The morning came with silence.
Not the peaceful kind. Not the quiet of a village just waking, of birds stirring in the trees, of farmers preparing for another day of work.
No.
This was the wrong kind of silence.
The kind that felt unnatural. The kind that made the hairs on the back of the neck rise.
Aric noticed it the moment he stepped out of the manor. The air felt thick. Damp, almost. As if a storm had passed, yet the sky was clear, the wind completely still.
A shiver crept down his spine.
Then came the screams.
Aric moved fast, boots hitting the dirt as he followed the sounds of panic. The village square was already crowded with people.
Farmers. Shepherds. Their voices clashed in fearful cries.
Lira was already there, dagger drawn, scanning the crowd. Kael stood a little to the side, arms crossed, watching everything with a grim expression.
Aric pushed through the gathered villagers. "What happened?"
A man turned to him, face pale as death.
"It's the livestock," he rasped. "They're all dead."
The words hit like a punch to the gut.
"All?" Aric demanded.
The farmer, still shaking, only nodded.
Something soured in his stomach.
Without another word, he pushed past them, heading toward the fields.
The stench hit him before the sight did.
A thick, rotting smell, the kind that clung to the inside of the throat.
And then he saw them.
Hundreds of animals. Dead.
Not just sheep—cows, chickens, even the hounds that guarded the herds.
All lifeless.
Some had decayed overnight, their bodies bloated, skin peeling as if they had been rotting for weeks. Others lay perfectly still, untouched by rot… but cold as stone.
Aric crouched beside one of them. A sheep, body stiff.
No wounds. No signs of attack. Just… lifeless.
Lira knelt beside another, running a hand across its side. "This isn't sickness," she muttered. "It's something else."
Kael kicked at a carcass, his expression dark. "It's the Rift."
Aric's hands clenched. He already knew that.
They found the first signs of the corruption near the edge of the farmland.
Dark veins spread through the soil, twisting like spiderwebs of ink beneath the earth.
At first, it looked like burnt roots. But when Aric knelt to touch one—it pulsed.
Lira recoiled. "Did you see that?"
Kael cursed. "Oh, that's not good."
The corruption was spreading.
And it wasn't just in the ground.
The first farmer to scream was an old woman, her hands stained with soil.
She had been digging through the fields, pulling up dead crops, when she saw it.
The black fungus.
It crept along the stalks of wheat like a living thing, thick and tar-like. Where it touched the plants, they withered instantly. Rotten. Twisted.
One by one, the farmers realized their crops were gone.
Every field. Every harvest.
Dead.
The air filled with cries of disbelief.
"We'll starve!" someone wailed.
"This isn't natural!"
"It's a curse!"
The crowd grew frantic.
Aric stepped forward, raising his voice. "Enough!"
The panic halted—barely.
He turned to the black fungus, frowning. "How fast is it spreading?"
One of the older men, a farmer who had worked these fields for years, swallowed hard. "It wasn't here yesterday."
The implication chilled him.
It had spread overnight. Fast.
And if it continued at this rate, Eldermere wouldn't last the month.
Lira stood by the largest patch of corruption, arms crossed. "We need to burn it."
Several farmers gasped in protest.
"If we burn the land, we lose everything!"
Lira's gaze was unforgiving. "It's already lost."
Kael ran a hand through his hair. "She's right. If we don't stop it now, it'll take the whole village."
Aric's jaw tightened.
Destroying the land meant destroying their food supply.
But if they didn't… this thing would spread.
He exhaled sharply. "Do it."
Lira nodded. "I'll get the torches."
As the farmers reluctantly moved to prepare the burning, Aric turned his gaze back toward the Rift.
The air around it shimmered.
The storm above it pulsed.
As if… it was feeding.
And something deep inside Aric whispered—
It's waking up.
The flames spread quickly.
Dry stalks of wheat caught fire in seconds, sending thick plumes of smoke into the sky. The villagers watched in horror as their fields—their lifeline—were reduced to blackened ash.
Aric stood at the edge of the burning land, the heat licking at his skin. The flickering flames reflected in his eyes, but his mind was elsewhere.
Because the Rift was watching.
He could feel it.
The first pulse came like a shockwave.
Not through the air.
Not through sound.
But through the ground itself.
A deep, throbbing vibration that rattled bones, not ears.
Lira cursed, stumbling back. "What the hell was that?"
Kael's hand went to his dagger. "Did you feel that?"
Aric didn't answer.
Because it was still there.
A slow, pulsing heartbeat.
Not from the sky.
Not from the land.
From the Rift.
And with every pulse, the storm above it swirled faster.
A heavy silence fell over the fields.
The villagers froze in place.
Even the flames, which moments ago had burned wildly, seemed to hesitate—flickering unnaturally, as if they too felt the Rift's presence.
Then—
A howl tore through the air.
Not an animal.
Not a human.
Something else.
The villagers shrank back.
Aric turned sharply toward the Rift, every instinct screaming at him.
He knew that sound.
It was the same howl he had heard on the night he first woke in this world.
The same howl from his death.
A sharp ache pulsed behind his eyes.
He staggered.
The ground lurched beneath him.
Kael grabbed his arm. "Aric!"
But Aric wasn't listening.
His vision blurred.
The world tilted.
And then—
A voice whispered.
Not in his ears.
In his mind.
"Come back to me."
His breath hitched.
Because it wasn't just a voice.
It was his own.
Not the man he was now.
But the man he had been.
Aelthar.
His pulse pounded.
The Rift was calling him.
Not gently. Not like before.
This was a demand.
The land twisted beneath his feet.
The Rift's hunger was growing.
And now—
It wanted him.