The forest's air hung thick as clotting blood, every breath a struggle against the rot's suffocating embrace. Dave's boots sank into soil that twitched beneath him—the Rotten Root's veins, restless and hungry. Shadows pooled around his feet, not cast by light but born of decay, whispering in tongues older than mortal tongues.
He stopped. The ground ahead split with a wet, tearing sound, vomiting up a skeletal hand clutching a tome. Its leather cover pulsed like a dying heart, stitched with threads of human hair. The pages hissed as they turned, revealing glyphs that squirmed like beetles trapped in ink.
A presence coalesced—a specter with no face, only a hollow where eyes should be, leaking smoke the color of gangrene.
Scion. Its voice was the grind of tectonic plates, the creak of a gallows rope. "I am Loreis. Architect of ruin. Prisoner of my own ambition."
The lich's memories struck like a cleaver:
—A tower of black basalt, its halls lined with living corpses fused to the walls, their mouths sewn shut—
—A ritual chamber where Loreis peeled his own skin, grafting glyphs of immortality into raw muscle—
—Centuries trapped, his body a garden of fungi and maggots, screaming silently as roots devoured his still-beating heart—
Dave collapsed, clawing at his temples as the visions burrowed. The forest laughed, its roots tightening around his ankles like shackles.
"You think this pain is new?" Loreis's voice slithered through his mind. "You are a child playing with corpse-candles. Let me show you TRUE suffering."
—
The First Memory:
Loreis stood at the edge of a chasm, his hands trembling as he clutched a dagger forged from a god's rib. Below, the Water Dragon's scaled back breached the black waves, its roar shaking the stars. A hooded figure—face blurred, voice familiar—gripped his shoulder.
"Cut its heart out," the figure urged. "The Tide's power will be ours."
Loreis plunged the dagger. The Dragon's blood was acid, melting his arm to bone. He woke centuries later, grafted to the forest floor, roots feeding on his agony.
—
Dave vomited, bile mixed with black petals. The lich's madness itched beneath his skin, whispering:
"Power is pain. Pain is power. Let it in."
The disciples emerged then—twelve figures in rotted robes, their faces hidden beneath hoods stitched with crow feathers. They circled Dave and the lich, chanting in a language that made the air bleed. One pressed a dagger to their palm, letting blood drip onto Loreis's corpse. The soil drank it greedily.
"
---
Dave's pulse quickly rose as their leader intoned, voice echoing with dissonant harmonies. "We tend the garden of the damned. Today, we prune."
The ritual quickened. The disciples' chants rose to screams as their skin sloughed off, revealing muscle threaded with glowing roots. They weren't human—they were *husks*, vessels for the forest's will.
Loreis's spirit writhed, smoke curling into the shape of a serpent eating its own tail. "They lied to me," he hissed. "The Dragon's Apostle promised godhood. He gave me… this."
Dave's breath froze. Apostle. The word slithered into his mind, burying itself like a tick.
The disciples converged, their blood-soaked hands pressing into Dave's chest. The lich's memories detonated:
—A masked man in royal livery offering Loreis a vial of the king's blood—
—The Water Dragon's glyph glowing beneath the throne room—
—A pact signed in rot and seawater: *"The Tide rises. The Rot dies."
Agony. Revelation. Dave's veins blackened as Loreis's knowledge fused with his own—
[Necrotic Chant I]: Bonehusk, Decay [Sigil]: Feast of Worms. The spells seared his mind, their costs etched in pain:
"Bonehusk requires a femur, fresh and screaming."
"Feast of Worms devours the caster's eyes. Temporarily."
The disciples collapsed, reduced to piles of ash and tangled roots. Loreis's spirit faded, his hollow eyes lingering on Dave.
"Beware the Apostle," he rasped. "He wears a thousand faces. He is closer than you—"
The lich dissolved. The tome crumbled to dust.
Dave lay gasping, his mind a storm of dead men's secrets. The Scion (rot-nymph) crawled from his collar, mandibles clicking excitedly.
"So much hunger," she crooned. "Feed me more."
He stood, legs trembling, and spat a tooth—blackened, wriggling with mites.
The forest had given him power.
The Apostle had given him a warning.
Dave smiled, blood dripping from his gums.
Let them come.