As Elias emerged into the borders of Weeping Hollow, the humidity was palpable. It hit him like the stench of a fish market at midday.

  sun – heavy, warm, and reeking of something sweet rotting in the dark. The moment the cool stone of the Emberkeep vanished, the temperature inside his helm spiked. Condensation slicked the inside of the metal faceplate instantly, dripping down his nose and stinging his eyes.

  [ZONE ENTERED: WEEPING HOLLOW — HOLLOWSHADE EDGE] [HAZARD: SPORE SATURATION — HIGH]

  "Filters," Elias muttered, "I wish i had filters" checking the leather seal where his gorget met his leather under-mask. It held, but the air coming through felt thick, like soup through a straw.

  Cindersnarl shook himself violently, sending a spray of sparks sizzling into the damp moss. The Warg sneezed, rubbed his nose against his foreleg, and let out a low, disgusted growl, his misery immediately apparent.

  Elias peered through the narrow eye-slits of his visor. The limited field of view made the forest feel closer, more oppressive. There was no sky, just a ceiling of interlocking fungal caps, grey and pale green, dripping mucus-like sludge. The trees—if they could be called that—were twisted, bloated things, their bark peeling away to reveal wet, white fibres underneath.

  "It's like a greenhouse," Elias said, his voice booming hollowly inside the steel structure. He stepped off the stone ring of the gate, his boot sinking six inches into the muck with a wet, sucking sound. He looked down in disgust as something bone-like rolled past his boot. "A greenhouse built on a graveyard."

  In the distance, a glyph flickered—amber, faint. A breadcrumb trail left by the Loom.

  He started walking. The ground was treacherous, a mat of roots, stagnant pools and decomposing leaves that shifted under his weight. Every few steps, a puff of yellow dust exploded from a crushed mushroom, hanging in the still air.

  [TOXICITY WARNING: 2%]

  "Don't breathe deeply," he told Cindersnarl, "and don't eat anything."

  The Warg huffed, keeping close to Elias's leg. The heat radiating from the beast was the only dry thing in the world.

  They had not gone fifty metres when the forest changed. It didn't just get quiet; it became still. The background noise of dripping water and rustling vegetation simply stopped.

  Cindersnarl halted too. His hackles rose, the fire along his spine flaring bright orange.

  "I know," Elias said, his hand drifting to his sword. "We're being watched."

  He didn't draw the weapon, keeping his hands open, palms out.

  "We can do this the easy way," he called out to the trees.

  The trees moved. Three figures detached themselves from the gloom, their bark-armour stained with the grey-green sludge of the Hollow. They moved with a disturbing, fluid silence that made Elias’s own heavy plate feel like a clanging dinner bell.

  The one in the centre stepped forward. Her mask was a single, jagged piece of ancient root that hid everything but a pair of eyes sharp as obsidian glass. She didn't hold her bow like a hunter; she held it like a law.

  "You carry a scream of iron on your back, stranger," she said, her voice a dry rattle of leaves. "And you bring an ash-beast to a forest that is already choking".

  Elias kept his hands open and away from Dawnfall. "I’m a medic. I’m here because the roots are dying, and I have the memory of why".

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "A medic?" The woman spat the word as if it were salt. "We have no need of soft hands. I am Veyra, the spear of this Weald. Until you prove you can walk without bruising the soil, you are merely a guest of the silence".

  She gestured to the massive figure to her left, whose skin looked less like bark and more like weathered granite. He stood perfectly still, as if any pause in motion might cause him to merge with the landscape.

  "This is Oaken," Veyra said, her voice tight. "He is our shield, provided he keeps moving long enough to remain flesh".

  Oaken rumbled a low sound of acknowledgement, his stone joints grinding with a sound like shifting scree. He didn't look at Elias; he looked at his own hands, flexing them with a rhythmic, almost anxious persistence.

  The third figure, the smallest of the three, pushed up a mask infused with vibrant, healthy moss. "And I'm Briar," she said, her voice lacking Veyra's edge but full of a scout's alertness. "I'm the eyes. And my eyes say your Warg looks like he wants to eat my boots".

  Cindersnarl huffed, a puff of smoke curling from his nostrils, but he settled into a defensive crouch at Elias's heel.

  "Veyra, Oaken, Briar," Elias repeated, committing the names to memory. "I’m Elias Ward. We need to see the Elders".

  "Need is a heavy word, Elias Ward," Veyra said, using his full name as if weighing the soul behind it. She shifted her stance as her eyes focused once again on his blade.

  "It poisoned this place." She didn't lower the bow. "You bring the rot back to the root."

  "I brought it back to fix it," Elias said. He nodded at Cindersnarl, who was vibrating with a low growl. "As for the wolf—he's with me. I know he looks like a walking forest fire in waiting, but he's disciplined. He won't torch your woods unless I give a very specific order."

  Elias met the leader's gaze, unflinching. "I saw the Rootsinger die. I have the memory. If you want to shoot me, go ahead. But you'll be burying the only chance you have of closing the wound."

  The leader tilted her head. The silence stretched, heavy and damp.

  Finally, she lowered the bow, not completely, but enough.

  "No fire," she warned. "If you spark a flame here, the spores will ignite. We'll all burn."

  "Understood."

  "Follow. Stray from the path, and the roots will consume you. We won't stop them".

  She turned and melted back into the undergrowth.

  They moved deeper in.

  The path was little more than a suggestion of a road. They climbed over fallen logs that crumbled to mulch when touched, and ducked under curtains of hanging moss that smeared a sticky residue across Elias’s pauldrons.

  The smell worsened. Beneath the sweet rot was something sharper: copper, bile.

  Elias stepped past a hollow tree trunk. Inside, a ribcage was fused into the wood, white bone protruding from the bark like thorns.

  "Don't look," the young scout whispered as she passed him. "It tries to show you things."

  "Who?"

  "The Hollow."

  They crossed a ravine on the back of a felled giant, the wood slick with black algae. Below, dark water bubbled sluggishly.

  Then the smell changed again. It stopped smelling like compost and started smelling like a butcher’s bin.

  Cindersnarl stopped, whining with a high, anxious sound.

  "Wait," the leader hissed, raising a hand.

  The mist ahead churned.

  A shape shambled out of the fog. It was humanoid, but wrong. It wore the rusted, moss-eaten remains of plate armour—Crimson Fyre styling. But where the head should have been, a cluster of red shelf-fungi bloomed. One arm was a swollen mass of roots; the other dragged a rusted longsword.

  [TARGET: THE UNDONE] [TYPE: CORRUPTED KNIGHT]

  "One of yours?" the leader asked, her voice tight.

  "Not anymore," Elias said.

  The creature made a sound—wet air wheezing through a throat that wasn't there. It sensed the sword on Elias’s back and reacted instantly, breaking into a loping, uneven run.

  "It wants the blade," the young scout said, stepping back.

  "Put it down!" the leader shouted.

  The Leshei loosed arrows. Thwip-thwip. The shafts hit the creature’s chest, sinking into the fungal mass with a wet thud. It didn't even slow down.

  "Standard arrows won't work," Elias said, drawing Dawnfall. "There are no organs to hit."

  The Undone shrieked—a psychic blast that made Elias’s senses ache.

  Cindersnarl roared and lunged, hitting the creature low and knocking its legs out. The Undone fell, flailing and slashing wildly with the rusted sword.

  Elias stepped in. He didn't fancy a duel, so he treated it like an amputation.

  He swung low, aiming for the knee joint where the armour had rusted through. The blade shore through metal and rot, and the creature collapsed.

  He finished it with a thrust through the chest plate, twisting the blade to break the fungal core.

  The creature spasmed and stilled, dissolving into a puddle of black sludge.

  [THREAT NEUTRALISED]

  Elias wiped his blade on a patch of moss. The Leshei were staring at him – or rather, at the sword.

  "It knows its own kind," the leader said. There was no admiration in her voice, just a cold statement of fact.

  "Let's keep moving," Elias said, sheathing the weapon. "Before its friends show up."

  They marched for another hour. The canopy began to change, the grey, sickly fungus giving way to a structured environment of woven arches and platforms grown from living wood.

  The leader stopped at the base of a ridge and pointed upwards.

  "Sporevault is up there," she said. "We must pass that way to reach the elders."

  "Do they know I'm coming?"

  "The roots felt your boots the moment you stepped off the stone," she replied. "They know everything."

  Elias adjusted his pack, sweating, covered in spores, and with swamp water sloshing in his boots.

  "Great," he grimaced. "I look my best."

  He began the climb.