Book One – Chapter 5

Witches, divided as warfaring covens, were united against wizards. Beyond the prospect of killing a wizard, individual witches had motivation aplenty to strengthen the Vicha for their own ends. They could sow chaos as it traversed the land, or follow in its wake, anticipating the moment it claimed its victim. In doing so, they could reap the spoils left behind — the possessions and remnants of the fallen wizard. With that, even the most destitute witch could become a harbinger of doom if her meagre Vicha was continuously fuelled by others. It could be sustained indefinitely, forcing the cursed wizard into unending flight and fugue, forever uncertain of when or in what form the Vicha might reappear. Even if the adept wizard managed to evade the Vicha, it left behind a destructive trail.

In this unforgiving world, no mercy was extended to a cursed wizard. Allow enough time to pass, and if not the Vicha or witches, it will be headhunters seeking your life, solely to halt the nightmarish cycle perpetuated by the malevolent entity. In the grand scheme, your life held no weight against the Vicha’s ominous potential for endless growth. It was a foreboding entity with no known limits, capable of swallowing villages or, in the chaos of war, entire armies.

And Yves, clinging to the hope that the desolate expanses of the Northlands would exhaust the Vicha, had instead birthed a colossal desert monstrosity. The very terrain he believed would eradicate the curse had now become the breeding ground for an escalating nightmare. Yves struggled to fathom the aftermath of the Vicha fully consuming this living mountain. Staring at the merging horrors — the dreadful curse that he had tried to evade for the last two months entwining with the behemoth creature that had nearly claimed their lives moments ago — a dire realisation dawned on him: “We need to stop it.”