A chill, damp air clung to Corbin Rhys, a familiar companion in his forgotten corner of Aethelgard. Each breath tasted of rust and decay. He lay on a cot of scavenged straw and rotten cloth, a fresh bruise blooming across his ribs, a dull throb in his skull. Yesterday’s indignity still gnawed, a sharper pain than the physical ache. Not an hour past the curfew bells, a patrol of the Overwatch had found him sifting through the collapsed market district. Not for coin, not for food, but for anything that hummed with a hint of forgotten power. A rusted cog, faintly etched with a glyph. A shard of glazed pottery, still warm with residual sorcery. They had crushed both under their boot, then him beneath their batons. A petty infraction, they’d called it. Trespassing on Blighted Ground without a permit. Permits were for the well-fed, the un-blighted. Not for scavengers like him. Aethelgard had long bled. Its grandeur was dust, its laws, the capricious whims of those with enough force to enforce them. Life was cheap, power expensive, and even a sliver of it—a whisper of old magic, a broken ritual—came with a cost that could twist bone and blight soul. But Corbin saw things differently. He saw opportunity in the rot, potential in the ruin. He saw the grotesque beauty of true power, even if it reeked of the charnel pit. He needed more than scavenged trinkets. He needed something potent, something capable of reshaping his miserable fate. That meant embracing the forbidden, the dangerous. The very things that promised ruin to others, but offered a different path for him. Corbin shifted, his gaze sweeping the cramped, earthen room. Dust motes danced in the slivers of weak light pushing through cracks in the stone. A single, greasy candle guttered on a overturned bucket. Beneath a loose flagstone, a secret. His secret. His fingers scrabbled at the rough-hewn stone. It scraped back, revealing a hollowed space. Inside, wrapped in oilskin, lay a tome. Not a book of elegant script, but a crude, thick hide, stitched with sinew, its pages brittle parchment stained with dried ichor and something darker, more viscous. *The Serpent’s Coil.* No, that wasn’t it. *Marrow-Blight Infusion.* Three words, etched in a jagged hand, pulsing with a faint, sickly green aura even in the dim light. Its presence was a promise, a threat, a lure. He had found it months ago, deep within the catacombs beneath Old Aethelgard. A former occupant of these very ruins had succumbed to its practice, so the legend went. Bloated, festering, his flesh sloughing away before he finally dissolved into a pool of blighted slime. Most would shy from such a grim warning. Corbin saw it as an instruction manual. The previous practitioner had simply lacked his unique gift. Marrow-Blight Infusion. A path to strength, drawn from the very corruption that consumed Aethelgard. It promised accelerated vitality, enhanced resilience, a subtle control over the minor blights that infested the land. But the cost was steep. The manual detailed a slow, agonizing decay, a spreading corruption that would turn flesh to putrescence, bone to brittle ash, and consciousness to a screaming void. To practice it, one first had to consume a ‘Binding Agent’ – an elixir concocted from rare herbs, alchemical catalysts, and the purified essence of a nascent blight-shard. This would prepare the body, making it receptive. Then, one submerged their hands in a ‘Blight-Wick Infusion’ – a potent, living ichor drawn from five specific, virulent blighted entities: a creeping blight-worm, a scuttling void-spider, a gnawing corpse-beetle, a bloated carrion-toad, and a venomous shadow-scorpion. A precise ritual of movements and incantations followed, drawing the blight’s power into the practitioner. Corbin had spent weeks gathering the components. The binding agent’s ingredients were scavenged from abandoned apothecaries and alchemists’ workshops, hidden deep within the blighted sectors. He’d traded a half-eaten loaf of bread and a chipped soul-gem for a few drops of purified blight-shard essence. The Blight-Wick Infusion, however, required live specimens. He had them now. Trapped in crude clay pots, their agitated scurrying and faint, acidic clicks filling the air of his hovel with a low, menacing chorus. His choice was made. The gnawing ache in his ribs, the taste of humiliation, the cold indifference of Aethelgard – these were catalysts. He would not remain a scavenger. He would become a master of the blighted. --- Corbin set about preparing the Binding Agent. A small, soot-stained kettle hissed over a sputtering fire. He carefully measured a pinch of moonpetal dust, its faint silver glow almost immediately extinguished by the foul-smelling swamp-root paste he added. Next, a few drops of concentrated shadow-bile – the liquid gleamed with an oily, shifting darkness. Finally, the precious, purified blight-shard essence, a translucent, viscous fluid that pulsed with a faint, sickly green light. The concoction simmered, bubbling with an unnatural vigor. A thick, acrid vapor rose, stinging Corbin’s eyes and throat. It smelled like death mixed with stale sweat and something far, far worse – the metallic tang of corruption, the sweet decay of forgotten things. An ordinary man might retch. Corbin’s morbid curiosity was piqued. He stirred the brew with a shard of bleached bone, watching the surface shift from murky brown to a swirling vortex of sickly green and black. “A fine vintage,” he murmured, a sardonic twist to his lips. He used the pretense of burning a pile of blighted refuse outside his hovel – a common practice to keep pests at bay – to mask the truly noxious fumes. No one would question the reek. In Aethelgard, vile odors were as common as misery. Once the Binding Agent had cooled to a lukewarm, viscous consistency, Corbin poured it into a chipped ceramic bowl. It shimmered, a living thing, drawing the faint light into its depths. He pinched his nose, took a deep breath, and swallowed the entire bowl in a single, burning gulp. The taste was indescribable. Bitter, metallic, alkaline, with a creeping warmth that spread from his stomach through his veins, quickly escalating into a full-body tremor. His vision swam. Nausea roiled in his gut. A cold sweat slicked his skin. Ignoring the immediate urge to vomit, he quickly reached for the five clay pots. With practiced, ruthless efficiency, he emptied their squirming, clicking, venomous contents into a larger, shallow basin. The blight-worm’s ichor, the void-spider’s venom, the corpse-beetle’s corrosive fluid, the carrion-toad’s toxic slime, the shadow-scorpion’s concentrated poison – they blended into a pulsating, iridescent pool of liquid corruption. This was the Blight-Wick Infusion. Its surface rippled, mirroring the frantic movements of the creatures, even though they were now dissolved, their essence absorbed into the potent mixture. A faint, almost melodic hum emanated from it, a dark siren song. Corbin plunged his hands into the Blight-Wick Infusion. The liquid was surprisingly warm, almost hot. Then, the agony began. It wasn’t a burn, or a sting, but a terrifying, accelerating sensation of decay. His flesh crawled, then tightened. Veins beneath his skin swelled and darkened, visible as grotesque, writhing cords. A wave of intense nausea crashed over him, worse than the Binding Agent. His bones ached, as if dissolving from within. A cold, creeping paralysis began to spread from his fingertips, up his forearms. His mind felt as if it were being scoured with acid. He bit back a scream, his jaw clenching so hard he thought his teeth might crack. This was the toll. The price. Then, a flicker behind his eyes. Not a vision, but an internal prompt, cold and clear, superimposing itself over the swirling chaos of his corrupted senses. **Marrow-Blight Infusion (Initial Strain)** **Progress: 1%** **Immediate Toll: Accelerated Decay, Psychic Scorch.** **Redirect Toll? (Y/N)** **Available Anchor: Joric, the Gate-Sentry.** Corbin’s breath hitched. A chilling smile touched his lips, despite the spreading corruption. *Finally. There it is.* His unique faculty, manifesting as cleanly as he’d hoped. Joric. That self-important brute with the bladed baton, who had cracked his ribs yesterday, mocking him for his paltry findings. Joric, whose breath always smelled of cheap rot-wine and unwashed arrogance. Joric, who embodied the petty tyranny of Aethelgard’s lower guard. Zero psychological burden indeed. Why wasn't an Overwatch Captain or a Blight Lord on the list? He filed the thought away for later. For now, Joric would do. His choice was instantaneous. *Y.* He mentally commanded it, a cold, ruthless resolve hardening his gaze. In that moment, the agony vanished. The crawling decay receded. The searing psychic burn faded, replaced by a profound, almost blissful emptiness. The Blight-Wick Infusion, which moments before felt like a cauldron of acid, now felt like a basin of cool, mountain spring water, invigorating and cleansing. His bruised ribs still ached. The dull throb in his head persisted. These were not tolls of the Infusion, merely mundane consequences. His ability was precise. It culled the direct, supernatural costs, leaving the common aches of the flesh to him alone. Corbin continued the ritual movements, his hands submerged in the now benign, iridescent liquid. He focused, drawing the power, feeling its subtle hum beneath his skin. It was an almost meditative experience now, free from the crushing weight of its original price. Strange. Almost anticlimactic. He was practicing a deadly, corrupting art, and it felt like a refreshing soak. After a full half-hour, as stipulated by the ancient tome – pushing past the initial limit risked over-saturation, a rapid dissolution of form, even with his ability – Corbin withdrew his hands. They felt strangely invigorated, pulsing with a faint, internal warmth. He consulted his internal ledger. **Marrow-Blight Infusion (Initial Strain)** **Progress: 9%** Joric, the Gate-Sentry. The name glowed with a faint, sickly green, noticeably dimmer than before. A fading ember. He’d drained Joric’s vitality, perhaps even his sanity, in a single session. Corbin chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. *A fine start.* He would need new anchors soon. There were always more Joric's in Aethelgard, ripe for the plucking. The blighted land would provide. And he, Corbin Rhys, would harvest their suffering for his own ascendancy.

Chapter 1: Marrow-Blight Infusion