Elowyn's Rest basked in the glow of early spring. Lanterns flickered with gentle light, bees drifted through the wild thyme, and children chased each other across soft fields. In every sense, the village was a cradle untouched by the world's cruelty.
And Xerces walked among it.
Illusion still cloaked him in the shell of a man—tired eyes, a faint scar across his brow, and an expression that warded off unnecessary conversation. "Cerric," they called him now. A quiet traveler with a wounded soul and a monk's discipline.
He slept in the hayloft of an old barn, far from the villagers' homes, claiming solitude as his comfort. In truth, it was necessity. He could only hold the Phantom Mask so long before it faltered.
Each morning he renewed it.
Each evening he prayed it wouldn't fail.
And every afternoon—he met Mira.
They had formed a rhythm: flower gathering, light meals near the stream, her teasing and storytelling, and his dry attempts at humor. The villagers liked him enough. Mira liked him more than that.
She never pried. But her eyes always held questions. Who had hurt him? Where had he come from? Why did he flinch at music or step around graveyards?
Xerces didn't know if she truly believed his monk story. Or if she simply saw what she wanted to see—a broken man worth healing.
He told himself this was just part of the disguise. That her trust gave him safety, gave him time.
But he found himself lingering at the river each day. Speaking a little more. Asking about her past, about the villagers, about the meaning of old folk songs.
And sometimes… he laughed.
A sound he had not heard in his own voice since before death.
But miles beneath the quiet roots of Elowyn's fields—something stirred.
In the winding tunnels once used by smuggler clans and ancient cults, an old darkness had begun to move. Its body was a shroud of chitin and shadow. Its eyes—many and hungering.
It had been drawn by the pulse of magic. A ripple in the arcane weave. Something ancient had awakened near the village—an echo of death wrapped in illusion.
It did not know what Xerces was.
But it knew he did not belong.
The creature—a Devourer Wyrm—slithered silently through the collapsed tunnels beneath the land, using veins of mana like roads. In every village it passed through over the centuries, it fed. Not on flesh, but on fear. On despair. It fed until the land itself withered.
Now it had found fertile ground again.
And Elowyn's Rest would become its feast.
The Devourer stirred its thoughts toward the surface.
Toward Mira.
Toward Cerric, the masked corpse that whispered magic in his sleep and clung to a soul not entirely his.
Above, in the village, Mira handed Xerces a small book bound in leather.
"It's poetry," she said, blushing. "Just… something to help you sleep. I figured you might need it."
He took it slowly, careful not to touch her hand too long.
"Thank you," he said. "I—don't remember the last time I was given something."
She smiled, her freckles catching the sun. "Well then, remember this one."
He did not read it that night. Instead, he stared at the pages long after the mask had fallen, his skeletal fingers clutching the fragile gift.
He did not see the shadows stretching slowly across the wheat fields beyond.
Not yet.