Taran Sandhin’s hands shook as he counted the Rot Leaves in his bag. He had been out on his own a full week now, painstakingly gathering Rot Leaf from the sparse growth in the surrounding plains. Rot Leaf was known colloquially in the surrounding villages as “Divine Mockery” due to the fact it thrives in areas of death and decay yet is one of the few plants known to slow the progress of the Crawling Rot. The immediate irony was not lost on Taran as he shifted the contents of his pack around. Seventeen leaves, a weeks worth of lonely wandering had netted him only seventeen leaves. Enough for three weeks of blissful relief from her wasting disease, perhaps even six weeks if they were able to convince Alchemist Vessanta to prepare the plant, but in some ways the time he spent away from his sister never felt worth it for such a paltry harvest. Anya was expecting him back today. He must be back today, her supply of Rot Leaf would be running dangerously low at this point.

  Grimacing, he hauled himself back to his feet, nervously glancing behind him at the gathering silver-grey clouds that seemed to ominously track his every step. There were few things as dangerous in this world as being caught out in a Thousand-Hand Storm on the Ash Plains, though the storms didn’t bother him nearly as much as the silence. The rot-damned silence of this place always got to him, no mere absence of sound, but a devouring presence that seemed to erase the very memory of noise. There is too much room for thought in silence, and in thought, too much room for despair.

  There were of course much better spots to harvest Rot Leaf, but for a “Wheel-Broken” like himself, there weren’t many options that didn’t represent certain death. The Ash Plains of the Sundered Hills were a desolate wasteland full of their own dangers, but it was one of the only areas surrounding his village that wasn’t crawling with Pretas, corrupted beasts, or worse. He found some grim humor in his wandering of a lifeless desert of ash that even the Voidtouched couldn’t abide.

  Hoisting his pack over his shoulder, he once again set off through the dry ash, determined to reach Akshaya Village by mid-day. The name of his village always made him laugh, “Akshaya,” loosely translated from the ancient Sanskrit as “imperishable” or “eternal.” What a name for a village seemingly anything but. Akshaya was one of the last remaining villages at the edge of the Sundered Hills. The Ash Plains slowly encroached further in towards their village step by creeping step. Sometimes Taran would almost have preferred a quick end compared to the dreadful, slow decay.

  Lost in thought, Taran didn’t notice the three men walking towards him until it was too late to try to avoid them. The Ash Plains swallowed noise as if it hungered for more than just the land. Taran stopped and waited. It was eerie watching the men approach without greeting, without footsteps, without any sound at all. By the time they made their way up to him, his nerves were fully frayed. He hated the rot-damned silence of this place.

  “Wheel-Broken! What are you doing all the way out here on your own,” the first man sneered, “I was expecting you to have run home with your tail tucked days ago.” The other men laughed at his cruel joke.

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  Gods… why them, why did it have to be them?

  “Thank you for your concern… I was just now heading home,” Taran replied with forced deference as he resumed walking towards the village, only to be stopped by the second man stepping in front of him. All three men now encircled him, their sneering, laughing, mocking faces webbed with the Creeping Rot’s telltale black fracturing. He felt trapped. He knew he was trapped.

  “I… I need to get to my sister,” Taran stammered, “she needs me, she needs this Rot Leaf… please.”

  Taran felt a harsh shove from behind as the third man ripped the pack from his shoulder, taking as many leaves from it as he could manage and spilling the precious remnants all over the ashen ground.

  “You think your sister’s the only one dying here, Wheel-Broken? You need to share this bounty,” the man said, in a way that felt so genuine it almost made Taran doubt himself for a moment before reality and anger took hold.

  “You rot-damned bastard!” Taran screamed as he threw all his despair and rage into one desperate, ill-informed punch. All his hard work, a week’s worth of searching these rot-damned plains, ruined. The Ash covering the leaves would render them useless for treating the Crawling Rot. The Ash took something from all it touched, and the leaves, though they grew there, were no exception. Some part of him knew his struggle was pointless, a large part at that, but what did he have to lose? The moment his knuckles split against the man’s face, Taran felt a sublime sense of release, and maybe that’s all he needed in this moment, maybe that feeling was worth what came next.

  Suddenly finding himself face-down in the midst of rapidly browning leaves, Taran could do nothing else but curl up as the men took their frustrations out on him, each kick full of the despair and sorrow of inevitable loss that all people near the Sundered Hills felt. Some held their sorrows quietly within, while others violently, and always in vain, tried to push it out. The men didn’t laugh while they beat him. There was little humor to be had in this place, even humor such as this, humor at his expense, humor as an attempt to avoid the crushing reality they faced. Taran knew the men would be dead in weeks without the Rot Leaf, the “Divine Mockery”name feeling more true and more personal than ever, but that knowledge didn’t help the fact that his sister would be as well.

  The men simply left him there, alive but covered in Ash and the smashed remnants of the hope the Rot Leaves had represented. As he came to, once again it was the abrupt silence that he noticed first. Silence that was slowly filled with the dripping sounds of his hot, angry tears mixing with the Ash. That same part of him that knew his struggle had been pointless told him to just lay there, let the Ash take him, let the Thousand-Hand Storm come, let all of the struggle just… end. Maybe he would have had it not been for his sister. His sister… all he had left in this world after The Vesakhanma Fracture took their parents years ago.

  The ash-laden alms bowl that hung from his belt was all he had left of his father, and it seemed to grow heavy as he forced his aching body to stand with a grim determination. His broken body tormented him as he picked up his ripped pack and what little was left of his pride.

  Unseen in the storm clouds above, a thousand stone fingers twitched—not in mockery of his suffering, but in recognition, as if the gathering clouds had tasted his despair and yearned to seal their bargain. The petrified fingers flexed the same mudra Taran’s mother had carved into his chest years ago. Taran’s Karmic Seals burned in sympathy as he began to trudge slowly onward in the ever-present silence towards Akshaya, unaware that the silence now bore a name: Mara.