The sunlight felt wrong.
Lucas squinted as they stepped onto the plateau, the warm rays that should have been a relief instead carrying a faint, coppery tang. The air was thick, heavy — like the world itself had been holding its breath too long.
Behind them, the remains of the tower still crumbled, a jagged wound in the skyline. But ahead…
"Uh," Seris muttered, lowering her crossbow. "Was that forest always… moving?"
Martha frowned. "It wasn't."
---
The valley below should have been lush and still. Instead, the trees twisted as though stirred by an unseen wind — but the air around them was perfectly still. Their branches curled unnaturally, forming shapes that looked disturbingly like clawed hands reaching for the sky.
And the ground — it pulsed. Not with life, but with a rhythm eerily similar to the heartbeat the tower once held.
Lucas's hand instinctively went to his sword. "We killed the heart. This… this shouldn't be possible."
Seris glanced at him, eyes narrowing. "Unless something else took its place."
---
They began the descent into the valley, each step accompanied by the unsettling sensation of being watched.
At one point, Lucas stopped dead in his tracks. "Don't move."
Martha froze. "What is it?"
He pointed. A patch of moss just ahead shifted — not like something beneath it was moving, but like the moss itself had decided to crawl. Thin tendrils slid across the rocks, retreating when they were noticed.
Seris swore under her breath. "Nature's not supposed to do that."
"No," Lucas agreed grimly, "but corrupted magic will twist anything it touches."
---
The deeper they went, the worse it became.
Vines curled along tree trunks in spiral patterns that hurt to look at. Insects hovered midair, wings beating far too slow to keep them aloft, yet they didn't fall. The air shimmered with faint motes of red light, drifting like embers from an invisible fire.
They reached the edge of a clearing — and stopped.
In the center stood something that might once have been a stag. Now, it was a grotesque sculpture of bone and sinew, its antlers overgrown into jagged spines. It moved with stiff, unnatural jerks, and when its head turned, its eyes glowed faintly… with the same hue as the tower's heart.
---
"Tell me we're not fighting that," Seris whispered.
Lucas studied it. "If we don't, it'll follow us."
Before they could act, the creature snapped its head toward them and let out a sound that was neither a roar nor a scream — something in between, raw and wrong.
It charged.
Lucas met it halfway, steel clashing against bone. The creature was unnervingly strong, its strikes rattling his arms. Seris fired at its legs, the bolts sinking into unnatural flesh, while Martha summoned a burst of searing light that made the creature stumble.
Lucas seized the opening, plunging his blade deep into its chest. The thing convulsed, then collapsed in a heap of steaming flesh and splintered bone.
As it died, a faint pulse rippled through the ground… and something in the distance answered.
---
"That wasn't the only one," Martha said quietly.
They moved faster after that. Whatever corruption lingered here was spreading — and if the forest was already like this, the nearby villages wouldn't be far behind.
By the time they reached the valley's far side, the sun was low. The air had grown colder, and the sky burned an unnatural red at the horizon.
Lucas looked back once. The forest was swallowing the stag's corpse, vines knitting over it like flesh healing a wound.
Seris shook her head. "This isn't over. We didn't destroy the heart. We just… set it free."
Lucas's grip tightened on his sword hilt. "Then we hunt it. Before it hunts us."
Far away, beyond the treeline, a faint, echoing heartbeat answered — slow, steady… and getting louder.