Archmage Reborn: the path of shadows

Elmsfall stank of death that morning.

Not the quiet kind that passed in sleep, wrapped in blankets and prayers—but the violent kind. The kind that painted walls red and left whispers tangled in the wheat.

Kael heard the screaming before he saw the body.

He was walking the edge of the eastern fields, a basket of dead roots balanced in his arms—just a cover. He'd planned another trip to his Shadow Root, to study the growing glyphs beneath the willow. But the sound cut through the dawn: a woman's scream, sharp and full of something that never quite left the throat.

By the time he reached the cluster of huts near the well, a crowd had already gathered. Peasants clutched each other. Mothers pulled children behind skirts. Their voices were low, broken, afraid.

Everyone was staring at old Harlan's door.

Goran stood at the threshold, one hand on the frame, the other waving wildly like he could push the crowd back by sheer force.

"Back! I said BACK!" he barked. "No one steps in! Not even the priest yet!"

But the villagers edged closer, their fear outweighing their obedience.

Kael moved through them quietly.

No one noticed him slip past. They rarely did when he didn't want to be seen. He didn't ask Goran's permission. He wasn't there to mourn.

He needed answers.

And the moment he stepped through the door, he knew.

Something ancient had been here.

The hut felt wrong.

Too cold. Too still.

The air was heavy, like it had been sucked out of the room and never returned. Sunlight leaked through the crooked rafters, but even the light bent strangely, like it didn't want to touch the place.

And the smell.

Not just rot—something beneath it. Iron. Damp earth. Burnt air.

Kael's eyes adjusted.

Harlan was slumped against the far wall.

Or what was left of him.

His skin had cracked like dry clay. His lips were frozen in a silent scream. His eyes stared wide and empty at nothing. But there were no wounds. No blood. Not a single bruise on his entire body.

Kael knelt beside him.

"Drained," he said under his breath.

Not of blood.

Of essence.

Kael reached toward the man's chest, not to touch but to feel. The soul core, weak as it had likely been, was gone. Hollowed out. Emptied, as if someone—or something—had carved it from within.

And whatever had done it hadn't left a trace.

No runes. No cast marks. No residue on the walls or floor. Kael pressed his fingers to the ground.

The wood was cold.

Then he felt it.

A pulse. Soft. Deep. Like a heartbeat underground.

His eyes narrowed.

"It's spreading."

The corruption from the obelisk. It was leaking outward, into the leyline fractures below the village. It had likely seeped into Harlan's home through the ground, maybe even through his well.

And now, it had fed.

Which means it's no longer sleeping.

Goran's boots thumped against the wooden floor as he stepped inside. He stopped behind Kael, breathing heavily.

"Out," he barked. "Priest'll be here any moment. This ain't your business."

Kael stood slowly.

"You'll need more than a priest to stop what's coming."

Goran's eyes darkened. "You keep talkin' like that, boy, and the village will start whisperin' about you."

Kael didn't blink.

"And they should start whispering about you, Goran. You're the one guarding a village already halfway dead."

He brushed past the man without waiting for a reply.

An hour later, the priest arrived.

Father Dalan, in his faded black robes trimmed with threadbare gold. He carried a censer full of sweet smoke, the scent meant to ward off spirits—though Kael doubted it would do anything here.

Dalan's face was carefully composed. Not grief. Not shock. Just routine.

He stepped into the hut, murmuring rites in the Old Tongue, drawing wards with a bone-handled dagger. The crowd watched with wide eyes, hoping ritual would fix what fear could not.

Kael watched from beneath the willow tree, arms crossed.

Dalan wasn't surprised.

Not truly. Not like the others.

He went through the motions, but his eyes scanned the room too precisely. His fingers lingered too long over certain symbols. When he turned, he met Kael's gaze across the clearing.

And Kael understood.

He's seen this before.

That night, Kael returned to the Shadow Root.

The dirt beneath the willow still pulsed faintly, warm with stolen essence. He knelt in the center of the blood-ringed circle and pressed his hand to the soil.

His soulcore thrummed with quiet heat. His breath steadied.

"The Warden wasn't alone," he whispered. "Something else is down there. Feeding. Waiting."

A glyph bloomed under his palm—barely visible. Black ink on black soil.

It pulsed once.

Then a new voice rose.

Colder. Older. Not like the one from the obelisk. This one felt rooted.

"You are marked."

Kael didn't move.

"So is the land," he said.

"Then you are doomed."

He smiled, thin and bitter.

"I've been doomed before."

Above him, the wind screamed through the willow leaves.

And far below Elmsfall, in the buried dark, something cracked.

Just a little.

But enough.