The outpost rose with clean walls and level stone. Flags hung still above the gate. Soldiers moved in pairs, carrying crates and blades. Orders passed hand to hand like tools. Past the eastern barracks, a crater marred the stone — round, scorches. The Empire's flag had been draped over it, but the wind had peeled it back at one corner. Beneath, the scar remained.
The Hero crossed the outer line without pause. The guard nearest the wall noticed, and his stance lifted.
"Sir. Commander said you might pass through."
The others halted at the fence line. The mage leaned against a post, gaze distant. Thorne checked the horses without speaking. Ryn traced symbols into the frost with the toe of a boot. The Cripple did not join them. He remained just beyond the boundary of the group. The wind caught at a loose edge of his tunic and found nothing worth lifting.
The guard cast a glance in his direction. He hesitated.
"You brought… him?"
The Hero did not need to look to understand to whom the guard was referring.
"He's our squire."
His tone left no room for further questioning. The guard led them in.
Inside, the command room pressed close with stone and map-lines. Pins covered the northwestern span. Wax thread tracked a narrow route through thinning woods. Two metal tokens rested on the edge of the table. One had fallen and been placed back without its fastener. The commander spoke without turning.
"North Hollow went silent three days ago. Last message mentioned movement at the western edge of the marsh."
Thorne stepped forward.
"Drayths?"
"Unconfirmed. No bodies were reported or brought back. One scout returned, but he would not speak. The other two are missing."
The Hero's eyes traced the map.
"We will go."
Ryn's breath left his teeth with a click. The Hero said nothing more. His finger paused at a narrowing of the trail, then moved again. At the threshold, the Cripple stood still. His gaze followed the curve of the wall, down to the fallen scouting token. Someone had marked it once. The edge showed old blood.
They left before noon.
[Subroutine Deferred]
[Unindexed Entity: Monitoring Suspended]
***
The outpost vanished behind them by early afternoon. Stone fell to pine, sharp and tall. The trees lined the sky like ribs. Pale light passed between them in long, uneven shafts, bending through fog that clung too low for the season. They moved in silence. The trail narrowed where the ground turned soft. Under the frost, mud swallowed sound. Water shifted beneath the reeds. Ice crusted the edges of stagnant pools, but nothing had frozen through. The air smelt faintly of metal.
The party arrived at a fork. One route veered toward a wider stretch. Wheel grooves ran deep, lined with splintered twigs. Tracks broken through brush. The other dipped into coarse grass and fog. No path cut through it, but the trees thinned just enough to move.
Thorne studied the wheel tracks. "Traffic went this way."
"Or someone wanted us to think it did," Ryn muttered. "Big mess buys time for a quiet exit."
The Cripple stepped forward. One foot into the grass, he crouched. His leg flared, but he kept steady. The reeds here did not bend like the rest; they had been brushed. He swept a hand along the base. Moisture lifted easily — no time to dry. He found the print just ahead. Heel pressed, but only shallow. Wrong angle for a soldier, too shallow for a beast. Further in, he noticed another step, half-pivoted.
"Someone passed through here, probably last night. The footprints seem recent."
Ryn scoffed behind him. "Could still be a trap."
" I never said it wasn't."
The Hero stepped forward and knelt beside him. His eyes tracked the same grass, the same faint change in colour where water had recently lifted and dried. He studied it for a while, then stood.
"We take the low path."
No one argued, but Ryn let out a breath like they meant to laugh.
The Cripple stepped back, returning to his place behind the group. When they started moving, he walked three steps behind Thorne and watched the marsh. The grass swallowed sound. Mist thickened the further they went and trees closed overhead. No birds called. No branches snapped. The trail left no noise. He memorised where the fog bent, where it parted, and where it did not.
Near dusk, they entered a stretch where the waterlogged soil gave way to hardened to earth. The Hero stopped. The others moved past him in pairs, heads down. The firewood was low, and Thorne's pack had begun to creak with its own weight. Ryn muttered something about shade and visibility. The Cripple lingered, half a step behind them. From the crest, he could see where they had come from. Mist had swallowed the lower path entirely. No footprints marked their way. The marsh had already closed.
He turned to move, but stopped. The Hero had not rejoined the group. He stood a few paces back, gaze resting on the trail without watching it. Not really. Not the marsh. Not the brush. Not the track they had followed.
But him.
The Cripple waited, allowing the silence to stretch. The Hero's gaze lingered for a moment before he walked away. Boots moved over packed soil. Quiet. Unhurried. The Cripple, too, resumed his walk, his steps more measured than before.
***
Trees stood wider apart now. Their roots stretched across the surface, like old lines. Brittle moss clung to bark in greying patches. The party split without a word.
Thorne angled toward the bend in the trail, Ryn just ahead, hacking idly at low growth. Sera turned left, slow and sure, hands folded into her sleeves. She moved like someone reading a script no one else could see. The Cripple did not follow. He stayed near the centre of the trail. From here, he could see all of them — Sera's half-circles, Ryn's exaggerated strides, Thorne's casual readiness.
And the Hero.
The Hero moved as before — upright, even-paced. He turned his head only when needed. Once when Thorne signalled that the trail bent clear. Again, when the Cripple paused near a root that reached like a claw, his foot brushing a fragment half-buried in dirt near the tree line.
The carcass of a creature came into view beside a fallen stump. Half buried, no fur or hide left. Ribs splayed wide and bones blackened — not from rot, but as if a fire had started inside. Sera reached it first and veered off-path, leaving space as she passed. Her boots left the trail by two careful steps. The others followed her route, hands resting on hidden weapons. Farther on, the earth had dried in jagged lines. Wide fractures ran through the trail, as if the ground had been dropped from a great height.
The Hero slowed near a narrow cleft between two tall trees. Their trunks twisted upward, the bark split down the middle. As if something once passed between them and dragged light with it. Beyond that, the land dropped into a shallow hollow. Thorne scanned the clearing.
"Camp here?"
The Hero nodded once. They circled wide before entering the hollow. Sera adjusted the perimeter without instruction. Ryn scraped a mark into a nearby stone. Thorne unpacked kindling from a tight coil of twine. No one asked the Cripple to help.
The fire burned low. Sera's glyph had taken better this time — the ground was dry, the air thin. Flames held close to the wood. No crackle, only the soft break of bark curling in the heat. Ryn took first watch and Thorne sat beside them, sharpening a blade already keen. Sera was resting against a tree, eyes lowered, breath even but not deep enough for sleep.
The Cripple sat on his cloak — a spare the Hero had given him the night prior, as he shook from the cold — at the edge of the fire. He had not eaten since they had departed Millhaven, and he could sense himself growing weak. Across from him, the Hero remained awake. He had not moved for some time. Once, his eyes lifted — not toward the woods, but toward the Cripple. Just long enough to confirm something, before looking away again. The Cripple shifted.
"You don't sleep," the Hero remarked.
The Cripple kept his gaze on the fire.
"Neither do you."
A pause stretched out between them.
The Hero's gaze drifted again, not toward the trees this time, but skyward. He stood and circled the outer line of the camp. The Cripple watched him pass. Across the firepit, the glyph dimmed like iron cooling. The Hero returned just as the last lines faded. He slowed a half a step, then moved on. Sera opened her eyes. She placed her hand near the coals and whispered a binding in the old tongue. Light stirred against her fingers, and a second glyph took shape beside the first. She glanced across the fire.
The Hero, now seated, brushed dirt from the side of his gauntlet and adjusted one of the perimeter stones by his foot. Sera looked down again and smoothed the glyph's edge with her thumb.
The Cripple laid down last, eyes on the glyph as it settled.