The forest was colder than it should’ve been. Not the kind of cold that bit your skin, the kind that made bones feel older than they were.

Rudra walked ahead of Tali, boots crunching against frost-veined leaves. There was no trail, just instinct, just a feeling tugging at him like a half-formed memory. Behind them, the path to Eldfen had already vanished beneath creeping fog.

“You sure you know where we’re going?” Tali called, stepping over a root the size of her thigh. Her breath clouded in the air, shoulders hunched under the weight of her pack.

"No," he said plainly.

She laughed, tired. “Good.”

Hours passed like that. Crows above, silent. Wind threading through bare branches. Every now and then, a sound - not quite a whisper, not quite a growl. Rudra didn’t flinch. He’d heard worse things say sweeter words.

Then it happened.

Just ahead, beneath an old willow, the fog thinned and they saw her.

A girl.

She couldn’t have been more than ten. Pale. Wet. Wearing a linen dress too thin for this weather, dark with damp and clinging to her knees. She was barefoot. Her eyes were wrong.

“Hey—” Tali stepped forward, slowly, gently. “Where’s your family? Are you lost?”

The girl smiled. It was a smile that didn’t touch her eyes, and then didn’t stop. It kept going. Stretching.

"Don’t." Rudra stepped in front of Tali.

"What? She’s just a kid—"

He shook his head.

"No child should be out here." he said. "And no child should smell like that."

Tali blinked.

Then the girl opened her mouth and said something neither of them understood.

A sound, not a word.

Like something remembering how to speak.

It came out jagged, wet, syllables too slow for a human tongue.

Behind her, the fog shifted.

Four figures. Tall. Limbs too long. Mouths stitched shut. Eyes burned into bark-skin. Watching.

Not moving.

Watching.

Rudra moved first. He drew the blade at his side, not the sharp one, the other one. The rusted iron with the red wrappings. The blade that hummed when near things not meant to be.

The girl hissed. Her face changed. She wasn’t a girl anymore. She wasn’t anything.

The thing lunged.

Tali grabbed a rune from her belt, crushed it in her palm. Blue light flared, a shield of cracked air forming between them and the child-thing’s open jaws.

The spell held barely.

Rudra didn’t waste time. He swung low, the iron blade singing a discordant note, and sliced through the illusion. The child-form shattered like ash in wind.

But the tall watchers didn’t flinch.

They simply turned.

And walked back into the fog.

Like they'd just... been curious.

The forest went still.

Tali dropped to her knees, panting. “What was that?”

Rudra wiped the blade on his sleeve, sheathing it.

"A memory," he muttered.

"A memory of what?"

He didn’t answer.

Later, they camped under a stone outcrop shaped like a bent crown. The fire crackled low. Tali wrapped herself in her cloak and leaned against her pack. Rudra sat nearby, eyes fixed on the stars above.

They blinked slowly, too slowly. One of them moved.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

He nodded.

“That man, back at the tavern. The one who gave you the necklace. You knew him, didn’t you.”

Pause.

"Not by name," he said. “But by... weight.”

Tali didn’t press. She just stared into the fire and whispered, “I think the world’s changing again.”

Rudra didn’t look away from the sky.

"It never stopped."

And in the hills far north, in a room made of teeth and mirrored stone, someone began to hum an old, old song.

The kind you don’t forget.

Even after dying.