The world tore apart. The abyssal blackness that erupted from Korvan’s shoulder was not a mere spill of ink; it was the raw, devouring void itself, consuming the searing red fog like a starved maw. The stone walls, once slick with a sanguine sheen, dissolved into a canvas of total night. Sound warred with itself – the high-pitched shriek of the breached rift, the wet, desperate gasps of Nestra, Pellam’s choked sobs – all muffled, then swallowed by the omnipresent, hungry thrum of the newly unleashed power. His body became a nexus, a conduit for something far beyond mortal comprehension. Each nerve ending screamed, not with pain, but with the terrifying ecstasy of assimilation. His bones groaned, reshaped, his flesh stretched and hardened into a shell of solidified night. The shadow-blade, once an external weapon, now flowed through his veins, a liquid abyss, making his very being a living, breathing void. The whispers from the Dirge-Weaver's Loom, usually a cold presence, now roared, a chorus of delighted, bloodthirsty encouragement. [The Grave-Walker’s Dirge accepts your offering. Humanity sacrificed. Dominance achieved. Reap.] Nestra’s hand, still clutching Jorvel, felt like a distant warmth against the encroaching cold. He could perceive her fading vital signs, the erratic beat of Jorvel’s heart, through the all-encompassing darkness. They were anchors in a sea of nothingness, the last vestiges of the world he had once known, the reason he had plunged into this profound transformation. He had to be quick. The fog was still attempting to seep through, a sickly, scarlet vein trying to find purchase in the consuming dark. It was a futile effort. Through the swirling obsidian, Korvan saw him. The Grandmaster, cloaked in robes the color of dried blood, descended into the subterranean vault, a sneer plastered across his face, entirely oblivious to the change. He carried a staff carved from bleached bone, its tip glowing with a malevolent, pulsating Dirge sigil. “Foolish whelp,” the Grandmaster’s voice echoed, distorted and tinny, against the roaring void. “You thought to defy the coming of the Scarlet Tide? To halt a ritual set in motion before your pathetic parents met their end? The Miasma will consume you, and your friends will be the first sacrifice, a grand, glorious end to the Morven Lodge.” The high magus waved his staff, and from the deeper recesses of the vault, a dozen elite specters materialized. Their forms were skeletal, wreathed in tendrils of crimson vapor, their claws long and sharp enough to flay flesh from bone in a single swipe. They moved with unnatural grace, their hollow eye sockets fixed on Nestra and Jorvel, leaking frost and raw predatory hunger. “The Red Fog has already touched you,” the robed lord continued, oblivious, his voice dripping with triumphant malice. “Your eyes, your mind, your very will bends to its influence. Soon, you will be nothing but another husk to fuel my triumph.” Korvan said nothing. The voice he now possessed would be a symphony of grinding stone and hungry abyss, not words. Instead, he moved. He appeared before the nearest stalker not as a figure, but as an absence, a momentary tear in the fabric of the dark. The horror, its attack already initiated, found its bony arm gone. Not severed, not broken, but utterly erased, leaving no trace, not even a wisp of blight. A guttural shriek tore from its throat, abruptly cut short as Korvan’s form rippled, and the rest of the creature dissolved into nothingness, its essence absorbed into the hungry dark. The other phantoms faltered, their programmed aggression momentarily overridden by a primal, instinctive terror. This was not a Hunter, not even a Dirge-empowered warrior. This was a force of nature, a predator of the void. “What… what in the Blighted Abyss is this?” the arch-heretic stammered, his sneer evaporating into an expression of genuine alarm. “How are you… unaffected?” Korvan did not grant him the dignity of an answer. He ghosted through the remaining horrors, each movement a blur of impossible speed and finality. A clawed arm raised to strike was gone. A ribcage, exposed by the dissipating fog, collapsed inward as if crushed by an invisible hand. The whispers in his mind sang with delight as each specter ceased to be, their forms absorbed into the limitless hunger that now defined him. Within five heartbeats, the elite guard, creatures designed to rip through entire brigades, were nothing but memory, leaving behind not even a splash of ichor. The robed elder stumbled back, his face paling to the color of ash. “Impossible! The Red Fog consumes all! My creations are imbued with its essence!” [Efficiency rewarded. Core Miasma absorbed. Grave-Walker’s dominion expands.] Amidst the chaos, Pellam Ystmar, still weeping and crawling, had managed to drag himself closer to Jorvel and Nestra. He saw the elder's monstrous elite guards, saw them disappear into the utter dark with no struggle. He saw the terror on the elder's face. Something in the sheer, undeniable power that had erupted from Korvan, something in the way the abyss suffocated reality, pierced through Pellam’s ingrained cowardice. Another ghast, smaller, but still lethal, slipped through a newly opened crack in the rift, its skeletal head turning toward Jorvel’s prone form. Its claws, tipped with an acidic residue, extended. Pellam’s eyes, wide with fear just moments before, now held a flickering spark of something else – a desperate, fragile resolve. He fumbled at his belt, pulling free a small, intricately carved silver locket, his ‘lucky charm,’ a family heirloom he had always hoarded, bought with the last of his allowance, capable of deflecting one lethal blow. It was his last truly valuable, personal possession, something he had clung to through every minor scrape. “Get back, you blight-born abomination!” Pellam shrieked, a raw, uncharacteristic defiance in his voice. He threw himself over Jorvel’s chest, the locket clutched in his hand, a flimsy, gleaming shield against the fog's horrors. The ghast's acidic claw slammed into the locket, melting it into slag with a hiss, but deflecting the strike just enough. The impact sent Pellam sprawling, a yelp of pain escaping him, but Jorvel remained untouched. Korvan felt a faint tremor in the endless void of his being, a ripple of… something. He pushed it away. Sentiment was a weakness. There was only the hunger now. The ritualist watched his plan unravel. The devoured legion, the unaffected Korvan, Pellam’s unexpected, idiotic courage. Rage contorted his features. “You will not defy me, Grave-Walker!” he bellowed, pulling a small, crystal vial from his robes. It pulsed with a viscous, crimson liquid, radiating pure, concentrated Miasma. “I will bring the Scarlet Tide myself!” With a maniacal laugh, he plunged the vial into his own neck. His flesh began to boil, his bones to crack and reform, his robes tearing away to reveal a grotesque, towering form. Horns sprouted from his skull, his spine erupted into jagged bone spurs, and his eyes glowed with raw, uncontrolled crimson energy. He was no longer an archivist; he was a monstrous, six-limbed fiend, radiating pure, concentrated decay. The mutated titan let out a deafening roar that vibrated through the chamber, even the void shuddering slightly. With impossible speed, a bone-blade erupting from his mutated arm, he lunged across the floor, a crimson blur against the pitch-black air, and plunged the weapon straight through Korvan’s chest.

The Night of the Red Fog