15^th Illumis, 460 AG, 20:05PM, Heodal Kingdom

The further they walked, the more the noise behind them thinned and grew distant. Before long, the only sounds left were the tap of shoes in the dirt and the murmuring of wind gliding through the long grass. Some people in the crowd still moved at a fast pace, but most remained in a broken line, barely looking at the others.

Xyron’s legs appeared hollow and weak. Every step acted as a signal that he’d barely eaten that day. Even the air out there, sharp with the smell of burned wood and scorched meat, was a kind of food for the empty part of him that didn’t know what to do next.

Katyl halted the group after such a long walk, letting the crowd pass and giving them space. She just straightened, rolled her shoulder to loosen it, and ran her eyes over the survivors. Xyron could see the priority behind it: first her own sons, then Kai, Luzia and the orphans, then anyone else in her field of vision, sorted by danger, distance, and how likely each one was to need her.

She knelt in front of Aolyne, who still held on to Xyron’s torso like glue, but was starting to squirm now that they weren’t sprinting for their lives. Katyl placed her flat palm on the boy’s hair and held it there for a second, then brought his chin up with two fingers.

“Let’s see you.” She said, her voice the softest it had been all day. Aolyne’s face was puffy and red, but the skin where the boulder had struck his arm was already fading to a yellow bruise. He stared at her, then at the sky, and then he just started breathing in big gulps, as if only now realizing it was allowed.

Katyl checked the rest of the children next. Luzia lined them up, and Katyl went down the row, touching each on the head or shoulder, her lips sealed into a line. The smallest child, Beatrix, the one Luzia had nearly carried the entire way, wouldn’t let go of Luzia’s hand, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. Katyl met Luzia’s gaze, and for a moment, Xyron thought she might say something about the blood on Luzia’s face, but that was not the case. Instead, she nodded once, in approval of her good job so far. Luzia finally cleaned her face with her sleeve, making a mess of blood and dust.

Kai hung to the side with hands on his knees, his chest burning up. His face seemed as if it belonged to a different person, one who just aged ten years in a single afternoon. He saw Xyron watching and tried to stand up straight, almost grinned at him, but the effort failed miserably.

“Still with us?” Xyron asked, and Kai managed a “Yeah, just… give me a sec.” Before going pale again. His armor was exhausting him far more than expected.

“Can you walk? If anything, throw that away.” Katyl’s voice, now back to steel. Kai gave a thumbs up and peeled himself off the grass.

“Wouldn’t want to get left behind.” He managed to laugh in between deep breaths.

“Then we keep moving.” Katyl turned west, away from the black curl of smoke where the village had been. Her pace was steady, not a soldier’s march, but the deliberate speed of someone rationing stamina for the long way to go. She waited for the orphans and Luzia to get in line, then for Xyron and Aolyne, then for Kai, and only once she had them all did she continue her march.

Xyron fell into step next to her, Aolyne walking now with small, slow steps, his hand held in Xyron’s. They were used to having their homes threatened by various things; the border villages had always been fragile, life there didn’t feel guaranteed, but this was different. There was no going back, not after what happened.

The road west was not really a road at all, more a faint line where the grass had been trampled into submission by centuries of sheep and the occasional caravans pulled by horses. Today, the sheep were gone, and the only movement on the plain was the ribbon of people curving toward Zakria, a ghost town that, from here, looked like nothing more than a smudge of stone at the rim of the world.

Xyron glanced at Katyl. She walked with her sword unsheathed, the point angled down, its blade’s tip sometimes hooking in the earth. He wanted to ask what the plan was, if there even was one beyond “Keep moving”, but he saw the way her face tensed with each step, how the muscles in her neck flickered every time she scanned the side or measured the wind. He didn’t need to ask. They would get to Zakria, or they would die trying, simple as that.

He looked behind once, but the smoke from the village had flattened against the dark sky, becoming part of the overcast afternoon. He looked ahead once again, at the wide, empty field. No soldiers, no creatures, nothing but the persistent lines of grass and the wavering line of people too far away to make out individually.

Aolyne’s hand squeezed his, tight and desperate. Xyron squeezed back, and together, they kept walking.

The grasslands west of the village looked like freedom, at least from a distance. In the first hour, Xyron had let the fresh air wash the smoke from his lungs and the ash from his face, hoping that maybe, everything behind them would shrink to a memory before it could haunt them.

The further they went, the more the road dissolved. Out here, no one had cared enough to put up waymarkers. The only signs were the marks where old wagon wheels had made grooves in the dirt, and the many trampled grasses where cattle often roamed. Xyron realized that none of these people were looking at each other. They all stared forward, at the line of the horizon and the promise of a next place.

For a while, it worked. Then the wind shifted, and Xyron caught a tangle in the air, not smoke, not blood, but something else, a sharpness layered under the grass as if something was lurking, coming for them. At first he ignored it. Then he noticed Aolyne stiffen, his hand clamping tighter, his eyes locked straight ahead with as much focus as he could manage. He wasn’t the only one; somewhere ahead, a girl with a torn apron broke into a run, dragging two smaller siblings by the wrists, their feet barely touching the ground. Behind them, an older woman with a birdcage walked as if she’d forgotten she was even holding it, the little yellow shape inside bouncing like loose stones in a box.

Xyron looked to Katyl for the signal. She had already slowed down, her head tilted a degree to the left, eyes examining the northern edge where the grass ran up to the nearest treeline. She said nothing, but his mother's demeanor made him want to say less. Kai noticed too, falling into step beside Xyron and softening his voice.

“Do you see that?”

Xyron did. In the space between grass and wood, something moved, more like several things. At first, shapes flickering, then more definite, long, low, and gray. The cold ran up his spine before the logic caught up, a wolf pack.

They never come out this far! Xyron thought, but to his horror, that moment proved a horrible exception. The opening scream came from the back, an older man’s cracked voice that appeared to rip the whole sky open.

“TO THE SOUTH! GODS, THEY’RE-” He didn’t finish, because someone else took up the cry, and then everyone was shouting, pushing, or both. Katyl’s arm shot out, pinning Aolyne and Xyron in place, while her other hand chopped down in a silent order for Kai and Luzia to stay put.

It didn’t stop the panic, and the line dissolved. People trampled over each other, some shoving ahead, some breaking away to the west and south, but most just lost whatever shape had kept them a collective, reverting to the pure instinct of self-preservation. A woman dropped her pack, and the contents spilled: bread, a cracked tin cup, something that could have been a ragdoll, but she never even looked back.

The first wolf burst into the open with its paws beating the earth like a drum. Then another, and another. They did not stall; they were going for the kill. There were thirty at least, fanning out in a loose semicircle, black lips drawn with their eyes yellow and bright. Their coats had the color of ashes mixed with dark blood. Xyron recognized the type, not the rangy, half-starved things that prowled the edge of the town in lean seasons, but real pack hunters, the kind that moved in units and finished everything they started.

He reacted when a second scream sounded close by, but Katyl did not. She crouched, shifting Aolyne behind her, and bared her teeth in a way that made her look less like prey and more like the wolves themselves. Xyron felt a hand, Kai’s, grab his shoulder, and he realized with sudden clarity that in such a large crowd, they might be the only ones left standing their ground.

“Get ready.” Said Kai, his voice was mellow but vibrating. He looked at Xyron, then at Katyl, then at the oncoming glimpse of fur and teeth. “We can handle this, right? Remember last year?”

Xyron remembered. Back then, a single wolf, a juvenile, had wandered into the lamb pens. It took two grown men and half an hour to corner it, and even then, the thing had nearly taken Xyron’s hand off before the final blow. He looked at Katyl, who was not smiling.

“Stay here. Do NOT move.” She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t even look back at them. Her eyes were fixed on the pack, counting. She drew her knife, readying herself for the battle to come.

“We’re not children, Mom. We did it before.” Xyron protested, wanting to help.

“You hunted a cub. These are pack leaders, starved for days and running on blood. You’ll do nothing.” Katyl’s answer was cold as ice.

Kai’s eyes kept changing places, accompanying the wolves, but didn’t let go of Xyron. “We can’t just stand here…”

“You can. You will.” Katyl’s look pinned him to the spot harder than any physical grip. She didn’t repeat herself. Luzia hovered just behind, her hands fanned protectively around the youngest orphan, her face sickly white.

“You’ll be okay, Beatrix. And you all as well.” The blood from earlier still caked the edge of her nostril. She looked at Xyron as though searching for a reason not to collapse, and then, in the hush before the next scream, said, “I’m sorry… My body is numb, I can barely move.” The orphans, clustered behind her, were weeping openly, the crying that came from a body with no more language left for fear.

The wolves took a wider position, their pace accelerating. The leading three moved in almost a line, heads low and steady, mouths salivating. At a house’s distance, they howled, not a call to the sky, but to each other, sharp and full of intention.

The crowd had by now been scattered. Some ran for the horizon, others lay on the ground trying to hide in the tall grass, as though the earth might swallow them before the wolves did. But Katyl’s group stood, out of place, the only upright points on the vast, shivering plain.

Xyron looked at Kai, who swallowed and set his feet like he was ready to go down swinging. Looked at Luzia, who had wrapped both arms around her orphans and begun humming prayers to Goddess Viana, voice weakening to nothing. He looked at Katyl, and for a second, he didn’t see his mother but a completely different creature, something with no use for fear or for the future, only for the small approaching moment of violence.

“Remember,” Katyl said, so quietly Xyron almost had to lean in to listen. “If they circle us, don’t run. The pack breaks when you take the leader. It always does.”

The lead wolf bared its fangs, saliva flying as it snapped at the air, and all others rushed into a full sprint, the line collapsing inward toward the group. Xyron had the sense, as the pack thundered toward them, that the entire plain, grass, wind, the ragged slice of distant forest, kept its hush.

The first impact came all at once.