Vessel of the Fractured Void

Weeks later, Surazal reaches a sunk marsh beneath Rhineford's far shadow. Black reeds lean over violet water, and the air stinks of rot, ash, and old cleansing fires.

He wades in without hesitation, breathing the necrotic fog as if it were wine. Each harsh inhale steadies the curse in his body, hardening flesh that once failed him.

Around his boots, dead lilies split open in slow pulses. Their spines and spores glow dimly under the fog, the kind of forbidden growth the Holy Order leaves behind when it tries to erase a place.

Surazal cuts through the marsh with his staff, parting hanging vines and nudging aside a corpse-cold bulb. His grimoire stays dry beneath his cloak while he studies the nearest patch for the strongest bite of death.

A deeper tremor runs through the mire, and a cluster of thorned violet caps quivers ahead, as if something beneath the mud has just awakened to his scent.

Surazal slows at the tremor and parts the reeds with his staff. Beneath the fog, the violet caps are not just clustered, they are rooted around a darker seam in the mud.

He crouches lower, letting the marsh stink bite at his lungs. His fingers brush aside ash-black silt, and the nearest bulb leaks a thin violet smear onto his glove.

The smear crawls toward the seam in his chest before fading. A dry crack of pain answers, but the stabilized lattice holds.

Surazal pries free a thorned cap. It comes loose with a wet, sucking pull, roots blackened as if the mud itself has been feeding it.

More of them stir in a ring ahead, marking a richer vein of necrotic growth. The marsh yields the source, but the fog thickens in warning and stains the air with a harsher rot.

A faint hiss rises from the water around his boots, and the exposed mud begins to sink where he kneels, tugging at his footing.