Leon the Great's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Leon the Great had killed monsters born of the blight, but none would tell him how the blight began. The rot spread from Blightspire Fortress like a stain across Aspenfall's holy fields. Somewhere inside that thorn-wrapped keep stood the fallen champion Leon had sworn to slay. To beat him, Leon needed the truth of his first fall. So he came back to the last village the blight had touched, where the old and the frightened still lived. He found them behind barred doors. Leon set his round shield against a wall and leaned his spear beside it. He knelt in the dust so the villagers would not fear his height. "Tell me how the champion fell," he said. "Only that. Then I leave." An old woman spat at his boots. A shepherd turned his back. One by one they shut their windows. "Speak his name and he hears," the woman whispered through the crack. "Speak of his fall and the cold thing comes for your breath." She would say no more. No one would. Leon understood then. The living could not help him. Their fear was a lock no plea would open. So he changed his plan. He walked to the old shrine at the village edge, where the champion had once been honored. Blue fire crowned Blightspire on the far hills. Leon drove his spear into the cracked altar stone and spoke into the dark. "If no living tongue will answer, then a dead one must." The air went cold enough to sting. Cyan flame climbed from the ground and took the shape of a warrior. His armor was dark and old, marked with swirling lines. Blue fire poured from his back like a burning plume. His eyes glowed under a shrouded helm. This was Theron Shadowhelm, the champion who had led these holy lands before the blight. The man Leon had come to destroy stood before him as a ghost. "You called," Theron said. His voice scraped like a blade on stone. "You want my fall. I will give it. But look upon what asked me to fall." Behind Leon, the earth split. An obsidian creature rose, faceted and black, a cold cyan light pulsing at its core. The chill from it reached Leon's bones. Theron pointed at the thing. "That is what took me. It offered power to save this land. I took it. The blight is what the price looked like." Leon gripped his spear. He had his answer at last. The champion had not chosen evil. He had been hollowed out by the void-born thing now clawing toward Leon. "Then I kill the thing, not you," Leon said. Theron laughed, and it was a broken sound. "You cannot. It shares my death and my life. To free me, you must destroy it inside Blightspire. And it now knows your face." The creature lunged. Leon raised his shield. The truth had opened one door and slammed a harder one shut.