The road north had been its own ordeal. Village guards as suspicious as scorned wives, peddlers hawking third-rate wares at thrice their worth—each scuffle felt like it peeled away another layer of patience. And then there was that pressing sense of the world going sour, as if the air itself had turned to foul miasma.

  But the Marshes were a beast of their own. Erden’s Edge, they called it—a place blessed with the prospect of being shot from both sides of the border, if the tensions didn’t kill you first. Hunting was forbidden by mutual decree—some fool notion about keeping the peace, not stirring the folk... or the land.

  So we trudged, day after day, knee-deep in sopping mud that sucked at our boots. Every inch forward was another protest from wet breeches and raw ankles. The damp had gotten into our packs, rotting what little we had left of holy herbs. Meanwhile, my charm kept hissing—a shrill, pulsing whine that set my teeth on edge. Annoying as all hells, but better than silence. Silence usually meant something far worse was about to happen.

  But we weren’t blessed with that tonight—no, a full moon hung fat in the sky, turning the swamp to pale sludge and making us damned visible to anyone prowling around. That left us crawling on our bellies again, like dogs in the muck, trying not to glimmer like lanternflies. Each squelch of mud under my elbows made me cringe, as if I might sink to the waist at any moment.

  Elrik's hips weren’t built for this business. He’d grumble under his breath every time his joints ground. Every second push, I’d hear a soft creak that set my nerves on edge. Eventually, we had to pause—no sense in dragging a half-crippled partner through a bog only to have him seized by the next patch of mire.

  We huddled against a knotted cypress, panting, the bark slick with moss and the smell of sour water everywhere. At least, for a few minutes, we’d be close enough to share what little warmth we had left. Because once we started moving again, the cold wet clothes would remember how to cling, and the chill would stab all the deeper.

  I ran a hand over the charm at my neck, still hissing like a kettle about to boil. Half the time it gave me nothing but a headache, but anything was better than going in blind. The moon might have lit our path, but it sure as hell lit us up too. If something was out there—Gustavian scouts, border scum, or worse—it’d see us long before we saw it.

  I spat once, tasting bitter mud and resentment. “Five minutes, Elrik,” I muttered. “Then we crawl again. I’d rather freeze than make a perfect target.”

  He nodded, not bothering to speak, his face drawn tight with pain. We hunched there, both cursing in silence. Because when the Marshes decided to make fools of you, complaining only gave them permission to get creative.

  "Johan," Elrik breathed out, voice barely carrying over the wet hush of the woods. "Why here? What hasn’t been picked clean yet? The Gibblets have long since been plucked."

  Aye, the Gibblets. They’d been a thing of beauty once—if you squinted past the horror of it. Some beast or poor soul had stepped wrong and taken a full reckoning from whatever twisted force haunts this place. Exploded. But not wasted. The energy held. Ground to a fine powder, their bones could be used to ward off the creeping rot of the mind, or so the alchemists claimed. Supposed to smell lovely, too, when steeped in perfume. Not that I’d know—would cost me a fortune just to take a whiff.

  I shifted my weight and looked past the treeline, listening to the charm hiss like a cornered rat. “Yes,” I said, “they’re gone.”

  “But you know, Elrik,” I muttered, not turning to look at him. “Dumbfounded men and backwards midwives, like you, see these things as the devil taken form. Or the reckoning of God.” I flexed my fingers, feeling the stiffness setting into the joints. “I hold no such belief.”

  I leaned against the trunk, the bark slick beneath my palm. “I see a force made manifest. Like a striking serpent. Or a river’s current.”

  “Johan... what the hell are you saying?” Elrik asked, his voice fraying with cold and disbelief.

  “A river can be diverted,” I said. “A serpent’s venom drained.”

  "And how the hell are you supposed to play God?" Elrik laid low, voice rough, uncertain. He was afraid now. I could hear it, smell it. I was playing with fire, and he knew it.

  "Simply observe, you rotten fool," I said, and pulled the charm from my neck, tossing it forward like a coin into a wishing well. Dramatic effect—of course. Anything to make him look more moronic, more cautious, more slow.

  It sang. Louder this time. Not just a hiss now, but a hum—a note held too long in the back of your skull.

  "We have a wishing rod to our desire," I said. "We find the energy, and we send something in there to meet God."

  "And what do we sacrifice to satisfy our needs?" Elrik asked, his voice nearly swallowed by the damp. He was practically pleading, the simple fool.

  I didn’t answer right away. Let the question hang there, like a snare in the underbrush. Truth was, I already knew. So did he. But saying it aloud made it something else—something real.

  “Simple,” I said, rolling my neck with a crack. “Slay the first god-fucked monstrosity we see. Ready your crossbow, Elrik.”

  My fingers twitched toward the crossbow slung at my back. “Something warm. Something breathing.”

  Elrik didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But I heard his breath catch. He’d followed me into worse.

  He gave me a look that could’ve frozen a summer pond, but he did as he was told. Good man.

  I opened my sack. As wet as the marsh, soaked through like everything else, but the contents still held. I fished out the whistle—a finely carved thing, old work, bone and twine, its end shaped like a woman crossed with a fish. Funnily enough, one of the few combinations this fever-dream land hadn’t spat out yet.

  I drew a long breath and blew.

  The sound that followed was halfway between a death rattle and the gurgle of a leprous cat. Foul, unsettling, unnatural. Perfect.

  The charm on the ground hummed in response. Louder now. Closer.

  “Now we wait,” I said, and took a seat in the muck like I was lighting a pipe by the hearth. “Let’s see if God’s home tonight.

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  We waited. Long enough for the wet to creep past skin and into bone. The kind of cold that makes you forget the shape of your fingers. I watched the fog gather like it had purpose, curling in slow spirals, thick enough to chew.

  “Better be worth it,” Elrik muttered, shifting against the root of a tree that smelled like damp and sour milk. His crossbow was drawn, but his grip was tired. Like the rest of him.

  Then—a sound. Squish and grunt. Heavy, slopping footsteps across the muck.

  We froze, every muscle stiff with hope and caution. For a moment, the fog seemed to hesitate too, curling tighter around the trees, as if holding its breath.

  Then it waddled into view, bursting from the reeds with all the grace of a landslide.

  The Uncle Pig.

  Assumed related to the common swine, in the same way a person kissed by cannonball is related to man. The ugliest bastard in all the marshlands, and I say that knowing full well what else crawls out here. Folds of flesh like old laundry left to sour, a snout that looked hammered flat, and skin marbled with lumps like curdled butter. A face only a mother could love—if she was blind and deeply forgiving. But the meat under all that was legend. Soft, rich, glistening with unnatural fat. Folk in the leaner townships would trade fingers for a cut.

  It stopped. Snorted. Turned one milky eye to the dark. Then it gave a shriek—high and wet, like a hog being skinned alive—and kept on, waddling through the clearing like a drunk lord on a morning stroll.

  The charm fell silent.

  A perfect silence—like a world inhaling.

  The trap was set, and something out there had noticed.

  I sat up straighter. Aimed down true, readying the sacrifice. Breath Held.

  Before I could pull, the fog shifted again. No steps this time. Just... tone. A scream.

  A scream definitely—but entirely wrong. Like it had been forced through water, then through teeth not built for the task. It came low, rumbling at first, before curving sharply upward into a pitch that bent the ear. No lung or throat should hold that pressure, but it did. Familiar in all the wrong ways.

  Elrik stiffened. “That wasn’t the pig.”

  “No,” I whispered. “Something else is hunting.”

  And for the first time all night, I wished the charm would start hissing again. Even a warning’s better than silence when something bigger’s already watching.

  "Don’t move a fucking muscle. Shut the fuck up." I didn’t raise my voice, didn’t need to. Elrik was frozen stiff, eyes wide, crossbow forgotten in his lap.

  My own hands were damp with more than swampwater. I was scared. Not edge-of-the-hunt cautious—scared. The kind that creeps into your marrow and makes your heart beat slow and loud, like it’s trying not to wake anything.

  God damn it all. The pig had been our pay. Right there in the open, waddling stupid through the mire. Easy. Now our spines would be ripped out instead.

  I shifted my eyes, slow as oil in winter, scanning the mire beyond the clearing. The fog was thickening again, no longer idle curls but creeping walls. Trees hunched like broken men, and underbrush twisted and low, hiding what it could, cradling what it shouldn’t. Every possible escape route came laced with danger—or promise.

  We’d need to move soon. Plan something. Run, or circle. Maybe draw it off. I didn’t know yet.

  Then came a noise. A giggle.

  Twisted. Warped. But no doubt—it was a giggle. A child’s, bent and snapped until it no longer fit the mouth it came from.

  I snapped my gaze back toward the pig. Something was coming.

  A form burst from the fog—rushing forward on two legs, too fast, too sure. Malice poured off it like heat from coals. A child—but not. Too big, too long in the limbs, its body twitching in wrong rhythms. Parts missing. A face half-gone. Something that had never been whole.

  It charged. Blackened limbs pumping, mouth agape in a wail that wasn’t born of breath. A shriek echoed it—high and sharp, as if the thing had dragged a crib’s cry into the swamp with it.

  The Uncle Pig squealed and leapt, pure instinct.

  Then—nothing. No struggle. A echo and a flash.

  Empty space where the pig had been.

  The Marsh had claimed another. Turned another soul to Gibblets. Stupefied the unknown foe, and Elrik.

  But not me.

  I grabbed Elrik by the scruff of his coat. He understood—slowly, the senile goat, but he understood. A flash and a bang had shaken the world; now it hunted on instinct, drawn by rage at the loss of its prey. We had to move.

  Low, slow, steady. No cold, no breath, not if we wanted to keep them. No luxury to shiver, no time to gasp. Just motion—measured, deliberate, through muck that swallowed the knees and whispered promises of bones beneath.

  From behind us came the sounds of the unnatural: screams with too many voices, a howl without an animal’s source, and somewhere threaded through it—a giggle. Gurgling, joyous. A pack of unreality had stirred.

  What was it? Who were they? A clutch of King Rats? A Wheelbeast? A Shield Lion, touched by madness or disease? Or had the Devil himself dropped his litter into the marsh?

  What can it smell? What can it hear? How many bolts to fell one? How many for the rest?

  Every shadow writhed. Every breath begged to betray us. Time to act.

  “Draw your knife, Elrik,” I sneered, breath shaking through clenched teeth. “Death comes.”

  Another flash—no light, just a rupture in the air. A tear. A scream layered atop a scream atop a scream, topped by laughter, topped by cries. A choir of insanity peeled through the swamp, no source, no end.

  One of them—whatever they were—had been claimed by the marsh.

  If these beasts could fall to frenzy, we were already short on time.

  No. My god.

  The charm.

  My compass through extinction. My only whisper against the dark. Left lying in the muck where the moon caught it. Left behind when our worst enemy had been wet pants and a border guard.

  My stomach turned. That charm had been the only thing between instinct and madness. My needle in a spinning compass. Without it, I might as well gouge out my eyes and crawl.

  No time. No fucking time. Gone.

  "I have lost the fucking charm," I said, too loud. Too fast.

  “Shut the hell up, Johan,” Elrik hissed, tugging me down to his level, already moving. God, he was right. But I couldn’t help it. I might as well have lost my crossbow. Or my head. The path forward had never been more clouded. Elrik's warning had come to late

  A rustle in the leaves.

  A wet trot. A strained breath.

  A shadow on our Left.

  Me and Elrik moved as one. No command, no cry. Just instinct.

  My crossbow sprang—the familiar whine of wood and steel recoiling into my shoulder. Elrik lunged beside me, his blade a flicker in the dark. The one who strikes first, wins. We both knew that.

  The bolt hit. I don’t know where. It looked like a torso. But the thing’s form twisted the eye—its shape refused to be pinned down.

  A head split in twain, separated but whole. Two skulls conjoined in disaster. Arms of oozing flesh, fingers swollen with pestilence and blistered disease. I saw the shape of a leg, or something like it, but it vanished too fast, and the creature’s very presence had already blinded me with nausea.

  Elrik’s knife struck. It moved through it, splitting itself like it wanted to die, or maybe didn't know the concept. Passed through too easily, like rotted cloth. The thing folded around the wound—yielding, stretching, spilling its black and white entrails like milk poured into ink. I was afraid what such foulness would do if it touched us.

  It screamed.

  And the swamp echoed it back, hungry.