an eerie, absolute silence. The Silt-Walkers, confused, halted their advance.
Then, Finn brought his hands together in a single, thunderous clap.
The song that erupted was not one of water, but of pure, concentrated life. It was the song Finn had been holding back, the core of his power, the essence of the river's spirit that he had been guarding. He wasn't attacking the Silt-Walkers.
He was healing the river.
A wave of blinding, blue-white light exploded from him, washing over the water. Where it touched the toxic sludge, the corruption burned away in a hiss of steam. Where it touched the Silt-Walkers, their muddy forms dissolved, not into dust, but into clean, fertile silt, harmless and pure.
It was the ultimate act of a Water-Whisperer. Not to destroy his enemy, but to cleanse his home.
The light faded. The river began to flow again, cleaner and more vibrant than ever, its song a triumphant, joyful rush.
Finn stood for a moment on the surface, a smile of perfect peace on his face. Then, his body, drained of every last drop of power, dissolved into a shower of glistening mist that settled gently onto the water, becoming one with the current he had given his life to save.
The silence that followed was broken only by the river's renewed song. The Silt-Walkers were gone. The fortress of flow and stone stood empty.
Kaelen stood on the bank, tears streaming down his face, not of grief, but of awe. Finn had shown him the final, terrible, and beautiful truth of their power. It was not a weapon. It was a gift. And sometimes, the greatest strength was the courage to give it all away.