They assembled before false dawn, when the dark was thick enough to taste. Patrol assignments were handed out like death warrants—without ceremony, without prayer. Recruits stood in loose formation, packs strapped and weapons sheathed. The fog clung low to the ground, masking the mud and pooling in the grooves of old footprints.
Captain Roegan surveyed them with a look that didn't hide his disappointment. Thirty recruits. Three days. Most would not return.
"Outer ring patrol. Sweep for tracks, infestations, or breaches. You see movement, you don't chase unless an officer tells you. You see anything bigger than a horse, you run unless you're already dead."
No speeches, no blessings. He turned and started walking.
They followed.
The world outside the fort wall was worse than rumor—the air was colder, the haze thicker, the land broken like something gnawed by time and teeth. What used to be trees stood as petrified husks, black and skeletal. The earth sucked at boots with wet greed.
Visibility was barely ten paces.
Roegan led from the front, a steel maul strapped to his back, shoulders squared. Two sergeants flanked him, followed by the first cluster of recruits.
Bright positioned himself exactly where he always intended to be—just ahead of the middle, far from the flanks and not close enough to catch the first ambush. Tobin fell into step beside him, spear in hand, humming under his breath.
"You ever been outside before?" Tobin whispered.
"Once," Bright said quietly. "To get here."
"Feels like the land hates us."
"It does."
They kept moving.
Creatures were born in the cracks, in the old tunnels, in the peat, in the bodies of things that hadn't decomposed properly. The world around them wasn't silent—it was listening. Every now and then, Bright could feel the distant tremor of movement through the soles of his boots. Not loud, not close, but present.
A recruit near the rear retched suddenly. The stench of rot and sulfur made even the veterans grimace. The ground was dotted with pale lumps—mangled remains of what had once been livestock or men. Flies didn't exist anymore, but smaller worms and carrion mites crawled greedily through the remnants.
They passed an overturned wagon half-swallowed by muck. Something had caved its side in with a single impact—teeth marks scored across the wood like runes.
Sergeant Vrann pointed with his halberd. "Don't stare too long. Some of them wake to memory."
Tobin muttered, "Memory of what?"
"Eating," Bright said.
Tobin shut up.
By midday—if you could call it that—the fog had turned gray instead of black. The patrol paused in what used to be a stone outpost before the fall. Only the foundation and half a wall remained. They checked corners, reset their grips, and waited while Roegan consulted a weathered map.
Tobin sat beside Bright on a slab of stone, rubbing his forearm. "You think they'll assign us to the inner sweep after this?"
"No."
"Not even if we do well?"
"You don't do well on your first patrol," Bright said flatly. "You survive it. That's the full criteria."
Tobin considered that. "Is that how you think we'll die? One by one until we're useful?"
"I don't think about 'we' at all."
Tobin smirked. "Liar."
Before Bright could respond, a scout jogged up to Roegan, armor flecked with mud and blood.
"Tracks ahead," the scout reported. "Fresh. Something big moved through the eastern trail. Might still be close."
The air seemed to constrict.
Roegan didn't flinch. "We follow. Eyes open. If it's nest-building, we pull back and report. If it's roaming, we thin it."
Someone audibly swallowed.
They moved again.
The eastern trail was barely a path—more a scar in the land where the soil had sunk under something's weight. Black sludge filled the grooves like tar.
They found the first sign of violence shortly after—an armored scavenger beast lying in pieces, its carapace cracked open like an egg. Whatever had killed it hadn't eaten it. That meant one of two things: territorial defense… or sport.
"Eyes up," a sergeant barked.
The tension thickened like wet cloth.
Tobin leaned in close to Bright, voice nearly inaudible. "We're not hunting, are we?"
"No," Bright said. "We're bait."
Hours passed. The world didn't change. It just kept getting worse.
The light dimmed again, plunging everything back into that suffocating twilight. Torches were lit only when strictly needed—the flame drew things.
At one point, the ground trembled. Not like footsteps. More like something shifting beneath. Everyone froze. Roegan raised one fist, signaling silence.
The tremor faded after a minute.
They resumed walking, slower than before.
By the time they made camp, no one had spoken for an hour.
The "camp" was a depression between two boulders and a shattered wall. No tents—just cloaks and stones and weapons laid close.
They posted watches. Bright drew second shift. Tobin had first.
As they sat near a dim ember pit, Tobin passed him the tin again—this time with a scrap of root bread.
"You'll need it later," Tobin said. "You get scrawny when you're tired."
Bright almost objected. Then he took it. He chewed in silence.
Somewhere in the dark beyond the rocks, a low, drawn-out howl fractured the quiet. Not canine. Not anything with lungs meant for breathing air.
Several recruits flinched. One began praying softly.
Tobin whispered, "You sleep with your eyes open?"
"When I have to."
"I can't sleep at all."
"Then don't."
Tobin smiled faintly in the firelight. "You think there's anything left worth living for out here?"
Bright didn't look at him. "There's things worth not dying for."
"Like what?"
Bright wiped his blade with a cloth. "The next breath."
Tobin chuckled tiredly. "Then I'll try to keep having those."
He meant it. That was the stupid, maddening part—he actually meant it.
When Bright finally lay back on the cold stone, listening to the distant, wet sounds of things moving in the dark, he made a quiet, private observation:
Someone like Tobin wasn't built for this world.
And though he didn't admit it—not even to himself—
he didn't want to watch the world prove that right.
"If you enjoyed it, please add to your library—it helps a lot!"