The ground was slick with mist, each stone sweating under the heavy fog. They had come prepared—tarps folded tight against their packs, small coils of rope, ration bags tied neatly, waterskins, and a few tools clinking softly at their belts. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for a two-day journey across Brumel’s wild interior.

  Kael marched ahead with steady, unhurried strides, boots gripping the wet terrain as though he’d shaped it himself. Zyren, by contrast, had to leap from rock to rock, his slender body swaying for balance with every foothold. Hisoka and Tasya struggled too, though with more grace—light steps, measured corrections, their silhouettes dissolving and reappearing in the drifting fog.

  Far from the forests he once called home, Brumel still felt familiar. There was soil beneath his boots, wind threading through sparse trees, the scent of greenery even in the cold mist. Compared to the constant, queasy sway of the Kelpie, this was steady. Grounded. Comforting.

  Yet the fog smothered the world. It clung to their clothes, dripped from bare branches, blurred every shape into a shadow of itself. The silence wrapped around them so tightly Zyren could hear his own heartbeat, loud and lonely.

  “Break,” Kael announced abruptly.

  He stopped in front of a broad, ancient tree whose bark curled like scales. Only then did Zyren notice the shrine carved deep into the trunk, framed by curved tusks and decorated with driftwood shaped into a small deity.

  Kael knelt before it, sprinkling salt and tiny shells with slow, practiced movements. His eyes closed—not in mysticism, but in simple reverence, a man honoring a responsibility.

  Tasya waited only a moment before speaking, voice low and efficient. “Once we make it to the city,” she said to Hisoka, though loud enough for Zyren to hear, “you and I will work the taverns. Information flows when the wine does.”

  Hisoka nodded, chewing absently on a piece of bread.

  Tasya turned to Zyren. “You’ll go to the harbor. Take stock of who’s docked, especially humans. Learn what they’re doing, where they’re staying.” Her gaze sharpened. “Do not be seen.”

  Zyren felt heat in his cheeks. He understood what she meant—what she didn’t bother saying. Hisoka and Tasya knew exactly how to move in shadows. They could blend, disappear, manipulate.

  He… wasn’t them.

  In Thornhold, Kaelith had fooled him within minutes and led him straight to the Kelpie. He’d walked willingly into a trap because he wanted to trust someone—because he’d been na?ve. That memory pricked sharply now.

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  His hood slipped lower over his face as he instinctively drew inward. Was he really the best choice? Or just the most expendable?

  Tasya’s eyes flicked toward Kael, who was now lifting the deity carefully from its place.

  “Why are you bringing that?” she snapped.

  Kael raised one finger. The gesture was calm but commanding enough to halt even her words.

  “Neritha travels with us,” he said. “Every Brumar who walks the island carries her blessing. She watches Brumel, and we help her.”

  And without waiting to see if they accepted that explanation, he strode past them—effigy in his long arms—expecting them to follow.

  ---

  The walk dragged on, each minute stretched thin by the fog. Sunlight pressed faintly through the dense air, glowing like a hidden ember, never clear enough to mark time. Zyren stepped precisely where Kael stepped, following the broad outline of the shipwright’s shoulders and the long harpoon strapped across his chest. For hours, those were the only things he could focus on—Kael’s silhouette, the sound of boots on wet stone, the occasional slip and muttered curse behind him.

  The waves grew louder as they moved, whispering through the mist like an approaching memory. Zyren couldn’t help thinking of Kaelith guiding him in Thornhold’s forest, of Bruln chasing and shoving him into its trees. Strange how even terror became nostalgia after surviving it.

  The vegetation thinned. Twisted shrubs clung stubbornly to the wind-shaped rock. Another line of tusks appeared—these laid into the ground, leading toward a circle of painted stones draped with nets. At the center stood another shrine, this one built from old harpoons, decorated with shells and strands of seaweed dried stiff by salt.

  “We camp here,” Kael said, placing Neritha in the shrine’s hollow center. “We continue at first light.”

  No one argued. No one had the strength. Even without knowing whether it was late or early, their legs trembled with the same exhaustion.

  They unpacked tarps and stakes, setting small tents between twisted trunks while Kael pulled Zyren by the arm.

  “Come. Firewood.”

  Tasya and Hisoka glanced over but said nothing.

  Kael led Zyren toward the trees, listening to the steady crash of distant waves.

  “You look lost,” Kael said, voice less sharp now.

  Zyren exhaled. “Things keep changing.”

  Kael nodded, collecting fallen branches and snapping them cleanly over his knee. “They’re fighting an impossible battle,” he said. “And they trust the wrong people.”

  “The Morozari,” Zyren murmured. It wasn’t a question.

  Kael placed a calloused hand on a tree trunk, gaze lifting to the fog-veiled canopy. “You can never tell what they want. They’ll use anyone—then leave them broken when it suits.”

  Zyren frowned. “How do you know?”

  Kael’s jaw tightened. “Brumar fought with the resistance, long before your captain joined it. The Morozari helped us push the humans out—then raided us when we were weakest. Took our cities when we had nothing left to give.”

  His fists clenched, knuckles pale against grey skin.

  “You might not believe it,” he said, glancing toward Zyren with a bitter smile, “but it was humans who helped us drive the Morozari off. That’s when Brumel became neutral.”

  “But you’re helping the resistance now,” Zyren said softly.

  “Because the resistance keeps the fight off our shores,” Kael replied. “It keeps balance. Without balance, everyone loses.”

  He handed Zyren an armful of branches. “Come. They’ll be cold.”

  When they returned to the camp, Tasya and Hisoka had already cleared a ring of stones. In the fog-damp silence, the crackle of their first sparks felt like a promise that morning would come—and with it, the unseen dangers waiting in the city ahead.

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