River Hale

How it all began. No one knew where the Corruption came from. Some believed an ancient seal had broken. Others whispered that the world itself had been wounded. The oldest scholars searched forgotten libraries for answers, while priests prayed to silent gods. None of them found the truth. Because by the time anyone understood something was wrong... It was already too late. It began quietly. A shepherd reported that his sheep refused to enter the forest. Hunters spoke of deer with black veins beneath their skin. Birdsong disappeared from entire valleys. Rivers that had flowed crystal clear for centuries became dark enough to reflect no light at all. People dismissed the stories. Until the monsters came. Not creatures from another world. Creatures from this one. Wolves twisted into towering horrors with too many eyes. Bears whose flesh cracked apart to reveal burning crimson light beneath. Ancient trees that tore themselves from the earth, their branches reaching like skeletal hands. Anything touched by the Corruption became something else. Something hungry. Something that no longer remembered what it had once been. The darkness spread like a sickness through the land. Forests blackened. Harvests withered. Entire lakes became poisonous overnight. Even the sky changed. There were nights when the moon rose blood red, and shadows stretched far longer than they should. People stopped travelling. Villages built walls. Kingdoms closed their gates. Roads that had once been filled with merchants and laughter became silent. Then the first cities fell. One by one. Not always destroyed... Sometimes they were simply... Empty. Doors left open. Meals still warm upon tables. Children's toys abandoned in the streets. No bodies. No survivors. Only silence. Fear spread faster than the Corruption itself. Neighbours began distrusting neighbours. Magic users were blamed. Kings declared martial law. Some kingdoms collapsed into chaos before a single corrupted beast ever reached them. Hope became rarer than food. Yet even in the darkest years... There were still those who refused to surrender. Knights who stood against impossible odds. Mages who exhausted every ounce of magic shielding villages. Healers who worked until their hands trembled with exhaustion. Ordinary people who chose courage over fear. Among them was a seventeen-year-old boy from a small mountain village. A boy with black hair. Blue eyes. And a wooden practice sword that would soon be replaced by steel. His name... ...was River. And though he could not know it then, the fate of countless lives would one day intertwine with his own.

Updated September 23, 2026