Chapter 1: The Forbidden Zone
The wind cut like knives as Elias Vale trudged through the dead forest bordering the ruins of Lornem Hollow—a cursed place the locals refused to speak of.
Trees rose like skeletons under a darkening sky, twisted branches reaching upward like the hands of the damned. No birds chirped. No insects buzzed. Even the sun, overhead only minutes ago, now hid behind a bank of thick gray clouds. The silence was not peaceful; it was suffocating.
Elias adjusted the worn strap of his satchel, brushing a strand of dark hair from his brow. His fingers were numb, not from cold, but from nerves. He'd heard the stories: spirits whispering from shadows, bones found fused with stone, sorcerers disappearing without a trace. But stories were just that.
Weren't they?
Still, he muttered a warding prayer under his breath as the black spires of the ruin came into view—broken arches and shattered towers coated in a thin crust of black moss. Everything smelled of ash and iron.
"Great," he muttered. "I get the one place even crows won't shit on."
He was here on orders from the Guild of Restoration, one of the many offshoot factions that handled ruins, relics, and other magical oddities in the kingdom of Drevain. Being a third-circle healer didn't earn him much rank or respect—just enough for grunt work. Like this. Officially, the assignment was to "survey and cleanse minor residual energies."
Unofficially? It meant he was expendable.
He reached the edge of the site, stepping past a rusted wardstone cracked down the middle. That should have kept the ruin sealed. It wasn't.
"Either this place isn't minor," he muttered, "or someone's really bad at their job."
Drawing a breath, he activated his mage-light—a hovering orb of soft blue glow that flickered slightly under the oppressive magic saturating the ruin. The moment he stepped past the outermost column, the air changed.