The objective was simple: confirm the destruction of a trade caravan at its last known position. Anastasya Orlova’s official report, transmitted from the Chancellery of Forms, stated the cause was a standard Umbra raid. Scavenging. The gaunt, nihilistic sub-race of Ailuropodine were known for such things. They were a symptom of the decay her Order existed to fight. She moved through the trees, her Crystalline Myxoid armor casting a cold blue aura that bleached the green from the surrounding leaves. The mission parameters were clear. The outcome was already logged. This was merely verification.
Dmitri Volkov, her pragmatic second-in-command, moved with silent efficiency at her flank. Ahead, the Silvanus prisoner, Lauri Vatanen, walked with a leaden exhaustion. The intense focus required to navigate the fog had drained him, and the persistent tremor in his hands was more pronounced. He was a living testament to the failure of his people’s chaotic philosophy, yet his senses had proven more reliable than Regalis cartography. A necessary, if distasteful, asset. The thought was a small, hard stone in the gut of her certainty.
They broke into the clearing, and the wrongness of it hit her first as a sound. Silence. Not the quiet of an empty forest, but a dead, pressurized absence of the world’s life-song. The air was thick with the smell of wet ash and a sharp, acidic tang that reminded her of a failing power conduit. Three large wagons sat in the center of the clearing, their canvas covers torn, their axles broken.
— Officer, — Dmitri’s voice was low, cutting through the silence. He gestured with his chin toward the wagons. — The cargo is mostly untouched. Bolts of fiber, preserved foodstuffs, mineral packets. High value, low weight. They took less than five percent.
Anastasya’s eyes narrowed. She processed the data. The official report specified looting as the primary motive. This was the first discrepancy. It was an untidy fact, and she hated untidy facts. She scanned the perimeter, her training taking over. No defensive positions. No signs of a prolonged struggle. It was a massacre, not a battle.
Lauri, his chains unshackled to allow him to examine the scene, knelt by the nearest body. It was a merchant, his fur patchy and grey. But it wasn't the stillness of death that held the Silvanus’s attention. The body was flaking away at the edges, dissolving into a fine, grey dust that stirred in the faint breeze. Lauri didn't need to touch it. He could feel the corruption.
— The Tears of Ash. It wasn't their blades that killed him. He was already dying, — he said, his voice a hoarse whisper, looking up at her with a grim understanding she was only beginning to comprehend.
Anastasya ignored the warden’s pronouncement and moved to the next body, her tactical mind overriding the revulsion. She was a soldier of the Regalis Regime; she dealt in observable reality, not Silvanus superstition. She knelt, examining the corpse. The cause of death was a single, deep wound to the chest. The edges were clean, precise. A killing blow delivered with efficiency. She moved to another body, and another. It was the same. These were not the frenzied, tearing wounds of scavengers fighting over scraps. They were systematic. Surgical.
This was the second discrepancy, and it was far more disturbing than the first. The attack profile did not match Umbra doctrine. It was too clean, too purposeful.
Lauri rose slowly to his feet, his gaze sweeping across the quiet carnage. The tremor in his hand was back, a violent shudder he tried to still by clenching his fist. He looked from the untouched cargo to the precisely slain merchants, to the grey dust that was all that remained of their flesh. The pieces clicked into place in his mind, forming a picture of such profound horror that he almost choked on it.
— This wasn't a raid. This was a culling, — he breathed, the words hanging in the dead air.
Anastasya stared at him. The word was alien. It did not compute.
— Explain, — she commanded, her voice sharp.
— They weren't killing them for their goods. They were killing them because they were infected. A mercy killing, to stop them from suffering the full change. To stop the spread, — Lauri said, his voice gaining a terrible certainty.
The Silvanus’s hypothesis was insane. It was a violation of every principle of Order. The Umbra were agents of chaos, creatures who embraced the Withering. They did not fight it. They did not show mercy. It was a contradiction, a paradox that her mind refused to accept. It was heresy.
Yet, the evidence lay all around her. The untouched goods. The efficient kills. The presence of the Tears of Ash. Each fact was a stone, and together they built a monument to a truth she could not deny.
Her hand went to the Data-Slate at her belt. It was a reflex, a reach for the comfort of official, sanctioned reality. She activated the device, its cold blue light a familiar comfort. She called up the intelligence report from the Chancellery. File 7-Gamma-9: Umbra raid on Caravan 41. Motive: scavenging. Casualties: high. Threat profile: chaotic.
She ran the comparison. Her own observations. Dmitri’s report. Lauri’s analysis. The data from the field versus the data from the Bastion. The discrepancy was not a minor variance. It was absolute. One hundred percent. The report was not an error. It was a lie.
A chasm opened in her world. The Chancellery of Forms, the bedrock of her entire existence, the source of all truth and Order, was lying. About the Umbra. About the blight. About everything. The price of this discovery was the foundation of her faith. Her certainty shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving only a cold, terrifying void.
The forest was no longer a simple, chaotic enemy. It was a place of complex, horrifying truths. The Regalis were no longer the simple, righteous agents of Order. They were blind. Or worse.
The hiss of decay from the bodies seemed to grow louder. The air felt thin, hard to draw into her lungs.
— Officer, — Dmitri’s voice was a blade, cutting through her spiraling thoughts. He stood rigid, his weapon raised. — Movement. Edge of the clearing. Seventy-five meters.
Anastasya’s head snapped up, her soldier’s discipline slamming back into place over the gaping wound in her ideology. From the deep shadows between the ancient trees, figures began to emerge. Gaunt. Tall. Their patchy, charcoal-grey fur was stained with mud and something darker. They carried crude axes and wore armor of scavenged metal bolted to their own hides. The Umbra.
They did not move like scavengers. They moved like executioners.
The air grew still, heavy with unspoken purpose. The scent of ozone from her armor mingled with the smell of rot.
