Dawn came as a duller shade of gray.

The sky pressed low over a country of water and reed. What passed for a road was an old stone causeway, its spine half-swallowed by the marsh. Time had pried the blocks apart; water seeped through seams and pooled in shallow bowls. Every step made a sound: suck, slap, scrape. They felt too loud for the hush around them.

Boaz led, because someone had to. Thorne sloshed at his side, whiskers twitching, pupils thin as knife-slits. The lynx’s shoulders rolled beneath his winter-thick coat. He at least was untroubled by the slick stone. The Sigil was hidden beneath his cloak, but he felt it like a weight that adjusted itself, heavy one moment, a steadying hand the next. He’d slept poorly. The echoes of Beltin had faded, yet the habit of listening for false voices hadn’t.

Reeds crowded close wherever the causeway dipped. The water between them reflected a broken sky, fractured by their thin stems. Sometimes the reflections moved wrong, as if the sky below the water turned faster than the one above.

Kestel circled low, talons tucked, wing tips almost grazing the mist. Jaxson walked with his head cocked to keep the hawk in view, as if the tether between them pulled through his ear. He hopped a gap and landed on an island of stone no wider than a tabletop. It rocked under his weight. He spread his arms, laughing once, a thin, breath-stealing sound, and then slipped forward to the next stable slab in two long strides.

Aldryn’s staff nudged a floating mat of moss aside. The old sorcerer’s cloak was beaded with fine water. Nevara rode his shoulder, black eyes constantly shifting, beak hidden in feathers against the damp breeze. “The stones will hold us,” Aldryn said, more to the air than to any one of them. “They were set by people who intended to cross back again. That breeds sturdy work.”

Theo had both hands on a battered leather folio, notched charcoal tucked behind one ear, another between his fingers. “Hold on,” he announced at nearly every turn, “we veer south a thumb-width here, the curve is measurable, see? If we mark this bend relative to the two tallest reeds…Tink!”

Tink had Tinked like an opportunistic breeze. The raccoon popped up from somewhere under Theo’s cloak with the exact charcoal Theo was using between her clever hands. She inspected it with enormous solemnity, then bit it. Black dust filmed her nose.

“Tink,” Theo said again, more wounded than angry. “Tools are a trust.”

The raccoon blinked, decided this was true, and stuffed the charcoal into his palm like returning a religious relic. Then, with a thief’s dignity, she kept the one from behind his ear and scooted to perch on his pack, gloating quiet as rain.

“Charcoal tax,” Jaxson said.

“The marsh toll,” Lyra added.

Theo opened his mouth, recognized a trap, and closed it with a martyr’s sigh. He scratched a small square on the map with his reclaimed tool. “Fine. But if we drown for want of a right angle, I’ll haunt every one of you.”

“You can haunt me,” Kiera said gently. “I’ll light a candle.”

Eira, hooded and roosting in the scooped shelter of Kiera’s cowl, shifted once and settled again, a pale mask of patience in daylight she disliked.

Boaz’s boots slipped. Thorne nudged the back of his calf, a reminder, not a rebuke. The Sigil hummed where it lay against his chest, like the first stir in coals when someone breathes on them. The fire that binds is the fire that breaks. Aldryn’s Old Huma had a way of lodging in his mind like a sticky burr. He still didn’t know which part of him it was meant to warn.

“Hold there,” Telen said, his voice quiet. He had gone ahead without seeming to, stepping where stone hid under a gray skin of water. He knelt and touched the surface with two fingers. When he lifted them, a hair-fine thread of green lifted too, clinging to his skin like spun glass. He wiped it on a cracked patch of stone. “Glassweed. Looks pretty. Cuts if you fall into it.”

“Good to know,” Theo said, and drew a skull-and-weed on his map with brisk piety.

Shaye took the lead beside Telen for a time, her steps deliberate, her eyes on the small things: the slick sheen, the faint bulge where silt hid a rise, the way the reed stems leaned just so to show a submerged current.

The causeway rose, dipped, rose again. In one dip, the water had claimed two full lengths of the road. They skirted the edge on a shelf as narrow as a man’s leg. Jaxson went first, hands out, body turned, this time without a joke. Lyra followed, her illusion orb the smallest blur at her wrist, bending the light so that the shelf looked wider and gave them more confidence. It was a quiet kindness of her craft.

They gathered on a broader slab, breathing hard. Mist dredged up from the dark channels and laid its cold hands on their faces. The marsh had a smell like old rope and wet stone, with a bitter under-note Boaz didn’t have a name for. It smelled like something that had once been sweet and had been left to sour.

Aldryn tapped the edge with his staff. “These roads were Terran work, you know. They used stone like language. It speaks even when no one listens.”

“What is it saying now?” Jaxson asked, still panting, still game.

“It remembers who built it,” Aldryn said. “But it wonders where they went.”

The mist thickened and thinned as the wind changed. Sometimes a lone reed jutted like a quill through paper. Kestel cried once, short, questioning, and drifted higher. On Boaz’s other side, Thorne’s ears pivoted forward, flattening once as if at a sound too low to name. Mika’s hackles rose, then fell as Lyra laid a hand on her neck.

Boaz kept his eyes on the path and his mind on the beat of his feet. The Sigil’s warmth spread, then cooled. Justice without vengeance, Aldryn had said. The words were clear as glass. The way through them was not.

They went like this for a long while, the road unraveling in front of them in short threads. One stretch had been shouldered aside entirely by a stand of reeds grown thick as a wall. Telen tested the water with his spear butt. “Soft bottom,” he said. “We skirt to the left.”

“The right looks shorter,” Jaxson said.

“Right drifts,” Shaye answered. “Left holds.”

They went left and found she was right; the footing was ugly but honest. Theo tried to keep count of paces, the better to map it later, but gave up when they were all different lengths anyway.

Ahead, the causeway rose again into a larger hump. At its crown the mist thinned, and shapes stood where no reeds grew. Blocks, not natural: squared, scarred, leaning as if mid-step and then frozen. Even from a distance, the stone wore the worn look of letters.

“Do you see that?” Lyra said, her voice too flat to be wonder and too quiet to be disdain.

Aldryn did. He lifted his head like a hound catching the cleanest scent all morning. “Markers. Still Terran work. They set their alphabet in stone when they needed the land to remember what they told it.”

Theo’s pen was immediately back in hand. “Oh, we’re noting those. We are absolutely noting those.” Tink, sensing a moment, dropped the stolen charcoal into his palm before he could ask.

They climbed the last few slabs to the hump. Mist slid aside like slow breath. The nearest pillar leaned at a tired angle, half its height drowned, its top filmed with moss. Faded grooves tracked its sides; lettering eroded to the idea of letters.

“Old Terran,” Aldryn murmured. He set his palm against the damp face of the stone as if greeting a long-forgotten friend. The wind shifted. The reeds answered and bent with it, turning downstream.

They had come to the drowned markers. The road behind them had narrowed to a memory. The way ahead waited.

Aldryn stepped forward, staff tapping once against the nearest block. “The Terran laid these to guide safe passage through the marsh. So long as you walked in their sightline, you stayed above the sucking ground.”

Theo squinted, wiping water from his brow with the back of his hand. “Well, we can see only half of them. So does that mean the road is…”

“…half as safe,” Shaye cut in. Her tone was matter-of-fact, but her eyes traced the horizon where other pillars leaned, their tops barely visible above the reeds.

Kiera approached the nearest stone. She rested her hand against its cold, damp face. For a long breath, nothing moved but the water lapping at its base. Then her shoulders tightened. “So many people,” she whispered. “Their fear clings here. People thought the stones would save them, but the marsh swallowed them anyway.”

Jaxson’s hand dropped to his short sword. “You’re saying they drowned right on the road?”

“Some.” Her voice was soft, but there was weight in it. “Families, travelers, even guards. The pillars remembered their last breaths. Their sorrow seeps into the water.”

The group fell silent. Even Tink, perched on Theo’s shoulder, stilled her constant rustling. Boaz shifted uncomfortably. He remembered Beltin: the voices outside the doors, the way they had twisted love into temptation. This felt different. Heavier. Less trickery, more truth. The marsh wasn’t inventing horrors; it was preserving them.

In the mud between stones, faint dragging footprints and clawed impressions crossed the causeway. Aldryn frowned. “Too uniform,” he murmured. “Like a patrol trained to move in step.”

Shaye spat to the side. “Fallen don’t march like soldiers.”

Aldryn only tapped his staff against the stone and didn’t answer. He traced the eroded runes with one fingertip. “The Terrans built with permanence in mind. Their stones could stand a thousand years. But the marsh is patient. It eats what it cannot break.” He shook his head, almost in admiration.

Lyra crossed her arms, keeping her distance. Mika trotted around the base of another pillar, sniffing, ears twitching. “So we’re walking on graves,” she said. “That explains the atmosphere.”

Kestel cried once from above, wheeling against the dull sky. Jaxson glanced up, then to the water where the hawk’s reflection wavered. “Still better than no road at all.” He forced a grin, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “At least with markers, we know where we shouldn’t be.”

Theo made a quick sketch of the leaning stones in his folio, marking their angle and distance. “If enough of these are still upright, I can plot a line. Even half-buried, they might keep us from blundering into…” He hesitated, peering at the water as if it might answer. “…whatever counts as certain death here.”

“Do it,” Boaz said. He touched the Sigil under his tunic, its warmth now steady against the damp air. The marsh might hold memories, but he had no desire to add theirs to its store.

Kiera pulled her hand back at last, her face pale but composed. “They don’t ask us to stop,” she said quietly. “Just… to remember them.”

For a moment, no one moved. Then Telen inclined his head to her, the smallest acknowledgment, before stepping forward to test the stones ahead with his spear butt. “We go on,” he said.

The company fell into step, leaving the drowned markers leaning in the mist. The reeds closed behind them, and soon even the carved pillars were nothing more than another memory the marsh refused to release.

Mist closed in as they left the last pillar behind. It gathered from the water and rose in pale threads, curling around ankles and wrists, seeping into every fold of cloak.

A cry came from the left. A voice thin as reeds and high with panic: “Help! Gods, help me, I can’t…”

Jaxson stiffened. His head snapped toward the sound. In the dark channel between causeway stones, arms thrashed, a woman’s form, hair plastered to her face, water boiling around her.

“She’s drowning!” Jaxson leapt forward.

“Wait!” Boaz barked, but too late. Jaxson dropped to one knee and reached for her, leaning over the black surface.

The woman’s face turned upward. Her eyes were open, but there was no plea in them, only a glassy, endless stare. Her mouth kept working soundlessly long after the scream had faded. The reflection of her body wavered like smoke under glass.

Jaxson’s fingers brushed only water. Then the reeds below surged upward, coiling around his wrist. With a startled curse he toppled forward.

Thorne lunged, claws scoring stone, but Jaxson was already sliding off the edge.

Theo acted first. He dropped his folio, snatched a palm-sized stone from the causeway, and scrawled a rune across its face so quickly it looked more instinct than thought. The lines burned faintly blue. He hurled the stone past Jaxson’s flailing shoulder into the mist.

It sank, then a rope of light unfurled itself from the rock, wrapped around Jaxson’s waist, and ascended to the surface. Theo grabbed it, shouting, “Hold fast!”

Shaye was already there. She seized the rope behind him, bracing her heels against a cracked seam in the causeway. “Pull!”

Together they heaved. Jaxson broke the surface coughing, reeds lashing his arms like whips. He scrabbled for the edge, hands sliding on the slime, but the rope held him just long enough for Thorne’s jaws to clamp on the back of his cloak. With a feral growl, the lynx dragged him over the lip.

They collapsed in a heap. Jaxson’s chest heaved, water streaming from his hair and sleeves. His eyes were wide, furious at himself. “She was right there,” he gasped. “She was…”

“There was no one,” Aldryn cut in sharply. He crouched at the edge, staff pressed to the stone, watching the water with unblinking intensity. “Not lures, not like Beltin. Memories. Echoes caught in the marsh.”

The water rippled again. A child’s face broke the surface only a few feet away, mouth opening in a silent wail. Then another further off, a bearded man struggling against invisible hands, eyes rolling white. Everywhere they looked now, new figures floundered just out of reach, each trapped in its own death-throe.

Kiera pressed a fist to her mouth. “They’re reliving it.”

“They never stopped,” Aldryn said grimly. “Old deaths sink in water. But the memory floats.”

Lyra swore under her breath. “So it’s not enough we walk on graves. Now they rise and beg for company.”

Boaz helped Jaxson sit up. His pulse hammered at his throat. The Sigil on his chest warmed, sensing his turmoil, but he held it down. If he let it flare here, what would it do? Burn illusions? Or bind them tighter?

Jaxson wiped water from his face, still trembling. “I could feel her hand. I swear to you I felt her hand.”

“It wasn’t hers,” Shaye snapped, sharper than she meant. She hauled him to his feet with a strong grip. “If you keep chasing ghosts, the marsh will keep you.”

Theo reeled in the glowing rope, the light guttering as the rune cracked. Tink clung to his collar, eyes huge, damp fur puffed like a question. He patted her absently. “Well. One more entry in the ledger of things I’d rather never do again.”

“Nice bit of rune-work there,” said Aldryn. Nevara gave a low croak from Aldryn’s shoulder, wings twitching uneasily.

“Thanks for that, I owe you one,” said Jaxson, still unsteady on his feet.

Boaz looked back at the figures in the water. The woman was still there, still drowning, but her thrashing had slowed into a loop: jerks repeating the same two motions, like a wheel stuck in its groove. The child vanished, then reappeared, always in the same spot, mouth open in the same voiceless cry.

“They don’t see us,” he realized aloud. “They’re not reaching for us. We’re just… watching the end of them.”

Kiera’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “They wanted someone to answer.”

“They wanted breath,” Telen said, low. He tested the path ahead with his spear, face unreadable. “They never got it.”

The company moved more tightly together now, every step wary. Figures continued to surface around them: some near, some distant, all caught in the endless drowning that had claimed them. The marsh itself seemed to breathe heavier with each new apparition.

Jaxson kept his eyes forward, jaw clenched, refusing to look again. Lyra walked with one hand gripping Mika’s scruff, the hyena growling low whenever another shape rose too close. Theo scratched a frantic sketch of one of the half-seen faces, then shoved the folio into his pack as if he couldn’t stand to hold it longer.

Boaz’s hand hovered near the Sigil. Justice without vengeance. Could justice reach the dead? Could mercy? The Sigil pulsed, faint and steady, but he kept his fingers from closing over it. Not here. Not now.

Aldryn raised his staff and spoke firmly, voice carrying across the mist. “Eyes up. The marsh has no shortage of endings to show you. But none of them are yours, unless you let it.”

The words worked better than comfort. They gave the company a rope to hold. One by one, they tore their gazes from the floundering figures and fixed them on the stretch of causeway ahead, stones glistening wet and narrow but solid. Step by step, they walked on, the drowned illusions slipping into the black water behind them. Only when the mist thinned slightly and the road widened again did anyone speak.

Jaxson spat to the side, shaking his head. “If I ever dive headlong at shadows again, someone hit me first.”

“Gladly,” Lyra said.

Theo offered a grim smile. “I’ll draw up a schedule.”

The laughter that followed was thin, but it was real.

The marsh whispered on, reeds rattling like bones in the wind. But for now, the fellowship kept itself unbroken.

The causeway pinched to a single, sagging timber span.

It ran ten paces across a black channel, boards bowed and bleached to the color of old bone. The marsh had eaten the handrails long ago; only the stump of a post remained on the near side, chewed to a splintered tooth. Water slid under the bridge without a sound. No ripples, no current, just a slow, dark glide that made Boaz think of lids closing over eyes.

“Well,” Jaxson said, stopping short. “That’s inviting.”

“Short and straight,” Shaye judged. She tapped the first plank with her boot. It gave a weary creak but held. “One at a time. Light feet, lighter breaths.”

Lyra stepped forward and lifted her hand. The small orb at her wrist brightened. The air wavered along the span, the illusion making the gaps between boards seem less like holes and more like darker wood. “Don’t look down where it isn’t,” she said, voice thin with concentration. “Look where it is.”

Mika stood rigid at the edge, every muscle strung. Her lips peeled in a silent snarl aimed at the water. Kestel pinwheeled once overhead, then climbed to a higher circle as if altitude itself were safety. Eira shifted in Kiera’s hood and hooted, low and disapproving.

“Let me test. I’m lighter,” Telen said. He set the haft of his spear on the first plank, then the second, putting a measured weight on each. He went to the third board and paused. “This one is rotten under the face.” He looked over his shoulder. “Step on the beam, not the board.”

Theo crouched, peering at the underside through a gap. “Beams run longways,” he muttered, half to Tink, half to himself. “We step the spine, not the ribs.” Tink, grave with the seriousness of engineers, patted his ear and then flicked a bead of water into the channel. It vanished without a ring.

Aldryn planted his staff. “Telen first, then Lyra to hold the line in our heads, Boaz, Kiera, Theo, Shaye, and I’ll close with Jaxson.”

“I can go earlier,” Jaxson offered quickly, jaw tight. “I don’t mind.”

“I know,” Aldryn said. “You’ll go last.”

Jaxson bit down on what he might have said and nodded.

Telen crossed like a man walking with confidence. He put his boot directly over the beams, long strides finding the narrow truth of the bridge. At the midpoint, the whole span sagged another finger’s width. Something deep below knocked once against the underside, soft, deliberate. Telen didn’t turn his head. He finished the last three paces and stepped onto the far slab of causeway, turning to face them, spear held casually upright, but at the ready.

Lyra went next. The shimmer along the bridge sharpened as she stepped out, the gaps becoming the suggestion of planks, the arc smoothing into a gentle curve. Mika tried to follow and Lyra held up a hand without looking back. “Stay.” The hyena didn’t like it, but she obeyed, muscles rippling under her spotted hide as if a tremor moved through the ground into her.

Two boards in, Lyra’s boot slid. She caught herself with a hiss and shifted onto the beam, breath steadying. “It’s fine,” she said to no one and everyone. “It’s fine if you decide it is.” She reached the far side, let out a long breath, and the illusion held, taut as a drawn string.

Boaz stepped up. He was easily the heaviest, and felt less sure because of it. Thorne pressed against his calf, a weight like an oath. “You wait,” Boaz told him quietly, hand in the lynx’s ruff. Thorne’s ears flattened, then flicked forward again. He sat as instructed, tail-tip tapping once, twice, slow as a metronome.

The first step was honest: wood, wet and giving. The second was less honest: a beam thinner than it looked under Lyra’s mirage. Boaz adjusted, rolling his weight to the ball of his foot. The Sigil stirred under his cloak, warming across his chest as if alerting to a boundary. Not a fire for fear, he told it, or told himself. Not here. He kept his eyes on the shoulder of Lyra’s cloak where a single raindrop clung and refused to fall.

Halfway across, the thing below touched the bridge again.

It was not a strike. It was the suggestion of a push from something large and unhurried. The timber answered with a long groan, and the dark surface heaved once under the boards. A smell rose with the swell: old mud and something sweet turned bad, like fruit left too long in a sealed jar.

Kiera made a small sound behind him, a prayer exhaled rather than spoken. Boaz didn’t turn his head. He set his foot on the beam and kept going. When he stepped off onto stone, his knees felt hollow.

Kiera came after him, each step measured to the beam. “You’re steady,” she said, not as reassurance but as a statement of shared fact. Eira peered over her shoulder at the water and went still.

Theo followed with Tink a tense bundle at his collar. The board Telen had warned of crumbled slightly under his heel with a wet sigh. He hopped to the next beam, then halted as the bridge bowed further under his weight than it had under Boaz’s. “Right. Not personal,” he whispered to the structure, as if embarrassed. He pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket and drew a tiny square on the beam he stood on, then another on the one two steps ahead. “There. You’re you. Be yourself.” He crossed the last span, boots tapping a quick nervous rhythm. Tink resisted the urge to look down by clamping both hands over her own eyes.

Shaye went in a low, even glide, the way predators cross narrow things. She paused once, head cocked, listening to a noise no one else seemed to hear, then finished lightly and posted beside Lyra, blade angled downward but ready.

Aldryn touched the post remnant with his fingertips before he stepped on. “You’ve held longer than you were asked,” he told the wood. “Hold a little more.” He set his staff ahead of each step, testing, tapping, trusting. The bridge talked back to him in small, aching sounds. He reached the other side, stopped, and turned. “Now, Jaxson.”

Jaxson inhaled, exhaled, and went.

He moved careful and quick, a man who knew his own urge to sprint and denied it without argument. When the shape below the bridge rose again, he didn’t look. It was obvious in the lift underfoot, in the way the boards sighed around the nails. He stepped slowly and let the pond-black thing do whatever it intended without giving it his eyes.

He reached the last pace, and a plank split under him with a sharp crack. His leg plunged through to the knee. He slammed forward, catching himself on his hands, ribs smacking the beam, breath flying out of him. The bridge lurched.

Boaz was already moving. He dropped to a knee on the stone, arm outstretched. “Take my hand!”

Jaxson grabbed it. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, then pressed his other palm to the beam, pushed while Boaz pulled, and they pulled his trapped leg free by slow degrees. Jaxson winced as rotten wood scraped his shin. He set his foot on the beam again, right over the spine, exactly where he meant to, and stood. Then he stepped off the bridge and onto the causeway, chest heaving. No one spoke for a long moment. The water slid under the bridge as it had before, indifferent.

Lyra let the shimmer release. The span seemed to sag another finger without the lie to brace it. “We don’t take that twice,” she said.

“Agreed,” Aldryn said. He set his hand lightly on Jaxson’s shoulder. “Well done.”

Jaxson laughed once, sharp and breathless. “I am going to start a petition against bridges. Whichever kingdom is supposed to maintain them had better do their job.”

Theo, his shaky grin returning like a reluctant friend, held up his folio. “I’ll second it. But I’m also going to nominate this one for an award.” He scribbled a crude laurel around a rectangle labeled Bridge That Tried.

Kiera knelt and checked Jaxson’s leg. Splinters, shallow cuts, a bruise already rising. Eira leaned in as if to audit the injury herself. “Stay still,” and she murmured a short spell, the wound cleaning, healing, and the bruise softening.

“Thanks,” Jaxson sighed.

Boaz looked back at the span, at the cracked plank, at the long slow thread of water beneath. “Let’s move,” he said, not unkindly. “Before whatever that was decides to investigate us more closely.”

They went on, the bridge a thin span behind them, the channel sliding under it. The reeds on the far bank leaned all one way, as if something had passed that direction not long ago and left the air bent. Mika’s hackles stayed up for a while; Thorne pressed close enough to brush Boaz’s knee every once in a while. When the path widened again to solid slabs and the mist thinned to a gauzy film, they paused and looked back. They all took a deep breath.

By late afternoon the road lifted onto a low rise where reeds gave way to broken stone. The place was hardly more than a shelf above the waterline, but it was solid enough to pitch camp. The fellowship spread cloaks and packs in a rough circle, grateful for the small kindness of a dry spot from the marsh.

Theo coaxed a fire from damp kindling, using shavings from a dry pouch he guarded more jealously than his maps. When the flames caught, licking orange against the gray, Tink trilled a pleased chirp and curled in front of it like a furry sentinel.

The firelight painted their faces strange: Jaxson’s jaw still tight, Lyra’s eyes hollowed with fatigue, Kiera’s mouth pressed thin with unspoken worry. Shaye sat with her blade across her knees, sharpening in slow, methodical strokes. Telen leaned on his spear, silent as always, but the way his gaze tracked the reeds told Boaz the Agua wasn’t at rest.

Thorne sprawled near Boaz, the lynx’s tufted ears pricked at every ripple of mist. Boaz absently stroked the thick ruff at his neck. The Sigil rested warm under his tunic, steady now, like coals banked beneath ash. For once it didn’t press on him with demand, only with presence.

The marsh never went still. Even here, shapes drifted at the edges of vision: pale shadows sliding between reeds, thin figures half-glimpsed and gone. Sometimes the mist carried what looked like a hand reaching, or a face just about to speak. The company didn’t rise, didn’t answer. They drew closer to the fire and let the visions pass.

At length, Telen spoke. His voice was flat as the marsh, but not unkind. “Hunters say the marsh teaches two lessons. Reflection can hide depth, and stillness is not safety. If you learn the difference, you live.”

Thorne stiffened, fur bristling. Boaz followed his gaze into the mist, where a tall silhouette stood watching. Its shadow moved oddly before the figure, out of step with its own stillness. Boaz’s hand went to the Sigil; it trembled hot in his palm, as if answering a call. The figure vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving only the echo of its presence. Boaz lingered, uneasy, but when nothing more stirred he turned to the fire with the others. No one else seemed to notice.

Jaxson poked the fire with a stick. “Sounds like the marsh has it out for anyone who doesn’t speak in riddles.”

Shaye gave a rare grin. “Then you’re doomed, Jax.” The laughter was thin but it loosened the tension.

Theo pulled his folio into his lap, scratching quick notes by firelight. “Reflection hides depth,” he muttered, committing it to the margin. “That’s wisdom worth mapping.”

Aldryn shifted, pulling his cloak tighter. “The marsh remembers more than men do. Its memory is not merciful. But memory alone cannot bind the living unless we choose to bind ourselves to it.” He looked across the circle, eyes sharp in the fire’s glow. “We will remember the dead we saw today. But we will not drown with them.”

Silence followed. Only the crackle of damp wood, only the reeds hissing in the wind.

Boaz drew his knees up, resting his arms across them. The Sigil pulsed faintly, as if to echo Aldryn’s words. Not vengeance. Justice. Not fear. Endurance. He didn’t speak the thought aloud. He wasn’t sure the others needed his doubt carried into their dreams.

Kiera’s voice broke the quiet at last. She looked into the fire rather than at anyone. “They didn’t ask us to follow,” she said. “Only not to forget.” Her hand brushed the feathers at Eira’s breast, and the owl leaned into her touch.

The company kept their watch in turns. Some slept quickly from weariness, others fought for it. Shadows came and went, but none crossed the circle of fire. By unspoken agreement, no one rose to answer the drifting shapes. They let them fade into mist, unanswered but not unseen.

Toward dawn, the wind shifted, carrying the smell of brine and peat. The mist thinned just enough to show the line of reeds bending ahead, pointing the way deeper into the marsh.

When Boaz took his turn at watch, he rose and walked a few steps to the edge of the rise. Thorne stepped beside him, silent as the fog. The marsh lay endless, flat and waiting. In its silence, he felt again the weight of the Sigil: not a burden, not a command, just a reminder.

He rested a hand on Thorne’s shoulder. “We keep our circle complete,” he whispered. “We endure.”

The lynx blinked slow, solemn as stone, and stayed at his side until the firelight behind them faded into the gray of morning.

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