The air over the Dead Hill was thin and tasted of metal. Anastasya Orlova sat with her back against a petrified stump, her energy rifle resting across her knees. The silence was a physical weight, a complete absence of the life-song that even a Regalis officer learned to register as background noise. Here, there was nothing. Only the faint, acrid smell of a world that had lost its argument with entropy. Her hope, a resource she had never before thought to quantify, was a guttering flame, perhaps ten percent of what it had been.
Jukka Anttila, the cynical shaman they had pulled from a prison-worm cart, sat hunched nearby, chewing on a piece of dried root. He had the weary posture of a man who had seen the end of the story and was merely waiting for the other characters to catch up.
— They will be here by dawn, — Jukka said, his voice a dry rustle. He did not need to specify who “they” were. Gerasim Frolov and his army of absolute Order were a certainty. They had less than five hours.
Anastasya did not reply. Her plan was in ruins. Her best soldier, Dmitri Volkov, was a memory. Her mentor, Ilmar Kallio, was a prisoner. And the key to their entire desperate gambit, the Silvanus warden who could sing the Sunken Song, had been broken by his own ghosts and had fled into this wasteland to die. All that remained was the waiting.
A flicker of movement at the edge of their meager camp. A shadow detaching itself from other shadows. Anastasya’s rifle was up in an instant, the weapon’s internal crystal glowing with a faint blue light in the gloom. Jukka merely looked up, unsurprised.
It was Lauri Vatanen. He walked into the dim firelight, and the man who had fled the ravine was gone. The frantic, haunted energy had been replaced by a stillness that was more unsettling than his previous despair. His fur was matted with grey dust, his face was gaunt, but his amber eyes held a terrifying clarity. He was sober in a way that went deeper than the absence of nectar. He looked like a blade that had been heated in a forge and plunged into cold water.
Anastasya lowered her rifle, but her hand did not leave the grip. Jukka spat out his root. Lauri stopped before them, his gaze steady. The transformation was absolute. His resolve was a tangible thing in the dead air, a solid one hundred percent.
— I’m ready.
The words were simple. There were no apologies, no explanations for his flight. There was only the statement, a quiet declaration that the debate within him was over. The broken pieces of their team clicked back into place, forming something new and harder than before. Anastasya felt a surge of relief so sharp it was painful, but it was followed by a cold wave of caution. This was not the man she had come to know.
Jukka grunted, pushing himself to his feet. He looked Lauri up and down, his ancient eyes assessing the change. He seemed to find what he was looking for.
— Good, — the shaman rasped. — Because you need to understand what you are ready for.
He gestured with a gnarled paw toward the hexagonal metal hatch half-submerged in the black swamp below.
— That machine is not a simple tool. It is a terraformer. It does not just heal; it rewrites. The power you seek is both creative and destructive. It is the power to make a world.
Jukka’s gaze shifted from Lauri to Anastasya, his words now aimed directly at her. At the Regalis. At the officer who had built her life on the foundation of control and predictable outcomes.
— The same resonance that can create a wave of life, — he said, his voice dropping low, — can be weaponized into a tidal wave of blight. The song is just the key. The singer’s intent is the force that turns the lock.
The choice hung in the air between them, stark and absolute. To proceed was to trust Lauri—to trust a Silvanus, a creature of the chaotic forest—with the power to unmake her entire civilization with a single, hate-filled note. To refuse was to surrender to the slow, inexorable victory of the Withering, to let Gerasim’s sterile order be the world’s final word. It was a crisis of faith at the end of the world.
Anastasya looked at Lauri. She saw the warden who had mapped the blight’s advance when her own sensors were blind. She saw the prisoner who had refused a corrupt bargain in the middle of a battle. She saw the man who had been broken by his past and had somehow, in the absolute darkness of the Ashen Tracts, forged his pain into a weapon. She saw his clear, steady eyes, and in them, she saw not a Silvanus, but an ally.
In that moment, the last pillar of her Regalis doctrine crumbled to dust. The Weft of Vigil, the intricate pattern of law and order, was a beautiful schematic, but it was useless against the reality of the blight. Survival required more than rules. It required trust. It was a price she was now willing to pay.
She gave a single, sharp nod. The decision was made.
— We will turn their poison into our cure, — she said, her voice firm, the words a fusion of their two worlds. She looked from Jukka to Lauri, her command presence returning, but changed, tempered. It was no longer the rigid authority of the Bastion. It was the focused will of a soldier who had chosen her ground.
She held Lauri’s gaze.
— We will use your warden’s song and my soldier’s discipline. Water and wine. Two parts of a whole.
She was giving him the final authority, cementing a partnership that had been forged in contempt and tempered in battle. He would be the song; she would be the silence between the notes, ensuring he was not interrupted.
The air was still and cold. The first hint of dawn was a faint grey line on the eastern horizon.
Anastasya drew her energy rifle and began to clean the firing lens with a soft cloth.
