Need help figuring out how to create a decaying effect

[knotty marsh]

I have shader that masks out the area within the cone/torch however, any attempt i take to add the decayed/withered effect to the edge of the mask looks terrible. Any pointers will be greatly appreciated!

for reference this is my shader graph for cone without any edge effects

[solid star]

Edge looks fine, but you'd probably want to animate it a bit by offsetting noise over the alpha

[trim kraken]

What's terrible about it, and how would you vision it should be better?

[knotty marsh]

oh sorry guys this is a reference image that isn’t what I made haha

i have done some work on it and this is what i have so far and the corisponding shader graph

how do i make it look more decayed and broken, instead of this blobby mess

[trim kraken]

With a low scale (high "zoom") and a specific threshold simplex noise is pretty soft
While you could tweak those variables or apply another (pretty expensive) octave of noise, you could use another source for it
Simple noise would probably be rougher than simplex, but the ideal solution would be a texture that has all the roughness and grunge you want