The river's roar was a lullaby of brute force, a sound so immense it vibrated in Li's teeth and bones. It filled the hollow under the roots, a constant, thrumming presence that drowned out the smaller, more terrifying sounds of the night—the cough of a predator, the whisper of the hunt. For a few precious hours, it granted them the illusion of safety.
Dawn came not with light, but with a slow leaching of the absolute black into a deep, watery grey. A thick, cold mist had rolled off the river, clinging to the world in a damp shroud. Visibility dropped to a dozen paces, turning the familiar forest into a gallery of ghostly shapes. The roar was muted now, softened by the fog into a pervasive, directionless hum.
Li was already awake, his body aching in protest. Every muscle, every joint, screamed its complaint. The gnawing hunger in his belly had become a sharp, persistent pain. He looked at Mei, still curled in a fitful sleep, her face pale and smudged with dirt. She looked younger in sleep, and the sight was a fresh wound. He had promised her father he would look after her. It was a promise made in the unspoken language of shared glances between villagers, and now it was the heaviest vow he carried.
He crept out from their shelter, the wet ground soaking through his worn shoes instantly. The mist was so thick he could taste it, a cold metallic dampness on his tongue. He needed to find food. The berries were a risk he couldn't take. But perhaps by the river, there would be something else. Cattails, maybe, whose roots Old Man Fen had sometimes boiled into a bland, starchy paste.
Keeping the roar of the water on his left, he moved slowly, his senses straining against the opaque wall of grey. The world was silent but for the river. Too silent. It was the same watchful, predatory silence he'd felt in the forest before the cat appeared.
He found a patch of cattails growing in a stagnant backwater and set to work, his numb fingers struggling to dig into the cold mud for the roots. The work was slow, mindless, and it gave his thoughts space to swirl.
He saw the soldier's eyes again. Not with the same gut-wrenching horror as before, but with a cold, analytical detachment that scared him more. He had ended a life. He had felt the fragile architecture of a body fail under his hands. It was a knowledge that now lived inside him, a dark seed that had taken root. The boy who had trembled with regret was being buried under the grim necessity of the survivor.
A sound cut through the muffled world, jerking him from his thoughts.
It wasn't the river. It wasn't an animal.
It was a voice.
Low, guttural, and shockingly close.
Li froze, crouching low among the reeds, his heart hammering against his ribs. He held his breath, the cattail root forgotten in his mud-caked hand.
The voice came again, closer now. It was the other soldier. He was speaking to himself, or perhaps to the ghost of his partner.
"...foul luck, sent to chase brats through this pissing mist... should have burned the whole mountain range..."
The words were punctuated by the sound of a heavy boot squelching in the mud, not twenty paces away. The mist swirled, and for a terrifying second, Li saw a dark, hulking silhouette materialize, then fade back into the grey. The soldier was following the riverbank, searching methodically. He was a professional, and his patience was a whetstone against Li's nerves.
Li's mind raced, a frantic, trapped animal. He was cornered. The river was to his left, a deadly barrier. The soldier was ahead. Behind him was open bank and then the forest. If he ran for the trees, the soldier would hear him in the silence of the fog. He was weak from hunger and exhaustion. He would be run down in moments.
He looked down at the mud, at the reeds, at the dark, churning water of the backwater. An idea, desperate and insane, sparked in his mind.
Find the center.
It was no longer about stillness. It was about becoming something else entirely.
Moving with a slow, deliberate care that made every muscle scream in protest, he began to smear the thick, cold mud over his arms, his face, his tunic. He coated himself in the filth of the riverbank, breaking off reeds and stuffing them into his belt, his hair, until he was caked in a shell of earth and vegetation. He then slid forward, into the icy, stagnant water of the backwater.
The cold was a shock that stole his breath. It was shallow, only up to his chest, but the bottom was deep, soft muck. He settled into it, letting the ooze claim his legs, his hips. He leaned back until only his face was above the surface, and then he used a final handful of reeds to cover his head, creating a small, camouflaged hollow for his mouth and nose.
He became part of the bank. A lump of mud and roots. A ghost in the reeds.
The squelching footsteps grew louder. He could hear the soldier's labored breathing now, the creak of his leather armor.
"...little rats... the Master wants that artifact... worth more than both our lives..."
The silhouette emerged from the mist, solid and terrifyingly real. The soldier stopped right at the edge of the backwater, his boots sinking into the mud. He was so close Li could see the individual scratches on his green, scale-like armor, the weariness in the set of his shoulders. He scanned the area, his helmeted head turning slowly.
Li held his breath. His body trembled violently from the cold, but he willed it to stillness, pouring every ounce of his focus into being inert, into being nothing. He was a stone. He was mud. He was a reed.
The soldier's gaze swept over the patch of cattails, over the disturbed mud where Li had been digging. It passed over the very spot where Li lay submerged. For an eternal second, those eyes, hidden in the shadow of the helmet, seemed to look directly into his.
Li's heart stopped.
Then the soldier grunted in disgust. "Nothing," he muttered to himself. "Useless."
He turned, his boots making a sucking sound as he pulled them from the mud, and continued his patrol downstream, his form swallowed by the mist within moments.
Li didn't move. He waited, counting his heartbeats, until the sound of the footsteps faded completely, and only the roar of the river remained. Then, and only then, did he allow himself to shiver, a violent, uncontrollable shaking that rippled the water around him.
He hauled himself out of the muck, his body leaden and freezing. He had not fought. He had not run. He had hidden in plain sight by ceasing to be himself.
It was a different kind of victory. A humiliating, desperate, filthy victory. But it was a victory nonetheless.
He gathered the few cattail roots he had managed to dig up and stumbled back through the mist towards their shelter. He was a creature of mud and cold, his spirit scoured as raw as his hands. He had faced the hunter again, and he had survived not by force, but by disappearance.
When he crawled back under the roots, Mei was awake. She took one look at him—caked in mud, shivering, his eyes holding a new, deep-buried darkness—and her questions died on her lips. She simply moved over, making space for him in the damp earth.
He dropped the roots and sat, pulling his knees to his chest, trying to contain the shivers. He looked at her, his gaze clear and grim.
"He's still here," Li said, his voice a rasp. "And he's not giving up."
He picked up a cattail root, its surface caked in the same mud that covered him. It was ugly, buried, and alive. Just like him.
"We eat," he said. "Then we move. We stay ahead. We stay hidden." He met her eyes. "This is the hunt now."