“Lovers’ quarrel?” Rowan yelped at Cengor’s voice, whirling around to see him standing in the doorway of his office, arms crossed and an amused smile on his face. Rowan stared at him, heart pounding from being spooked. Cengor’s words caught up to him a moment later, and he felt his face burn. “W-what?!”

“You’re still here, aren’t you?”  Rowan’s voice broke through the quiet of the morning as he rounded the bend that put his house out of view. The only sounds were the distant running of water from the brook, the soft clinks of the potions he carried, and the occasional groans of withered trees in the wind.

The rest of the day, Rowan barely talked to his family, staying largely out of the house. He didn’t want to talk to them, not yet. Everything felt too raw, too painful, and too confusing. He wasn’t cursed.

The moment the sirens rang in the distance, Sorrel felt like she had just fallen deep into an icy river. She looked up from her mortar and pestle, staring at the wall that blocked her vision of the road leading into town, her face contorting into one of horror. 

Nova the Tempest was confused. Until now, the human settlements she visited in this southern Bascor had not given her anything meaningful. They all held the same stale Viridian magic, active by technicality, but barely moving, and with no indicator of a source. No one had explanations as to why the hills were more alive than the rest of the Reprised Shores.

Rowan didn’t stop until they were some distance away from the square, on one of the quieter streets that had mostly abandoned homes. The buildings belonged primarily to people who hadn’t survived the food shortages of the Great Wither or to soldiers who died at war.

“Rowan, up here. I see some reeds.” At the sound of his grandfather’s voice, Rowan looked up from where he was crouched by a rotting stump, inspecting the bits of lichen and fungus growing on it. Or rather, half-inspecting, half lost in thought.

Ladisdale was nothing impressive, in Rowan’s opinion, but he admittedly only knew of ‘impressive’ through old books that he read in the local library. ‘Impressive’ was the capital city of Orbcrest, spilling over one of the tallest hills of the region with its numerous spires and sprawling colonnades.

Every night, Rowan Spicer had the same dream. He stood in swirling darkness, like thick, black smoke that obscured his vision. Vague, distant shapes broke through the undulating void, hinting at a world beyond what he could see. Despite that, he couldn’t escape the darkness around him.

The western border of Bascor had been a battlefront for longer than Nova’s eighteen years alive. The towns that once lined this edge of the country were now either military outposts or abandoned ruins, and nothing in between.