Magus Reborn [Stubbing in Three Weeks]

379. Morning crisis

Kai ended up spending nearly a full day inside his astral space.Even when he first realized how much time had passed, he did not leave immediately.

What he had found—what he had started piecing together from his master’s notes and his own thoughts—was too important to abandon halfway through. Some plans could survive being rough at the edges, but this was not one of them. Not with what stood in front of them.

There would be no second chance.

If he brought this plan to his party and they followed him through with it, then the outcome would be absolute in one direction or the other. They would either die, or they would somehow succeed in getting their hands on the Elder Tree seed. And even if they managed that impossible part, escaping the earth plane afterward would become an entirely different problem waiting to tear them apart.

That was reason enough to be careful.

So Kai stayed where he was and kept working through it.

He turned the idea over from every angle he could think of, tested its weak points in his mind, stripped it down and rebuilt it again and again, trying to leave as few holes in it as possible. Each answer brought another question. Each possible path opened into another risk. Time slipped past without much meaning while he forced himself to keep thinking, keep refining, keep searching for the places where everything might collapse.

It took far longer than he would have liked.

At some point, he became aware of how fortunate he had been that nothing in the forest had chosen to disturb him while he sat by the waterbody.

Only when he had done all he could—when the plan felt as solid as he was capable of making it—did Kai finally pull himself back out of the astral space.

When he opened his eyes, the natural light of the plane had risen to its brightest point. The clearing around the pond felt quieter than before. Only a few spirits lingered near the water now, scattered and unbothered, and Kai spared them no more than a passing glance before he moved.

Mana surged into his legs, and he shot forward through the forest.

This time he did not drift half-lost through the trees as he had before. He moved with purpose, moving between the massive trunks, avoiding the thick hanging vines entirely, taking the cleanest path he could toward the camp his party had made. The wind tore past him as he went, leaves and branches flashing at the edges of his vision while his senses stretched ahead.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, another thought pressed at him.

He had likely worried his party more than he should have.

Leaving the camp as he did and then remaining gone for so long had not been fair to them, and he knew that. But by the time the thought had truly taken shape, he had already been too deep in the work to pull himself away from it.

Regret would not make the delay any shorter now. So he did the only thing left to him—he flew faster.

And when the shape of the camp finally came into range of his senses, Kai let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding.

He found all of them still there.

They were seated on the same rough logs around the fire, each with a bowl in hand, still working through what remained of the herbal soup Elder Caelith had prepared earlier. The sight of them, safe and whole, loosened something in Kai’s chest before he even spoke.

Then every eye turned toward him.

All of them stood at once, and Elias was the first to find his voice. It came out less like a greeting and more like a bark.

“So you’re not dead,” the old man snapped. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been gone?”

Kai let the words hit him without flinching. “I know it’s been sometime,” he said. “I got occupied.”

“Occupied with what?” Elias shot back. “Were you trying to sneak into the spirit king’s castle by yourself like some half-crazed thief?”

Kai shook his head. “If I had tried that, I wouldn’t be standing here now,” he said. “I don’t even know what kind of defenses the castle has.”

Veridia spoke next, her tone much calmer, though not much softer. “That is actually the only reason we were certain you weren’t dead,” she said. “We never heard any explosions, and you are not the sort of man who fights quietly.”

She paused, studying him. “So where were you? And more importantly, I hope you’ve had enough time to calm down and decide we should leave.”

At that, Kai smiled faintly.

Instead of answering right away, he stepped closer to the fire and picked up one of the untouched bowls of soup. Hunger had crept up on him while he was in his astral space, and the smell alone was enough to remind him how long it had been since he last ate. He lifted the bowl and drank from it without ceremony, the warmth of the soup settling through him as the others watched in silence.

Only after lowering the empty bowl did he look around at them properly.

“Actually,” Kai said, “that’s what I wanted to speak to all of you about. There’s been a change in the plan.”

Elder Caelith’s expression shifted at once. “What kind of change?” the elf asked. “Are we not returning?”

“We are,” Kai said. “Just not yet.”

That answer did not ease anyone. Kai continued before they could interrupt. “I’ll prepare the ritual circle to send us back,” he said. “But we won’t use it until we have the Elder Tree seed in our hands.”

The reaction was immediate.

Elias stared at Kai as if he had finally lost his mind. Elder Caelith looked even worse, as though he was still trying to decide whether he had heard correctly at all. Killian and Claire said nothing, but both of them kept their eyes on him with the same expectant stillness, clearly waiting for him to continue. Veridia, meanwhile, looked like she had just swallowed something rotten.

“What do you mean, we’re going to get the Elder Tree seed?” she asked. “Did you happen to find one lying somewhere while wandering through the forest?”

Kai looked at her. “If I have, wouldn't I already be preparing the ritual?”

Killian spoke before Veridia could answer. “Then how are we going to get them, Lord Arzan?”

Kai drew in a breath and did his best to look more certain than he felt.

“We’re going to steal one,” he said. “We’ll pull off a heist, take the seed, and leave the earth plane as quickly as possible. After that…” He paused briefly. “We pray the spirit king has no way to follow us into our world.”

He had not even finished speaking before the weight of everyone's stares sharpened.

Question after question sat plainly in their eyes. Elias, in particular, looked one breath away from asking whether Kai had finally gone mad.

So he spoke again before anyone else could.

“I haven’t lost my mind,” he said. “I have a plan.”

Elder Caelith scratched at his hair, his expression still caught somewhere between disbelief and worry.

“I don’t know what kind of plan would make something like that possible,” the elder said. “Do you have any idea how many spirits might be inside that castle? And that’s before we even speak of the spirit king itself.”

“Hundreds,” Kai said at once. “At the very least. And if the earth sovereign was right, then the security around the garden where the seeds are kept will be even heavier.”

Veridia stared at him for a moment, then gave a short, humorless sound.

“Then why do you think we can steal anything from there?” she asked. “Did you somehow become a Ninth-Circle Mage in the space of a day? Or have you just decided you want to march us all to our deaths for no reason?”

Kai shook his head. “Nothing like that,” he said. “As I said, I have a plan. I came up with it while I was away, and I believe it can work. None of us can take on Spirit King Vaelthoros directly. That much should be obvious by now. But we are more than capable of creating distractions strong enough to pull its attention where we want it. I’m not planning to confront it head-on. If this works, then we do it without it even realizing what’s happening until it’s already too late.”

Elias frowned harder. “And how exactly is that supposed to happen?” the old Magus asked. “What is this plan of yours? Are you about to suggest turning one of us into a suicide Mage and having them detonate their own Mana heart just to make enough noise outside the castle?”

At that, Veridia visibly paled.

“I would never agree to something like that,” she said immediately.

Kai gave a small smile.

“That isn’t my plan,” he said. “And even if it were, it wouldn’t work. The spirits would understand what was happening long before we got anywhere near the castle.”

He looked around at all of them, one by one. “Just listen first.”

Then he began to explain.

He went through the plan from beginning to end, laying out each step in the order he intended it to happen. He started with the first movement and carried it all the way to the last, speaking without hurry, making sure none of the important parts were left vague. As he did, he could see the expressions around the camp changing. Elias looked openly unconvinced. Elder Caelith’s face tightened more than once. Even Killian and Claire, though better at hiding it, watched him with the sort of look people reserved for someone who had either seen something brilliant or completely mad.

Kai could not blame them.

Anyone hearing it for the first time would think it sounded insane.

He had thought the same when the shape of it first began forming in his own mind. The only reason he could stand there and say it with any confidence now was because he had already spent hours turning it over from every side he could find, cutting away the weaker versions of it, forcing himself to think through the parts where it might break. By the time he had returned to camp, he had done everything he could to make sure this was not just madness dressed up as confidence, but an actual path toward what they needed.

Even after he reached the end of the explanation, he did not stop there.

He went back through it again, this time in more detail. He explained the reasoning behind each decision, why one step had to come before another, where the risks lay, and what each part was meant to accomplish. He knew very well that this was not the kind of plan he could simply announce and expect the others to follow without question. Something like this  preparation and scrutiny. And more than anything, it demanded that everyone involved understood exactly what they were stepping into.

Every one of them had to be part of it.

There was no version of the plan where only half the group understood what was happening while the rest followed blindly. If Kai expected them to agree to something like this, then they deserved every piece of information he could give them.

So that was exactly what he did.

He went through each person’s role one by one, explaining what they would be responsible for, what might go wrong at their part of the plan, what kinds of opposition they were likely to face, and how good—or bad—their chances were of making it back through all of it. He did not soften any of it. There was no point pretending this was the sort of scheme where everyone walked in, did their part, and returned safely if they followed instructions well enough.

There was real risk. A high chance, even, that one of them might not come back. Perhaps more than one.

Kai made that clear.

At the same time, he told them plainly that he would do everything in his power to get every one of them out of the earth plane alive. But even as he said it, he could tell the promise did little to ease the weight settling over the camp.

When he finally stopped speaking, silence followed, and it wasn’t short.

Long enough that Kai became painfully aware of every sound around them—the crackle of the fire, the stir of leaves beyond the camp, the slow shift of spirits far above in the trees. More than ten minutes passed that way, and every second of it felt worse than the last.

Killian and Claire eventually sat down again, though neither of them relaxed. Now and then they glanced up at Kai, then away. Elias could not sit still at all. He paced back and forth across the camp, muttering under his breath, opening his mouth now and then as if he meant to say something, only to think better of it and keep moving instead. Elder Caelith sat with his head lowered and his eyes closed, so still that for a moment Kai thought the old elf had already accepted the shape of his death and was merely waiting for the rest of them to catch up.

Veridia was harder to read.

She kept looking at him with an expression that never quite settled into one thing. Doubt, irritation, thought, disbelief—each of them passed over her face in turn, only to give way to the next before Kai could decide which mattered most.

In the end, she was the one who broke the silence.

Rubbing a hand over her forehead, she let out a breath and said, “I have never heard a plan this insane.”

Kai almost smiled. “I don’t think a reasonable plan gets us out of this.”

Veridia lifted a hand before he could say more.

“Don’t,” she said. “Just answer this.” Her eyes fixed on him. “How confident are you that you can actually pull it off? You’re the center of it. If your part fails, the rest collapses with it.”

Kai did not answer immediately.

He felt everyone’s attention gather on him again, heavier than before. The truth sat in him plainly enough, but speaking it aloud made it feel harsher somehow, but he managed to do so after a minute.

“Twenty-five percent if I’m still at the fifth circle. Sixty if I manage to reach the sixth.”

***

A loud knock jolted Heath awake so suddenly that he nearly rolled out of bed.

He caught himself at the last second and blinked up at the ceiling above him, the same familiar ceiling he had been staring at for nearly six decades now. Not once in all that time had waking to a knock ever made him eager to climb out of bed and face whatever new problem the village had managed to produce.

Maybe taking up the mantle of village chief had been a mistake.

A few years ago, it still felt manageable. Tiresome, yes, but manageable. Since his wife’s death, though, and since his son had left for Veralt to try and build a better life for himself, the weight of it had only grown heavier. Some mornings Heath felt as if the whole village had become little more than a list of burdens waiting for him to drag himself through. Maybe he should just—

Another knock cut through his thoughts.

Heath cursed under his breath, pushed himself up, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His knees protested the moment he put weight on them. He muttered another curse, found his footwear by feel, and shuffled toward the door.

Before the knock could come a third time, he undid the latch and pulled the door open with a glare already on his face.

The man standing there was Marek, one of the few farmers still left in the village who had not packed up and gone elsewhere in search of better fortunes. But the irritation on Heath’s tongue died the moment he looked properly at him.

There was fear in the man’s eyes.

“What happened—?” Before he could complete his words, Marek spoke in a rush.

“Village Chief, you need to come with me. My fields—something’s happened to them. They’ve all turned black, like someone cursed them.”

“Cursed?” Heath repeated, the word coming out sharper than he meant it to. “Why would anyone curse your fields? We don’t have Mages here. We barely have enough people left to steal chickens, let alone curse farmland. And there aren’t even any beasts around that could do such a thing.”

Marek shook his head quickly. “I don’t know, Village Chief. Just come and see it for yourself. I didn’t even dare touch it.”

Heath wanted to tell him to calm down. Wanted to say that panic made fools out of men faster than any curse ever could. But the look on Marek’s face stopped him.

So instead, he gave a short nod and stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind him, locked it, and followed.

It was still early morning, and the cold wind bit at Heath’s skin the moment he stepped out, but he simply followed.

The two of them moved through the village in silence, passing between the scattered houses and narrow paths until the fields began to open up ahead. For a while, Heath saw nothing unusual, only the familiar stretch of farmland he had looked over so many times before, but then the farmer lifted a trembling hand and pointed.

“Just a little ahead,” he said. “The curse is spreading.”

Heath still did not fully understand what the man meant.

Then he saw it for himself, and his steps nearly stopped. In the distance, a section of the wheat field had turned black.

Not burnt black. Not muddy. It looked wrong in a way that made his stomach tighten. The stalks of wheat stood dark and brittle, as though all life had been drained out of them and something foul had been poured in its place. The color was uneven in places, spreading through the crop like rot beneath skin, swallowing the gold that should have been there. Even the earth beneath it looked disturbed—split, darkened, and cracked in jagged lines, as though the field itself had been diseased.

Heath had been here only three days ago. It had not looked like this then.

Now nearly a quarter of the field had been overtaken.

They kept walking toward it, though the closer he got, the more a quiet unease crawled through him. Every step made him feel, for no clear reason, that he should turn around and go back. That whatever had touched the field was not something meant to be approached.

Beside him, Marek swallowed and said, “Like I told you, Village Chief. It looks cursed. I don’t know what to do.”

Heath turned to look at him, his brow furrowing deeper.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he muttered. “Are you certain it wasn’t here yesterday?”

Marek shook his head at once. “No, I swear it wasn’t.”

That answer did nothing to help. As Heath drew closer to the blackened edge of the field, he felt strongly that he ought to call for someone else. Someone with actual knowledge. A Mage, perhaps. But there was no Mage in the village. No one with the skill to make sense of what stood in front of him.

In the end, there was only one thing he could do.

“Let me check it,” he said.

He stepped forward on his own and approached the field.

When he reached the edge of the darkened wheat, he narrowed his eyes and slowly raised a hand. For a brief second, he hesitated, then stretched his fingers toward one of the black stalks.

The moment he touched it, a jolt shot through his arm. Heath stiffened.

In the very next second, he saw the same black curse race across his palm, spreading over his skin.

And dread hit him at once.

***

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