Mist clung low to the ground, weaving between reeds and curling along the causeway until stone and water blurred into the same pale grey. The River Rallin meandered beside them. It was a slow enough current here that you had to watch its dark waters for some minutes to know which way it flowed. Bubbles rose and kissed the surface without a sound.

They halted where the bank surrendered to the first ranks of stone. The causeway reached ahead like a broken spine, vertebrae misaligned, slick with moss and half-sunk by years of neglect. After a dozen strides it vanished into mist. Even Thorne hesitated at the edge, muscles tight, tail flicking. He stood next to Boaz and pressed against his leg, a low growl humming in his chest.

Aldryn crouched, set the butt of his staff into the black-green water, and drew it out again. A film clung to the wood. His mouth flattened. “Sick with memory,” he said quietly. “The river forgets its name… and begins to rot.”

No one asked what the river’s name had been. Only Aldryn had known it when it ran fuller and cleaner. For the rest of them, the Rallin existed as it lay before their boots: a hush of water, colorless light, reeds that swayed without wind.

Telen’s eyes moved across the banks. “A marsh should be louder than this,” he said, voice even but uneasy. “Birds, frogs, insects, even the reeds speaking to each other. But here it keeps its tongue.” His grip tightened on his spear. “Wrong.”

Lyra gave a short, too-sharp laugh. “Or right, if you’re the thing hiding in it.” She cinched her cloak tighter. “Feels like we’ve interrupted someone else’s silence.”

“Then we’ll be polite guests and keep moving,” Shaye said, blade balanced on her shoulder. Her tone worked at nonchalance; her eyes did not.

Theo crouched over the first stone, tracing the fissures with a fingertip. “This looks like the Terran work from before,” he muttered. “Old. Settled. See how the edges list toward the silt? If we spread load…”

“Let’s keep moving,” Jaxson cut in, more hiss than whisper. He had a bow in hand and impatience in his stance. “I don’t like the feel of this place, and we shouldn’t linger.”

Kestel circled once above the fog, a shadow more than a hawk, then vanished, wings scissoring the mist. Eira’s pale shape ghosted to Kiera’s shoulder. Mika kept to Lyra’s heel, hackles up. Tink tucked herself against Theo’s pack straps, chittering once before going still.

Boaz listened without turning his head. The marsh’s disquiet pressed in on them, testing their resolve to keep moving. He laid his palm to his chest. The Sigil almost felt as though something unseen had reached out and tapped it.

Cayden’s voice rose unbidden from his memory: Step forward and lead, or they won’t. The words sounded practical and not unkind. He let his hand fall from the sigil, set his thoughts in order, and filled the space the company left for him… to lead.

“We move,” Boaz said. Not loud, just certain. “Close formation. If trouble comes, circle. No stragglers.”

He stepped onto the first stone without looking back to confirm agreement. Thorne flowed after him, paws making no sound. Water lapped once against the rock. The next stone came slick and slanted; Boaz tested it before shifting his weight forward. Behind him boots followed in deliberate rhythm: Jaxson with his impatient stride; Lyra careful and contained; Theo muttering numbers; Aldryn slow and steady; Shaye and Telen as rear guard, blades already bare.

The mist climbed as they went. It drew to their knees, their waists, their shoulders, until their bodies thinned to shadows with wet edges. Every tap of leather on stone felt overlarge, a foreign noise in a place that wanted none. Boaz counted steps without meaning to, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and forced his mind away from it. Counting made the distance seem longer.

They passed a half-drowned marker: a squat, ridged stone with shallow grooves that might once have been letters. Theo slowed, frowning, but Boaz raised two fingers, pointed forward, and the young man moved on. They were not here to take every curiosity into their hands.

On the left, the bank fell into a wider gutter of water. A mat of reeds lay there, veined black like leaves pressed too hard in a book. Thorne stared at it, nose working, then sneezed and shook his head as if shaking out some water.

“What do you smell?” Boaz asked without looking back.

The lynx’s answer was not a word, but Boaz knew his moods. Not danger yet, just a wrongness like a pebble in the paw: impossible to ignore, impossible to fix before you reached clean ground.

“Eyes open,” Boaz said, and the words went down the line like a rope pulled taut.

They advanced another span. The causeway dipped, and water crept across the stones. It was cold when it broke around Boaz’s boot and colder when it soaked his skin. He imagined threads in it: a film that chose what to cling to, and made the thought stop. He would not feed dread with his imaginings.

Jaxson came up on his left to peer ahead. “I don’t like how quiet it is,” he murmured. “Feels like a stage after the players have left.”

“Then we should leave the theatre after curtain call,” Boaz said.

That drew a breath from Jaxson that might have been a laugh if he’d had one to spare. He dropped into line. Lyra, catching the exchange, shook her head but the corner of her mouth loosened.

Aldryn’s staff tapped stone, then stone again, marking the pace. “The Rallin ran bright once,” he said, as if to himself. “Ran quick. Traders followed it. The Terrans set these stones to keep their feet dry.” He paused. “A boy skipped them anyway.” His mouth bent into a private shape. “He did not fall.”

Boaz didn’t ask who the boy had been. The old man’s memories were like the path: useful if you stepped carefully. What mattered was the company behind him and the mist in front of him and the feel of his next footing.

The stones narrowed. Ahead, the causeway shouldered between two darker pools, water on either side perfectly still, as if waiting to decide whether it would be river or black mirror. Boaz watched the surfaces for any ripple not made by them. Nothing changed. He moved on.

Theo’s voice reached him, hushed but eager. “There’s a trick to balancing weight on a tilt. If we redistributed packs…”

“Keep your pack,” Shaye said from the rear. “I like knowing where the clanking of gadgets comes from.”

“They aren’t clanking,” Theo said, affronted. “They’re… necessary.”

“Then keep them necessary and quiet,” Telen said.

The Sigil quickened again, a soft pulse timed with no breath of Boaz’s. It made him want to press his palm there in acknowledgement and also to tear the tunic away because the marsh felt aware of what he carried. He did neither. He set his boots carefully on each stone, and the company stretched behind him like a single string being pulled by a hand.

They passed another marker, this one toppled into the water. A dark smear clung to its submerged face, hiding perhaps more Terran letters. Boaz’s gaze snagged on it and slid away. He could not afford curiosity and fear at the same time.

“Boaz,” Lyra said softly, “how far do you think this causeway runs?”

“It goes on for as far as I can see, at least in this mist,” he said. The answer was not meant to comfort, only to end the question. Comfort belonged to different sorts of days.

The mist thickened again, like an animal settling down for a rest. For a span all he could see of those behind him was the pale flash of Kiera’s hair and the dark blade in Shaye’s hand. Somewhere above, Kestel made a tight circle and disappeared. Eira settled on Kiera’s shoulder, head turning without sound. Thorne’s shoulder brushed Boaz’s knee, a steadying touch.

He lifted a hand and slowed. The causeway sank lower beneath his boot. The water beside the stone had a skin like grime on old glass. He listened. Nothing. He breathed once, deep, and stepped forward.

The causeway narrowed as the mist pressed closer, stones slick and dark beneath the fellowship’s boots. The river to either side seemed to hold its breath. Thorne’s growl deepened, his muscles coiled.

Then the water erupted.

A massive shape burst upward, jaws opening wide enough to swallow a man whole. Spray struck Boaz’s face like rain. Moss and algae clung in dripping mats to a plated hide, and its eyes burned with a faint gold gleam. The thing landed half on the stones with a crash that jarred the entire path.

“Alligator!” Jaxson’s cry tore free, though the word sounded too small for what loomed before them.

Before the shock faded, another surged from the reeds to the left, tail lashing across the causeway. Stones shattered. Lyra staggered with a sharp cry as the blow caught her hip, pitching her sideways. Jaxson seized her arm and hauled her back just as the water splashed where she would have fallen.

Theo had no time to think. The first beast lunged at him, jaws snapping shut with a sound like timber splitting. He flung himself backward, scrambled, and slammed one of his carved shards against the stone. A shimmer sparked around him: teeth scraped across an invisible ward instead of flesh. Still, moss tendrils slithered from the creature’s hide, crawling toward him. He froze, body locked by a terror that was not his own.

Kiera’s voice cut the air. A pure note, sharp as glass, then widening into song. Light radiated outward, dissolving the paralyzing grip. Theo gasped, shoving himself to his knees, his hands trembling.

Boaz was already moving. He stepped into the beast’s next strike, sword flashing, Sigil burning hot against his chest. When the blade cut, it carried fire that was not flame but cleansing heat. Moss hissed and curled, shriveling as the creature recoiled. Its eyes guttered, the gold dimming.

The second beast lunged for Lyra again, who was closest, water streaming from its plated head. Desperation bent her hands outward, and for an instant the air rippled. The creature struck its own reflection and shuddered in confusion. Jaxson darted forward, blades flashing, and sank them both into the exposed side. Black water sprayed as it roared.

Shaye was there in the next breath, her hooked knife ripping moss from the flank of the first. Telen’s spear flew true, punching through the lower jaw and pinning it for a heartbeat against the stone. The beast thrashed, tail slamming the causeway hard enough to spray water over them all.

Boaz closed, Sigil flaring brighter, and drove his sword in deep. The moss recoiled in smoke and steam, shrieking as it died. The beast convulsed once and sagged.

The second beast tried to rise again, blood frothing around Jaxson’s blades. Boaz wrenched his sword free and swept the strike across its skull. The plated hide split with a wet crack, and the creature slumped sideways, half into the river.

Silence rushed back, sudden and total.

The only sound was the company’s ragged breathing and the drip of water off their weapons and clothing. Steam curled from the dying moss and bodies, black scraps writhing for a moment before collapsing into sludge that bled into the stones.

Thorne stood rigid, chest heaving, his gaze locked on the still river as though expecting more to rise.

Boaz lowered his blade slowly, chest tight. The Sigil’s heat faded, but its echo lingered, as though it had wanted the strike.

Steam rose from the carcasses where the moss had burned away, curling in the mist before vanishing. The bodies slumped against the stones, heavy and still, though scraps of green-black slime twitched a moment longer before collapsing into foul sludge. The air reeked of iron from their blood and the stagnant water that was disturbed.

The fellowship stood in silence, blades still drawn. Thorne paced at the edge of the causeway, fur bristling, a low growl running down his throat. Only when the river gave no further stir did anyone lower their weapon.

Jaxson broke the quiet first. He nudged one carcass with the tip of his short sword. “That was no alligator I’ve ever seen.”

Lyra winced as she adjusted her cloak, favoring her hip. “Too big. Too fast. And the moss… moved. Like it was alive and wanted us.”

Shaye spat into the river. “Ugliest thing I’ve set eyes on. Mossgator, more like.”

Theo barked a short laugh, thin and shaky. “Mossgator. God preserve us, that fits. You earned naming rights, Shaye.” The word stuck. Even Lyra let a half-smile slip. Jaxson snorted, shaking his head, and sheathed his swords.

Boaz wiped his blade clean against the reeds. His mouth tugged into the faintest grin. “Mossgator. Still fresher than Tessa’s cooking.”

That cracked them. Jaxson laughed aloud, Theo joined in, and even Shaye’s mouth twitched. The sound carried thin across the mist, a fragile defiance against the silence. For a moment it felt like air returning to their lungs. Laughter hadn’t been heard here in a long time.

But Aldryn did not laugh. He knelt by one of the carcasses, staff planted against the stone. Nevara wheeled overhead, croaking once before settling silent. His gaze was fixed on the moss still clinging to the beast’s hide, now blackened and brittle. “Something is shaping these creatures,” he said, voice low. “Not breeding them. Warping them. Binding life to ruin. This is no accident.”

The laughter faded. One by one, the company fell silent again, the weight of his words settling heavier than the mist. Boaz’s hand drifted to his chest, where the Sigil throbbed faintly under his tunic. He pressed it, feeling its warmth stir at Aldryn’s words. Watching. Waiting.

The causeway stretched ahead into fog, and the river beside them flowed on, silent, sluggish, watching.

By the time the causeway gave way to firmer ground, the light was failing. They found a low rise of stone at the edge of the marsh where the mist thinned, and there they built their fire. The wood was damp and hissed as it burned, but the flame took hold at last, giving them a fragile circle of warmth in the sea of grey.

Thorne prowled just outside the light, shoulders tense, his eyes bright and unblinking. Eira perched on a leaning post of driftwood, her head swiveling in sharp, silent arcs. Mika padded around the fire three times before settling with a grunt, head resting on her paws but ears flicking at every faint sound. Tink sat cross-legged beside Theo, her tiny paws busy with the scrap of moss Theo had pocketed, turning it over like a trinket she wanted to dismantle.

The fellowship sat close. The fire spat, smoke clinging low to the ground. Beyond the rise, the marsh was utterly still. No insect drone, no frog croak, no wingbeat of night birds. The silence pressed against their circle, listening.

Jaxson was the first to speak. He leaned back on his elbows, staring into the flames. “If that rot can twist alligators into… those things —” his mouth tightened “— what’s next? Wolves? Deer? People?”

Lyra pulled her cloak tighter around herself. The firelight caught her eyes, making them look sharp. “Beltin’s voices are still clawing at the back of my head. That silence, the knock on the shutters, the voices that weren’t theirs. Now we have beasts shaped into nightmares. It doesn’t matter what face it wears, the corruption always knows how to get under the skin.”

Kiera glanced at her, then leaned closer to the fire. Her voice was quiet but steady. “And yet it can be broken. Virelya’s Mercy scattered the fear. Light still answers.” She smiled faintly, though her fingers traced the haft of her mace as if reassuring herself. “Darkness lies heavy. But it isn’t endless.”

Theo cleared his throat. He had been holding the moss scrap under rune-light, watching the veins pulse faintly. His hands shook from more than fatigue. “It’s still pulsing, but this isn’t flesh,” he muttered. “Not properly. More like… etching. As if someone carved runes into life itself, but without care for shape or limit. It’s all jagged, wasteful. Wrong.” His fingers cramped suddenly, and he hissed, dropping the fragment. “Even looking at it makes my hands ache.”

Boaz sat quiet through it all. Thorne pressed against his leg, steady as a stone, while he kept his eyes on the fire. The Sigil pulsed faintly beneath his tunic, as though every mention of corruption drew it nearer to waking. He said nothing. Not yet.

Shaye poked at the fire with the tip of her blade. “What I want to know is what in the Maker’s name you did, Lyra. That second beast, it looked like it struck its own reflection. That wasn’t luck.”

Lyra stiffened. “I don’t know what it was. I only reached.”

“Don’t play it off,” Jaxson said, leaning forward. “You bent it. Threw it against itself. Call it what it is.”

Lyra’s mouth pressed into a thin line. For a long moment she didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on the flames. At last she said, “It was like pulling a veil aside. Making what was real seem false, and what was false hold weight. If I had to call it something…” She drew a slow breath. “Veilshift.”

The fire crackled as she said it.

Jaxson smirked. “Veilshift. A trickster’s spell if ever there was one.”

“Better than being swallowed whole,” Shaye said dryly.

Theo shifted where he sat. “And mine,” He flexed his cramped fingers. “I’ve been carving glyphs into stone, wood, shards, anything I can manage. They wake when I set them. Barriers, wards, constructs. I suppose it ought to be named, too.” He glanced around sheepishly. “Glyphcraft. That’s the closest word for it.”

Kiera smiled gently. “It fits.”

Lyra raised a brow. “And you, healer? You already gave yours a pretty name.”

Kiera met her gaze steadily. “Not I. The old tongue made it before me back in Cirol’s library: Virelya’s Mercy.”

There was a pause. The fire cracked again, throwing sparks.

Jaxson leaned back, exhaling through his nose. “Fine, then. We’re naming things now. Maybe names make them more real. More ours.”

“Or more dangerous,” Shaye muttered.

Theo shook his head. “Not naming doesn’t make them less. Only leaves them untethered.”

The familiars stirred as if echoing the thought. Thorne came up closer to Boaz, eyes bright in the firelight. Eira ruffled her feathers and gave a low hiss. Mika stood and circled again, restless, before collapsing with a thump. Tink dropped the moss scrap and skittered up Theo’s shoulder, chittering as if to punctuate his words.

Through it all, Boaz remained quiet until at last he spoke. His hand pressed to his chest, where the Sigil pulsed. “Every time we meet this corruption,” he said slowly, “the Sigil stirs. It feels like it’s waiting for me to answer. Like it knows.”

The fire hissed as damp wood popped. No one interrupted him.

Boaz stared into the flames, the weight of the others’ silence as heavy as their eyes. At last he said, “I don’t know what it wants. Only that it does.”

The mist pressed closer to their circle, almost luminous in the firelight. The silence deepened, swallowing their words as soon as they were spoken, as if the marsh itself leaned in to listen.

The fire had burned low, its circle of light shrunken to a bed of glowing coals that spat and hissed in the damp air. Mist pressed against the edges of the rise as if it wished to smother the flame entirely. The fellowship had grown quiet after the naming of their spellcraft. Some shifted into their blankets, others leaned into their familiars, but sleep had not yet come. It was the silence of people still turning things over in their minds.

Aldryn rested his hands over the head of his staff and studied the faces around the circle before he spoke. “You did well tonight. Quick hands and quicker thinking. That saved lives. But you need to understand what we faced. Those beasts weren’t natural. The moss wasn’t feeding on them, it was directing them. Something is bending life into weapons. This isn’t random sickness. It’s deliberate.”

Theo frowned, flexing his hands as if the memory of the moss still clung to them. “So it’s… controlled?”

“Exactly,” Aldryn said. “Corruption this deep doesn’t spread without will. The question isn’t what it’s doing, but who’s behind it.”

“Vortannis,” Lyra said bitterly.

“Perhaps,” Aldryn allowed. “Perhaps one of his servants. It hardly matters which. What matters is this: the more we resist, the more it will adapt. Expect it to learn from every encounter.”

Jaxson stirred at that, restless. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “If this thing is learning from every encounter, then we need to adapt as well. But I hated the silence and oppressiveness more than the fight. That silence on the causeway, it was like standing on a stage with the crowd hiding in the dark, waiting to see how you’d trip.”

Shaye smirked faintly. “Then you’d better not trip.”

Jaxson tossed a pebble toward her boots. “Easy for you to say. You looked half ready to bite the thing’s head off yourself.”

“Better its head than mine,” Shaye replied.

Lyra shifted her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t like naming what I did out there. Naming makes it too real.”

“Too late,” Jaxson said, grinning. “Veilshift has a ring to it. You’re stuck with it now.”

Theo rubbed his hands, still stiff from earlier. “At least your magic doesn’t punish you for using it. I swear these glyphs will snap my fingers clean off one of these days.”

“Finally,” Shaye said, “a weapon that bites back.”

That drew a ripple of laughter, thin, but real. Even Lyra’s mouth twitched despite herself.

Kiera’s voice was quiet, but firm. “Names don’t make the magic heavier, Lyra. They give us a way to hold it steady. We’re already carrying more than we’d like. Better to call it what it is than let it remain a shadow we can’t understand.”

Lyra studied her a moment before looking away. “Perhaps.”

The fire sank lower, sparks leaping briefly before dying in the mist. Around the circle the familiars shifted into their night-roles. Eira took a silent pass overhead before returning to Kiera’s shoulder. Mika prowled three full circles before Lyra coaxed her down at her side. Tink busied herself by pawing at Theo’s tiny ward of pebbles and string before curling beside it like a sentinel. Kestel ghosted once overhead and vanished. Thorne refused to settle, pacing the perimeter until Boaz finally lowered himself to the ground, sitting; only then did the lynx press against him, warm and steady.

Boaz did not lie down right away. He lingered at the edge of the firelight, staring into the mist. The Sigil still pulsed beneath his tunic, faint but insistent. Aldryn joined him without sound, staff in hand. For a long while they sat side by side, listening to the damp crackle of coals.

Boaz pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the faint warmth of the Sigil under his tunic. “The Sigil stirs whenever we face corruption like this. As if it knows.”

Aldryn’s gaze settled on him. “I think that’s a good thing. But be careful. Power that rises too easily tempts a man to strike before he should. The Sigil may be a weapon of justice, but justice misused cuts both ways. Learn its weight. Answer it when you must, hold it when you can.”

Boaz exhaled through his nose. “That’s harder than it sounds.”

“Of course it is,” Aldryn said. “If it were simple, anyone could carry it.” He paused. “You carry yourself well in front of them,” Aldryn said at last. “But I can see what it costs you.”

Boaz’s jaw tightened. “They look to me because you don’t claim the place. If you wanted to lead, they’d follow you.”

“I’ve led before,” Aldryn replied. “It leaves marks. Better you learn while the weight is still new. If it bends you now, I can still help straighten you. Later… not so much.”

Boaz’s fingers brushed his chest. “Every time the corruption rises, the Sigil pushes at me. I don’t know if I’m using it, or if it’s using me.”

“That’s the right question,” Aldryn said. “Too many never ask it. Power without doubt is ruin. Power with nothing but doubt is paralysis. You need the middle road.”

“And if I choose wrong?”

“Then you learn, and choose again,” Aldryn said simply. “Leadership isn’t about always being right. It’s about refusing to let fear keep you still. Stillness can look like wisdom, but often it’s only fear hiding behind patience.”

Boaz turned his gaze eastward into the mist. “And if I act in anger?”

“Then the Sigil will turn on you,” Aldryn said, sharp as steel. “You already know that. Which means you must decide what you fight for before you draw. Don’t let the moment decide for you.”

Boaz breathed out, steadying himself. “Then I’ll learn.”

“That’s all anyone can ask,” Aldryn said, his voice softening. “And it’s enough.”

Behind them, the others had begun to drift toward uneasy rest. Kiera checked each one before lying down herself. Jaxson finished a last circuit of the rise, blades at his side. Lyra leaned into Mika’s warmth, finally letting her eyes close. Theo whispered one last command to his ward before curling around it, Tink perched watchfully on his chest. Shaye and Telen argued briefly over who would take the first watch until Mika solved it by planting herself beside Shaye with a grunt.

Boaz remained a little longer, thinking of Beltin, of his father’s forge, of the council in Cirol who had spoken of crowns. The Sigil pulsed with each memory, as if reminding him that none of it was finished. At last he allowed one thought to settle: tomorrow he would need to lead again. That was enough.

Aldryn planted his staff and pointed east. His words were quiet, but plain. “This isn’t a plague of nature. It’s a will. It’s watching us. And the road forward lies through that watching.”

Boaz gave a single nod. “Then we’ll go through.”

At last he lay down with Thorne pressed against him. Sleep came thin, broken, but it came. The coals glowed red, a fragile heart against the mist. Beyond the reach of firelight, the marsh gathered itself and waited.

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