One of the soldiers froze mid-step, head snapping toward it. He lifted a clenched fist, then tapped two fingers against the rune set into his gauntlet.
"I've got audio," he murmured into the comm. "North quadrant. Structure intact. Sounds like… a child."
Magnus's voice came back instantly, low and controlled. "Hold position. I'm on you. Seraphel, north side."
"Moving," Seraphel replied.
The soldier advanced carefully, boots quiet against the warped wooden planks of a walkway that sagged under his weight. The crying grew louder with each step—ragged, exhausted, the sound of someone who had already screamed themselves empty.
He reached the doorway. Inside, the air was stale and damp, heavy with the coppery tang of blood long gone cold. In the far corner of the single-room dwelling, a girl was hunched over a body. She couldn't have been more than eight or nine.
Her knees were pulled tight to her chest, arms wrapped around herself as she rocked back and forth, sobbing into the crook of her elbow. Her hair hung in tangled sheets around her face, streaked with mud and tears. One small hand clutched the sleeve of the body beneath her—a woman, unmoving, eyes open and unseeing.
"Hey," the soldier said gently, lowering his weapon at once. "It's okay. You're safe now."
The girl didn't look up. She just cried harder. Her shoulders shook violently as she pressed closer to the body, as if afraid it might be taken from her too. Her sobs echoed off the wooden walls, filling the empty space with grief that had nowhere left to go.
"I'm going to approach," the soldier murmured into the comm, keeping his voice low and steady.
The disturbance hit Seraphel all at once—not sound, not sight, but a sudden wrongness in the ley flow, like a cord pulled too tight beneath her skin. Her head snapped up, eyes flashing as she turned toward the structure.
"No—" she shouted, sharp and commanding. "Do not engage. Pull back. Something's—"
Static. There was no reply. Seraphel stiffened as the rune array along her gauntlet flared once, then went dark. Her blood ran cold.
Inside the hut, the soldier heard none of it. He took another step forward, boots creaking softly on the damp wood. The crying didn't change—still broken, still relentless—but there was something odd about it now. Too even. Too continuous. No hitch for breath. No pause.
"Hey," he said again, closer now, one hand raised, palm open. "It's okay. I won't touch her. I just want to help you, alright?"
The girl rocked harder, her sobs intensifying as he drew near. Her face remained hidden behind her hair, pressed down toward the woman's chest.
The soldier crouched, careful, lowering himself to her level.
"It's over," he said gently. "You're safe."
As his shadow fell over them, the crying stopped. Not slowly. Instantly. The hut went deathly quiet. The girl's shoulders stilled. Her head lifted—just a little.
Seraphel broke into a run outside, armor splashing through shallow water as she closed the distance, dread coiling tight in her chest. Inside, the girl turned her face toward the soldier. Her eyes were black.
Not pupils dilated—black. Glossy and lightless, reflecting nothing. Her mouth stretched into something that tried, and failed, to be a smile.
Behind her, the body beneath her twitched. The soldier's breath caught and then the crying started again—Not from the girl. But from the walls.
Magnus and Seraphel reached the hut at a dead run.
Seraphel skidded to a halt just outside the doorway as the sound hit them—
A scream. Raw. Ripped from the chest. Pain and terror fused into something that barely sounded human.
It tore out of the hut and across the marsh, sharp enough to make nearby soldiers flinch and reach for weapons.
"Private Raymond!" Magnus barked, already moving.
The scream cut off abruptly.
Not fading.
Severed.
For half a heartbeat, there was only silence—thick, suffocating, wrong.
Then something inside the hut moved.
Wood cracked. Wet. Heavy.
Seraphel raised a hand, sigils igniting along her armor as containment wards snapped into place. "Back!" she shouted to the soldiers converging from the paths. "Form a perimeter—now!"
Magnus drew his weapon in one smooth motion and stepped into the doorway.
The smell hit first.
Rot—fresh and old at once. Blood, iron-thick. And beneath it all, a sour resonance that made his teeth ache.
The girl stepped forward.
Slowly.
Her feet left wet prints on the warped planks as she crossed the threshold, the doorway framing her small shape against the gloom inside. Black ooze streamed from her eyes, spilling down her cheeks like tar-thick tears. It leaked from her ears, her nose, dripping in viscous strands that stretched and snapped as she moved.
Her mouth was stained red.
Not a smear. Not a trick of shadow.
Blood clung to her lips and chin, still wet, still shining.
Behind her, the soldier twitched on the floor.
Just once.
A sharp, involuntary jerk that rattled his armor before his body went still again, one gauntleted hand curling as if trying—too late—to grasp a weapon that was no longer there.
The girl's head tilted.
Not in confusion.
In curiosity.
Her eyes locked onto Magnus and Seraphel, pupils blown wide beneath the black sheen, reflecting nothing but hunger. Her chest rose and fell too fast, breath hitching in shallow, animal pulls. When she inhaled, the ooze along her face quivered, as if responding to something deeper inside her.
She smiled.
It wasn't wide.
It wasn't exaggerated.
It was worse than that—small, instinctive, like a predator recognizing prey.
Seraphel's wards flared brighter, the air around her hardening as she stepped half a pace forward, placing herself slightly ahead of Magnus without even looking back.
"That's not a child anymore," she said, voice cold and absolute.
The girl's jaw unhinged with a soft, wet crack.
A sound crawled out of her throat—low, layered, wrong. Not a voice, but many, pressed together and forced through one mouth. The black ooze pulsed in time with it, veins standing out along her neck as something inside her shifted, coiling closer to the surface.
Magnus tightened his grip on his weapon.
"Easy," he muttered—not to her, but to himself. "Whatever you are…"
The girl took another step forward.
Another shape moved in the doorway.
Then another.
Two more figures stepped out of the hut behind the girl—an older woman and a man whose clothes still bore the marks of village life, not battle. Their movements were uneven, joints lagging half a heartbeat behind intent, as if their bodies were answering to commands that arrived late.
Their eyes were the same.
Black. Glassy. Empty.
The same viscous ooze traced slow paths from their sockets, dripping from noses and ears, spattering softly onto the planks below. Their mouths hung slightly open, lips trembling as that layered sound seeped from their throats—breath mixed with something else, something crowded.
They stopped beside the girl.
Not protectively.
Not familiarly.
They stood like extensions. Echoes.
Seraphel's wards surged again, sigils crawling up her armor as the air thickened into a visible distortion. "Magnus," she said quietly. "It's not isolated."
"I see that," he replied, jaw set.
Behind them—
Clang.
Both of them turned.
The soldier's body jerked on the floor.
Once. Twice.
Armor scraped against wood as his fingers dug in, muscles spasming hard enough to bend metal. A wet, choking sound tore from his throat as his back arched violently.
"No," Magnus growled.
The soldier rolled onto his side, coughing—deep, racking, desperate coughs that sprayed dark fluid across the planks. He clawed at his helmet, tearing it free and sending it clattering aside.
He staggered upright.
For a single, unbearable moment, his eyes were his own—wide, panicked, full of pain and dawning horror.
"Pillar Magnus—" he rasped. "I—can't—"
Then his pupils flooded black.
The change was instant. Total.
The panic vanished. The pain stopped.
His body straightened, movements smoothing unnaturally as the coughing ceased mid-breath. When he looked up again, there was nothing left of the man who had answered Magnus's orders minutes earlier.
Only hunger.
The soldier—thing—stumbled forward out of the hut, joining the others as if answering a silent call.
Four of them now.
All facing Magnus and Seraphel.
The marsh answered with a deep, resonant thrum, water rippling outward as if something vast beneath the village had shifted in satisfaction.
Seraphel's voice dropped to a whisper edged with steel. "…It's learning."
Magnus raised his weapon fully, power gathering along its edge. "Then we end this here," he said.
The creatures smiled. All at once.
The four of them tilted their heads in the same fraction of a second.
Mouths opened together.
And they spoke.
"Are you the Songweaver?"
The words came out in perfect unison—child, woman, man, soldier—layered voices compressed into one sound. Not shouted. Not whispered. Spoken with uncanny calm, as if asking a long-awaited question.
The air shuddered.
Seraphel felt it immediately—the ley lines around the marsh spasming, resonance warping inward toward the sound of that name. Her wards flared violently in response, sigils snapping brighter as she braced herself.
Magnus froze.
Just for a heartbeat.
"Songweaver?" he echoed, low and dangerous.
The girl took another step forward, ooze dripping steadily from her chin now, pooling black at her feet. When she smiled again, the others mirrored it perfectly, their expressions syncing as if pulled by the same string.
The girl inhaled.
Deep. Slow.
Her chest expanded far more than it should have, ribs stretching beneath skin as the black ooze along her face quivered and drew inward. The others did the same—four bodies breathing as one, heads tilting slightly as if scenting the air.
They were smelling them.
Not flesh.
Resonance.
The layered sound slipped from their throats again, softer now, disappointed.
"…No," they said together.
The smiles faltered—not vanishing, but thinning, sharpening.
"Not her."
The girl's head tilted farther, nose twitching faintly as if tasting something bitter. The soldier's borrowed body leaned forward, shoulders rolling as joints adjusted, preparing.
"You carry echoes," they continued. "Authority." said the soldier. "Steel." said the man. "Order." said the woman.
The word twisted as it left their mouths.
"But not the song." finished the little girl.
The black ooze pooled thicker at their feet, spreading in slow, creeping tendrils that sank into the marsh mud and vanished beneath the surface. The ley lines groaned, resonance pulled taut like wire stretched too far.
Seraphel's wards screamed in response.
Magnus lifted his weapon fully now, stance widening, power humming along the blade as his voice dropped to a lethal calm. "You don't get to decide who lives."
The creatures laughed.
It came out wrong—four laughs layered but out of sync, pitch sliding unnaturally as if the sound couldn't settle on one shape.
The laughter cut off at the same instant.
Four heads lifted.
Four mouths opened.
And the air tightened.
"All of you will die," they said together.
Not shouted. Not threatened.
Declared.
The marsh answered with a deep, grinding thrum as the black ooze at their feet surged outward, veins of it racing through the mud like roots seeking purchase. The reeds bent low, water darkening as resonance was dragged downward, suppressed.
"Silence," the woman intoned, her voice flattening into something vast and hollow.
"Will Reign," the man followed, spine arching as if something larger pressed against his skin from the inside.
The soldier's borrowed body straightened fully, shoulders locking into an unnatural stillness. "Order will end," he said, voice stripped of humanity.
The little girl smiled last.
Wide now. Satisfied.
Seraphel stepped forward, planting her boots hard into the marsh as her wards flared to full brilliance.
"No," she said, voice ringing clear and unyielding through the crushing pressure. "We will not let that happen."
Behind her, the sound of movement surged.
More soldiers emerged from the reeds and walkways, weapons raised, sigils igniting along armor and shields as containment lines snapped into place. Steel formed ranks. Wards overlapped. The perimeter tightened, disciplined and deliberate despite the weight pressing down on every breath.
Magnus didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
The ground beneath them cracked again as his power anchored deeper, stone and force answering his will. Between him and Seraphel, the air itself seemed to harden—defiance given shape.
The four creatures watched it all unfold.
And laughed.
The sound burst outward in a single, unified peal—too loud, too full, vibrating through bone and water alike. The black ooze surged in response, rippling violently as if delighted.
"Try," they said in unison.
The girl tilted her head, eyes gleaming with anticipation. "We want to see you struggle."
The woman's hands flexed, fingers elongating. "We want to hear you scream."
The man leaned forward, grin splitting his face unnaturally wide. "We want to feel you break."
The soldier—what wore him—took one deliberate step forward, marsh water hissing as it recoiled from his feet.
"Come," they said together.