It took two days to bury the dead.
They used no shovels; there weren't enough. Instead, they piled loose rock and broken timbers over the bodies until the smell faded and the vultures turned their attention elsewhere.
Kairo helped with the lifting. He didn't ask names. No one offered any. Most of the corpses had none left to give faces, gone, limbs missing, armor melted to bone. He found himself staring at one child no older than ten, cradled in the arms of an older woman who had likely died shielding her. They were buried together.
He didn't cry. He couldn't.
After the burials came silence. Long and bitter.
Then, on the third morning, Elya gave the order.
"Redgate still stands," she announced to the survivors, her voice hoarse but hard. "And they're going to hit it soon. If we stay here, we die. If we keep moving, we may still make a difference."
Nobody cheered.
But no one protested either.
So they marched.
The land between Ember Hollow and Redgate was once part of a thriving farmland district before the Writ twisted the region. Now it was nothing but dead fields and bone orchards, where the trees grew twisted, blackened by ash and magic. Crows circled overhead, but never landed.
Kairo walked at the rear of the caravan, his halberd secured across his back. His boots crunched over dirt that felt too dry to be real. The clouds never shifted. It was as if the world had been paused mid-suffering.
"How's the leg?" Elya asked, falling into step beside him.
"It's fine," Kairo replied. "Bruised, not broken."
"Lucky." She glanced at his halberd. "Did you sleep last night?"
"No."
"Me neither." She kicked a rock. "Keep seeing their faces. The ones we couldn't save."
He said nothing.
Elya's tone softened. "You moved like a warborn out there, you know. Like someone who's fought before."
Kairo looked down at his hands.
"I remember battle," he said slowly. "The weight of a weapon. The way a fight smells. But not where I learned it. Not… who taught me."
"You think someone cursed you?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I was born into it."
Elya considered that. "Everyone born in this era's cursed, if you ask me. The gods wrote it that way."
Kairo glanced sideways. "You believe in the gods?"
"I believe they're real," she said. "But that doesn't mean I worship them."
They passed through an abandoned village at dusk.
Houses still stood, but the doors hung open, and the fires had long gone cold. A few survivors scavenged inside, picking through shattered ceramics, empty pantries, and old drawings hung on soot-streaked walls.
Kairo found a rusted toy sword near one of the hearths. Its blade was broken, and the paint faded. He stared at it for a long time before replacing it where he had found it.
He stepped outside.
The others had begun setting up camp for the night. Fires were kept low, small, and surrounded by loose stone. Smoke would attract patrols.
Kairo walked the perimeter.
His halberd pulsed faintly as he passed the edge of the ruins.
He paused, narrowing his eyes.
Something moved beyond the ridge.
A shadow. Low and fast.
Kairo narrowed his eyes and crouched low behind a crumbled stone archway. The ridge beyond the camp swelled in a slow rise, silhouetted against the pale dusk. Nothing moved now.
But he was certain something had been there.
He slid the halberd from its back strap, careful not to let the steel ring.
At that exact moment, the weapon flared a brief pulse of heat, like a whispered warning. The red veins along its shaft shimmered briefly before fading.
Someone or something was watching.
He circled wide, creeping through dead brush and abandoned fencing. His boots barely made a sound as he crept toward the ridge's crest.
Halfway up, he paused and listened.
A low, rhythmic clicking reached his ears.
Armor. But not steel. Bone.
Kairo climbed to a boulder and peered over.
Six shapes were advancing slowly down the far side of the hill, Blightborn. But these weren't the twisted hulks he'd faced before. These moved with intelligence. Sleek. Coordinated. Light armor wrapped their limbs like shell plating, and small, curved blades were grafted to their arms. Their bodies were segmented, like insects carved from ash and muscle.
They weren't scouting. They were hunting.
He scanned for a leader and then spotted one. At the rear, a taller figure in shadow-gray robes crouched beside a twisted pillar. They held a long staff topped with bone fangs. From this distance, he couldn't see a face, just the outline of something with too many fingers moving silently between gestures.
Blightborn warlocks.Wastes-born necroscribes.
And they were headed straight for the village.
Kairo slid back down the slope and sprinted toward the camp.
By the time he reached Elya, the wind had picked up, and the fire pits were dying down. She was reviewing a torn map with two other survivors near a fallen statue, now just a pair of boots beneath cracked stone knees.
"We've got a problem," he said.
Elya looked up, immediately on alert. "What kind?"
"Blightborn. Six, maybe more. Advancing from the ridge. I saw a warlock with them."
Her eyes darkened. "That's no scouting party."
"They're tracking us."
She grabbed a blade and called over her second, a bearded man with a shield made from wagon planks.
"Rett, rouse the perimeter. No shouting. Quiet calls only. Get the kids hidden."
Kairo added, "They'll circle from the north if they've mapped our smoke."
"Then we ambush them before they circle. Can you lead the flank?"
He didn't hesitate. "Yes."
Fifteen minutes later, Kairo crouched with five others in the ruins of a collapsed inn, its roof caved in and the walls pocked with bolt marks. His heart beat steadily, synced with the tension in the air.
Elya's voice echoed softly from the other side of the camp.
"Wait for my mark."
The wind shifted again, carrying the faint scent of rot.
Kairo tensed.
The Blightborn came into view, dark shapes moving between ruined buildings. They made no sound. Not a single footstep. Even the wind seemed to bend around them.
The warlock moved behind, raising its staff high.
Symbols burned in the air, and the scent of copper and bile intensified.
Elya gave the signal.
A flaming bolt whistled through the sky, and then everything erupted.
Kairo lunged first, hurling one of his chainblades into the nearest Blightborn. The weapon shrieked through the air, embedding deep in its neck. Before the creature could scream, he yanked it forward into a waiting blade.
Sparks. Blood. Fire.
Behind him, Rett's shield slammed into another, cracking its ribcage wide. Two archers released a volley from a rooftop. Three Blightborn went down in the first seconds.
But the warlock raised its staff, and everything shifted.
A ripple of black mist spread outward, like ink in water. The air turned heavy. The chain linking Kairo's weapons slowed mid-swing, dragged by an unseen force.
Gravity distortion.
One of the soldiers screamed as their sword flew from their hand into the warlock's grip. The blade melted instantly in its palm.
Kairo dropped low and surged forward.
The halberd shifted back into a single shaft. He sprinted, ducking through debris as the warlock turned to face him.
They met in a blast of shadow and flame.