A dozen cultists came pouring through what was left of the doors, shoving splinters aside like they didn't even notice them. Pikes in hand, rusted and grimy, and their hands twitching like they were being worked from the inside. Their eyes were worse—empty of thought but burning with something close to worship. Like puppets stuck in borrowed skin.
Caylen gave them a once-over, lips curling, voice pitched in disbelief. "I've seen better theater from drunk noble kids. This? This is a crime against thespians." His fingers moved without waiting, already flirting with the strings at his hip.
The Oracle screamed. Not just loud—its voice hit wrong, like someone shoving a broken bottle into the back of your skull. "Enough!"
A jagged spike of yellow light cracked through the air and blew apart a pillar like it was chalk. Dax flung himself out of the blast, the impact dragging dust and pebbles into the air.
"Scatter!" Verek's voice hit like a whip. His hand sliced through the air and sigils burst to life around him, swirling bright and sharp. The ward snapped into place like a wall of old, stubborn truth.
And just like that, everything came apart.
Ezreal disappeared into the dark, barely a blur, then came back into the light behind a cultist. His blade whispered once. The man dropped, no sound. Dax grabbed a chair leg from the wreckage and jammed it into a zealot's gut hard enough to make ribs buckle. Caylen's strum rang out like a slap to the face, the sound bending into force that blasted two cultists clean off their feet.
"Go for the stalks!" Verek shouted, his voice clipped and tight. He flung a bead of flame that popped against the Oracle's underbelly. It flared upward, a roar of heat blistering the air, and two of its eyes shriveled black.
It came back swinging.
A wave of anti-magic blew out from the thing, tearing holes in the fabric of spellwork. Caylen's song fell flat mid-chord. Ezreal's shadows cracked open and spat him out. Dax froze in place mid-run, face twisted in pain as his limbs locked hard and fast.
Caylen's message stone blinked white at his belt, just once. Not a call—more like a warning flare.
Then more cultists arrived. Thin, sharp, and twitching wrong. One flung a vial overhead that shattered into a green fog before it hit the floor. Another lined up a crossbow and let a poisoned bolt scream straight for Ezreal.
He dove. The bolt hit the wall just behind him with a thunk and hissed.
"They're not just trying to kill us," Ezreal said, voice sharp around the edges. "They're after our heads. They want us broken."
Caylen shoved past falling rubble and got to Dax, planting his palm dead center on his chest. "You're the hammer. Now swing."
Light jumped from Caylen's hand—warm, solid. It tore through the freezing spell like sunlight through frost. Dax gasped like someone hauling in their first breath after drowning, then roared loud enough to make bones rattle.
He drove his fist into the nearest cultist's jaw, shattering it. Teeth flew. He spun and drove his elbow into another one's throat. That one crumpled like wet parchment.
The Oracle's voice hit again, a sharp bend in reality. "You ruin everything!"
Verek's face had gone stone. He reached into his cloak, pulled out a sphere lined with crawling runes. They weren't stable. They pulsed, shifting like ink in water. "You think this is mercy? It's fear. Dressed up in kind words."
He hurled it. The sphere cracked in mid-air and slammed the space around them with a pressure that felt like it sucked breath out of the room.
Reality gave.
The village shattered like old wallpaper peeled back from rot. Houses buckled, slumped into piles of meat and bone. The chapel was a burnt-out husk. The ground showed through—skulls, half-gnawed, crawling with wet things. The vendors—their bodies twisted and split, the real shapes inside pulling free.
The Oracle screeched, its whole body flickering like it couldn't decide what it was anymore. "No!"
Ezreal lunged, blade aimed with hate. Dax was already there, fists like wrecking balls. Caylen's music came back, not holy, just furious. Verek advanced, hands seething with raw magic that pulsed from his skin.
They hit it together.
The Oracle lashed out, not with claws but with something worse—thoughts that weren't theirs. It stabbed into their minds. Ezreal saw his mother die again, heard the scream that never ended. Dax saw the fire take his fiancée, felt the smoke in his throat. Caylen couldn't speak, choked on his own damn name.
"Hold!" Verek slammed his staff into the stone floor. Runes shot outward from the point of impact, locking down the storm in their heads.
Ezreal didn't hesitate. His blade drove through another stalk. Dax jumped, brought his full weight down, and cracked the Oracle's jaw open. Caylen screamed his note to the rafters. Verek chanted the last word.
The Oracle crumpled inward. It folded into itself like a dying breath.
Silence came down hard.
Greymoore was nothing now. Ash, bones, the stench of old rot. The illusion had fallen, but something about it still clung to the air like spoiled milk.
Ezreal stood there, unmoving. "That was bait."
Caylen knelt next to a tiny skeleton. His voice didn't try to rise. "Then someone's watching the hook."
Verek barely whispered. "They were already gone. Or they were used."
Dax peeled back a trapdoor. Nothing inside but bone. "Burn it. Salt it. No half-measures."
Ezreal turned, sharp and cold. "No. This whole place was staged. We're still in someone's play."
Caylen glanced around, voice low. "Then why are we still breathing?"
Wind slid through the village, stirring the ashes.
"We move," Verek said. "Now."
Ezreal lingered at the chapel ruins. His hand traced the scorched threshold. "Ellenoir's stink is all over this."
"You sure?" Dax asked, shoulders tight.
Ezreal nodded once. "It wasn't just illusion. This was curated. Something older than spellwork."
"Worked," Caylen muttered. The bitterness in his mouth could've curdled wine.
Verek's eyes never left the east. "Not well enough. We're still standing."
They left what was left of Greymoore behind. The sky cracked red over bones. Smoke trailed behind them like a shadow that hadn't decided to stop.
Dax leaned on a post, breath ragged. "That wasn't a mayor. That was madness that learned to lie."
Ezreal didn't look back. "It thought it was doing mercy."
Caylen's voice drifted. "Kindness wears masks."
"No," Verek said quietly. He flicked ash off his sleeve like it disgusted him. "Truth does."
Ezreal looked up. The sky was too clear. "How many more of these places exist?"
Dax answered without pause, fists clenched. "Too many. And I'm done letting corpses pretend they're towns."
The ground underfoot felt soggy in the wrong way. Too soft. Too quiet. Like the earth remembered what died here and didn't want to say it out loud. Nothing moved, but something still watched.
The Oracle. The village. The mind-born rot.
This wasn't over. Not close.
Ezreal's voice hardened. "Kings Port. That's where the next crack shows."
Verek's eyes narrowed. "The king won't listen."
Caylen's smile had teeth in it. "Then he'll learn. Fast."
They stood at the edge of ash and memory, waiting for the road to move under them.
"No," Verek said again, almost to himself. His fingers twitched against his robes. "Something's wearing his face."
Caylen's eyes drifted toward the road ahead. His grip tightened on his lute until his knuckles lost color. "One village. One lie. How many more of these things are smiling at us right now?"
Crack. Dax cracked his knuckles again, slow and hard.
"Too many," he said, and his voice was rock sliding down a hill. "And I'm not walking into another grave pretending to be a home."
A raven wheeled above them and cried out, sharp and quick.
Far down the road, something unseen shifted.