They left the battered village at first light, breath ghosting in the raw air, boots crunching over old ash and packed snow. Behind them, the burned-out shells of homes and pyres smoldered, sending thin threads of black into a pale sky. Captain Daric gave them little time to dwell. Once his order came, the platoon was moving — lines tightening, weapons checked with mechanical precision, eyes fixed ahead so they wouldn't drift back to the dead.
Kael felt the sting of the cold less than the quiet that settled on them all. Even Lyren was subdued, hands flexing over his spear shaft like he needed constant reminder it was there. Ayla walked close on Kael's left, hood pulled up, expression tight. Garrick and Nell took the rear flank, Garrick's heavy javelins balanced across his shoulders. No one wasted breath on talk.
They pushed into the deeper forest by midmorning. The trees grew massive here — old, gnarled things that arched overhead and shut out much of the light. Snow lay thick only in patches, the ground beneath dark with rot. Everything seemed to muffle sound. Even the clank of armor felt strangely hushed, swallowed by the undergrowth and hanging moss. Kael tried not to look too closely at some of the twisted trunks; more than once he caught patterns in the bark that looked almost like faces.
Daric halted them near a stand of pines that leaned together over an icy hollow. He raised a hand for silence, already scanning with narrow eyes. Scouts spread out ahead in pairs, bows strung, moving like wraiths among the roots. The rest formed a defensive circle, shields braced. Kael settled his spear butt into the loam, knuckles whitening on the shaft. He could hear his pulse thudding in his ears.
They waited nearly an hour. When the scouts finally returned, their faces were drawn. One of them — a lean, scar-slashed woman named Kera — nodded once to Daric and murmured something low. The captain's jaw tightened.
"Burrows," he announced quietly to the squad leaders. "A cluster, maybe a dozen or more tunnels. Signs of recent feeding. We collapse them before dusk. Burn what we can't close."
Orders were relayed down the line. Kael felt a cold knot form in his gut. Fighting Dreadborn in the open was horror enough. In their lairs, where the air stank of mold and old blood, where tight passages gave the beasts every advantage — that was something else entirely. He saw Lyren swallow hard, eyes darting to the dark beyond the pines.
"Stay close to me," Kael said under his breath. It was automatic now. Lyren just nodded, mouth a grim line.
They advanced in staggered lines, two squads forward to clear the first nests, Kael's unit in support. The smell hit them quickly — sweet rot mixed with iron. Kael had to breathe through his scarf. Ahead, Kera and her team began setting clay charges around the burrow mouths, thin fuses trailing back like veins. Others stacked bundles of dry branches soaked in pitch.
A deep growl rolled out from one of the holes, vibrating through Kael's boots. He tensed, spear coming up. The growl became a rising chatter, joined by others. Shapes poured out — long-limbed, eyeless things with split jaws and pale plates along their backs. The Dreadborn weren't waiting for dusk.
Arrows lashed out in answer. Several beasts dropped with shafts quivering from their skulls, black ichor spraying the snow. But more came on. Kael braced as one lunged for him, jaws yawning wide enough to take his head. He rammed his spear up under its chin, felt it catch bone, then sheer through into pulpy brain. The creature convulsed, nearly tearing the weapon from his hands before crumpling in a heap.
Beside him, Lyren pivoted and stabbed low, driving his blade between armored plates at the creature's belly. Ayla moved like a phantom, dodging wide claws to slice across exposed throat flesh. Garrick's javelins hammered targets further back, dropping two more before they could leap.
More Dreadborn kept coming. Kael lost all sense of the plan, all thought beyond the next parry, the next savage thrust. One creature slammed into his shield so hard he staggered. It snarled, claws scrabbling over wood and iron, hot breath spilling over him. Kael gritted his teeth and shoved forward, twisted, brought the spear around and jammed it sideways into the thing's ear socket. A wet pop and it went limp.
Screams erupted down the line. Kael risked a glance — one of the new conscripts had gone down under two Dreadborn, limbs jerking as they tore him apart. A heartbeat later, a fire charge went off, washing the scene in orange and shrieking sparks. The beasts staggered, burning, but the boy was already in pieces.
Daric roared for the charges to be lit. Fuses hissed and spat. Kera sprinted past Kael, kicking over a torch into a bundle of pitch-soaked sticks. Flame whooshed up, rolling heat and thick black smoke. Kael coughed, eyes watering. Shapes writhed in the gloom, Dreadborn catching fire, flailing, crashing into trees.
One massive brute — its back armored in crusted barnacle-like plates — barreled through the flames, jaws gaping. Kael's squad met it together. Ayla slashed at its hind leg, Lyren rammed a spear into its ribs, Nell lunged for its throat. Garrick planted his last javelin square between its eyes, splitting bone in a crunch that Kael felt through his boots. The monster fell with a heavy groan, twitching, ichor puddling out.
They stood over it panting. Kael's arms felt numb. His ears rang with more than just battle cries — a distant, pulsing call that seemed to come from somewhere deep in the earth. When he staggered, Lyren caught his shoulder.
"You hear it too," Lyren rasped. Not a question.
Kael only managed a nod. His heart felt like it was trying to crawl up his throat.
Daric stalked over, armor scorched, one gauntlet dripping black. "This nest is finished. Move to the next. We clear them all before dark or we're the ones hunted tonight."
So they moved, deeper into the forest that seemed to close tighter around them with every step. The second cluster of burrows lay under a massive uprooted tree. More charges were set, more fires laid. The pattern repeated — scouts marking burrow mouths, soldiers standing guard, Dreadborn bursting out to savage them.
Kael lost track of how many he killed. Each new body left his spear slick and his hands trembling. Once, he found himself face to face with a snarling horror, its jaws dripping, eyes bulging. It froze. Kael didn't. He drove his spear point through its open mouth and felt something inside him thrum — an echo, like recognition. It horrified him more than the kill.
By the time the last burrow collapsed, the sun was dipping behind the tangled canopy. Ash and smoke coiled through the branches, painting the world in sickly orange and gray. Daric finally gave the signal to pull back and regroup at the hollow where they'd started.
They set a cold camp. Fires were risky this deep with fresh blood on the air. Kael sat with his squad, backs to a broad oak. Lyren leaned close, shivering despite the heavy cloak. Ayla cleaned her blades with precise strokes. Nell sat slightly apart, head down, picking dried ichor from under his fingernails.
Garrick finally broke the silence. "Too many today. Even for them. They're gathering, I swear it. Pulling back into the deep nests for something."
"Don't say that," Lyren muttered. "We need them scattered and stupid, not... organized."
Kael felt that strange pull again — like an itch behind his eyes. He rubbed at his temple. When he closed his eyes he saw shapes in the dark, shifting patterns that felt almost familiar. He thought of the way some of the Dreadborn seemed to hesitate when they looked at him. Thought of the way his pulse sometimes matched the strange tremors in the ground.
Ayla's voice snapped him out of it. "You're swaying again. Either you're about to pass out or there's something you aren't telling us."
Kael swallowed. He tried to speak, but nothing came. His throat locked up. Finally he managed a thin whisper. "It's like... they know me. Or I know them. I can't tell which."
The words seemed to hang there, heavy, ugly. Lyren's hand closed around his wrist. Warm, anchoring. "Then we watch you closer. Until we're back behind walls. Until this is done."
Kael wanted to believe it would ever be that simple.
The rest of the night dragged by in uneasy half-sleep. Every crack of branch made Kael's heart jump. He dreamed of eyes opening in the roots, of mouths whispering secrets in a voice that was somehow his own. When he startled awake just before dawn, Lyren was still holding his wrist.
Captain Daric gave them little reprieve. At first light he ordered them moving again, deeper yet into the Whispering Vale. The air grew colder, carrying a damp that sank through Kael's cloak and turned every breath into a shallow rasp. They found more signs of burrows — fresh claw marks on bark, piles of bones scraped clean.
At the next stop, Daric called Kael over with a grim nod. "You've got a sense for these things," he said without preamble. His eyes were sharp, studying Kael in a way that made sweat bead under his collar despite the cold. "I don't know how, and right now I don't care. We need it. If something stirs out here before we see it, you tell me."
Kael wanted to protest. Wanted to say he didn't understand it himself, that it terrified him. But he just nodded. Daric clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and moved off to instruct the scouts.
Lyren let out a breath when the captain was gone. "He's not wrong. You've felt them before the rest of us every damned time."
"That's not comforting," Kael muttered.
"Doesn't have to be. Just has to keep us alive."
They marched until evening. The forest floor here was thick with black moss, swallowing their footfalls. When they finally halted, Kael dropped to sit on a fallen log, spear resting across his knees. Lyren sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. It was more comfort than Kael could put words to.
"You think we make it out of this?" Lyren asked finally, voice low so it wouldn't carry to the others.
Kael didn't answer right away. His gaze drifted up through the tangled canopy, catching the last scraps of dying light. "I think we try. And that's all we've ever done."
Lyren laughed a tired, cracked sound. He bumped his forehead against Kael's, just for a heartbeat. "Fair enough."
They sat that way until the dark fully took them, each listening for the telltale scrape of claws or the low, hungry chitter that meant the night would not stay quiet. Kael closed his eyes and tried not to imagine that somewhere in that dark, things waited with a patience only monsters could afford and that whatever tied them to him was tightening, breath by breath.
Long after the others drifted into exhausted sleep, Kael lay awake listening to Lyren's slow breathing. The woods were almost unnaturally silent now, no wind through the branches, no distant rustle of hunting creatures. It was as if the entire forest was holding its breath. That stillness crawled under Kael's skin worse than any scream. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the echo of something deeper — a faint, alien pulse that beat out of time with his own heart.
Beside him, Lyren stirred, eyes opening just a crack. "What is it?" he whispered, voice hoarse with sleep. Kael tried to smile, failed, and just shook his head. "Nothing," he lied. Lyren didn't push. He only shifted closer, resting a warm hand over Kael's. In the frozen dark, that simple weight was the only thing that felt real, and Kael clung to it like a lifeline against the cold promise whispering from the trees beyond.