The Urban Legend Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Chapter 106

Years passed, and the Torchbearers' light spread wide across the lands. Their disciplines were taught in village squares and fields, instilling courage and community where once isolation fed fear. Evil was far from extinguished, but held at bay by vigilance and hope.

Until whispers reached the castle of a strange plague creeping across distant borderlands. Crops withered, animals fell ill, and people sickenend with an unnamed malaise. Few died, but many lost the will to carry on, as if sinking into shadowed dreams.

Leonard's old bones chilled at the news. Though progress had slowed him, he departed immediately with a band of Torchbearers to investigate the blight. They marched for weeks over increasingly barren foothills and woodlands. Skeletal trees clawed at the sky, and the scattered inhabitants fled at their approach.

At last they reached a village nestled in a gray, lifeless valley. Not a sound broke the still air but for a faint whimpering like a wounded animal's cry. Moving war