The jagged steps of Mount Solitude were slick with an unnatural, crimson moss that bled under the heavy iron boots of Kaelen the Disgraced. The wind howled through the crags, a mournful sound that mimicked the screams of dying men, tearing at his tattered grey cloak. Kaelen did not pause. He could not afford the luxury of rest. Strapped to his back was the Runeblade of Aethelgard, its ancient metal humming with a faint, cold light—the only holy thing left in this forsaken kingdom.
He climbed higher into the creeping fog, his lungs burning with the sulfurous air. Three weeks had passed since the Rotting Curse had taken root in his younger sister, Elara. It had started as a blackening of her fingertips, spreading rapidly up her arms like a creeping frost, turning her veins into rivers of necrotic sludge. The court physicians had recoiled, offering only prayers to a pantheon of silent gods. But Kaelen knew of one last hope: the Tears of the Seraph, a divine relic housed at the peak of Mount Solitude in the Abbey of the White Dawn.
As he breached the cloud line, the silhouette of the abbey loomed against a bruised, purple sky. But something was horribly wrong. The grand spires, once heralded as beacons of pure marble, were encased in a thick, pulsating biomatter. Veins thick as ancient tree roots spiraled up the architecture, throbbing with a sickening rhythm. The air here was heavy, smelling of ozone, dried blood, and sweet, rotting fruit.
Kaelen drew his blade. The metal sang softly, a low vibration that traveled up his arms, steeling his frayed nerves. He approached the shattered oak doors of the sanctuary. They had been blown outward, not from an external siege, but from something erupting from within.
“Who walks the path of the forsaken?” a voice rattled from the shadows of the archway. It was a wet, gurgling sound.
Kaelen raised his sword, the runes flaring to life, casting a stark blue illumination. Hanging upside down from the archway was what used to be a monk. Its holy robes were fused to its flesh. The man’s limbs had elongated, joints snapping and reforming to allow him to scurry along the stone like a grotesque spider. His eyes were gone, replaced by jagged, gaping mouths that whispered overlapping prayers to a god Kaelen did not know.
“I seek the Tears of the Seraph,” Kaelen commanded, masking his revulsion with a lifetime of martial discipline. “Step aside, creature.”
The monk-thing unhinged its primary jaw, a sickening pop echoing in the courtyard. “The Seraph is dead. We sing a new song now. The Choir hungers for iron and bone.”
With terrifying speed, the creature lunged. Kaelen pivoted, bringing the heavy broadsword around in a brutal arc. The blade struck the creature’s midsection, burning through the mutated flesh. The monk shrieked—a sound of overlapping harmonies that pierced Kaelen’s mind like shards of glass. He pushed through the pain, driving his armored boot into the beast’s chest and ripping the sword free in a spray of black ichor.
The creature writhed on the stones, its multiple mouths gasping, before dissolving into a pool of bubbling ash. Kaelen stood panting, staring into the gaping maw of the abbey. The holy sanctuary had become a tomb. Tightening his grip on his hilt, he stepped over the threshold, plunging into the abyssal dark to save the only family he had left.
