The mist rose from the damp ground in a cold, wet shroud, smelling of ash and wet stone. Lauri pushed a dripping branch aside, his eyes scanning the familiar layout of the grove. This was the rendezvous point, a small, secluded hollow known for its vibrant Sun-Gels. There was no green light. There was no life-song. The silence was a physical weight, a pressure in his ears. The grove was dead. Woven-root dwellings, once alive and pulsing, were now blackened, skeletal things, still smoldering in the damp air.
Anastasya moved up beside him, her Crystalline Myxoid armor a stark, cold blue against the universal grey. She held her energy rifle at a low ready, her gaze sweeping the ruins with a soldier’s practiced economy. She saw tactical positions, lines of fire, and the failure of a safe haven. Lauri saw a graveyard. He saw another place that had died while he was trying to save it. The hope that had carried them from the canals curdled in his gut. This was a trap.
They knew it too late. Figures rose from the ruins, their armor absorbing the dawn’s weak light. Ten of them. Regalis soldiers, moving with a chilling, synchronized grace that was the antithesis of the forest’s chaos. They formed a perfect circle around the clearing, their weapons raised. No escape. Anastasya’s stance shifted, her body becoming a study in contained violence as she calculated the impossible odds. They were pinned, a hundred meters from the nearest defensible cover.
— Stand down, heretic, — a voice commanded from the cordon, amplified and distorted. — The Justicar’s judgment is upon you.
Then, from behind a massive, fallen root-ball to their left, a new figure emerged. Ilmar Kallio. The old lore-keeper, his dense grey fur marked like the bark of a birch tree, moved with a speed that defied his age. He held a simple staff of living wood, and his presence was a sudden, shocking note of life in the dead grove.
— Lauri, — Ilmar’s voice was a low rumble, not of panic, but of deep intent. — The prison-worm carts travel the crystal causeway at dusk. The shaman, Jukka Anttila, is on one. Go.
He did not wait for a reply. He moved, not toward them, but directly at the Regalis line. He fought with the surprising strength of ancient wood, his staff a blur of flexible, unpredictable motion. He did not meet their rigid blocks with force; he flowed around them, using their own momentum to send them stumbling. A soldier lunged with a crystal blade; Ilmar’s staff deflected it into the dirt, and the pommel caught the soldier under the chin with a sharp crack of bone. He held off three of them, a whirlwind of grey fur and green-marked limbs, a physical manifestation of the Silvanus way.
It was a beautiful, impossible fight. And it could not last. Lauri started to move toward him, to help, but Anastasya’s hand clamped down on his arm.
— He’s buying us time, — she hissed, her voice tight with tactical urgency. — Don’t waste it.
Ilmar saw them hesitate. He saw the opening his diversion had created, a momentary gap in the cordon as soldiers shifted to contain him. He made a choice. He parried a final blow, then simply stopped. He lowered his staff and allowed the next soldier’s strike to knock it from his hands. He stood, breathing evenly, as two more guards seized his arms, binding them behind his back. He was not losing a fight. He was paying a price. The cost was his freedom, and Lauri knew, with a certainty that was a cold stone in his stomach, it would be his life.
The Regalis soldiers dragged the lore-keeper toward the center of the clearing. As they did, Ilmar Kallio turned his head, his deep amber eyes finding Lauri’s across the smoking ruins. And he laughed.
It was not a sound of madness or despair. It was a deep, rumbling laugh, full of a profound and defiant understanding. It held no fear. It was a final lesson, a statement that even in a cage of their making, his spirit was free. The sound echoed in the dead grove, a bizarre and terrible note of joy in a world of ash.
The laughter broke Lauri’s paralysis. Anastasya was already pulling him back, into the thickest part of the mist. He stumbled after her, his feet catching on dead roots, his gaze still fixed on the spot where his mentor was being swallowed by a tide of blue-armored soldiers. The emotional toll was a physical blow, a hollowing out of his chest that left him gasping for air. He had found his purpose in the dark cave, and the world had immediately demanded a sacrifice he was not ready to make.
The mist closed around them, muffling the sounds of the Regalis consolidating their position. The air was cold and smelled of decay.
