Prince Hadran had chased the rot for three weeks, and every trail he followed died before it led anywhere. His villages were sick behind him. Crops turned black. Wells soured. He wanted the head of the beast that spread it, because a head like that would make his name his own. But he had no true trail, only rumors, and while he guessed wrong the sickness crept north toward homes he had sworn to protect. He reined in his horse at a pig farm with timber walls and a sagging thatched roof. The smell hit him first. Not manure. Something under it, sweet and wrong. "Careful," Tallius said. His squire drew his blade. "That's the smell from the burned wheat." Hadran dismounted. In the pens stood a herd of pigs, but they were dead things walking. Their flesh hung in ribbons. Their eyes glowed yellow. They did not squeal. They only watched. A man crouched in the mud between them, thin as a rail, dirt caked to his beard. He flinched when Hadran opened the gate. "Don't," the farmer whispered. "They don't like the gate. Please." His voice cracked. "They won't let me leave. Three days I've sat here." "Who did this?" Hadran asked. "A man came at dusk. Touched the trough. The pigs died and then they got up." The farmer pointed a shaking hand past the barn. "He went that way. Toward the river." A trail. At last, a real one. Hadran felt his chest tighten with it. Then the cold came. Green vapor rolled across the pens. The pigs turned their heads as one. From the mist stepped a hooded shape, tall and thin, bones showing under a rotted cloak. Worms moved on its skull. It held a rusted scythe. "You followed the smell," the figure said. Flat. Certain. "Most run from it." "You spread the rot," Hadran said. He drew his elven sword. The edge caught the dim light. "You're the one killing my land." "I am Malachar." The necromancer did not raise the scythe. "The rot follows me. I do not command it." Hadran charged. His blade cut through the vapor and struck the cloak. The elven steel bit deep, and Malachar staggered back, hissing. Green smoke poured from the wound. But the scythe swung low and grazed Hadran's arm. It did not draw blood. It drew something worse. For one breath, Hadran wanted to drop the sword and kneel in the mud and stop. He gritted his teeth and pushed the feeling down. He swung again. Malachar's form broke apart into mist and worms, sinking into the ground before the blade landed. The pigs collapsed, still at last. The farmer wept. Hadran stood alone in the emptying fog. He had found the beast. He had wounded it. And he had learned it could not be killed by cutting mist. He wiped his blade and looked toward the river.

Hadran followed the river toward the mountains. The trail of dead grass led him and Tallius to a place where small waterfalls spilled from the rocks. Behind the water hung a dark cave mouth. Green vapor leaked from the gap and curled across the pool. Malachar had gone to ground here. But Hadran still had no way to strike a foe made of mist. "He'll slip away again," Tallius said. "Cutting fog does nothing." "I know," Hadran said. "I need more than my sword." Hooves splashed behind them. Hadran turned, blade up. A dwarf rode from the trees on an armored boar. His red beard held stone beads. He carried a two-handed hammer, and the hammer burned with white light. He stopped and studied the cave without fear. "Tiroc Stouthammer," the dwarf said. "I've tracked this rot for three winters. It killed a whole village in one night. That was his work." He nodded at the cave. "You wounded him." "With elven steel," Hadran said. "He turned to mist and fled." "Steel won't finish him." Tiroc lifted the hammer. The runes on its head glowed brighter. "Light burns corruption. Mist or bone, it burns the same. My weapon does what yours can't." Hadran looked at the burning hammer, then at his own sword. He wanted the kill for himself. He wanted the head to carry home. But pride would let the necromancer escape north to more villages. "Then we go in together," Hadran said. "I hold him. You strike." Tiroc dismounted. "Agreed." They stepped through the falling water into the dark. Cold air pressed on them. Malachar rose from the cave floor, cloak hanging from skeletal shoulders, worms moving on his skull. He raised the rusted scythe. "Two of you now," the necromancer said. "It changes nothing." He swung. Hadran caught the scythe on his blade and shoved it wide. Malachar began to dissolve, his edges thinning into vapor. "Now!" Hadran shouted. Tiroc drove the hammer forward. White fire flooded the cave. It caught the mist before it could scatter and held it in place. The vapor could not sink into the ground. It burned. Malachar screamed, a dry sound, as the light ate through the smoke and the bones inside it. The worms shriveled. The cloak fell empty. The scythe clanged on the stone and lay still. Silence, but for the falls behind them. Hadran breathed hard. The thing that had rotted his lands was gone. Tiroc lowered his hammer and looked at the empty cloak. "That was the servant," he said. "Not the source." "What?" Hadran said. "The rot in your villages. It came from farther north. He carried it. He didn't make it." Tiroc turned toward the mountains beyond the falls. "There's a beast up there. Blighted. It bleeds this sickness into the land. Kill it, and the rot stops." Hadran looked at the snow-capped peaks. His true beast waited there.

The climb took two days. Hadran and Tiroc rode into the northern mountains, where the peaks rose in jagged rows against a gray sky. Snow deepened. The trail of dead grass gave way to blackened ice. Near the summit they found the lair. Spikes of blue ice framed a dark cave mouth. Green vapor bled from the opening and stained the snow. "I don't know what it is," Hadran said. "Or how to kill it. My sword failed against the servant. This is worse." "Then we ask someone who knows." Tiroc pointed his hammer down the ridge. A figure walked up through the storm, untouched by the wind. Hadran had met him once before, at the edge of a healed grove. The old elf whose body was split down the middle. One half of his face shone white and living. The other half was black and shriveled, an eye lit with cold fire. Demetri leaned on a wooden staff and studied the cave without fear. "You came far to die," Demetri said. "We came to end the rot," Hadran said. "Tiroc says the source is in there." Demetri nodded. "A serpent. Once it guarded these peaks. The blight took it and never let go." He raised his dark hand. "Your steel means nothing to it. His fire will hurt it. But burning it only scatters the rot into the ground. You'd poison the mountain for a hundred years." "Then how?" Hadran said. "You don't kill the rot. You move it." Demetri drew a seed from his robe. "Hold the beast still. Tiroc burns a wound in it. I pull the blight out through the wound and pour it into this. The seed holds the balance. The serpent dies clean." Hadran gripped his sword. "How long must I hold it?" "Longer than you'll want to." They entered the ice. The serpent uncoiled from the dark, wreathed in frost, its dead eye burning green. It lunged. Hadran met it. He drove his blade into its jaw and shoved with all his weight, pinning the great head against the ice. The cold ate through his gauntlets. His arms shook. "Now!" he shouted. Tiroc swung the burning hammer into the serpent's throat. White fire opened a wound. Demetri stepped close and pressed his dark hand to the burn. Black smoke poured from the beast into the seed in his palm. The serpent thrashed. Hadran held. His boots slid on ice. He held. The green light in the serpent's eye faded to gray. Its body slackened and fell still against the stone. Hadran let go and dropped to his knees, breathing hard. The seed in Demetri's hand had swelled, dark and pulsing. "It's done," Demetri said. "The rot leaves your lands now." Hadran looked at the dead serpent. He had his beast. But the imposter who wore his colors still walked free, and no severed head would answer for that.