Chapter Forty: Wide Skies and Tight Spaces[edit | edit source]

Meliu oversees the Helmveliners’ relentless digging through Green Mountain’s tunnels, uncovering an ancient aqueduct but no trace of the bone-fingered creatures. A search party’s report of a yellow-eye slaver camp southwest along a river shifts her focus, and she joins Polus, Dondolus, and sixty warriors to investigate. Observing the camp, they plan to lure the yellow-eyes into an ambush, but the slavers refuse to chase Kosef’s bait, forcing a direct assault. As Kosef’s crossbows and Silone arrows disrupt the camp, the yellow-eyes form a shielded formation, revealing a powerful crone wielding Breath Stealer witchery, dropping men without contact. Dondolus, attempting to heal a fallen warrior, is slain by the crone’s bone blade, and Meliu, realizing the witch’s power outranges her own Light and Dark prayers, flees with the surviving Silone and Kingdomers. Hiding in enchanted Dark, Meliu evades the crone’s malevolent presence, later confronting a lone yellow-eye. Unleashing a torrent of Dark-born terrors, she incapacitates him, then mercy-kills him with her dagger. As the yellow-eyes celebrate across the river, Meliu, steeled by her encounter, vows to face the crone, her resolve sharpened by the loss of Dondolus and the urgent need to rescue their captured men.

WoG Chapter 39 — Bone Fingers
WoG Chapter 41 — Impassable Waters
Whispers of Ghosts — Main Chapter Listing