The gravel, frozen into sharp, jagged clumps, scraped a raw protest against the shovel’s steel edge. Riksa didn’t flinch. Her grip, gloved in worn synth-leather, was steady as she heaved another scoop over the twin mounds of disturbed earth. A fine powder of crystalline snow dusted the air, catching the weak, bruised light filtering through the skeletal branches above. Two crude markers, splintered pine planks, stood crookedly at the head of each mound. They were empty, save for the bitter lie they told. “Are they… real now?” Yenik’s voice, a reedy whisper, barely carried above the wind’s mournful sigh. His small face, usually pale, was an unhealthy grey, framed by a hood cinched tight against the biting cold. He stood a few paces back, hands tucked deep into his coat pockets, eyes fixed on the mock graves. Riksa didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. Her focus was on the ritual, the final, visceral act of severing their past. “As real as they need to be,” she rasped, the words catching in her throat, tasting of ash and regret. She tossed the last scoop, the impact a dull thud. The sound, she hoped, would be enough to bury the ghosts of their former lives. A high-pitched whine, like a cicada amplified a thousandfold, sliced through the quiet desolation. Riksa’s head snapped up, her body coiling. Her eyes, the colour of glacier ice, scoured the canopy. A dark, segmented shape detached itself from the gloom. It was small, no bigger than her fist, but the red pulsing eye on its underside was unmistakable. Zhelezo. Already. The drone descended, its miniature rotors kicking up a flurry of snow, the red eye fixing on Yenik’s face. A silent, internal command pulsed through Riksa’s nerves. *Threat. Eliminate.* Before Yenik could even register the mechanical predator, Riksa moved. A blur of motion, too fast for the human eye, too practiced for hesitation. From her sleeve, a thin, wickedly sharp blade, honed to a molecular edge, slid into her palm. Her arm arced, not a throw, but an extension of her own will. The blade spun, a silver sliver against the grey sky, embedding itself with a sickening *thwack* into the drone’s optical sensor. The whine died. The drone sputtered, sparks showering the snow, before plummeting to the ground in a tangle of broken metal and wires. It lay twitching, its red eye extinguished. Dead. Yenik stared, his mouth agape. “Riksa…” “They know,” she cut him off, her voice flat, devoid of warmth. “They found the markers. It was a scan.” She didn’t wait for him to process it. Grabbing his wrist, her fingers cold and unyielding, she yanked him forward. “Move. Now. The Stuzha Expanse. We’re going in.” The air thickened immediately. It wasn’t just the cold; iron and chemical scald coated the back of her throat. They’d crossed the invisible line, the threshold into the Stuzha Expanse. The trees here were grotesquely twisted, their bark weeping a shimmering, iridescent sap that froze into brittle, rainbow-hued crystals. The snow, too, was different – packed thick, strangely luminous, and when Riksa’s boots crunched through it, a faint, acrid scent of ozone lifted. Each inhalation burned. The frigid air, laden with whatever unnatural compounds tainted this place, began its insidious work on her. A prickle, then a crawl, then a searing agony started in her left wrist. It wasn’t a natural cold. This was something else. Beneath the worn leather of her glove, her skin began to glow. A faint, cyan light, like an internal fire, pulsed and flared, tracing the lines of a complex, jagged symbol etched into her flesh. The command sigil. Awakened by the extreme conditions, it throbbed, a compass needle of pain pointing her interior toward the freezing, toxic landscape. “Riksa, your arm!” Yenik cried out, his eyes wide with fear as he glimpsed the unnatural light bleeding through the gaps in her glove. “What is it?” “Nothing,” she bit out, grinding her molars against the bile rising in her throat, the spikes of pain lancing up her arm and into her spine. The sigil pulsed faster now, a maddening rhythm. *Further. Deeper.* She ripped off the glove, revealing the full horror of the glowing, agonizing mark. The air hissed around it, a faint mist rising from her skin. “We need cover,” Riksa gasped, the words feeling like shards of ice in her throat. Her gaze swept the warped terrain. A deep drift, banked against a mound of grotesque, frozen fungal growth, seemed their only option. The snow here was a sickly pale green, swirling with ethereal, blue motes. She shoved Yenik into the drift, burrowing in after him, pulling the shimmering, toxic snow over them both. The cold intensified, a living thing that sought to consume her. The sigil burned, a beacon of her suffering. Yenik shivered violently beside her, but his eyes, despite the terror, held a flicker of something else. He was reaching into his pocket, his small fingers closing around something. A mutated frost-sparrow, frozen solid, its iridescent feathers ruffled, its tiny, multi-faceted eyes dull. He carefully tucked it beneath his wool lining, a silent, desperate act of compassion. The drone’s search lights, fainter now, swept across the distant treetops, then faded entirely. For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind, the crackle of her burning sigil, and their ragged breaths. Then, from the swirling white chaos of the blizzard, a shape emerged. Massive. Grotesque. Its fur, matted with rime and something darker, rippled with unnatural muscle. Its head was too large, its snout elongated, teeth bared in a silent snarl. Two eyes, the colour of molten amber, found Riksa in the snowdrift, locking on with a terrible, knowing intensity.

The Empty Graves