The decision, once made, was an avalanche. The stagnant energy of the spire shattered, replaced by a grim, purposeful momentum. Arden moved through the familiar space with a new intent, no longer a restless guardian but a soldier preparing for a deployment into hostile territory.
He ignored the meager stores of food he kept. The memory of the dream-siphon was too fresh; he would not break his fast with sustenance that felt like it could be tainted by the same apathy he was going to fight. He drank deeply from the cold, clear water of the spire's cistern, the only thing he trusted completely.
Kaelen watched him, a silent, solid presence. The Captain had shed his initial shock, his training reasserting itself. He was now an asset, a resource. "The path down is treacherous. I have a second horse tethered at the base of the peak. It's no war-steed, but it's sturdy."
Arden gave a curt nod. A horse. The mundane logistics of travel felt alien, a reminder of the mortal world he was re-entering. He had not ridden a horse in over a decade. His travel had been the flight of desperation, the stride of a being half-made of light and void. This would be slower. Messier.
He paused by the pedestal one last time, his gaze sweeping over the two void-carvings. He considered destroying them, unleashing a fraction of Dawnbringer's power to reduce them to splinters and smoke. But he stopped himself. That was the old thinking. The hammer. These were not weapons to be shattered; they were evidence. They were the enemy's doctrine, written in wood. To destroy them would be to refuse to read it.
Instead, he took a small, empty leather pouch from a shelf—once used for holding whetstones—and carefully, using a scrap of cloth, picked up the dark rose and the sparrow and placed them inside. He drew the cord tight, the pouch now containing a profound, chilling weight. He would carry the silence with him.
Then he turned and descended the spiral staircase, Kaelen falling in behind him. He did not look back.
The air changed as they moved downward, becoming thicker, warmer, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth. The absolute silence of the peak was gradually replaced by the whisper of the wind through the trees, the distant cry of a hawk. To Arden, each sound was a small defiance, a note in the song the enemy sought to silence. He found himself listening to them with a new, fierce appreciation.
At the base of the spire, the second horse, a patient-looking bay gelding, stood waiting beside Kaelen's own mount. Arden approached it slowly. The animal shied back, its eyes rolling white. It sensed what he was. Not a man, but a concentration of power, a walking dawn that smelled of ozone and old stone. It took a long moment of stillness, of Arden consciously dampening his aura to a faint ember, before the horse would let him touch it, let him take the reins.
The act of mounting was clumsy, his body protesting the unfamiliar posture. The saddle felt foreign and restrictive. He looked absurd, he knew—a legendary warrior on a common packhorse, a god reduced to a traveler. The thought was a bitter pill. This was his first lesson in the new war: his power had limits, and one of them was the simple, stubborn reality of the world he was trying to save.
They started down the mountain path, Kaelen taking the lead. The Captain was silent, his focus on the trail, but Arden could feel the questions hanging in the air between them. What is your plan? What do we do when we get there? How do you fight this?
Arden had no answers. He only had a direction: south, towards Stillwater. Towards the silence.
As they rode, the landscape began to shift. The raw, scoured rock of the high peaks gave way to hardy alpine meadows, then to the dense, ancient forest that carpeted the lower slopes. And with the changing landscape came the first tangible signs of the blight he had only felt from afar.
They passed a stream that should have been bustling with water-skeeters and frogs. It was pristine, clear, and utterly still. No life skated on its surface, no song came from its banks. It was a liquid mirror, reflecting a perfect, dead world.
Further on, they came across a grove of aspens. Their leaves, usually a constant, shimmering dance of green and silver, were perfectly still. Not a single leaf trembled. They hung from the branches like ornaments made of metal, frozen in a windless void. The air within the grove was cold and thin, the same absolute chill of the carvings in his pouch.
Kaelen drew his horse to a halt at the edge of this unnatural stillness. "This is new," he murmured, his voice hushed. "This wasn't here when I came up the mountain two days ago."
Arden dismounted, his boots sinking into the soft, silent loam. He walked into the grove, Dawnbringer still sheathed on his back. He placed a hand on the trunk of the nearest aspen. The bark was smooth, lifeless. He could feel no sap flowing beneath, no thrum of vitality. The tree was a sculpture. A beautiful, perfect, and utterly empty shell.
This was not the work of a single missionary. This was the next stage. The cult was no longer just convincing people; it was rewriting the land itself, turning the vibrant, chaotic noise of nature into a still-life painting.
He looked at Kaelen, who was watching him from the edge of the living world, his face pale. "They are learning fast," Arden said, his voice flat. "Their confidence grows."
He remounted, and they rode on, leaving the silent grove behind them. But the memory of it rode with them, a cold companion. The descent was no longer just a journey from a high place to a low one. It was a journey from the realm of theory into the heart of a spreading, silent plague.