The three leaders continued, undeterred by their follower’s death, as if it were a necessary sacrifice. They raised their hands, beckoning the creature closer, whispering promises and commands in voices that dripped with desperation. Aric could see their exhaustion, the toll that this dark pact was taking on them, but they pressed on, each word thick with raw ambition and madness.
Then, with a gesture from the lead cultist, the massive steel bell hanging above the altar began to tremble. Slowly, it tilted forward, its inner pendulum swinging and building momentum until—clang. The sound was immense, resonant, a physical force that seemed to shake the cave to its core. The bell’s chime was no ordinary sound; it vibrated with the same unnatural energy as the Wyrd, amplifying it, spreading its chaotic influence like an infection.
The moment the bell tolled, the bodies of the elves on the altar began to convulse violently.
Aric’s jaw tightened as he watched, a flicker of regret stirring within him. “Could I have prevented this?” he wondered briefly, feeling a pang of guilt. He quickly buried it. Emotions were for the weak.
The voice’s cool, calculated tone broke through his thoughts. “This is the cost of prophecy, Aric. Some are sacrificed, so others may be spared.”
He gritted his teeth, frustration simmering within him. “Prophecy? All this for some twisted vision of the future?”
The voice remained silent, leaving his question to linger in the air, heavy with a lack of answers. Yet, it left him with a sense of unease, the suggestion that he was watching just a small part of some vast, disturbing design. If prophecy was involved, it meant the cultists weren’t merely stumbling in their dark arts—they were following a pattern, one perhaps given to them by something that understood the arcane nature of the Wyrd better than they did.
The bell tolled again, its deep resonance echoing through the cave with a life of its own. But this time, it sounded different: less like a signal and more like a command. The reverberations bounced off the stone walls, filling every dark corner and momentarily silencing the cultists’ frenzied whispers. Aric narrowed his eyes, sensing something change, as the Wyrd entity they’d summoned moments before began to dissipate. It vanished into the shadows as though banished back beyond the Veil by the toll of the bell itself.
Aric’s gaze sharpened. He didn’t need the voice to tell him to stay hidden now; he knew better than to interfere openly. If this cult truly performed such rituals every few days, he had an opportunity to learn more—and perhaps turn their own plans against them. With calculated silence, he slipped out of the chamber and made his way back to the surface.
---
Over the next ten days, Aric established a small, hidden camp outside the cult’s cavern. Each day, he watched them carefully, moving at dawn or dusk to avoid detection, studying their movements and noting patterns in their behavior. From his vantage points outside the entrance or from crevices within the cave walls, he observed the cultists carry out their chilling rites with disturbing regularity. Every three days, they gathered around the altar, drawing upon the Wyrd to summon the same flickering, shadowed entity that he’d witnessed before.
He counted close to 150 people, most of whom were the elves from the vanished village, now drawn into the cult’s grasp. They acted almost as automatons, their eyes hollow and bodies unnaturally rigid, as though their very essence had been dulled by the corrupting energy that lingered around them. The cultists, those who had orchestrated this mass corruption, seemed changed as well. They moved with an eerie, feverish dedication, and despite their emaciated forms, they didn’t appear to eat or drink. They merely… existed, sustained by something far darker and less tangible than mere sustenance.
Each time the cult gathered for the ritual, Aric felt the Wyrd’s pull intensify, pressing against his senses as if daring him to interfere. The voice in his mind, however, would advise against it, its cautionary tone a reminder of the danger. “Not yet, Aric. Their own ambition will be their undoing if you remain patient.”
After ten days of careful observation, Aric determined his plan. When he noticed a group of cultists venturing out for supplies to keep the elves alive, he seized the chance. Five of them, draped in robes and walking with a silent, grim focus, left the cavern, venturing into the forest beyond the cave’s shadow. He followed at a distance, slipping silently between the trees, until one cultist drifted just far enough from the group for him to strike.
Raising a hand, Aric focused his mana into a single, razor-thin tear in space below the cultist. He held his breath as he compressed his spatial magic, pouring more mana into the narrow void to control the distortion with as much precision as possible. The tear opened directly beneath the lone cultist, who stumbled, his figure slipping into the tear before he even had the chance to call out.
In an instant, the cultist reappeared through another tear a few paces in front of Aric. He didn’t wait; as the body fully emerged, he moved swiftly, his sword slicing cleanly through the figure’s neck with brutal precision. The cultist’s head fell forward, but before the body even hit the ground, Aric inhaled deeply, reaching for the cloud of Wyrd energy that began seeping from the lifeless form.
Holding out his hand, he concentrated, absorbing the Wyrd into himself. He felt its chaotic energy seep into his core, winding through his mana channels and seeking a foothold within his mind. Darkness crept over his vision, and whispering voices brushed against his consciousness, promises of endless power and visions of warped realms beyond the Veil.
They urged him to take in more, to let the Wyrd corrupt his very essence. But Aric’s will was unyielding, and he pushed the voices back with an iron resolve, focusing instead on binding the Wyrd’s power to his own.
He quickly donned the cultist’s robe, adjusting it to cover his head and make him less noticeable among the group. There was only one thing left to complete his disguise: a pulse of Wyrd energy circulating within him, mirroring the dark aura of the cultists. His hands flexed, feeling the wild energy twist in his veins.
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It wasn’t enough. If he wanted to seamlessly blend in, he’d need to expose himself to a greater surge of the Wyrd, to allow more of its power to flow through him. He gritted his teeth, weighing the risk. But his determination held. If this was what it took to uncover the cult’s secrets, he would go through with it.
Using the cultist’s own dagger, he carved a minute rune into the ground, forming a narrow rift and concentrating his mana into it with surgical precision. The Veil stretched, the fabric of reality bending at his will, until a small tear appeared. For an instant, the darkness of the Wyrd’s chaotic realm shimmered at the edge of the breach, and Aric siphoned a controlled pulse of the energy as it spilled forth. The Veil resisted, closing rapidly, but not before he felt the influx of raw Wyrd power course through his mana pathways.
Corruption clung to his mind immediately, like a cold, suffocating presence. It tried to creep in, pressing against his senses with the allure of deeper secrets and forbidden strength. Twisted whispers clawed at his mind, tempting him to give himself over to the darkness entirely, but he forced himself to remain grounded, his thoughts sharp and disciplined.
“You’re just a tool,” he whispered into the dark voices, his tone as cold and unyielding as steel. Not my master.”
Slowly, the whispers faded, cowed by his refusal to yield, and he exhaled, feeling the Wyrd settle within him. He channeled it outward, focusing on his exterior, letting it mold around him like an invisible cloak, aligning his aura with that of the cultists.
Disguised and shrouded in Wyrd energy, he rejoined the remaining cultists, blending into their ranks as they returned to the cave. As he walked among them, he could feel the subtle effects of his transformation. His senses were sharpened, yet tainted by the alien sensations of the Wyrd, casting a faint, unsettling glow over the world. Every whisper, every flicker of movement in the cave felt amplified, as if seen through the distorted lens of a different reality.
Now entrenched within the cult’s dark heart, Aric bided his time, waiting for the next ritual. He moved with careful calculation, noting the familiar chants, the measured steps, and the fevered focus of the leaders as they prepared for the next invocation. This time, however, he wouldn’t be a passive observer. He would be ready to use his newfound insight and the very energy they worshipped to dismantle them from within.
As the next ritual drew near, Aric steeled himself, hidden among the cultists now, his hood pulled low to obscure his face. The damp air in the cavern felt heavier than before, thick with the malevolent presence of the Wyrd energy that clung to the walls and lingered in the shadows. With each passing day, he could feel the cult’s influence stretching further, deepening its hold over the drained elven villagers and creeping into the very stones of the cave.
The ritual was about to begin. The cultists assembled in their usual circle around the altar, each lifting their hands in synchronized, eerie silence as they chanted words that reverberated through the chamber like a forgotten language. The air pulsed with energy, and Aric’s senses, sharpened by the Wyrd he’d absorbed, picked up on the subtle tremors running through the ground. This ritual was different; he could sense the intensity building to a level he hadn’t witnessed before.
Aric gritted his teeth, controlling the surge of his mana to keep his disguise intact. Even now, there was an urge within him, a pull from the Wyrd itself, urging him to join the chant, to submit to the rhythm of dark words that spilled like oil from their mouths. He resisted, narrowing his focus to analyze the ritual’s finer details, noting the precise movements and the glyphs carved into the altar’s stone surface that flickered with a faint, dark glow. They were glyphs he hadn’t seen before—runes that could only be glimpsed with Wyrd-imbued sight.
As Aric immersed himself in the ritual’s unnerving rhythm, a sudden explosion shook the cave, sending a violent tremor through the stone and knocking several cultists off balance. Dust cascaded from the ceiling as an echoing boom resounded through the cavern. Aric's head snapped toward the source of the disturbance, his instincts kicking in.
“What? No one was supposed to find this place,” he muttered, his mind racing.
Through the thick haze of dust and darkness, he glimpsed the gleam of armor and the unmistakable emerald-green insignia of Verdantis. The knights poured into the cavern’s entrance, led by their highest-ranking commanders and mages. At their head stood Sylvan, his face a mask of fury and disbelief as he looked upon the sacrilege of his kin, the drained elven villagers now sprawled on the altar. Sylvan's hand gripped his sword tightly, his eyes blazing with righteous anger.
Aric felt his stomach turn as realization hit him. He had left Valenwood with no word of his plans, no indication of his intentions to investigate the missing villagers. If they spotted him here now, garbed in the cultist’s dark robes with traces of Wyrd energy clinging to him like a second skin, he would be as good as dead. He wouldn’t be able to explain himself, not without implicating himself in something that would see him hunted by the very people he sought to protect. And the knights of Verdantis were relentless; they would not hesitate to cut him down as a traitor.
His mind spun, each second critical. He weighed his options as the knights advanced further into the cavern, cutting down the startled cultists who scrambled to retaliate or flee. A few of the cultists shouted warnings, and their leader screamed commands, but the well-trained knights pressed on, their gleaming weapons tearing through the darkness. Sylvan’s voice rang out, commanding his forces to capture any cultists alive for interrogation. Aric clenched his jaw, the urgency pressing against him like a vice.
In an instant, he made his decision.
Gathering his mana, he felt the familiar rush of spatial magic swell within him, every particle buzzing as he prepared to leave. Just before he vanished, he cast a glance back at the scene—the knights advancing, Sylvan’s hardened glare, and Lyra, who had been stationed closer to the entrance, her gaze intense as she scanned the room for any movement. His heart skipped when he saw her head tilt slightly, her eyes narrowing in his direction, as if sensing the subtle fluctuations in the air around him. Her intuition was sharp, sharper than most, and he knew she would be the first to notice any trace of spatial magic.
“I have no choice,” he muttered, tightening his grip on the Wyrd-infused robes as he shifted his concentration and allowed the veil of mana to form around him.
Aric disappeared, his body slipping through the delicate fractures in space, each point precisely calculated to mask his exit as much as possible. Even as he teleported, he could feel Lyra’s gaze lingering, her sharp, worried eyes catching the fleeting disturbances left in his wake.
In the moments after he rematerialized outside the cave, he fought to steady his breathing, the weight of the situation still pressing on him. He cast a quick glance back toward the cave entrance, catching one final glimpse of the knights pouring into the cavern, their magic illuminating the dark recesses, filling it with flashes of fire and searing light.
He was safe, for now, but the close encounter left a bitter taste in his mouth. The risk had been too high, and it was a mistake he couldn’t afford to repeat.
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