The spore site didn't look like a crime scene. It looked like a wound.
The stream here was black, not from mud but from something alive—a sludge that crawled upstream against the current, defying gravity and logic. The banks were scorched in a perfect circle, ten feet across, where nothing grew. Not even the Stranglevine touched it. [BIOPHOBIA FIELD: ACTIVE] .
"This is new," Mira whispered, crouching at the water's edge. Her fingers hovered over the black sludge, not quite touching. "The Bloom's corruption was green. This is... oily."
My overlay scanned: [ANALYSIS: VOID-TAINTED SLUDGE] [RARITY: RARE] [SOURCE: NON-DEMONIC]. Non-demonic. That was worse. Demons had rules, patterns. This was other.
Drek prodded the sludge with a hatchet. The metal hissed, etching in seconds. "Acidic. Like the Bloom's heart, but refined."
[CORRELATION: 87% MATCH TO DEMON-BLOOM HEART-ESSENCE]
The saboteur hadn't just planted a spore. They'd synthesized it. Distilled the Bloom's core into a portable weapon. That required lab equipment, magical knowledge, and a sample.
Callum's Echoes of the Dead skill could phase into pocket dimensions. Could it access a lab? My parallel analysis ran 10,000 scenarios. 3,402 ended with Callum as the seeder. But 6,598 ended with him as a cat's-paw .
"Someone gave him the spore," I said aloud. Mira looked at me. Drek just grunted, which was his version of "explain."
"The Bloom's heart was too big to move. But its essence—" I knelt, scraped a sample of sludge into a vial. The glass held. It was alchemist's glass, Helga's handiwork. "—could be condensed. This isn't raw. It's refined. The saboteur needed a Bloom sample first, then the equipment to weaponize it."
Drek frowned. "So they killed a Bloom before planting one here?"
"Or they had a supplier."
[QUEST UPDATE: THE SEEDING]
[NEW OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY SUPPLY CHAIN]
[POTENTIAL SOURCES: RIVAL SETTLEMENT (41%), DEMON CULT (32%), INTERNAL (27%)]
Mira stood, her gaze tracking upstream. "The nearest settlement is Hollow's End, thirty miles north. They trade in... unsavory alchemy."
"Distance from spore site to Hollow's End: 28.4 miles," I corrected, mapping the terrain in my overlay. "They have a river route. Three days by raft, one day by foot if you cut through the Shatterglass Ravine ."
"Nobody cuts through the Ravine," Drek said. "It's haunted."
[ANALYSIS: SHATTERGLASS RAVINE]
[THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN]
[POPULATION: 0 (OFFICIAL), ??? (UNOFFICIAL)]
[HAUNTING PROBABILITY: 78% BASED ON LOCAL LEGENDS]
Legends were data points, not truths. But zero official population meant no infrastructure. No witnesses. Perfect place for a clandestine lab.
Mira's hand went to her bow. "We have company."
My overlay already knew. It had mapped the approach vectors twenty seconds ago. Three shapes, humanoid, emerging from the tree line. Not Callum. These were solid.
[NAME: ???]
[RACE: HUMAN (MASKED)]
[LEVEL: ??]
[OVERLAY: NULL]
No overlays. No system recognition. They were either natives with stealth gear or Worldlost with masking skills.
"River's Reach jurisdiction!" Drek bellowed. "Identify!"
The leader—a woman in grey leather and a porcelain mask—laughed. The sound was artificial, modulated by the mask. "Jurisdiction?" Her voice echoed wrong, like it came from three places at once. "The River belongs to no one, dwarf."
She raised a hand. The sludge responded, crawling toward her like a pet.
[ANALYSIS: SLUDGE CONTROL - SKILL OR ARTIFACT?]
[PROBABILITY: ARTIFACT (83%) - SKILL (17%)]
Artifact meant supplies. The sludge was a product, not a power. She was the supplier.
"You're the seeder," I said. Not a question.
"Seeder?" She tilted her head. "Such a crude word. I prefer cultivator. The Bloom was a test. You passed." She looked at me, mask tilting. "The River spits up interesting souls. You calculate, don't you? I can smell the numbers on you."
Drek charged. The woman flicked a finger. The sludge erupted, forming a wall between us. Drek's hatchet struck, and the sludge absorbed the impact, the force dissipating into the stream.
Mira's arrow flew. The woman caught it. Not with her hand—with a tendril of sludge that snapped out, faster than my precognition could track. She snapped the shaft.
[THREAT LEVEL: REASSESSING... LEVEL ?? (ESTIMATED 15+)]
"Run," I whispered. Not a command. A calculation. [COMBAT PROBABILITY: VICTORY 0.03%] .
But Mira didn't run. She dropped her bow, drew a knife, and cut her palm. Blood dripped onto the bank. [RITUAL ACTIVATION DETECTED] . The forest responded.
The Stranglevine woke up.
It didn't attack us. It attacked her —the masked woman. The bank erupted in glowing tendrils, drawn by the blood, but Mira's blood wasn't just blood. It was marked . The Warden's bloodline. The town's founding family.
The vine recognized its master.
The woman hissed, sludge retracting to defend. "Blood witches. I should have known."
Drek grabbed my arm. "Now we run."
But my overlay was mapping something else. The woman's mask. The sludge. The way she moved. [PATTERN MATCHING...] . I'd seen her gait before. In the Warden's Tower. In the system's corrupted logs.
[MATCH: CALLUM'S PHASE SIGNATURE = 94% CORRELATION]
She wasn't the seeder.
She was Callum's source.
"Wait!" I shouted. "Where's Callum?"
The woman laughed, sludge boiling around her. "Echoing. Just like you will be, if you keep calculating."
She threw something. Not sludge. A seed. It landed at my feet, pulsing black-green.
[ITEM: DORMANT BLOOM SEED (LEGENDARY)]
[USE: PLANT TO SPAWN INSTANT DEMON-BLOOM]
[DETONATION TIMER: 10 SECONDS]
She phased. Not like Callum. Like a shadow into shadow. One moment there, the next—[ERR: TARGET LOST]. But this time, I saw the error code: [TRANSPORT: PHASE-WALK TO PRESET MARKER].
She had a waypoint. A base.
The seed pulsed. 9 seconds.
Drek and Mira froze. My parallel analysis ran 100,000 futures in 1 second.
In 99,999, we died.
In 1, we didn't.
"Drek! Eat it!"
The dwarf didn't hesitate. His Unique Skill was Unbreakable Digestion. He snatched the seed, shoved it in his mouth, and chewed.
[UNIQUE SKILL: UNBREAKABLE DIGESTION - OVERRULE]
[DEMON-BLOOM SEED: NEUTRALIZED]
[DREK HP: -30 (INTERNAL DAMAGE)]
[DREK STATUS: STABLE (UNIQUE SKILL REGEN)]
He swallowed, grimaced. "Tastes like ass. And betrayal."
The sludge wall collapsed without the woman's control, oozing into the stream. The Stranglevine retreated, Mira's blood ritual complete. She was pale, but standing.
[PARTY STATUS: UNHARMED, INTEL ACQUIRED]
The woman was gone. But she'd left data. The waypoint marker had a signature. My overlay captured it: [PHASE SIGNATURE: CALLUM + MASKED WOMAN, 72% SYNC]. They were using the same ability source. Maybe the same artifact.
"She's his handler," I said. "Callum's not the mastermind. He's a courier."
Mira wiped her knife. "We need to tell Gorum."
"No." My parallel analysis showed 8,402 futures where Gorum's involvement made things worse. Town politics would slow us down. "We handle this. Party quest."
[NEW QUEST: THE HANDLER]
[OBJECTIVE: TRACK PHASE SIGNATURE TO SOURCE]
[SUSPECT: MASKED WOMAN (PRIORITY), CALLUM (SECONDARY)]
[REWARD: 8000 EXP, UNIQUE CLASS UNLOCK, HANDLER'S ARTIFACT]
[RISK: PARTY WIPE (34%)]
Drek spat black slime. "I'm in. Nobody feeds me a Bloom seed and walks."
Mira nodded. "My bloodline demands it."
[PARTY VOTE: UNANIMOUS]
The waypoint signature pointed north. Toward Hollow's End. Through the Shatterglass Ravine.
The Ravine's "haunting" was about to meet three very determined Worldlost.
And I'd just hit Level 6. My parallel analysis could map 3 seconds of all possible futures.
[PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL THROUGH RAVINE: 78%]
The highest it had ever been. But my 1 Luck whispered: "That's when the universe cashes its debt."
I ignored it. We moved north, toward the woman who turned demon spores into weapons.
The Handler's game had begun.
And I was very good at calculating games.