What the World Is Dying Of
Two forces are tearing this world apart. This is what a traveler arriving in Verdanya would have heard — rumors, warnings, and the kind of truths people learn the hard way.
The Verdant Curse is what happens when something fundamental about this land broke. The forest grows wrong. Animals change into things they shouldn't be. And people — people who are hurt by those creatures, who spend too long in the deep wilderness — they begin to change too.
It starts small. A patch of bark on the skin. Moss where a scar used to be. Flowers that bloom from wounds and don't hurt. It gets harder to hide over time. Then it becomes impossible.
What makes it so unsettling is that it isn't always painful. Some people describe the early stages as almost peaceful. A warmth. A sense of connection to something vast and old. That's what makes it dangerous — it doesn't always feel like something going wrong.
The fully transformed are called the Verdant-Born. Some still have their minds. Some don't. Ironhold has standing orders regarding them. The Resistance has a different view. Everyone else is somewhere in between.
Ashlung is a disease of stone. It started in Ironhold — and their desperation to find a cure is the reason Verdanya is occupied at all.
It begins as a dry cough that produces a faint grey dust. Easy to explain away at first. Harder to ignore as the skin hardens, starting at the fingers and spreading inward. Given enough time, it reaches the heart.
Unlike the Verdant Curse, Ashlung offers nothing. No strange beauty. No sense of connection. Just a slow, merciless countdown.
The only treatment anyone knows of is Mourning Roses — rare crimson flowers that grow in Verdanya. Ironhold came here to harvest them. They haven't left.