The wind shifted the moment I passed beyond the old boundary stones.
Not just a breeze or chill—no, this was different. It slid over my skin like wet silk, slow and clinging. I stepped down from the air with a soft crunch of earth and moss, the Wind-Mover in my hand flickering with the last remnants of alchemical charge. A gentle whir sounded from the core of the device, then silence. I replaced the core with another, ready to use it again if need be.
I glanced back toward Bree. A dot now, far behind me, beyond hills and hedges. I'd flown most of the way using one of my better tools for this little adventure. The Wind-Mover—a slim, finned cylinder powered by directional wind Qi and designed to float along ambient breezes for reduced power usage—had done its job beautifully.
What mattered now was what lay in front of me.
The Barrow-downs.
I had read about them in a passing reference from Bilbo's collection. Burial mounds left by ancient men. Possibly Dúnedain. Possibly older.
I took a breath.
Then stopped.
The Qi here was wrong.
It wasn't just dark—that was manageable, even useful in some alchemical contexts. But this was something else. It felt… dirty. Stagnant. Like water left too long in a sealed jar, or blood that had congealed under the sun.
My own Qi recoiled slightly. I felt it pull tighter into my core, wary. Whatever was here had tainted the land so thoroughly that even passive energy—light from the sun, wind from the hills—seemed muted.
I crouched, placing my palm on the ground.
Nothing flowed. No life-force ran beneath the roots here. The soil wasn't dead exactly—but exhausted. As if every breath of Qi had been siphoned away… or replaced with something far worse.
One of the barrows stood ahead of me—a rise in the earth shaped like a sleeping beast, covered in low, grey grass. Stones jutted from the sides like ribs. There were dozens like it across the hills. Some had entrances. Some didn't.
I reached into my coat and withdrew a small vial, specially treated. It shone faintly as it reacted to the energy around me, but the glow stuttered and darkened. I watched the colour shift from pale blue to an oily green-black.
"Corruption," I said under my breath.
This wasn't just old, buried grief. This was intentional. Someone—or something—had warped the Qi here. Twisted it enough to leave scars in the very air. A perfect site for experimentation. Dangerous, yes. But invaluable to study. If a bit… worrying, considering the kind of thing that might've done it. The Witch King had a hold on this place.
I stood and brushed off my gloves, eyes fixed on the nearest mound. The grass over it shifted gently, like breathing.
Then I pulled out another alchemical object—a Shadow-Plate, thin as bark, infused with Qi to mask presence. I slid it under my coat and let it activate. My outline dulled. Footsteps softened. The wind followed at my heels as I approached the barrow.
The barrow's entrance was a low, narrow slit beneath a slab of stone, half-sunken into the earth. Roots dangled from above like fingers. I stepped forward, hand brushing the surface of the entry stone, and felt the warmth of the sun cut off behind me.
Inside, it was cold. Not simply in temperature, but in presence. The wind halted at the threshold. Not even a whisper followed me in. I stepped beyond it alone.
Every step into the passage deepened the silence. My own breath was loud. My heartbeat louder. The shadows along the stone walls did not behave normally—they bent too sharply at odd angles, as if they had their own intentions. As if they were watching.
I kept one hand hovering near a pouch on my belt. Within it, a pair of incendiary capsules—sun-charged with liquid fire and treated to react on contact. My own lore of fire was coiled tightly within me, like a waiting serpent, ready to strike the moment I willed it.
Nothing moved.
Still, I knew something was here. Something watching back.
The barrow widened slightly after a dozen paces. The ceiling arched into a dome supported by rib-like stone columns. In the centre, a stone slab altar—blackened with age, or soot, stood with ancient carvings wrapping around its base. There were markings. I couldn't read them, but I felt them. Felt them crawl across the edges of my mind.
I stepped closer.
My flame sputtered.
It didn't go out, but it struggled. Like something was pressing down on it.
I took a slow breath, steadying my mind. The Qi here didn't want me. It didn't want anything. But I was here all the same, and it would have to deal with that.
I drew a ward-stone from my coat and placed it on the floor at the base of the altar. It pulsed once, then began to hum gently. A protective radius—enough to give me time to react.
"Come on then," I muttered under my breath. "Let's see what secrets you're so eager to hide."
Then I stepped closer.
And the shadows seemed to breathe.
They stood there — three of them.
Tall, draped in rotted remnants of ancient mail and cloth. Armor dulled and broken. Swords long and jagged like rusted teeth. Their faces were hidden beneath decayed helms, but I didn't need to see their eyes to know they saw me.
The Shadow-Plate was useless. They were shadows themselves, Barrow Wights.
They didn't move. Not yet.
And then I felt the pulse behind me.
My protection plate — the ward-stone — flared. I turned instinctively, flame crackling around my knuckles, and saw a fourth Barrow-wight mid-slash, its jagged blade crashing down against the shimmering air of the shield.
So that was it. The three before me were bait. Just a distraction.
I stepped back quickly, now flanked on both sides, and watched as all four figures began to converge on the glowing ward. One after another, they raised rusted weapons and struck.
The shield held.
Swords scraped uselessly off the enchanted air with hollow clangs, like steel on stone. The magic flickered but endured.
Then one of them — the largest — stabbed.
It drove its broken blade straight into the heart of the shield.
There was a sound like shattering glass muffled under a thick blanket. The ward-stone cracked with a sharp, bright pulse. Energy stuttered, flickered — and then the blade pierced through.
"Oh shit."
I didn't hesitate.
The Lore of Fire roared to life.
Flame surged from me in a wave, not wild but shaped. I pulled it from the deepest part of my core and let it erupt. A serpent of red-gold energy uncoiled from my chest and lashed outward.
The barrow filled with light.
The damp air ignited, the flame burning away the cloying silence, the heavy rot, the clinging shadows. The Barrow-wights hissed and their shapes reeled in the blaze.
Far away, on a hill overlooking the Barrow-downs, an old shepherd paused mid-step.
He squinted.
"The hell?"
Before him, one of the mounds in the distance flared like an opened furnace — a red-gold flash, sharp and silent. A sudden gust of wind rolled across the hills, carrying with it a distant, dull whoomph.
The sheep scattered.
The shepherd crossed himself and turned right back around.
Back inside, the barrow shook.
Stone cracked. Ash curled against the ceiling like smoke in a chimney. My flame dimmed slightly, then held steady — the Wights had fallen back, their forms distorted, hissing, flickering like shadows torn loose from their owners.
I stepped forward, flame roaring in both hands now.
"Alright," I growled.
The barrow churned with smoke and flame.
The Wights reeled at first, but they were not simple undead. They learned fast. Three of them scattered like shadows peeled from walls, their bodies flickering into half-forms — insubstantial, sliding across the stone like mist and reforming elsewhere. The fourth remained, unmoving. Watching.
Their intelligence was decayed, but not absent.
I raised both hands, muttered an incantation in the guttural tongue of Aqshy, and slammed my palm down.
"Pyr'kai Maraz."
Flame exploded outward in a ring, curling around me in a living vortex. A shield of fire, blazing so bright the very stone glowed orange. It twisted and coiled around me like a serpent of molten light.
A blade struck the shield.
One of the Wights had surged forward, its entire arm stabbing into the flames. There was no scream. Just pressure. And then the hiss of metal turning to slag. Its blade buckled, melted at the edge, warping like wax in a forge. The Wight pulled back, its arm now a twisted, blackened stump. It didn't fall. Just stood there. Smouldering.
I didn't wait.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent firebolts lancing toward the two nearest. They were half-visible, dematerializing between moments, phasing in and out of substance like breath on cold air.
But I didn't need eyes.
I could feel them.
The taint in the Qi, the wrongness of them — it drew my senses like smoke to lungs. My flame bent toward that wrongness.
Even before I moved, I let my own Qi flow through me — strengthening my limbs, sharpening my mind. Strength to my legs, clarity to my focus. Like striking a tuning fork inside myself. The fire wasn't just around me now. It was in me. Speed. Power. Precision.
One Wight flickered into being directly to my left, sword high.
I turned, stepped inside the arc of its swing with unnatural speed, and slammed my hand into its chest.
"Flame, eat the forgotten."
The Wight ignited from within — a bloom of internal fire, light gushing from the seams in its armor. Its form twisted, convulsed, then crumbled like dry parchment, the metal of its helm ringing once as it fell into ash.
Three left.
Another struck — this time from behind — but I pivoted, enhanced reflexes catching only the whisper of its blade against the edge of my burning shield. Sparks flew. The Wight retreated again, fading from view.
I reached into my coat, gripping a smooth, round orb etched with glowing runes.
Alchemical Sunfire. A mixture of light-reactive salts and Qi-reactive compounds, designed to detonate in a flash of searing radiance and heat — a perfect poison for shadows.
I closed my eyes, focused.
There. A thread of corrupted Qi slinking around to my right, low, trying to flank.
I snapped my hand out and threw the orb without looking.
Thunk.
The orb struck something mid-air — and detonated.
The blast was white-hot and deafening, not just flame but pure alchemical radiance, like a miniature sun stuffed into a bottle. A wail tore through the chamber — the sound of something ancient being burned away. The hidden Wight flickered back into existence, its torso and face boiling off like wax. It collapsed, twitching, and then lay still.
Two.
The last two regrouped, one flickering beside the crippled Wight with the slagged blade. Both stood back now, revaluating.
I pressed forward, hands glowing with flame, my own breath like smoke through my teeth.
One of them surged forward again — a suicide charge — its blade thrusting through the wall of fire directly at my chest.
I held.
The sword entered the flames… and melted.
The Wight kept pushing, even as its form blackened, burning. Its face — a hollow space under the helm — bent toward me.
I let it get close.
Then I opened my hands.
"Cinderstorm."
A wave of burning embers and razored sparks erupted outward in a cone, devouring everything in front of me. The charging Wight was gone in an instant, burned down to ash. The slagged remains of its blade hissed on the stone.
The last one stepped back, uncertain. Alone.
I drew in a breath, let my Qi steady, strength still coursing through my limbs like tempered heat in a blade.
The Wight didn't move.
So I lifted both hands.
And the last of the barrow-wights burned.
Silence.
Only the faint crackle of residual flame. My shield slowly unravelled into drifting sparks, fading into the cold dark of the barrow.
I waited, tense then exhaled.
Ash was everywhere. But not everything had been destroyed.
I stepped over blackened stone, spotted two blades that hadn't melted. One was scorched but intact. The other whole. Both carried something in them still. A miasma, a curse of some kind it tickled at the area around it trying to poison the world.
Still dangerous. Still useful.
I summoned a smaller flame, carefully wrapped it around each blade like a glowing hand. My fire wouldn't melt them now — only cleanse. They sizzled slightly in protest, reacting to the pure heat as the last of the taint was burned away. It released a black miasma into the air fusing back into the stone.
Then I pulled out a thick wrap of treated leather sliding the blades into it one by one, careful not to touch the hilts directly. I tied it off. Hung it by a strap to my belt. Then I did the same to one of the remaining armour sets, cleansing it packing it and putting over my shoulder.
Nothing else down here.
Just smoke. I turned toward the exit.
Time to go.