Rain fell for three straight days.

It wasn’t the clean kind that washed dirt away; it was heavy, colorless, and constant, turning the air itself into water. The world had shrunk to a circle of gray where every step made the same sound—mud sucking at boots, water running off armor, breath and silence.

Luk lost track of how many times they stopped. Sleep came in fragments, stolen between marches. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the gate—his father’s hand through the bars, his mother’s face half-lit by fire. And every time he woke, it was to the sound of water.

───────────────

By the third morning, his fever had taken hold.

It began with the pulse in his calf—hot, rhythmic, in time with his heartbeat. Then the heat spread up his thigh, dull at first, then sharp, like a thread of iron winding through his veins. He could still walk, but each step left a shadow of pain behind it.

Anna stayed close, her hand in his, too light, as if she might vanish if he let go. She didn’t talk much now. The fog seemed to swallow words before they left her mouth.

Delun still led the march, a black shape in the gray, unmoving, unchanging. Valen rode beside him, eyes red from lack of sleep.

The road had disappeared. The marsh stretched in all directions—reeds, water, faint lines of stone that once might have been bridges. The air stank of rot. Somewhere far off, something moaned—a long, hollow note that didn’t sound quite human.

No one looked toward it.

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When they stopped that night, they didn’t bother with tents. There was nowhere dry to stand, let alone sleep. The men built fires on the largest stones they could find, but the rain snuffed them quickly.

Luk sat with Anna beneath a broken wagon, their cloaks heavy with water. He could barely feel his leg anymore. The numbness scared him more than the pain.

Across the camp, Valen was arguing with one of the soldiers—too quietly to hear at first, then louder.

“—I said we don’t burn the bodies here!” Valen snapped.

Delun turned, his voice flat. “And I said we do.”

The knight’s jaw clenched. “The fumes carry sickness. The air’s thick enough—”

“It’s not sickness that follows us,” Delun interrupted. “It’s memory. We burn it before it remembers us.”

───────────────

The soldiers moved quickly after that, dragging the corpses of the fallen from shallow graves. The smell of oil filled the air.

Luk turned Anna’s head away when the flames caught. The smoke rose thick and black, clinging low beneath the rain, refusing to lift. It crawled through the camp in tendrils, curling around their faces like hands.

That was when Luk heard it again.

“You left them.”

He looked up, heart pounding. The voice had come from behind him—soft, certain.

“Who’s there?” he whispered.

Anna stirred beside him. “What?”

He scanned the fog. Nothing moved. But when he turned back, he froze.

Across the fire, someone was standing at the edge of the light.

A man. Bareheaded. Soot-blackened.

“Papa?”

The word slipped out before Luk could stop it.

The figure didn’t move. Its face was hidden by the smoke, but the outline—the shoulders, the shape of the hands—was right.

Then the light flickered. The man was gone.

Luk’s knife clattered to the ground. His breath came sharp and shallow.

Anna’s eyes were wide. “Who were you talking to?”

He forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “No one.”

───────────────

That night, the fever broke. Or maybe it deepened.

He dreamed of the river—the one that ran past their house outside Westernlight. He saw it in perfect detail: the reeds, the wooden bridge, the light on the water.

Then the light shifted red. The river thickened, turned dark, began to boil.

Something moved beneath the surface. Large. Slow. Watching.

When it rose, he saw scales, not green but black, shining faintly beneath the blood-colored sky. The water trembled with each breath it took.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

The creature’s voice came not from its mouth, but from the air itself—deep, distant.

“The blood remembers.”

He woke screaming.

───────────────

The soldiers didn’t ask what happened. They were all dreaming by now—some talking in their sleep, some waking to things that weren’t there.

Even Delun looked hollow-eyed, his armor streaked with rust. Only Valen still seemed aware, though he said less and less each day.

Luk’s wound had changed. The skin around it had turned a strange gray, like stone. When Valen touched it, Luk didn’t feel anything.

“Does it hurt?” Valen asked.

“No.”

“That’s worse,” the knight muttered.

He pulled a flask from his belt, poured rum over the wound, and wrapped it again. “You’re lucky to still be walking.”

Luk didn’t answer. He couldn’t tell if he was lucky at all.

───────────────

By the time the rain stopped, the marsh had fallen silent again. No birds. No frogs. Only the sound of the wind brushing through reeds that no longer moved.

When Luk looked down, the water reflected nothing—not his face, not the sky, not the fires still burning on the stones. Just darkness.

Anna took his hand. Her voice was barely a whisper. “It’s not just a dream, is it?”

He didn’t lie. “No.”

───────────────

Delun stood at the edge of camp, staring south. Valen joined him, his voice low. “We can’t keep walking blind.”

Delun didn’t look away. “You think I don’t know that?”

“There’s no road left. Half the men are seeing ghosts.”

Delun finally turned. “Ghosts are better than what’s behind us.”

Valen’s expression darkened. “And what’s ahead?”

Delun’s eyes flicked to the mist. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

───────────────

That night, Luk woke to the sound of water again—but not the rain.

The puddle beside him rippled outward, though there was no wind. Then another ripple. Then another.

Something was moving beneath the camp.

He reached for Anna, but she was already awake, staring at the water.

“Luk,” she whispered. “They’re calling again.”

Her voice didn’t sound like her own.

───────────────

{:–––––––––––––––

Archivist’s Note — The March through the Dead Marsh

What remains of the Marsh Records is incomplete. The ink has long since bled through the parchment, and the pages smell faintly of iron and river mold. Of the three known copies, only one still bears the seal of the Lionroar command — half-burned, half-swallowed by rot.

It is said that Commander Delun’s company vanished there, somewhere between the Eastern ridge and the drowned watchpost once called Wraith’s Crossing. No report ever reached Westernlight. No messenger returned. Only rumors drifted back — soldiers waking in fever and hearing voices that knew their names.

Some among the Enigma Guild argue that this event marked the first stirring of what scholars now call the Second Sleep. Others claim it was nothing more than madness born of exhaustion and grief.

But the older records — the ones kept hidden in Elvenhelm beneath the sealed vaults — speak differently. They tell of a sickness that carried light beneath the skin, a fever that whispered of ancient chains.

The marsh was never mapped again.

The road to the south was abandoned.

And still, on quiet nights, travelers swear the air in that region hums faintly — as if the ground itself remembers a heartbeat it once buried.

— Recorded by Archivist Eryndor Venn, Fifth Record of Westernlight, Year 402 of the Age of Kings

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