This spell is a part of the Blotting spell chain and is found in the Blotting rune stone.
Fear is contagious. This is not a metaphor. It is documented, observable, biological fact. One person's panic triggers the threat-detection systems of everyone nearby. Their body language, their sounds, their sudden movement - all of it reads as signal to every other body in range that something is very wrong and the appropriate response is immediate. Dread understands this better than anyone. It has been using it since long before anyone thought to study it.
Panic Spreading requires only one opening. The timoramancer reaches through Dread and delivers a single, precise burst of overwhelming fear to one target, fear enough to break the surface, enough to make the panic visible to everyone around them. What happens next requires no further effort. The first target's fear becomes signal. Those nearest them must make a Hard Mental Balance check or catch it - their own fear spiking in response to what they see and hear, their body deciding that if that person is that afraid then something here is genuinely worth being afraid of. Each newly panicked target becomes the next signal, doubling the number affected each round as the panic moves outward through the group in waves, every affected target turning on those nearest them in blind unreasoning terror. The timoramancer does nothing after the first cast. They don't need to. Dread started the fire. Fear burns on its own.
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