Darkness pressed at the edges of Isolde’s vision, thick and suffocating like the cavern's corrupted air. The psychic static roaring from the Nexus was a physical blow, hammering against her skull, making coherent thought almost impossible. Through swimming senses, she saw Borin pinned against the rock wall, the mutated Duergar husk raising its corrupted hammer, its dead eyes fixed on the trapped miner. She heard Edmund’s desperate yells, lost somewhere in the swirling chaos of guards and drones. She saw Lyraen, a whirlwind of green and grey leather, desperately fending off the skittering horrors surging towards them, the Warden’s usual calm replaced by fierce urgency.

  Closer, the shadow-things drifted, their presence leaching warmth, pulling at the fragile threads of her consciousness, probing the taint coiling within her arm. Pain, white-hot and sickening, pulsed beneath the wrappings, a frantic counterpoint to the cavern’s deep, malevolent thrum. No… not enough… The thought was a ragged gasp in her mind. Can’t hold…

  Borin roared, a sound of defiance choked off by pain as the hammer slammed down near his head, cracking stone. Lyraen cried out, staggered by a coordinated attack from the skitterers. Edmund was too far, too occupied.

  No.

  The single word echoed in the ruins of her thoughts, sharp and sudden. Not a plea, but a denial. Not again. The faces of her lost Order flashed behind her eyes—mentors, friends, consumed by the Blight because their power, their connection to the Living Essence, had made them targets. Because they hadn't been strong enough, or perhaps, because they hadn't been willing to pay the price.

  We fail. They die.

  Borin grunted again, pinned, helpless. Lyraen risked a glance towards her, their pale eyes wide with alarm, before being forced back by another wave of attackers. Edmund… she couldn't even see Edmund anymore.

  The choice wasn't a choice. It was necessity. Raw, terrifying necessity.

  Forgive me, Maeve, she thought, a silent apology to the memory of the Elder in the grove. Forgive me, Edmund.

  She ignored the screaming agony in her arm, the dizzying psychic pressure. She ignored the certainty of the cost. Reaching deep, past the careful reservoirs of her own Essence, past the fragile barriers she’d maintained since Blackfen, she pulled.

  Not just from herself, but from the corrupted, supercharged energy radiating from the Nexus itself. It felt like plunging her hands into shearing ice and burning coals simultaneously. A violation. A surrender. Power, raw and tainted, flooded into her, tasting of cold stars and ancient rot. It surged through the dark lines etched into her flesh, setting them ablaze not with green life, but with a terrifying violet-grey light. Her staff, carved from pure rowan, groaned in protest, struggling to contain the unnatural energies.

  "Isolde, NO!" Lyraen’s horrified cry was lost in the sudden surge of power.

  With a guttural scream torn from her lungs, Isolde unleashed the borrowed, corrupted power. It wasn't a focused beam, but an uncontrolled eruption. A shockwave of raw, unstable energy exploded outwards, tinged with the sickening colors of the Blight.

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  It slammed into the shadow-creatures nearest her, dissolving them into screaming wisps of corrupt smoke. It blasted the mutated Duergar pinning Borin, staggering them, their stone-like hides cracking under the impact. It even struck the Nexus itself, a visible ripple distorting the colossal entity’s pulsating surface, causing the cavern's light to flicker violently. The Blighted drones faltered, their coordination momentarily shattered.

  For a single, blinding instant, she had bought them time.

  Then came the price.

  The energy recoiled, tearing back into her through the conduit of her own tainted flesh. It felt like being ripped apart from the inside out. Every nerve screamed. Her muscles convulsed uncontrollably, throwing her back against the rock debris. Sparks of violet energy spat from her fingertips. The dark lines on her arm didn't just pulse; they burned, spreading like wildfire up towards her shoulder, glowing with an intensity that seared through her glove and tunic, branding her skin beneath.

  Agony. The world dissolved into pure, blinding pain.

  Yet, in that incandescent moment of self-destruction, as her own corrupted Essence warred with the raw power of the Nexus, something fractured. Not just her body, but her perception. For a fraction of a second, the psychic roar of the Blight Mind resolved into something almost… understandable. Not words, but concepts. Images.

  Geothermal feed… regulator conduits… Duergar craft… severance… vulnerability…

  A flash of understanding, terrifyingly clear, pierced through the agony. A weakness. A way.

  Then darkness surged, dragging her down into merciful oblivion as she collapsed, limp and broken, amidst the settling dust and echoing silence. The last thing she registered before consciousness fled was a choked gasp escaping her lips, containing the single, crucial fragment of insight wrenched from the jaws of oblivion:

  "Regulators… sever the… feed…"

  The cavern fell into a stunned, momentary silence after the explosive discharge of Isolde’s magic. The Blighted creatures hesitated, disoriented. The attack on Borin and Lyraen faltered.

  Lyraen reacted instantly. Ignoring the skittering drones momentarily thrown back by the blast, they surged across the space towards Isolde’s crumpled form with impossible Aelfen speed. They knelt beside her, their face grim, taking in the rapidly spreading, fiercely glowing taint on Isolde's arm, the faint smell of ozone and corruption clinging to her.

  "Edmund! Borin! Defend her!" Lyraen commanded, their voice sharp with urgency, losing all its usual melodic calm.

  Without waiting for a response, the Warden’s hands began to move. They produced small pouches from their belt, crushing herbs between their fingers, applying a pungent green poultice directly onto the blistered skin near the flaring taint lines. Simultaneously, they placed their other hand gently over Isolde's forehead, chanting softly in the ancient, flowing cadence of the Aelfen tongue. Calming, pure green energy radiated from their touch, meeting the aggressive violet glow of the taint, battling it, trying to soothe the raging storm within Isolde's corrupted Essence.

  It wasn't healing magic, not in the conventional sense. It was a desperate act of stabilization, a binding, an attempt to pull Isolde back from the precipice of irreversible corruption or death. The green light pushed against the violet, containing it, forcing the angry pulsing to subside slightly, though the dark lines remained, stark and deeply etched.

  Edmund, galvanized by Lyraen’s command and the sight of Isolde’s state, roared and charged the nearest Blighted drone, fighting with renewed ferocity to keep the creatures away. Borin, staggering to his feet, his arm bleeding freely but his pickaxe retrieved, took up a position beside Lyraen, swinging his heavy tool in vicious arcs to ward off any creature that came too close, his face a mask of grim determination.

  Isolde remained unconscious, stabilized but only just, her breathing shallow. The immediate crisis of the Blight Mind’s trap had been broken by her sacrifice, but the cost was terrifyingly clear, etched onto her very skin. And the pulsating heart of the enemy, the Nexus itself, still thrummed with malevolent life in the center of the cavern, damaged but far from destroyed. The insight Isolde had paid for so dearly hung in the air, a fragile key amidst the lingering peril.