They traveled south. Sineus Belov set a hard pace, his long strides eating up the damp earth. His bodyguard, Fedor Sokolov, matched him step for step, a silent, broad-shouldered presence at his left. The veteran warrior moved with an economy of motion, his gaze sweeping the terrain, his hand never far from the axe on his back. They put distance between themselves and the white stone walls of Belogorod.
To their east, a constant companion. The Echoing Blight. It was a churning, silent wall of grey fog that stretched from the earth to the low sky, marking the edge of the world. They kept it roughly eight kilometers away, a safe enough distance that the land still felt real under their boots. But its presence was a weight, a constant pressure against the senses.
The air grew colder. It was a damp, unnatural chill that had nothing to do with the season. It clung to their woolen cloaks and settled deep in their bones. Fedor grunted, pulling his collar tighter.
“The cold bites deeper here, Knyaz,” Fedor said.
Sineus nodded, his eyes fixed on the hazy line of the Blight. He felt the temperature drop, a change of at least five degrees from the lands nearer the city. But he felt something more. A low thrumming at the edge of his perception.
It was the Blight. It did not just consume. It radiated.
A whisper started in the back of his mind. It was not a word, but the ghost of a sound, like a thousand forgotten voices all speaking at once, too far away to be understood. The ache behind his eyes, his constant companion, sharpened.
“Do you hear anything?” Sineus asked, his voice low.
Fedor stopped for a moment, head cocked. His scarred face was a mask of concentration. He listened.
“Just the wind in the pines,” he said, his gaze sweeping the sparse woods around them. “Nothing else.”
Sineus did not press the point. Fedor saw the world that was. He saw the physical threat, the enemy you could put an axe to. He did not see the Pod-sloy, the shimmering layer of what had been. He did not hear the screams of torn reality. For that, Sineus was grateful. One man carrying that burden was enough.
They walked on, the whispers growing from a faint hiss to a constant, sibilant chorus just beneath the sound of the wind. It was the sound of lost things. A child’s lullaby, a merchant’s final calculation, a soldier’s dying oath. All of it was shredded into meaningless noise.
They reached the rendezvous point by midday. A sparse woodland of pine and birch, where green moss grew thick on the northern faces of the grey rocks. The place felt old. It felt watchful.
A figure stepped out from behind a thick-boled pine. It was a woman, young, dressed in practical, layered hides of brown and green. She carried no weapon, only a simple leather satchel. Her dark hair was tied back, and her face was lean, with eyes that seemed to miss nothing. She was Alani Vainu, their guide. A woman of the Forest Folk.
She gave a short, simple nod. No bow, no title. Her people did not deal in such things.
“You are late,” she said. Her voice was clear and quiet.
“We made the time we could,” Sineus replied.
Fedor shifted his weight, his hand resting on the pommel of his axe. He did not trust this. The Forest Folk were strange, their ways not the ways of city dwellers or soldiers. They navigated by feelings, by the whispers of the land itself. It was a superstition he could not afford to rely on.
Alani’s gaze swept over them, lingering on Sineus for a moment longer than Fedor. She seemed to see the weariness in him, the faint tension around his eyes that spoke of the Blight’s constant pressure.
She turned without another word and started walking.
“This way.”
They followed. She led them not toward the wide, clear valley that offered the most direct path south, but up a steep, rocky ridge. The going was harder, forcing them to watch their footing on the loose stones.
“The valley is faster,” Fedor grunted after ten minutes of climbing.
Alani did not look back. “Faster is not always safer.”
Sineus looked down into the valley. It seemed peaceful. A stream cut through a meadow of pale, dry grass. It was an easy path. Too easy. He felt the whispers from the Blight to the east, but there was another feeling here. A sour note in the quiet landscape.
“What is down there?” he asked Alani.
She stopped and turned, her dark eyes meeting his. For the first time, he saw the depth of her focus, the way she seemed to be listening to something far beyond the wind.
“Pain,” she said simply. “Old pain. A memory of a hunt that went wrong. A whole village, lost to hunger and a bitter winter. The memory is strong. It has curdled.”
She pointed a slim finger toward the ridge path ahead.
“The ground here does not scream.”
She turned and continued her climb, leaving them to follow. Fedor looked at Sineus, his expression a mixture of disbelief and concern. A screaming ground. It was madness.
But Sineus understood. He did not feel the land as she did, but he heard the whispers of the Blight. He knew that memory was a tangible thing. A painful memory, left to fester, could become a poison in the earth itself.
He nodded to Fedor. They would follow the guide.
The wind rustled the high branches of the pines. A lone bird called out from the ridge they were about to climb.
The woman from the forest led them toward the silent ridge
