Nhalvarn's Red Harvest

Each fall, Nhalvarn's fields were piled high with grain, tall as soldiers and golden as flames. There, farmers were proud, their children strong, their bellies full. One season, however, the grain bent low as though it were being forced down by something invisible, rising too quickly and thickly. A sticky substance that adhered to skin and hurt like nettles was swept from stalks.

It was dubbed red dew by the farmers.

They believed it to be harmless until the first child fell. A seven-year-old boy's skin swelled until his arm exploded in ribbons of raw flesh, and his hand burned where he had touched the resin. He has survived long enough to yell that fire was coursing through his veins.

Others came after them. Faces and arms broke out in blisters and swelled till they burst. The resin flew into the air and stuck to the lungs, causing internal stinging. Women scratched their throats raw in an attempt to breathe, while men coughed blood in spirals. As if nourished by the suffering they caused, the fields continued to grow, their stalks dense with that red dew.

Nhalvarn's demise is not mentioned in the Calyra. According to official records, its people "migrated" and the harvest "failed". However, soldiers who were sent to burn the fields never came back alive. One survivor was pulled by by his comrades, but his throat was roiling with scarlet blisters, and his tongue was gone. Before he passed away, he repeatedly scribbled the same phrase into the ground:

"It stings. It stings. It stings."

Nhalvarn is no longer nowadays. Blackened dirt, no houses, no farms. Yet visitors talk of evenings when the wind carries a high, buzzing hiss like swarming insects and the air becomes harsh with iron. According to some, the stalks continue to grow covertly, blood-red against the moonlight, and weeping with venomous-dripping dew.

They also say that you will be stung if you breathe too deeply there.