(Pov Milo)

  “How many have you killed?” I asked.

  Malorn didn’t look at me. Though a slow smile formed.

  “Twenty-seven so far.”

  He loosed another arrow. The air screamed as it split, then burst into icy shards midflight. Two winged things shrieked as their membranes shredded, frost biting through sinew. They tumbled from the sky.

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Show-off,” I muttered, tamping my pipe and peering over the wall from my little crate — the indignity of being halfling-sized in a war built for taller folk.

  We’d been on rotation here for a week. Long enough for the smell of alchemy smoke, blood, and rot to sink into everything I owned. The enemy waves hadn’t stopped. It did thin slightly like a river pretending it was running out of water.

  The strike team had left a week ago and the thinning occurs shortly after they left. For their assault on one of the Asharkith fortresses. Bunch of heroic nonsense if you ask me.

  I tried not to think about Bryn and Sirius. Tried and failed.

  From up here, the horde stretched on in seemingly endless numbers.

  I flicked a pair of spiraled colic charges down onto the parasitic growth clinging to the stone below, followed by a vial of foltin mag. The impact splattered green and violet across the writhing mass. It hissed, recoiled, then pushed forward again, tendrils crawling like fingers searching for a throat.

  “Nope,” I muttered. “Still hate that.”

  The fungus kept pressing against the warded base of the wall, testing, probing, learning.

  The other alchemists and I had been working nonstop. Potions. Salves. Compounds. Crystals. Half-finished theories scribbled on blood-stained parchment. Plenty of things worked — briefly — but nothing scaled. Nothing we could produce fast enough or in enough quantity to make a difference here.

  That was the worst part. Knowing you were just smart and capable enough to help…but not enough that it mattered.

  A low rumble rolled through the stone under our feet.

  “BRACE!” a commander shouted.

  I grabbed the crenel and planted my staff. All of Aurelith seemed to shudder violently, like something vast had shifted its weight beneath us. Dust drifted down. Somewhere farther along the ramparts, someone swore.

  Then it stopped.

  Just… stopped.

  These quakes had been getting worse. More frequent. Stronger. No one knew why. Every explanation we had sounded thin.

  I didn’t like not knowing what was under my feet.

  A soldier nearby cried out. I turned to see blood soaking through his greave where something had sliced his leg open. I was already moving before he finished falling.

  “Hold still,” I said, digging into my kit.

  I sprinkled life-aether infused salt over the wound. The grains glimmered faintly, warmth blooming under my fingers as the infection burned away and the flesh began to knit. Crude, but effective.

  I flicked the excess salt off my hand over the side of the wall.

  That’s when I heard it.

  A faint sizzling, different than normal.

  I froze, then scrambled back onto my box and leaned over the edge.

  Where the salt had landed, the parasitic ground was burning.

  Not recoiling. Not resisting.

  Burning.

  The flesh-black growth blistered and peeled, curling inward like it wanted to escape itself.

  My breath caught.

  “What the…”

  Aetheric infused salt was common. It was relatively cheap and easy to make. Usually not worth the pouch space unless you were desperate or lazy, which, in my case, worked great. It was mostly used as a component, a way to meld an affinity into something better.

  I carried it because it was light, affordable, and I could make it myself.

  Heart thudding, I grabbed another pinch and dropped it directly onto a cluster of maggots and a lumbering bipedal nidus.

  The creatures shrieked. Their skin bubbled, sloughing away in strips.

  Then — horrifyingly — it healed quickly. Flesh was knitting back together like the damage had never happened.

  I frowned.

  It did hurt them. That was the best result I’d come across so far.

  “There’s something here,” I murmured.

  I stepped back from the wall, mind racing, pieces slowly sliding into place.

  “We know they react to things that hinder undeath,” I muttered to myself. “So, it could be the salt… or the life aether bound to it.” I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the grit still there. “But we also know they adapt. And they can use life aether to regenerate.”

  My gaze drifted back to the writhing ground below.

  “Which means the salt isn’t the problem,” I said quietly. “The life is.”

  Time stretched. Three heartbeats. Four.

  My fingers snapped.

  “That’s it.”

  I spun, already moving. “I’ll be back,” I shouted over my shoulder to Malorn and Fern. “Try not to win the war without me.”

  He snorted, loosing another arrow.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I vaulted off my crate, staff tapping stone as I sprinted down the wall, halfling legs pumping as fast as they’d go.

  I needed Master Forloth.

  And I needed to figure out how to make entropy-infused salt.

  —

  (Pov King Strider)

  I stood at the long stone table with both hands resting against its surface.

  The chamber beneath the High Keep was old. Older than Aurelith itself. It had been carved deep into bedrock once believed unassailable. Soft aether-lamps lined the walls, their pale glow holding back the darkness without offering warmth. Maps lay spread before us, etched with sigils and shifting markers that tracked tremors, aether saturation, and parasitical spread.

  None of them offered comfort.

  The earthquakes had continued. More frequent and getting stronger by the day.

  “What have we learned?” I asked.

  The robed aether-savant inclined her head. “Nothing definitive, Your Majesty. The tremors originate far beneath the city, below even the oldest foundations of stone. There is no sign of collapse or conventional tunneling.”

  “And no single source,” another councilor added. “No fault line. No void pocket. Whatever causes it is distributed.”

  I felt my jaw tighten. “Anything else?”

  The pause stretched longer than I liked.

  “There is a slow but consistent increase in foul aether beneath Aurelith,” the savant said carefully. “The signature matches the parasitical miasma present throughout Asharkith territory.”

  “How far beneath us?” I asked.

  “It was deep,” she replied quietly. “But it has been advancing quickly. It is seeping through the stone. It will reach the surface soon.”

  A murmur passed through the council.

  “So, we are standing on infected stone,” I said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  I pressed my fingers into the stone table and forced my breathing to slow. “Have we made progress beyond fire and solar, and the other known affinities for countermeasures?”

  An older alchemist stepped forward, his hands stained with ink and reagents. “Limited progress. Most affinities fail once introduced to large-scale parasitical biomass. Adaptation remains their greatest advantage.”

  “And entropy?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “Promising in isolated trials. Volatile and difficult to stabilize. We haven’t found a means to deploy at scale for now. That has been the largest obstacle.”

  A younger alchemist spoke next, her voice precise and careful. “There has been a partial breakthrough. Aether-infused salt.”

  Several heads turned.

  “It is crude but seems stable,” she continued. “Milo brought a potential discovery to Master Forloth. Life-aligned salt causes localized damage before their regeneration compensates. They are working on creating some entropy-infused salt.”

  “It is still conjectural,” she said. “But models suggest it may disrupt cohesion rather than just damage tissue. That could bypass regeneration entirely.”

  “Could?” I said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. There are no guarantees.”

  “How close are we?”

  “If there are no complications, we expect our first batch within a day.”

  The room shifted. The first potential breakthrough that could scale.

  “I want you test other affinities as soon as possible,” I said.

  “Immediately. Everything that can be safely bound to salt and produced in quantity.” She replied.

  I nodded once. “Do it quickly. I fear we may not have much more time.”

  Silence followed.

  I turned back to the maps, my gaze tracing tremor lines spreading beneath the city like fractures in glass.

  If the ground beneath Aurelith was changing, then this war was no longer only at our gates.

  It was under our feet.

  —

  (POV Milo)

  “Yes!” I said. “That’s it.”

  Master Forloth raised a hand without looking at me. “Do not touch it.”

  I froze, fingers still half-lifted. The salt sat in a shallow stone tray, dull gray and uneven. It didn’t gleam like life salt or pulse like solar crystal.

  Forloth leaned closer, peering through his lenses. “Stability holding,” he murmured. “Containment is intact.”

  I swallowed. “So, it worked?”

  “It has not failed yet,” he said. “Those are not the same thing.”

  He straightened slowly and finally looked at me. His expression was controlled, but his eyes were bright with focus.

  “Explain my how we got to these results,” he said.

  I took a breath. “The void shard fragment provided the affinity. The chronothistle kept the binding from decaying. Instead of damaging tissue, it should disrupt cohesion. Structure. The thing that lets the nidus stay… themselves.”

  Forloth nodded once. “Good.”

  Forloth reached for a warded basin etched with old sigils. With practiced care, he lifted a single grain of the salt using alchemical tweezers.

  “Observe,” he said.

  He released it.

  The grain struck the stone and vanished without sound. A heartbeat later, a shallow depression formed, edges rough and fractured.

  I felt my pulse in my throat.

  “This just might work,” I said.

  “Yes,” Forloth replied. “It should unravel the Asharkith’s parasitical growth.”

  He sealed the remaining salt into a small iron vial layered with containment runes and held it out to me.

  “Take this to the walls,” he said. “Test it against their active growth. Start with the smallest amount possible.”

  I accepted the vial with both hands. It felt heavier than it should have.

  “If it works?” I asked.

  “Then we finally have a way for everyone to fight these things,” he said. “If it fails, you withdraw…I am not sure how much time we have left. We will have to make haste with others trying to create something else.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  He studied me for a long moment. “Share the runes with the craftsmen as well. We will need to start etching weapons and equipment with them so we can coat our weapons in the salt without them deteriorating.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then go. The walls will give us our answer.”

  I turned for the door, the vial secure at my side.

  For the first time in days, my steps felt lighter.

  —

  The wall smelled worse than before.

  Rot and hot stone and that sour-sweet alchemy smoke that clung to the back of my tongue. The parasitic growth had crept another arm span closer while I’d been gone. It pulsed faintly, wet and patient, pressed up against the warded stone.

  Malorn stood a few paces down the parapet, bow in hand releasing arrows without pause.

  “You look like you stole something important,” he said without turning.

  “It was given to me!” I replied, setting my crate down and climbing onto it. “I can be trusted with dangerous things.”

  He glanced over then, silver eyes flicking to the iron vial at my hip. “You, did it?”

  With my alchemical enchanted gloves in place, I uncorked the vial just enough to let a pinch slide into my palm.

  “I need a controlled test,” I said. “One arrow.”

  Malorn studied the salt, then reached back and drew a single shaft from his quiver. The arrowhead was narrow, etched with layered runes that caught the light as he turned it.

  “These can take more abuse than most,” he said.

  “That’s what I needed,” I said.

  I pressed the salt gently along the arrowhead, just enough to coat the edge. The runes flared once, then settled.

  “That’s a good sign,” I murmured.

  Below us, a cluster of winged things wheeled closer, membranes stitched together with blackened veins. Farther down, a bipedal nidus dragged itself along the growth, limbs forming and reforming as it moved.

  “Take the flier first,” I said. “Center mass.”

  Malorn nocked the arrow. Drew. Released.

  The arrow sang.

  It struck the creature midair.

  A black sphere formed where Malorn hit the creature, and it began to spread through its muscles and membranes.

  It reached one wing, and the membranes lost tension, edges fraying inward as if the idea of being a wing no longer made sense. The creature shrieked once before its other wing followed suit. It dropped hard, hitting the growth below.

  We both leaned forward.

  The nidus convulsed, flesh bubbling as it tried to heal. Usually that took seconds.

  This time, the damaged area collapsed inward instead. The structure folded, pulling surrounding tissue with it like cloth unraveling at a bad seam.

  It did not regenerate.

  The creature spasmed, then went still, a core rolling free before it disintegrated into dust.

  I let out a slow breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  “Yes!” I shouted. “Now, let’s try this.”

  I sprinkled a thin line of salt just over the stone lip of the wall, right where the parasitic growth pressed against the wards.

  The grains descended through the air.

  A moment later, the growth recoiled as it began to peel back.

  The blackened flesh puckered and collapsed, pulling away from the stone in a slow, almost reluctant retreat. Where it had been, the ground looked… ordinary. Scarred. Cracked. But clean.

  No regrowth followed.

  “We might have done it,” I whispered.

  Malorn’s voice was shocked. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

  A deeper rumble rolled beneath us. Smaller than the quakes before, but close. The stone under my feet thrummed like a struck bell.

  I swallowed. “One more test.”

  I coated another arrow. “Ground target this time.”

  Malorn nodded and fired into the densest cluster below.

  The arrow punched through a lumbering nidus and buried itself in the growth beneath.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then the ground around the impact point sagged.

  It sank, collapsing inward tendrils snapped and fell limp. The nidus toppled sideways, half its body folding in on itself, unable to hold form.

  “That’s it,” I said, words tumbling out. “I have to get back to Master Forloth. We need more of this.”

  I poured half the remaining salt into one of my gloves and set it beside Malorn.

  “Give them hell,” I said.

  Then I flipped my collapsible staff, felt it lock into place, and began vaulting back toward the alchemists’ chamber.