*Lazlo*

The day after the trial, the first raid came at dawn–quick, surgical, and devastating. By nightfall, there were four more. Outposts are gutted. Scouts vanish. Forests burn and are left crawling with curses. Montelune is under siege.

Villagers whisper of strange lights floating in the woods at midnight. One settlement awoke to find their wells poisoned with blackened water, leaving livestock sick and dying by morning. Another reports entire forests twisted by blighted trees, tendrils of dark magic snaking through the soil, choking life from the earth itself.

In one village, a mother’s scream tore through the night when her child’s eyes rolled back and his words switched to...