The Weight of the Unseen

As we rode deeper into the snow, the road disappeared under a blanket of pale silence. The forest went on, branches weighed with frost, the wind empty and slow.

It was as though the world itself was holding its breath.

We were still miles from the stronghold, but something had changed.

The silence wasn't simply quiet. It was deliberate.

As if we had crossed some invisible line — a line we hadn't even realized we'd crossed until it was too late.

...

All of the regular sounds of the wild — the birds, the far-off wolves, the crackling of underbrush — were gone.

Nothing but the crunch of hooves on ice and the sound of our breath coming out in silvery puffs in the cold.

Asura had noticed too.

She rode a little ahead, though her posture remained relaxed, her hand not far from her dagger.

I gulped, adjusting my grip on the reins. "We're being watched."

It wasn't a question.

Asura exhaled slowly. "We've been watched since we took off."

That runs a chill up my spine — not from the cold but the way she said it.

Like it as if it were a fact, not a belief.

The First Glimmer of Something Else

We passed an older wooden signpost whose edges looked hurried, rotting with time.

No words remained.

Any name this road might have once  had been erased.

Erased.

A few miles later, we saw the opposite.

One horse, left alone by the roadside, half-buried in snow.

It was still saddled.

Still equipped.

No rider.

No blood.

No tracks leading away.

Just… gone.

Something in my chest tightened. It wasn't simply death that disturbed me. It was the absence of it.

Asura leaped down from her horse, dusting frost from the leather straps. "This was recent."

I frowned. "How can you tell?"

She reached for the saddle and rubbed a gloved hand over the material. "The leather hasn't cracked. The snow hasn't completely covered it yet."

She sat up straight and looked down the empty road. "Whoever was here left not long ago."

A Question We Wish We Didn't Want Answered

I swallowed. "No footprints."

Asura's eyes cut over to me, keen under the dim setting.

I sighed, feeling something drop heavy in my ribs.

"Where did they go?"

She didn't answer.

Because we both knew we wouldn't be happy with whatever answer we found.

….

We didn't linger.

We rode faster, the cold closing in around us, the weight of the silence had grown heavier.

The bastion lingers somewhere out there.

And I had a sinking feeling that it was waiting for us.

…..

The road curled through the trees, the snow building in thick drifts around us, untrodden by any other passersby. The farther we rode, the more I sensed something was a miss.

It wasn't merely a case of the land having been abandoned.

It felt erased.

No animal tracks. No signs of human life. Even the air seemed stagnant, unmoving, as if the world itself had been abandoned.

I drew my cloak tighter around me, though it wasn't the cold that unnerved me.

It was the stillness.

And the silence that seemed to be listening.

…..

We hadn't spoken much since the horse that was abandoned.

But it wasn't the comfortable silence that usually meets this type of news.

It was heavy.

Asura rode a little in front, her face inscrutable, her movements calculated. Always controlled.

I watched her, how she never seemed to hesitate, never let uncertainty mess with her stride.

"You don't like this." My voice pierced the silence, a declaration not a question.

Asura didn't look at me. "You do?"

I breathed out, seeing the fog of my breath vanish into the ether. "No."

For a while, we just rode.

Then — "What do you think we're going to find?"

She moved slightly in the saddle, thinking. "Nothing good."

That would have been obvious. But something in the way she said it tightened my stomach.

Asura doesn't say things she doesn't mean.

A Flicker of Doubt

I passed a gloved hand over my reins.

Since we left Celeste, something had been gnawing at me in the back of my mind.

"Do you think she brought us here for a reason?"

Asura twitched five fingers — just barely, just enough for me to see.

She was thinking the same thing.

"She doesn't waste words." Her voice was low, piercing the snow-sick silence. "She didn't tell us the whole story. But she told us enough."

Enough to make us go.

And she must've known what we would uncover.

She had to know this place wasn't simply abandoned.

I clenched my jaw. "Then why didn't she say so straight out?"

Asura's eyes shifted toward me, the faintest trace of something across her features.

"Would you have believed her?

I hesitated.

Because the answer was no.

The Weight of the Unknown

The road stretched on.

The snow deepened.

The wind whispered like the dead trees, curling against the cloaks that kept us warm, soft as breath.

I thought of the missing knights.

The names that had been painted over.

The records that never had existed.

I thought of Celeste, the way she had asked me — Tell me, Alarion, what do you think it would feel like to be erased?

And for the first time, I wondered if I was about to learn.

Then—a noise.

A low, dragging sound across the ice.

I hardly registered it before Asura's hand was on her dagger.

The snow shifted ahead of us.

Not footprints.

Not tracks.

Just… movement.

The sort that left no trace behind.

The Initial Warning of the Citadel

Then I caught a glimpse of it through the thinning trees.

A shadow on the horizon.

The stronghold.

Its towers lifted into the dim sky fractured and shattered, black stone devoured by frost and time.

No torches. No banners.

Just ruins.

And something else.

Something I couldn't see.

But I could feel it.

Watching.

Waiting.

And I knew this place wasn't empty we was preparing for the worst but we will press on