For its whole life so far, Dreadmark has been the story of one pilgrim, a holy crusader who solved problems by walking up to them and swinging until they stopped. That changes with this build. Step up to the fire at character creation and you now choose who you are, and the two answers kill in entirely different tenses.
The Witch kills in the future tense, which means she arranges for you to die soon. Where the Templar trades blows for resource and spends it the instant he earns it, she stands at range and lets a fight become a debt. She layers curses that make every other wound bite deeper, seeds packs with stacking rot and green witch-fire, and keeps the debtors alive-but-owned with slows, pulls, and a blink into the dark. Then she collects, detonating the whole ledger at once. Her resource is Malice, banked hit by hit with cheap weaving-bolts and spent on the hexes that do most of the work. Her three trees each answer "kill them later" differently. Maledictions is the curse web that links a pack into one shared wound. Pestilence is the rot, from a lobbed gob of plague up to a contagion that makes one afflicted foe infect the crowd around it. Ruination is the cash-in, with witch-fire and burning ground feeding a capstone bell that tolls once and erupts every affliction on every foe in a wide ring.
The Templar answers with iron. The old crusader got torn down and reforged around the slab on his left arm. The shield is the engine now. Raise it, and a blocked blow saves you and also pays you, banking the Vigor that fuels everything else, so you defend in order to attack. The shield is also a weapon in its own right. You can thrust with its edge to open a lane, charge behind it to plough a pack off its feet, or hurl it like a discus and catch it spinning back. His best play is reactive. Time a block and the shield bashes back on its own. Let the Retribution stance bank every hit that lands on you, then release it as a ring of holy force that hits harder the harder they hit. Wear the Crown of Thorns and their own blows break against you. Fight long enough and Zeal takes hold, a rising fervour earned in the thick of it rather than bought. His three roads all run out of the same camp: Warfare (the shield as weapon), Sanctity (censer-fire and consecrated ground), and Retribution (block, counter, reflected wrath). The faith is cleaner too. The old streak of self-harm and poison is gone, traded for endurance and the shield that turns a beating into a weapon.
For both pilgrims, a rune turns a skill into a different spell instead of adding a number like "+15% damage". The Witch's escape blink can leave a poison cloud where she vanished, or arrive like an omen and blast the ground where she lands. Her plague-thrall can split into three spitters or burst on death into a killing cloud. The Templar's thrown shield can chain, his counter can erupt in a shockwave, and his wall can heal its keeper. Each skill ends up with several ways to play it.
Judgment is a capstone that finally lands. It used to be an overhead cut with a grander name, just another fast attack in a new coat of paint. Now it is a verdict. Cast it and a colossal blade drops from directly above the target and slams into the ground, slower and heavier by design, because it is the payoff for the biggest cost and longest cooldown in the Warfare tree. Bulwark of Faith, once a watered-down copy of another shield buff, became its own thing too. It gives you Armor and Block you can lean on early and without a shield at all, and it is distinct at last from the skill it used to blur into.
Both pilgrims come out of the same firelight, the Templar killing in the present tense and the Witch in the future. Pick who you are, and the game loads you back exactly as you left her.