Valos had called it corruption, and he had seen corruption before.

  Not the kind spoken of in lectures, but the kind that left nothing intact. Death-mana poisoned the body—settling into flesh until hunger wore a familiar face and instinct forgot mercy.

  Most did not survive it. The poison burned through mind and nerve alike, unraveling thought until only appetite remained. What lived after that was not human, not beast, but something that fed because it could not stop.

  The few who managed to survive, frightened him more than the beasts. They broke mana’s rules without knowing how. And of the few experiments that he had read, no answers had been found. Not where the corruption ended and the person began, not where restraint failed and the quiet, twisted desire to eat flesh and drink blood took its place.

  “I know of no cure,” he said. “But there may be a way to suppress it, her bloodline helps.”

  Lysara listened from the doorway, her hands still shaking, skin pulled too tight over bone. Her throat burned where she had screamed herself hoarse, each breath scraping raw on the way in.

  She had not told them the full truth about that night — about being dragged deeper into the fog forest until roots tore at her boots and branches clawed her arms raw. About the moment her blood hit the ground, and the world shifted.

  The pressure came first. Sudden. Heavy. Like air forced inward from all sides at once. Leaves shuddered overhead. Roots creaked beneath the soil. Mana did not rush into her body. It peeled away from it, pulling outward through her skin until her teeth ached and the edges of her vision smeared dark.

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  She had not told them how the Noctharis stalkers came out of the dark without warning.

  They did not circle.

  They hit.

  Shadows broke loose from the trees — teeth flashing, bodies slamming into motion. The men barely had time to turn. One was lifted off his feet. Another struck the trunk hard enough to crack bark. Bone snapped. Screams cut short. Blood sprayed hot across her hands as she curled in on herself and waited to die next.

  She did not.

  They came close instead. One lowered its head. A rough tongue dragged once across her blood-slick skin. Breath steamed against her wrist. The creature moved away. None of them touched her again.

  When Valos found her hours later, the forest was quiet. Leaves still shifted. Branches creaked. Nothing approached.

  Lysara tightened the straps of her patched satchel, settling the jars of herbs inside, clearing her gloomy thoughts and cut straight into the fog forest. It was faster this way.

  The canopy dimmed almost immediately. Poison mist curled low between the roots, thick enough to sting the back of her throat. Shapes moved in it — large, silent, close. Noctharis territory.

  She did not slow.

  Heads lifted as she passed. Pale eyes tracked her through the haze. A massive shape shifted its weight just off the path, close enough that she could hear breath moving through ruined lungs. None of them stepped in front of her.

  She walked for hours beneath the gray canopy, boots finding the narrow strips of solid ground she’d learned as a child. The fog thinned as she went, clinging behind her like something reluctant to be left alone.

  The change came quietly.

  The air warmed. The sweetness crept in beneath the rot. The mist loosened, breaking apart instead of closing ranks.

  She blinked, half-expecting the forest to darken again.

  It didn’t.

  Light filtered through in pale bands. Moss brightened underfoot. Leaves caught sound instead of swallowing it. The trees here still bore scars, but sap moved beneath the bark instead of stagnating.

  The forest breathed — not easily, not freely, but fully.

  Lysara slowed at last.

  “Mother,” she murmured. “You would’ve loved this place.”