The village of Oakhaven used to be a masterpiece. It rested in the cradle of the Prismari Valley, a place where the grass was not merely green, but a vibrant, pulsing emerald, and the sunsets looked as though a deity had spilled a palette of crushed rubies and spun gold across the horizon. But that was before the Chalk Blight. For the past six months, a creeping, silent phenomenon had been bleeding the world dry. It started at the edges of the valley, a subtle desaturation that the elders blamed on a harsh winter. But it did not stop. It crept into the cobblestones, the leaves, the roofs of the cottages, turning everything into a brittle, lifeless grayscale. Where the Blight touched, things didn’t just lose their hue; they lost their essence, crumbling into fine, white ash at the slightest touch.
Isolde stood by the window of her chaotic, cluttered workshop, watching a young boy in the street below drop a wooden toy horse. When the toy hit the gray cobblestones, it shattered into a puff of white dust. The boy didn’t cry; his face was a pale, desaturated mask of apathy. The Blight stole joy just as easily as it stole color. Isolde turned away, her heart aching. She looked down at her own hands. They were stained with cerulean, ochre, and deep violet. She was a Chromatic Alchemist, a rare breed of mage who ground magical flora, crushed gems, and captured starlight to create enchanted pigments. She was the only person in Oakhaven who still retained her color. Her wild, curly hair was a defiant auburn, and her eyes remained a piercing, stubborn hazel.
“We are running out of time, Pascal,” Isolde murmured, walking over to her heavy oak workbench.
Sitting on the edge of a mortar and pestle was Pascal, a fist-sized chameleon. Usually, Pascal shifted through a dazzling array of neon pinks, electric blues, and sunny yellows depending on his mood. Today, he was struggling to maintain a muted, sickly lavender. He let out a soft, defeated croak, wrapping his curled tail around Isolde’s thumb as she reached out to pet his crested head.
“I know, my brave boy. The air feels thin today,” she said softly.
Isolde returned her attention to the center of the workbench. Resting on a piece of black velvet was her latest and most desperate discovery. She had found it three days ago in the deepest, most dangerous part of the Whispering Woods, hidden inside the petrified hollow of an ancient, gray oak tree. It was a seed, perfectly round and no larger than a pearl. But it was entirely untouched by the Chalk Blight. It pulsed with a brilliant, blinding, impossible crimson light. It was the Crimson Core, an artifact of myth mentioned only in the crumbling, dusty journals of the first Alchemists.
According to the legends, all color in the world did not come from the sun, but from beneath the earth. It flowed from the Prismatic Font, a colossal, subterranean palette that painted the roots of the world. The journals warned that if the Font ever ran dry, reality itself would become a blank canvas.
Isolde picked up a delicate glass vial and carefully nudged the Crimson Core inside, sealing it with a cork. The red light cast warm, dancing shadows against the gray walls of her workshop. If she stayed here, she would eventually succumb to the Blight. Her paints would dry, her hair would turn to ash, and she would fade into nothingness. She had to take the Core to the Prismatic Font. She had to remix the world.
She packed quickly and practically. She slung a heavy canvas satchel over her shoulder, filling it with her most potent vials of liquid color. She packed Storm-Blue, a pigment brewed from crushed lapis and captured lightning. She packed Sun-Gold, distilled from sunflower petals and high-noon heat. Lastly, she strapped her wooden easel to her back and slid her favorite brush—a beautifully carved wand of polished mahogany with bristles made from unicorn hair—into the loop at her belt.
Stepping out of her workshop, the silence of Oakhaven was deafening. The villagers moved like ghosts, their grayscale eyes unseeing, their voices hushed. The air smelled of chalk and old, dry bones. Pascal scrambled up Isolde’s arm, taking refuge beneath the collar of her heavy leather coat.
“Keep your colors close, Pascal,” Isolde whispered, stepping past the village gates and looking toward the looming, jagged peaks of the Ashen Mountains. “We have a very long way to go, and I fear the canvas is almost empty.”