The forest died by degrees. First, the vibrant green of the Verdant Maze muted to the color of old moss, then to a sickly yellow-grey. The air, once thick with the scent of damp soil and the clean ozone tang of healthy Myxoids, grew thin and sharp. The constant, life-affirming hum of the mycelial network faded, leaving a ringing silence that felt like a pressure inside Lauri’s skull. For three days, the four Silvanus scouts had led them through this decline, their movements as silent and grim as the dying woods around them.
The lead scout, a lean Ailuropodine with fur the color of deep shadow, stopped at a sharp, unnatural line. On their side, the last vestiges of struggling life. Ahead, a vast expanse of uniform grey. He pointed a single claw.
— The Dead Hill, — he said, his voice a dry whisper. His duty was done.
He and the other three scouts gave a final, curt nod. It was not a gesture of farewell, but of grim acknowledgment. They turned and melted back into the dying trees, their forms swallowed by the gloom, leaving the three of them utterly alone at the edge of the world’s end.
Lauri took the first step across the threshold, and the universe went silent. It was not merely quiet. It was a void, a complete absence where a fundamental sense should have been. The life-song of the world was gone, and its lack was a physical pain, a hollow ache that started behind his eyes and spread through his entire body. The ground crunched under his boots, a fine, grey dust that might have been soil, or rock, or bone. The air was cold and still, carrying a taste of acid and burnt metal that stung the back of his throat. This was the price of their approach: to walk through a land that had already surrendered.
Anastasya moved beside him, the faint blue glow of her Crystalline Myxoid armor seeming offensively bright in the monochrome landscape. She held her energy rifle in a low ready, her head sweeping, analyzing the dead terrain with a soldier’s discipline. Jukka Anttila, the wiry shaman, walked with a strange ease, as if this absolute desolation was a familiar, if unpleasant, library.
They advanced toward the low mound that gave the wasteland its name. The Dead Hill was not made of earth, but of the same grey dust that covered everything, a colossal dune studded with the skeletal, petrified remains of ancient trees. Their blackened forms clawed at the sky like desperate hands frozen in their final moment.
— The Cradle is within, — Jukka said, his voice a rasp that barely disturbed the profound stillness. He pointed with a bony finger toward the center of the hill, confirming their goal was just five hundred meters away.
The shaman stopped, placing a hand on Lauri’s arm. His touch was dry as paper.
— Be warned, warden. This place is not merely dead. It leaks. The energies of the precursors seep from the ground here. It accelerates the decay.
He let that sink in, his dark eyes scanning the horizon.
— To anything that lives, that energy is a beacon. It draws the rot. The Corrosive Myxoids will feel our warmth, our breath. To be alive here is to be a lure.
They reached the base of the hill. Here, the dust gave way to a swamp. It was not a swamp of water and life, but a stagnant, black pool of viscous fluid that shimmered with a greasy, unnatural slick. It was the pure, concentrated essence of the blight.
— There, — Anastasya’s voice was sharp, cutting through the silence. She pointed.
Half-submerged in the black muck was the entrance. It was a perfect, hexagonal shape of dull, grey metal, its surface stained and algae-streaked. An unnatural geometry imposed on a world of decay. It was their way in, but the path was blocked by a moat of poison.
As they contemplated their approach, a sharp, bird-like whistle cut through the air. It came from the edge of the Ashen Tract behind them. One of the scouts had returned. He stood at the border of the dead zone, unwilling to step foot inside, and gestured frantically to the east.
Anastasya raised a small optical enhancer to her eye, the lens glowing as it focused. Her posture stiffened.
— Movement, — she reported, her voice tight with a new urgency. — A klick east of here. In a ravine. It’s a camp. Refugees.
Jukka went rigid, his cynical demeanor vanishing, replaced by a look of dawning horror. He stared at the Dead Hill, then to the east where the scout was pointing. The terrible calculus clicked into place in his mind.
— The leak, — he breathed, the words catching in his throat. — The energy from the Cradle… it creates a current in the blight. It’s pulling the wave.
He turned to them, his eyes wide with a terror that dwarfed any fear of Gerasim or his soldiers.
— It’s pulling the blight right toward them. They have two hours. Maybe less.
Lauri looked from the hexagonal hatch, the key to saving the world, half-sunk in its pool of poison. Then he looked east, toward the unseen ravine where a hundred people were about to be consumed. The image of Elina Rovio’s face, her arm dissolving into black sludge as she reached for him, burned behind his eyes. It was the same choice, amplified. The mission was here. The catastrophe was there.
The silence of the dead world pressed in, waiting for an answer they did not have.
They could not be in two places at once.
The air was still. The grey dust did not stir.
