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Belvoir Village, Valenor
The salt arrived at dawn—crude sacks hauled by sullen mules. Aldric watched as serfs spilled the crystalline mounds into troughs, their faces etched with wary hope. Purify the soil. Flush the toxins. He repeated the mantra like a prayer, though he knew salt alone couldn’t save them. Not forever.
“This is madness,” muttered the bailiff, clutching his ledger like a shield. “Do you know what salt costs? The Duke will have my head when he hears you’ve wasted it on dirt.”
Aldric ignored him, crouching to sift the treated soil. The metallic stench had dulled, but the earth still felt lifeless. Like ash. His fingers brushed a half-buried Aether crystal, now inert and gray. Progress. Maybe.
A child’s laughter sliced through the tension. The cataract-eyed girl from yesterday darted past, clutching a withered turnip. Her mother chased her, cheeks flushed—not with fever, Aldric noted, but vitality. They’re eating. The granary stores he’d redistributed had bought their trust. For now.
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The Alchemist’s Den
Isolde found him that evening in the abandoned chapel-turned-laboratory. She moved like smoke, her nun’s habit traded for a leather apron singed with acid burns.
“So you’re the heretic noble,” she said, eyeing the dissected Aether crystal on his workbench. “I expected horns. Or at least a decent beard.”
Aldric coughed into his sleeve—a bloody speck bloomed on the linen. “Sister Marguerite sent you?”
“Marguerite fears you’ll burn down the duchy. I’m here to watch you try.” She lifted the crystal, her pupils dilating as its faint glow returned. “You know what these are? Batteries. The Church sucks Valenor’s ley lines dry to power their Divine Engines, then dumps the waste on peasants. Clever, isn’t it?”
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Aldric’s stomach turned. Corporate greed in ecclesiastical robes. “And the Blight?”
Isolde grinned, all teeth. “Aether decay. Use it raw, and it poisons the land. Refine it…” She produced a vial of liquid light, swirling like captive starlight. “…and you could melt a castle gate. Or a man.”
“You’re not a nun.”
“And you’re not a saint.” She tossed him the vial. “But we’re both heretics now. Cheers.”
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The Sermon
Three days later, the priest came.
Father Julien’s voice boomed across the village square, his vestments embroidered with the Holy See’s sunburst sigil. Peasants knelt in the mud, foreheads pressed to soil they no longer trusted.
“Blight is divine judgment!” he thundered. “To defy it is to defy the Light!”
Aldric watched from the shadows, Isolde at his side. The salt had greened the fields, but whispers spread faster than wheat. The Church’s wrath. Cursed harvests.
“They’ll turn on you,” Isolde murmured. “Fear trumps full bellies every time.”
A rock flew. Then another. The cataract-eyed girl’s mother staggered, blood trickling from her temple. “Witch!” a man roared. “She took the heretic’s salt!”
Aldric stepped forward, lungs burning. “Enough!”
The crowd froze. Father Julien’s smile was seraphic. “Lord Aldric. Come to repent?”
“Come to educate.” He lifted a fistful of revitalized soil. “The Blight isn’t punishment—it’s greed. The Church’s greed.”
A gasp rippled through the crowd. Isolde’s hand drifted to her belt, where vials clinked.
“Blasphemy!” The priest spat. “Seize him!”
The mob surged. Aldric’s guards hesitated—loyalty warring with fear of hellfire.
Then the earth screamed.
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The Fracture
It began as a tremor—a vibration in the marrow. The chapel’s bell tolled without hands. Horses reared, their eyes white with panic.
“Blight zone!” Isolde yelled, dragging Aldric back as the square split. Black veins spiderwebbed through the soil, swallowing a hovel whole. The air curdled, sweet and metallic.
A serf stumbled into the fissure. His shriek cut off abruptly, replaced by a wet, crunching silence.
Aldric’s mind raced. Induced seismic activity. The Aether waste destabilized the bedrock—
“Run!” Isolde shoved him toward the keep. “Unless you fancy becoming a martyr!”
He ran, coughing blood, as Valois Keep’s gates groaned shut behind them. Through the arrow slit, he watched Belvoir die—not to famine or fire, but to the Church’s poisoned progress.