The floor pulsed. Not with earth's heart, but a sick, alien rhythm. Corbin knelt. His fingers dug into damp earth, then into cold stone beneath. Before him, the seer thrashed. A thin man, robed, convulsing. Muscles locked, then released in sickening spasms.
His eyes were wide, pupils blown. Fixed on nothing. A wet gurgle escaped his lips. Not words. Just broken sound, like stones churning in mud. His mind was a shattered mirror, reflecting only madness.
Corbin felt it. The influx. Not the clean foresight the man had sought. Never clean. It was a torrent of potential futures. Fragmented. Distorted. A million pathways, collapsing into each other. Each glimpse came with a razor-thin whisper, a fragment of the madness meant for the seer.
He let it wash over him. He knew how to ride the wave. To channel the venom. Not to ingest, but to redirect. To make a weapon of the curse.
He pushed the energy out. A focused surge. The seer screamed. Not from pain. From the sudden, absolute void where his mind had been. He tore at his face. His nails scraped bone. "No! Light! I see... nothing! Everything!" His voice, once prophetic, now a frantic shriek.
He collapsed. A broken puppet, twitching. Corbin stood. His own head throbbed. The borrowed echoes of doomed futures faded. They left a metallic taste on his tongue. A familiar aftertaste of consumed damnation.
---
The air chilled. A rustle. The temple stone groaned, a heavy, ancient sound. Corbin spun. Shadow detachments. Hooded figures emerged from the deeper gloom. Their movements were too fluid. Too silent. Zealots. They sought the same void Corbin diverted.
They moved like wraiths among the crumbling pillars. Their faces, pale and drawn, were barely visible beneath deep cowls. Each bore symbols etched into their skin, patterns of decay and nullity. A twisted communion.
"The Seeder," one hissed. Its voice grated like stone on stone. "You steal the gifts. You deny the calling."
Corbin didn't reply. His hand went to the obsidian dagger at his hip. The blade hummed, a low vibration against his palm. Its edge was sharp. Its purpose, sharper. His eyes scanned their positions. Six of them. Flanking.
He focused. The psychic residue. The very essence of the seer's torment. It coiled within him. A dense, humming ball of corrupted intent. It vibrated with the agony of lost sanity.
He pushed it forward. Not a wave. A focused blast. The foremost zealot faltered. Its hand flew to its face. Not to cover eyes. To claw. Its mask, a crude carving of a screaming mouth, cracked. Obsidian shards scattered.
Then, a silent scream. Its allies recoiled. A pocket of unnatural blackness consumed the zealot. Not shadow. An absence of light. A void that swallowed all sensation. The zealot began to babble. Incoherent, high-pitched nonsense. Its body spasmed. Muscles seized. It crashed against a crumbling pillar. Dead weight.
Corbin lunged. The remaining zealots were momentarily stunned. He was a phantom, weaving through their formation. His dagger flashed. He aimed for a throat, a quick, clean strike. The blade sliced through coarse fabric, then flesh. The zealot fell, gurgling, blood blooming black on the grey stone.
Another lunged, a rusty cleaver sweeping in an arc. Corbin parried with his dagger. The impact rattled his arm. The cleaver hummed with a faint, corrupted aura. He saw a flash: his arm broken, bone protruding. He shifted. Not a clear vision, but a chaotic predictive sense. Enough.
He twisted. The cleaver grazed his shoulder. Not a deep cut, but it burned, a necrotic heat. He kicked out. The zealot stumbled back. Corbin channeled again. The whispers, the fragments of madness. He didn't just project them. He directed them into the zealot's mind. A focused psychic spike.
The zealot screamed aloud this time. A truly awful sound. Its eyes rolled back. Foam frothed at its lips. It clawed at its own face, tearing flesh. It fell, twitching, a human husk filled with alien terror. The air grew thick with the residue of its shattered sanity.
Two more remained. They were more wary. They knew his trick. They advanced cautiously, their blades held high. They began to chant. Low, guttural tones. Invoking something. The very stone around them seemed to shiver.
Corbin felt the air growing heavy. The pressure. He needed to finish this. He focused. This time, a wider burst. The whispers meant for the seer, the mind-shattering chaos, erupted from him. Not a sound heard, but *felt*. In their skulls. Their very beings.
The zealots dropped their weapons. Clutched their heads. Their mouths opened. No sound. Just silent, desperate screams that twisted their faces. Their eyes rolled back. They thrashed, convulsed. Then, one by one, they fell. Lifeless puppets, their strings cut.
He was left standing amidst the ruin, the stench of blight and fear thick in the air. His head still throbbed. The necrotic burn on his shoulder pulsed. His senses were heightened, strained. Every shadow seemed to hold a threat, every silence a promise of horror.
---
He pressed deeper into the temple. The walls here were not crumbled. They were smooth, obsidian-like, etched with glowing symbols that pulsed with a faint, malevolent light. This was the heart of the place. An inner sanctum. The purpose of the seer's ritual.
A vast chamber opened before him. In its center, on a crudely carved pedestal of black rock, sat a crystal. Not glowing, but humming with latent power. The air around it felt dense, heavy with anticipation. It was rough-cut, dark as night, yet somehow drawing all light into itself. This was it. The Seed of Aethelgard.
He felt the pull of it. It radiated a faint, almost imperceptible version of the blight's decay, but contained. Controlled. A weapon. A key. He knew its stories. The true genesis of the Blight itself. The heart of the fractured empire.
He stepped forward. The hum of the crystal intensified. It was a song of ruin, subtly influencing his thoughts. His fingers grazed the cool, slick surface. A jolt. Not pain, but a surge of foreign insight. The crystal's purpose, its connection to the blight, filled his mind. A momentary download of terrifying truth. A complete history of the world's unraveling.
"That is not for you." The voice. Deep, resonant. It vibrated in his teeth. Not human. More like grinding stone, old and raw.
Corbin snatched his hand back. Spun. A figure stood at the chamber's entrance. Taller than the zealots. Broader. Clad in black iron plates, rusted at the seams. Patches of sickly green moss clung to the metal. No human face. A featureless helmet, smooth and dark. Two pinpricks of crimson light glowed within. Like embers in a forge.
Malazar. A warlord of the blight. A puppet king in the skeletal empire. His presence alone was a weight upon the air.
Malazar extended a gauntleted hand. No, not gauntleted. The hand itself was calcified, bone-white, ending in needle-sharp claws. Tendrils of sickly grey mist snaked from his fingers. They writhed, hungry. Seeking purchase. They were raw decay. Accelerated entropy.
"We felt your pilfering," Malazar rumbled. His voice carried the weight of ages, of slow, creeping ruin. "The whispers you divert. The prices you deny."
Corbin moved. A blur. The obsidian dagger flashed. He aimed for the joint in Malazar's armor. A vulnerable spot. An exposed gap between breastplate and armguard.
Malazar didn't flinch. The grey tendrils lashed out. Faster than Corbin could react. They coiled around Corbin's arm. Not mist. They were raw decay. Corrosion given form. They accelerated entropy.
Pain. White-hot, sickening. His skin aged, withered, flaked away in seconds. The very fabric of his sleeve disintegrated. He ripped his arm free, screaming. The flesh beneath was raw, red, like old burns. Healing already, but agonizing. His unique physiology was fighting it, but the attack had been potent.
"A taste," Malazar said. His crimson eyes seemed to glow brighter. "Of what the world endures. You only redirect. You do not truly cleanse."
Corbin gasped. He backed away. The Seed hummed louder. It was almost mocking now. He couldn't use the blind/babbling trick. Malazar was immune. Or beyond it. His mind was already too warped, too steeped in the blight's madness.
Corbin needed something more. Something with raw power. He reached for a small vial at his belt. Alchemical acid. It hissed, fuming, a corrosive green liquid. He threw it. A desperate gamble.
Malazar merely raised a hand. The grey tendrils caught the vial mid-air. It shattered. The acid instantly vaporized. Dissolved into nothingness. The tendrils reformed, hungrier.
"Pitiful," Malazar sneered. He took a step. Then another. The floor darkened where his heavy, iron-clad boots touched. Decay spread like ink, consuming the ancient stone. The air grew thicker, heavier. The pressure in the chamber intensified. Corbin was cornered. His eyes darted. The Seed. Malazar. The exit. No escape.
He made a choice. A desperate one. There was another forbidden art. One he had only briefly sampled. A ritual of 'Soul-binding'. It promised absolute loyalty from a follower, but left the practitioner a hollow shell, their will utterly broken. He had diverted that consequence before, turning its draining power into an outward burst of coercive force. But never against someone like *this*.
He closed his eyes for a split second. Summoned the memory of that ritual's dark resonance. He prepared to unleash it. To redirect the essence of ultimate subjugation. To break Malazar's will, or at least his concentration. His body became a conduit. Power surged. A raw, dark energy. It coalesced. He felt the familiar pull, the diversion. The shift.
Then Malazar moved. Faster than thought. A black blur. His bony, calcified claw wrapped around Corbin's outstretched arm. His grip was like a vise of ancient stone, crushing, absolute.
"Not this time, Seeder." Malazar's voice was a triumphant growl. "You will know."
The redirection shattered. The power, meant for outward projection, recoiled. It crashed *into* Corbin. All of it. The soul-shattering emptiness. The ultimate loss of will. The price. Unfiltered. Untamed.
His vision exploded into searing white. His mind fractured. He felt his very essence draining, not into a weapon, but into a gaping, internal maw. He screamed. A silent scream, swallowed by the sudden, profound void within his own being.
He fell. The Seed of Aethelgard still hummed on its pedestal, indifferent. Malazar stood over him, a dark, victorious silhouette. Corbin felt nothing. Saw nothing. Just the endless, suffocating pull of non-existence. His will, his self, dissolving.