Maw of the Gloam

Morning in the Wastes was a mockery.

There was no true sunrise — only a sickly glow pushing weakly through the endless mist.

Finn packed quickly, his movements practiced and silent.

I extinguished the Warden orb and slipped it back into my satchel.

The whispering voices immediately surged against the walls of my mind, but I forced them down.

We had no time for weakness.

We moved out.

The mist was thicker today, clinging to our skin, filling our lungs with a sour, metallic taste.

Every step was a gamble.

The ground shifted underfoot, riddled with sinkholes hidden beneath deceptively solid crusts.

The silence was worse than the noise.

It pressed against my ears, stretching each moment thin, until even the creak of my boots sounded like thunder.

Finn led the way, weaving a cautious path between collapsed towers and skeletal trees.

Suddenly, he froze.

I stopped beside him, hand on my relic-sword.

"What is it?" I whispered.

He pointed.

Ahead, something moved.

Slowly.

Wrongly.

Through the mist, I caught glimpses — a slithering mass, larger than any beast I'd ever seen.

Dozens of pale tendrils dragged its bloated body across the shattered ground.

It left a trail of black sludge in its wake, and wherever it passed, the world seemed to wither and die.

Finn paled.

"Bloodeater," he murmured. "Haven't seen one that big before."

The thing lifted its head — a bulbous mass of scarred flesh, eyeless, with a maw that split its body nearly in half.

Teeth like broken glass jutted from the wound.

It sniffed the air, tendrils twitching.

Searching.

I gritted my teeth.

"Options?"

Finn shook his head quickly.

"We can't fight that. Not with what we have. Best we stay quiet... and pray."

Prayers had never saved me before.

But I crouched low beside him, heart hammering, as the monstrosity slithered closer.

The ground trembled beneath its weight.

Bits of rubble floated briefly in the air before falling again — some kind of gravity distortion field.

Its mouth opened wider, and a deep, wet clicking noise echoed from within.

Finn tensed.

"Don't move," he breathed.

The Bloodeater passed within a few paces of us.

I could smell it — a choking stench of rotting meat and burning metal.

My muscles screamed to run.

But I stayed still.

And somehow, by some miracle, the creature moved on.

We didn't move until it vanished into the mist, its trail of decay slowly fading behind it.

Only then did Finn exhale.

"Saints and sinners..." he muttered. "That was too close."

We rose carefully and continued, but the encounter had rattled us.

Both of us checked every shadow, every whisper, twice over.

The Wastes grew stranger the deeper we went.

We passed forests of crystalline trees, their branches chiming softly in the poisoned wind.

Pools of shimmering liquid that reflected faces not our own.

Once, we stumbled across a wrecked caravan — a dozen wagons twisted and melted together, as if fused by some eldritch fire.

The bodies were gone.

Only the blood remained, staining the ground in unnatural patterns.

Finn examined one of the wagons.

"Scavengers," he said. "Or worse."

I did not ask what worse meant.

We pressed on.

Hours later, when even my endurance began to fray, we reached the place the Mapstone had marked.

A basin.

Sunken, dead.

At its center stood the Pillar.

Or what remained of it.

It was broken — cracked nearly in half, barely emitting any light at all.

Black tendrils of corruption clung to its base, seeping into the ground like oil.

Finn cursed under his breath.

"Too late?"

I shook my head.

"No."

Not yet.

The Pillar still lived.

But it was dying — poisoned from the inside.

I approached carefully.

The corruption recoiled slightly as the relic-sword neared it, but it did not break.

I would need more than steel to purge this infection.

Finn kept watch, crossbow ready.

"I'll cover you," he said grimly. "Do what you have to."

I knelt before the Pillar.

Placed both hands on its scarred surface.

And reached.

Magic surged up my arms, burning like acid and ice.

Visions slammed into me — flashes of the City's fall, of battles lost and won, of the ancient Warden orders crumbling to dust.

I saw the source of the corruption.

A seed.

Planted deep within the Pillar's heart.

And guarding it — a creature of nightmare.

Something far worse than a Bloodeater.

A Warden-Twisted.

One of my own... consumed and remade by the Herald's dark arts.

My breath caught.

The seed pulsed, sensing me.

And suddenly, the ground cracked beneath us.

The mist thickened into a wall.

And from the mist came laughter — broken, hollow laughter.

Finn backed toward me.

"Uh, Caelan?"

I rose slowly, relic-sword in hand.

The mist coalesced into a shape — tall, armored, with a face hidden behind a shattered Warden helm.

Its voice was like knives dragged over bone.

"You are late, brother."

It raised a rusted blade wreathed in black fire.

"And now... you will join us."