“ A Call to the Cunning. A Trial for the Tested.”

The breeze off the river carries a strange weight—damp, sour, heady. It clings to your clothes. Settles in your lungs.

Fishermen speak of soft spots in the meat. A gleam in the eye of the catch that wasn’t there before. The reeds along the bank near the fields have begun to darken, curling inward with a kind of sickness no one can name. Even the insects avoid them.

There’s no cause you can point to. No curse declared. But those who pay attention—those who’ve lived long enough to know the signs—feel it.

Something’s changed. Not loud. Not sudden. Just… off.

“Water touched. And the first words were chanted.”

Illarion will soon been called out. Not by name, but by fate. The fields, the river, and the land itself hang in the balance.

- Can the poison be unraveled before it takes root?
- Or will the deluded drink ruin, and call it freedom?