( Readers this is the most important chapter .
This chapter is grassroot of km arc the most dangerous arc)
The canyon deepened, the rock walls rising like jagged teeth on either side of the narrow path. The Slate's pull was relentless, dragging them deeper into a ravine where the sun barely touched the ground.
By midday, they spotted a flicker of orange against the grey stone. A campfire.
Hunched beside it was a figure wrapped in tattered grey robes, stirring a bubbling pot. He looked harmless—a scavenger, perhaps, or a lost traveler. As Mith and Jis approached, weapons sheathed but hands ready, the man looked up. His face was gaunt, smeared with ash, but his eyes were bright and eager.
"Travelers!" the man rasped, gesturing with a wooden spoon. "Come, come. The road is unkind to empty bellies. I have stew. Rabbit and root. Plenty to share."
The smell wafted toward them—savory, rich, and overwhelming. Jis's stomach gave a traitorous rumble. They hadn't eaten a real meal since the siege.
"We have no coin," Jis said cautiously, stepping closer.
"No coin needed," the man beamed, his teeth yellow and jagged. "The King provides. We are all brothers in the shadow of the new dawn. Sit. Eat."
He ladled a thick, steaming portion into a wooden bowl and held it out to Mith.
Mith reached for it. He was starving. But as his hand hovered over the bowl, the heat rising from the stew hit his palm.
It wasn't right.
Mith was a fire mage; he knew heat like a musician knew notes. The heat from the stew wasn't thermal—it was necrotic. It was a cold burn, a chemical mimicry of warmth. The Slate in his pocket gave a violent, warning jolt.
Mith's eyes narrowed. He looked past the illusion of the savory steam and saw the truth: the meat in the bowl wasn't rabbit. It was black, pulsating sludge, alive with writhing parasites.
"Don't touch it!" Mith slapped the bowl from the man's hand. It shattered against the rocks, the black sludge hissing as it ate into the stone.
"It's cursed," Mith snarled, his hands lighting up with flame. "You're one of them. A Follower."
The man's friendly demeanor vanished instantly. His face contorted into a mask of zealous fury. "You reject the King's communion? Then you shall be the meal!"
He didn't pull a weapon. He lunged with his bare hands, his fingernails lengthening into jagged claws.
"Subdue him!" Jis shouted.
Jis stepped in, sidestepping the man's clumsy swipe. He slammed the pommel of his sword into the cultist's solar plexus. The man doubled over, gagging, but he didn't stop. He threw himself at Mith, snapping his teeth.
Mith didn't use fire; he used force. He blasted the man with a wave of compressed air, sending him tumbling backward into the canyon wall. Before the cultist could rise, Jis was there, pinning him to the rock with a forearm against his throat, sword tip hovering inches from his eye.
"Who is the King?" Jis demanded, his voice echoing off the canyon walls. "Where is Tuk?"
The cultist, bloody and pinned, just grinned. Blood leaked from his mouth, black and viscous. "He is shedding his skin," the man gurgled. "We all are. We are the chrysalis."
"What are you talking about?" Mith demanded, stepping forward.
"You can't stop the change," the cultist whispered. "The bridge was just the beginning."
Suddenly, the man's body went boneless.
Jis gasped as the cultist seemed to collapse in on himself, sliding out from under Jis's pin like a sack of wet laundry. But he didn't fall to the ground.
He twisted.
His limbs snapped backward with sickening crunches, joints reversing. He dropped to all fours, his spine arching unnaturally. In a split second, the human scavenger was gone, replaced by a creature that moved with the jerky, insectoid rhythm of the Skitter-Stalkers.
"Catch him!" Mith yelled.
But the creature was unnaturally fast. It didn't run along the path. It scuttled straight up the vertical canyon wall, claws digging into the sheer rock, defying gravity.
Mith fired a bolt of flame, but the creature zigzagged wildly, disappearing into a fissure high above the trail.
"He... he didn't use magic," Jis said, his voice hollow, staring up at the dark crack in the rock. "He climbed like a spider. Mith, his arms... they turned into legs."
Mith stood frozen, the horror of the realization settling in. Aldrein hadn't just been cursed. The Stalkers they had been fighting for months... they weren't summoned monsters.
"They're people," Mith whispered, looking at the black sludge eating the stone at his feet. "The army... the horde... they were people."
They stood in the darkening canyon, the silence returning, heavy and suffocating. The Slate pulsed slowly in Mith's pocket, pointing forward into the heart of the curse. The rescue mission had just become something far more terrifying.