Entry 5: The Outbreak
Age 22 - When Everything Went Wrong
They’re all dead. Seventeen of them. And it’s my fault for waiting too long.
The corruption outbreak started exactly as my visions had warned: Old Mother Seedkeeper tending her hanging gardens, roots growing through her body like she was just another plant to be cultivated. Then the Northwind twins, joined at the spine by writhing vines that pulsed with their shared heartbeat. Then Elder Canopysong, my favorite storyteller, with flowers blooming from his throat, petals falling like tears every time he tried to speak.
I reported to the Reachguard Elders immediately. Showed them the evidence, explained the progression patterns my oracle visions revealed, begged them to authorize immediate action before it spread to the root-network beneath our entire community.
Elder Thornwick demanded “proper procedures.” Forms to be documented. Prayers to be offered to gods who abandoned us over a century ago. Consultations with archives that contained no knowledge of corruption this advanced.
While they debated protocol in their Crown Circle meetings, I watched Whisper-Steps turn.
It happened slowly at first, just like the visions had shown me. Stumbling steps that lasted a moment too long. Words that took strange turns mid-sentence, as if something else was learning how to use his voice. Then his eyes began to reflect light wrong - not the warm amber of our people, but something cold and hungry.
Black veins started spreading up his arms like ink through bark.
I should have acted immediately. Should have trusted my visions over my heart. But this was Whisper-Steps - the only person who believed in me, who saw my abilities as gift rather than curse. The mentor who taught me everything I knew about survival, about protection, about the difference between necessary violence and mindless cruelty.
I kept hoping I was wrong. Kept waiting for some other solution.
By the time I accepted what needed to be done, he was too far gone to save but still aware enough to recognize me. The corruption had stretched his features into something nightmare-ishly wrong, but his eyes - gods help me, his eyes were still him.
He tried to teach me one last lesson as the black veins reached his heart: “Sometimes the kindest cut comes from those who love us most.”
His hands - already growing claws - guided my dagger to his chest. He smiled as the blade went in, and for just a moment the corruption receded enough that I could see my teacher clearly one final time.
“Good student,” he whispered as the light faded from his eyes.
I held his body until dawn, then burned my teacher with my own hands while the ancient trees of Thornhaven Reach bore silent witness. Seventeen piles of ash by the time the sun would have risen, if we could see sky from our underground sanctuary.
The Reachguard Elders found me there, surrounded by the remains of what used to be our people. They didn’t ask how I’d known where to find them all. They didn’t thank me for preventing the spread to our entire community.
Elder Thornwick’s face was carved from stone as he pronounced judgment: “Mass murder. Forbidden aether magic. A corrupted individual who poses ongoing threat to community purity.”
They cast me out for saving them.
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Journal Entry 5 of 10 - The breaking point