A thick pall of fear settled over Blackfen Village in the wake of the traveler's sudden, violent collapse. The incident shattered the fragile relief brought by Rhys's return, replacing it with raw anxiety. Whispers spread like wildfire through the huddled houses—speculation about the aggressive Blight, suspicion directed at all the newcomers, and uneasy glances towards Elara and her miraculously recovered lover. Elara, though still clinging to her joy, couldn't help but notice the shift—the way conversations hushed when she approached, the widened eyes, the subtle tightening around her neighbours' mouths.
Back in their inn room, Edmund paced restlessly while Isolde stared out at the rain-streaked village. "His recovery makes no sense, Ms. Isa," Edmund said, voicing the thought that plagued them both. "And that poor woman… the way the Blight took her was so fast, so vicious. Not like the slow decay the elder described."
"Exactly," Isolde murmured, turning from the window. "Two anomalies. Rhys's impossible health, and a Blight that acts unlike the local strain. They feel connected."
Isolde managed another brief examination of the collapsed traveler, who now lay still and feverish in the isolated shed. The Blight consuming the woman was indeed hyper-aggressive, almost chaotic in its nature, unlike the insidious wasting Maeve had described or the typical progression Isolde knew. It felt… tainted by something else.
Meanwhile, Elara's unease grew. Little things about Rhys began to prick at her consciousness. The way he held his eating utensils felt slightly awkward, unfamiliar. He seemed hesitant when she mentioned shared memories, relying on her to fill in the details. When she tried talking to her neighbor, Old Man Hemlock, about the strange atmosphere, he just shook his head, muttering about "fen tricks" and refusing to meet her eye, deepening her confusion.
Driven by her mounting suspicions, Isolde found a quiet moment when Rhys was near the village palisade, seemingly observing the fen. Focusing her will, she subtly extended her senses, weaving a gentle probe of magic designed not to attack, but to perceive the nature of the Living Essence around him—and detect any illusion. What she felt wasn't the simple masking of a minor glamour. It was a deep, complex weave of magic, ancient and slippery, with an underlying signature that felt wild, mischievous, and fundamentally other. Not human, not Blight… Fae.
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Over the next day, 'Rhys' subtly fanned the flames of fear. He spoke with quiet concern to Elara about the sick woman, suggesting perhaps all the newcomers, except himself, might pose a risk. He expressed worry that the outsiders (pointedly including Edmund and Isolde) were bringing trouble to the village, making Elara feel increasingly isolated.
Isolde, needing more evidence, went back to the shed under the pretext of checking on the sick traveler. While there, she quickly looked through the woman's meager belongings—a worn satchel containing little more than flint, steel, and some dried herbs. Tucked in a side pocket, however, was a smooth, grey river stone. As Isolde's fingers brushed against it, the stone seemed to shimmer for just an instant with an unnatural, oily light, and a single, sibilant word whispered directly into her mind—a word in no language she knew, yet filled with cold amusement. An illusion triggered by touch? A Fae marker?
The puzzle pieces slammed together in Isolde's mind: Rhys's impossible recovery, the complex Fae magic signature, the aggressively unnatural Blight afflicting the traveler (perhaps induced or exacerbated by Fae magic?), the whispers and illusions in the fen, the elder's mention of shapeshifting entities, the trickster stone. It all pointed to one horrifying conclusion.
She found Edmund sharpening his sword by the dim light of their room's single candle. "It's not Rhys," she said, her voice tight with certainty. "It's a Púca."
Edmund looked up, skepticism still etched on his face. "A Fae trickster? Here?"
Isolde quickly laid out the evidence—the Fae magic, the impossible healing, the strange Blight, the stone. "Púca are shapeshifters," she explained, drawing on fragmented lore. "They delight in sowing confusion and fear, feeding on emotions. What better playground than a village gripped by the Blight? It replaced Rhys, probably leaving him for dead in the fen, and has been manipulating Elara and the village ever since."
The conviction in her voice, combined with the mounting evidence and his own lingering unease, finally convinced Edmund. The unnatural frost, the perfectly timed distractions… it all made a terrible kind of sense. "A Fae creature wearing Rhys's face," he breathed, his expression hardening. "What does it want?"
"Mischief? Despair? Perhaps something worse," Isolde replied grimly. "But right now, we need to figure out how to expose it and protect Elara before it decides its game is over." Their objective shifted again—not just understanding the Blight, but confronting a cunning imposter hiding in plain sight.
