“You have my attention. Now, you have one week to prove this isn’t a parlor trick, or the headsman will finish what the Colonel started.”
The words were a low rumble, a promise and a threat entwined. Marek Sova’s eyes, the color of storm-struck steel, held mine with an intensity that pulled the air from my lungs. His steel-grey stare bored directly into mine, demanding an immediate answer. Borin, still rigid in his seat, looked ready to spontaneously combust. The other officers remained frozen, the council chamber quiet enough to hear the guttering candles.
“One week, Commander,” I replied, keeping my pitch even. “That’s all I need.”
A corner of Marek’s mouth twitched. “See that it is.” He straightened, towering over the table, and signaled a burly guard by the door. “Private Oska, escort our… Strategist va Kost to her new quarters in the Ost-Spire. She’ll require a full military escort, considering her newfound prominence.” His tone was laced with dry amusement, the ‘prominence’ delivered like a whispered jest.
Oska, a man whose face seemed permanently etched with battle scars, saluted with a grunt. I offered Marek a curt nod, a silent challenge in my own eyes, before turning to follow the guard. As I walked past Borin, his furious glare felt like a physical blow, but I kept my chin high. Let the old warhorse stew. He’d just underestimated a historical re-enactor with a laptop and a penchant for ignoring ancient taboos.
The Ost-Spire, it turned out, was less a spire and more a crumbling, perpetually damp segment of the fortress’s outer wall. My “quarters” were a single, spartan room, its stone walls weeping moisture. A narrow cot, a rough-hewn table, and a solitary, sputtering oil lamp comprised the entirety of the furnishings. The window, a mere slit, offered a grand view of perpetually swirling grey mist.
“Luxury, eh, lady?” A voice, gravelly and laced with sarcasm, cut through the damp air. I turned to see a man leaning against the doorframe, a lanky figure with shrewd, quick eyes that missed nothing and a perpetually crooked grin that suggested he found everything deeply amusing. His uniform was rumpled, and he smelled faintly of sour ale and woodsmoke. A disgraced scout, by the look of him.
“Comfort is for the dead, or so I’m told,” I replied, tossing my meager satchel onto the cot. “And you are?”
“Your escort, guard, and resident pessimist,” Pike drawled, stepping inward. “Petyr, though folks call me Pike. Sova’s orders. Keep an eye on the miracle worker, make sure she doesn’t dissolve into thin air.” He mimed a floaty gesture with surprising grace. “Me, I reckon you’ll trip on your own feet and crack your skull long before any holy vapor gets involved.”
He tilted his head with an amused scoff. “Glad to see my reputation precedes me,” I said, a dry retort. “And you’re to keep me company while I do what, exactly?”
“Figure out how to win a war in a week, I suppose. Or at least look busy trying. Me, I’m just here to make sure you don’t wander into any dark corners and get yourself shanked by a disgruntled stable boy. Or, more likely, to make sure you’re still breathing when the headsman arrives.” He kicked at a loose stone on the floor. “Don’t take it to heart, mistress. It’s just how things are around here. Promises are cheap, and faith won’t stop a cutlass.”
His cynicism, though irritating, held a kernel of truth. “I have no intention of relying on faith, Pike,” I told him, turning my attention to the rough table. “My methods are… more empirical.” I needed information. Lots of it. “Where are the records? Anything on past border campaigns against the north.”
Pike snorted. “Empirical, she says. There’s an old repository in the lower barracks, but it’s mostly moldy rolls about old dynasts and goat sacrifices. The real war stuff sits in the memory of the land, and the folks living on it.” He tapped his nose. “You’ll find no grand battle maps from the calamity down there. Just warnings not to dig too deep.”
Ignoring his warnings, I spent the next two days buried in the lower stacks. It was a cavernous vault smelling of damp sheepskin and pitch, where towering shelves bowed beneath heavy folios. I devoured reports on northern skirmishes, border redoubts, and the ledger notes of dead quartermasters. My modern mind, trained to see patterns and predict outcomes from data, buzzed with the input. The local crown officers, for all their omen-reading, kept meticulous records when tracking oats and tallow.
I was tracing the faded ink of an old survey map, a crude depiction of the Dragar Peaks, when the twitch began. My left hand, resting lightly on the brittle parchment, began to tingle. A cold, alien sensation spread from my fingertips, chilling me to the bone. I pulled my hand back, startled, and stared at it. For a horrifying instant, my skin seemed to shimmer, the bones beneath momentarily visible, a ghostly lattice beneath translucent flesh. The colors of the room dimmed, the musty air growing heavy. It was gone as quickly as it came, my hand solid and whole again, but the icy tendrils of that strange cold remained, deep within my marrow.
*Echo Rot.* The whispered warnings of my consciousness, the one that used to inhabit this body, had been vague, abstract. This was concrete, terrifying. A terrifying, silent clock had just begun to tick.
“Find anything useful, or just communing with the ghosts of forgotten grain tallies?” Pike asked, leaning in the doorway with half a heel of black bread.
I forced myself to breathe, to calm the sudden tremor in my hands. “Just confirming that the crown scribes were as maddeningly inefficient five centuries ago as they are today.” I tried to sound flippant, but the cold lingered, a dull ache in my core.
Pike grunted, tearing off another piece of bread. “Told you. Books are only half the story. You want to know how the Voryans move, where their supply trains get bogged down, you don’t read some high commander's memoirs. You talk to the Mist-Folk in the valleys. They know every goat path, every hidden spring, every shadow that moves in the fog. These high-born commanders,” he waved a grease-stained thumb, “think the world ends at the edge of the paved road. The Mist-Folk, they live in the bones of the land.”
“Mist-Folk?” I asked, intrigued despite myself. This was the local knowledge I’d been missing, the human element beyond the maps.
“Aye. Some say the grey fog altered them. Others say they just know how to stay alive. They don’t care for kings or high officers, but they trade secrets for coin, or a good yarn. Or an ear from someone claiming divine favor.” He gave me a knowing look. “They’re not on any of your fancy maps, but their camps are everywhere, tucked into the ravines and hollows, always moving with the mist.”
I made a mental note. This was an angle. A way to get real-time intelligence, to bypass the rigid, slow-moving military hierarchy. “So, you’ve spent time among them?”
Pike’s grin vanished into a flat scowl. He swallowed the last of his bread. “A good scout knows everyone, Saintess. Especially the ones the generals pretend don’t exist.” He paused, his eyes hardening. “That’s how I ended up here, guarding a… well, guarding you.”
“Why did they strip your rank?” I asked.
He sighed, a long, weary sound. “Borin. The good Colonel. Said there was a Voryan patrol moving through the ‘safe’ northern pass, ordered my squad to intercept. A simple recon, he called it. But that pass wasn’t safe. Never was. Not since the grey mist settled. We walked into a trap. A full enemy company. I was the only one who came back.” His voice was flat, devoid of emotion, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the doorframe. “Borin called it cowardice. Said I abandoned my men. I say he sent us to die. Cleared the way for one of his nephew’s patrols to march through, clean as a whistle, a week later. Made that boy look like a hero by taking an enemy supply wagon that conveniently lost its way.”
The ache in my hand surged, sharp and needlesome, blurring the parchment ink before my eyes. This was no petty slight; it was routine corruption. Borin, the self-serving, tradition-bound officer, had not only proven tactically inept but also morally corrupt. My strategic mind instantly recognized the implications. If he was willing to sacrifice his own men for personal gain, he would be a much larger obstacle than I’d initially accounted for. The political landscape of Ost-Kamen was far more treacherous than any wargame.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. A sudden, violent cough wracked my body, tearing at my throat. I stumbled, clutching at the nearest shelf, sending a shower of dust motes dancing in the lamplight. My lungs burned, and a bitter taste filled my mouth. Pike was instantly at my side, his cynical smirk vanished, replaced by a look of alarm.
I pushed him away, still coughing, a sound that felt less like a cough and more like my very essence was tearing itself apart. When the spasm finally subsided, I stood panting, my chest heaving. Something dark and brittle lay in my palm.
It was a single, unnervingly black petal, like something torn from a petrified flower.