What Remains After Stillness

The wind carried the last of the ash west.

Long streaks of gray-black drifted across the sky as the sun rose above the walls of Delrest. Its light filtered through the hollow streets, illuminating clean stone where once bodies had lain. The city, though broken, was no longer haunted. It had been cleared. Honored. Freed.

The pyres were nothing but scorched rings now, framed by char and soot, and the memorial Koda had carved stood undisturbed in the courtyard—each word etched with unwavering purpose, each line a scar the city would carry proudly.

They had not saved Delrest.

But they had cared for it.

They'd cleaned the roads of debris, cleared homes where death had lingered, and gathered every usable supply left behind. The city's stores—grain sealed in barrels, dried herbs, clean water pulled from deep cisterns—had kept well. With it, they could restock fully.

It was time to leave.

Their cart was packed. The horses—now well-fed and rested—stood saddled and ready, their breaths visible in the morning chill. Terron sat at the reins once more, his gloved hands flexing slightly, his usual humor muted into something respectful.

They gathered in the courtyard one final time.

No words were spoken at first.

Only glances.

Nods.

The kind of quiet shared only by those who had burned the bodies of children together.

Wren was the first to break the silence, her voice a whisper:

"Sloth… it was the cruelest fate of all."

No one disagreed.

"To go like that…" Thessa murmured, "…without fear. Without even knowing."

Maia's eyes were soft, cast downward. "It was kind, in its way. A dream with no pain. No screaming. Just… stillness."

"But it wasn't peace," Junen said firmly. "It was stolen peace. Given by something that didn't care whether they woke again."

Koda's gaze lingered on the empty streets. The doors left open. The wind moving through the city like it had waited too long for its tenants to return.

"No," he said, quietly. "But maybe now, they've found real peace. In the flames. In the prayers."

A moment passed.

The team stood in silence, heads bowed.

Each offered a final thought, a final word, a final breath for the dead of Delrest.

And then they mounted up.

They did not ride fast. Not at first.

They passed through the gate Koda had once forced open with brute strength.

But now the doors had been propped aside.

There was no need to break through anymore.

The city let them go without resistance.

And as the last wheel of the carriage passed the threshold, the sun crested fully over the hills behind them—casting long shadows forward toward Cael'Rhain.

They would report what they had seen.

They would speak of Sloth. Of Wrath.

And they would remember.

——

The road from Delrest began quietly, the echo of hooves striking stone softened beneath the thick hush that still lingered around the basin. Even now, miles from the edge of the silent city, it felt as if they were walking through the residue of something sacred—like the land had taken a breath and wasn't quite ready to exhale.

The air was cooler here.

Not cold, not biting, but the kind of chill that whispered the season's edge. Pale sunlight filtered through the early morning haze, throwing long, gold-spun shadows over the hills. To their backs, Delrest disappeared quickly. The road sloped upward, and once it crested the first rise, the towers and walls were lost from sight, tucked back into the basin like a closed book.

And the land began to change.

What had once been open plain and cultivated ground gave way to sparse, rolling scrubland. The soil grew rockier with each passing mile, and patches of coarse grass climbed between stones bleached by sun and wind. To the north, jagged hills crept higher, their peaks still green but hinting at the sharper elevation to come.

The party remained quiet for much of the morning.

Maia sat inside the carriage beside Wren and Thessa, a worn cloth journal resting on her lap. Every now and then, she would pause to sketch something they passed—a rare bird, a strange plant, the ruin of a mile marker half-buried in moss. Her eyes remained calm, though there was weight behind them still, as though the city they'd left had not yet released her.

Terron handled the reins with his usual quiet competence, chewing on a reed of dry grass and humming a flat, tuneless melody under his breath. Every few minutes, he glanced skyward, as if checking the weather for something that wasn't written in clouds.

Koda rode alongside the carriage, keeping pace easily. He said little, his expression unreadable beneath the hood he had drawn to shield from the wind. He didn't need to speak; his presence was enough to remind the others that they were still moving forward.

By midafternoon, the first ridge loomed ahead—a rise in the terrain where the road twisted through a crumbling arch cut into the stone itself. Once, it must have been part of an ancient watchtower. Now only the lower arch remained, leaning precariously, dusted in ivy.

They paused there for a quick meal.

Junen handed out travel bread and dried meat while Deker boiled water for a mild herbal tea—something to keep the weariness off. There was no fire, just heat stones and silence, broken only by the low buzz of insects and the occasional far-off call of birds overhead.

It wasn't until dusk began to settle that the first signs of danger crept in.

Koda was the first to sense it—his horse snorting uneasily, hooves scraping as it slowed on its own. He raised a hand, and the party halted.

The wind had changed. The quiet had deepened.

Then the growl.

Low, guttural, and close.

From the scrub just beyond the road, shapes moved—three long, lean figures with fur matted in gray and ochre. Not wolves. Too angular. Their eyes burned faintly with the residual sickly sheen that marked mana-touched beasts—likely mutated during one of the past calamities.

"Crag hounds," Koda muttered, drawing one blade into his hand. "Too thin for their numbers. They're desperate."

The beasts circled, not lunging, but edging closer.

Junen stepped forward, shield raised, feet firm. "We drive them off?"

"Cleanly," Koda said. "Let them go if they run."

The skirmish was brief.

Deker lobbed a burst of flame that scattered the first charge, forcing one of the hounds into a wide retreat. Wren struck the second with a bolt of force that spun it midair and cracked its skull on a boulder. The third lunged for the carriage, teeth bared—only for Koda to intercept it midleap, his blade passing through fur and bone with one fluid arc.

The carcass slid to the dust, twitching once, then still.

Terron hopped down from the carriage and inspected the bodies. "Famine's biting through these hills. That's not the last we'll see of them."

"No," Koda said. "But they're not our enemy."

They dragged the bodies away from the road and covered them with rocks—not out of kindness, but caution. Too many things hunted the scent of fresh death these days.

By nightfall, they reached a plateau with a wide outcropping of stone where they could see the basin's edge behind them and the first hint of the mountain pass ahead. The trees here were sparse, but sturdy—bent by wind and time. A half-buried ruin marked the edge of the road, likely once a shrine. Now only its base remained, with faded carvings worn smooth by centuries.

They set camp in a small ring, building a low fire and surrounding it with barrier wards cast by Thessa and Wren. The fire was not for heat—it was for light. For sanity. For the knowledge that the darkness could not fully swallow them while it burned.

As the stars emerged, the silence returned—but not the heavy stillness of Delrest.

This quiet was natural. Earned.

The land breathed again.

They were back in the living world.

And though grief lingered, and dangers loomed ahead…

The road still led forward.

---

Morning broke pale and blue.

The second day on the road began with a cool wind brushing over the plateau, stirring the ashes of their campfire and sending them spiraling eastward. The early light filtered between scattered clouds, gilding the edges of the world in silver as the land sloped upward beneath them.

The basin behind had disappeared completely now—lost to the natural rise of the earth. What began as gentle incline was now a slow, persistent climb. The road wound through a series of highland ridges, some carved by old wagons, others reclaimed by nature, overgrown with moss and stub-grass that crunched underfoot.

Koda scouted ahead that morning, his silhouette moving in and out of view along the rocky edge. From above, he could see what the others couldn't—narrow passes, distant trails, and the first shadowed hints of the mountains that would soon close in around them.

The others followed steadily, the horses adjusting well to the changing slope. Terron guided the carriage with a calm grip, taking his time with the turns, calling out occasional reminders to the team about uneven ground or slipping stone.

It was midmorning when they passed their first real marker—an old milepost half-collapsed at the edge of the road. The engravings were ancient, in a dialect even Wren had to squint at.

"Older than Cael'Rhain," she muttered, brushing a finger over the faded script. "Could've been a border line once. A checkpoint. Or just… a forgotten piece of a different age."

They pressed on.

Birds were rare up here, but occasionally one would cry out in the distance—sharp, solitary calls that echoed along the ravines like flung stones. The forests had thinned into crooked trees with pale bark, brittle and hollow-sounding when the wind moved through them. Some had grown at strange angles, warped by wind or magic, casting long, skeletal shadows across the stone.

The mood was calm.

Not cheerful. Not yet.

But steady.

Maia sat outside the carriage today, walking beside the horses for stretches at a time. She kept her eyes on the terrain, occasionally calling out when she spotted herbs or wildflowers growing from cracks in the rock. When she found something useful—feverleaf, a cluster of drybone root—she would kneel, clip it gently, and store it in a pouch strapped to her belt.

Deker and Wren rode atop the rear platform of the carriage, their conversation quiet and clipped, but not unfriendly. Occasionally they would glance toward the ridgelines and murmur observations about the lay of the land, discussing tactics in the event of ambush. Not paranoia—just preparation.

Junen remained mostly silent, eyes always forward. Every few minutes she would adjust the straps on her gear, shift her stance, or roll her shoulders. A soldier's rhythm. She seemed more comfortable with movement than with stillness—like motion itself was her faith.

The first sign of trouble came just before noon.

Koda was scouting a bend in the trail ahead when he saw movement—a flicker of motion between stones. He stopped, signaling silently behind him, and dropped to a crouch.

When the others caught up, they found him standing beside the twisted remnants of a carcass—some kind of long-necked deer, its body half-eaten and drained.

The blood had been licked clean.

The cuts were surgical.

"No bite marks," Thessa observed. "Not a beast."

"Not recently dead either," Junen added. "This has been here since the night at least."

Terron looked up toward the ridgeline. "Watchers?"

Koda didn't answer, but his eyes lingered on the shadowed ledge high above the trail.

They moved more cautiously after that.

As the sun reached its peak and began its descent, the air grew thinner. Not enough to strain them, but enough to feel. The wind carried less warmth now. Even in the light, there was something brittle about it.

In the distance, the foothills gave way to craggy shelves of stone and thick pine groves that stretched toward the roots of the true mountains. Snow was visible in high crevices, though the paths below remained dry.

That evening, they found shelter in a half-collapsed waystation built into the cliffside—a remnant of a long-abandoned trade route. The stone was solid, the overhang wide enough to keep the wind off, and the old firepit still usable with a bit of clearing.

As they settled in, Koda stood watch on the edge of the rise, his gaze scanning the southern horizon.

Maia joined him, arms crossed against the chill.

He didn't look at her, but he spoke.

"We're nearing the place where the river splits. After that, the climb gets worse. More cliffs. Fewer places to camp."

"Then we make the most of tonight," she said softly.

They watched the sky fade into dusk together—no longer Delrest behind them, not yet Cael'Rhain ahead.

Just the road.

Just them.

———

Travel began once more with frost on the stone.

Not ice, not snow—just a thin sheen of breath crystallized across the ridge, painting the morning rocks in a brittle shimmer. The pine trees that framed their camp had stilled overnight, as if the whole mountain had frozen in place to observe their passing.

Koda rose before the others.

He didn't sleep much anymore—not since Greed's fall. Dreams were unreliable, clouded with remnants of other people's desires. He preferred the clarity of motion. The rhythm of steps against earth. He walked the perimeter of their camp twice before the others stirred.

As they broke camp, a silence clung to the party—not of grief, but of focus. The ascent was slow. The road now twisted like a serpent through the highland cuts, doubling back across narrow switchbacks and stone bridges suspended over shallow ravines. Some of the bridges had been damaged—chunks of missing stone patched with makeshift planks long rotted by weather.

Terron led the horses with care, reins tight, posture forward. Every step they took was deliberate. Even the wind had grown sharper here, tugging at cloaks and whispering along the walls.

As midday approached, the path narrowed again into a cleft between two high ridges. The sun barely reached the trail there, casting the whole corridor in a dim gray shadow.

Then the smell hit.

Rot.

Old, wet, stale.

The party froze.

Koda raised one fist in signal.

The others spread out, hands on weapons, eyes sweeping.

Ahead, a twisted heap blocked the path. Bones. Fur. The carcass of some horned beast, half-petrified by time and exposure.

But it was not alone.

A scraping sound—like claws on stone—rattled above them.

From the ridge, shadows peeled away.

Six-legged things, low and long, with hides like splintered bark and mandibles dripping with dark, congealed fluid. They were silent save for the click of limb on rock.

Maia inhaled sharply. "Ridge crawlers."

"They don't usually come this low," Wren murmured.

"They're hungry," Koda replied. "And they've been left alone."

The fight broke out fast.

Three dropped from the cliff, scuttling with horrifying speed toward the cart. Junen moved first, shield raised to intercept one mid-leap, deflecting it with a thunderous clang that echoed down the pass.

Thessa and Deker flanked the left. Thessa cast a burst of white flame—holy fire—that scorched one of the creatures, while Deker's magic formed a wall of burning air that forced the others to funnel toward Terron.

Koda vanished in a blur of movement—Stalwart Rhythm kicking in, his every step growing heavier, faster, more precise. He moved like water through the ridge, leaping up the embankment, where two more crawlers waited.

His blades found them before they could lunge.

Maia stayed back, directing healing to Junen and Terron as they absorbed the brunt of the assault. Wren pinned one creature to the stone with a kinetic blast so focused it cracked the rock beneath it.

Within minutes, the fight was over.

The bodies smoked where they fell, twitching once before stilling.

Junen wiped crawler ichor off her shield, grimacing. "They're nesting in the high trails."

"We'll avoid the next ridge," Koda said. "Take the longer loop around. I don't want to risk running into a full hive."

They took an alternate trail, one that cost them two hours but bought them safety. It led them around the cliff face and down through a narrow gorge—lush with moss and thin streams of mountain runoff, where birds watched them from high ledges with wary eyes.

By dusk, the path widened again. They camped beside a cold spring, tucked between high trees that leaned overhead like old sentinels.

That night, as the fire cracked softly, Maia spoke.

"Do you think… Wrath made it past the range?"

Koda didn't answer at first.

Then: "I think Wrath's already moved on."

"Toward the capital?"

"Eventually. But not yet. He's consolidating."

Junen stirred the fire, sparks catching in her eyes. "And what do we do when he isn't consolidating anymore?"

Koda looked out over the ridge toward the mountains beyond.

"Then we do what we've always done."

He tapped the stone with the heel of his boot.

"We move forward."

———

A hush clung to the trees, one that wasn't born of peace but of observation. It was the kind of quiet where every breeze seemed to hesitate before moving, every leaf waited to fall until unseen eyes looked away.

The team broke camp early. The trail had leveled briefly, winding along the edge of a shelf that overlooked a mist-filled valley. In the distance, the high peaks of Cael'Rhain rose like stone titans draped in veils of snow and cloud. Their destination lay somewhere between them—close enough now that the air tasted of cold iron and altitude.

The path remained narrow but well-marked, cutting through stands of pale-needled pines and stone clusters that looked like broken pillars half-buried in the soil. Old waystones reemerged here, some leaning with age, others overtaken by ivy.

It was early afternoon when the trail narrowed again through a passage flanked by dense underbrush. The horses grew uneasy. Their ears twitched. Hooves faltered.

Terron pulled them to a halt. "Something's wrong."

Koda was already down from his saddle.

The forest here felt strange.

Not threatening.

But…inviting.

The light was golden through the trees, warmer than it should have been at this altitude, dappling the mossy floor like a stage. Flowers bloomed in impossible patterns—spirals and perfect rings—among roots that curled like fingers. There was a scent in the air, too sweet to be natural. Almost ripe.

And then they saw it.

A clearing up ahead—bathed in amber light. At its center, a creature sat atop a smooth stone.

Humanoid, at first glance. Lean and long-limbed, with pale skin and dark eyes that reflected the light like oil. Its movements were languid, graceful. Not feline, not reptilian—but wrong in a way that made the skin crawl gently without knowing why.

It tilted its head toward them. Smiled.

And the moment stretched.

Junen blinked slowly. Her hand dropped from her weapon.

Even Terron shifted in his seat, his brows furrowed, confused.

"Don't breathe too deep," Koda said sharply. His voice cut the air like a blade. "Something's riding the wind."

Wren closed her eyes and cast a spell under her breath—an aura of clarity. As it spread, the weight on their minds began to lift.

The creature rose, almost lazily, its posture loose, relaxed. It took a step forward—and its shape shifted slightly. Not morphing. Not overtly changing. But something about it became more inviting, more familiar. A trick of memory.

Maia's breath caught. "It's… reflecting us."

Thessa whispered, "It's using something in us to draw us in."

Then the trap was sprung.

From the treeline, vines shot forward—not from the ground, but from the creature itself. They moved like limbs, threading through the dirt and curling up toward the party with serpentine speed.

Junen reacted first, raising her shield and smashing back a tendril that snaked toward her leg. Deker launched a bolt of fire, severing a reaching vine in two. Koda moved to flank, blades in both hands, eyes fixed on the creature's face—still smiling, still watching.

It never attacked directly.

It invited the others to fail.

The air shimmered with suggestion. Every motion the thing made seemed to ask them to wait. To lower their guard. To lean forward, just a little.

Koda didn't let it speak.

He dashed forward through a burst of mist, ignoring the scent, the beauty, the warmth. His blades struck true, carving through the creature's midsection with a slice of will-formed steel.

Its body resisted, too soft and too smooth—but it bled.

And when it bled, it shrieked.

Not a roar. Not a howl.

A wail of disappointment. Of rejection.

It pulled back too late. The others descended.

Junen smashed its legs from beneath it. Thessa's holy light cut through its writhing form. Wren pinned its limbs with force magic. Deker immolated the roots trying to reform beneath it.

And in the final strike, Koda drove his blade through its skull, silencing it completely.

The moment it died, the forest exhaled.

The scent faded. The warmth cooled.

The clearing dimmed, returned to its proper shade of day.

Terron spit to the side. "That thing was wrong."

"It didn't feed like a beast," Maia said. "It… craved."

Koda crouched beside the corpse. Even in death, the face was beautiful in a way that didn't seem real. Not carved. Not born. Designed.

"To make you drop your guard," he muttered. "To make you want what it needed."

No one said what they were thinking.

They didn't have to.

The road was changing.

And whatever sins had begun to wake in the world—they were no longer content to wait behind scars.

They were leaking through.

As they pressed on, the trees thinned, the wind sharpened.

Ahead lay the foothills of Cael'Rhain, where the high passes waited.

And what might come next, none of them could yet name.

But they would face it.

Step by step.