Khaydruk watched the elder’s retreating back, the golden feather a stark, bloody glint against the snow. “Don’t go far, old man,” he called out, a thread of something less than apathy in his voice, “your bones aren’t done hollowing out yet.” Pobur, who had been trying to discreetly wipe his perpetually running nose on Khaydruk’s cloak, flinched. “Master Khaydruk, the elder is sick! Shouldn't we prepare a healing herb? My aunt makes a poultice—” “Your aunt’s poultice won’t mend a spirit’s wrath, nor will it stop the earth from swallowing us whole,” Khaydruk cut him off, his gaze sweeping the increasingly distorted path ahead. The jagged peaks of the Dhalangar Range loomed, their craggy faces now seeming to sneer. “He’s a symptom, Pobur, not the disease. Our concern is the source.” He pulled a small, intricately carved wooden board from his satchel, no bigger than his palm, and set it on a patch of less-slushy ground. Thin, delicate iron needles, like spider legs, sprang from its surface, quivering with subtle, internal vibrations. “The settlement is an open wound. The channels beneath it are screaming. We need to find where the infection is anchored.” Pobur hovered, wringing his hands. “Anchored? But temple diviners say a curse comes from a buried grudge, a grave disturbed! Is there a new grave? Could it be the merchant’s grave? It was rather… hasty.” “Hasty graves don’t rewrite the very bedrock,” Khaydruk scoffed, kneeling beside his divining board. He pulled out a leather pouch, shaking loose a handful of polished river pebbles. Each was pierced with a tiny hole, threaded onto a fine copper wire. He tossed them onto the board. They settled, then began to hum, vibrating against the wood, drifting subtly towards a point unseen. “This isn’t a simple ghost. This is a targeted assault. Something wants Qeng-Dhar gone.” “Gone? But where would we go? The pass is sealed! My uncle, he always said the spirits of the Dhalangar were merely… dramatic. He said they only made the snow fall a little heavier, or made a goat dizzy. He never mentioned… this.” Pobur gestured vaguely at the churning air and the sliding shale around them. Khaydruk ignored him, his eyes tracing the paths indicated by the stones. “The pulse radiates from the central tiers. That’s where we start. If this spirit means to bury us, it’s attacking the foundations.” He rose, tucking the board away, and began to stride uphill, his long strides easily outstripping Pobur’s panicked shuffle. They navigated a path that had, only hours ago, been a familiar thoroughfare. Now, a massive fissure had cleaved the main thoroughfare, forcing them to clamber over newly exposed rock. A narrow field shelf, once neatly segmented by low masonry walls, now listed drunkenly to one side, its soil spilling down into the next level like a slow, brown river. The air tasted of burnt copper and wet slate. “Master Khaydruk, look!” Pobur gasped, pointing a trembling finger towards the highest peaks. Above them, where the jagged teeth of the heights bit into the bruised sky, a silhouette began to coalesce. Not a cloud, but a thing of deeper darkness, vast and feathered, its outline indistinct yet unmistakably avian. It blotted out the light, its presence a cold pressure that made the air shudder. A screech ripped through the pass, raw and ancient, echoing off the cliffs, not a sound of flesh and blood, but of grinding boulders and shearing gale. It was the howl of a raptor magnified across the whole range. As the cry intensified, the silhouette above seemed to ripple, and the rock beneath responded. The dirt convulsed. With a low groan, the steps to their left began to buckle. Dry masonry walls, centuries old, exploded outwards, sending shrapnel whistling past their ears. The underlying strata twisted, meridians straining and ripping beneath them. A section of the path ahead, previously solid, tilted precariously over an opening chasm. Spikes of grey schist rose like petrified knuckles, blocking their way, only to sink back and reemerge yards ahead. “The meridians! It’s ripping them apart!” Khaydruk yelled over the din, grabbing Pobur by the scruff of his neck as a slab of granite the size of a wagon sheared free and slid past where Pobur had stood. “Hold on, you witless peddler!” They were trapped in a maelstrom of churning scree. The trail behind them collapsed, and the soil beneath their boots began to heave. Khaydruk’s meridian sense screamed, the world a jumble of hostile currents. The spectral owl-shape above dipped, its colossal form seeming to dive, and the mud rippled like water. “It’s trying to crush us! My bones are not ready to be hollowed by a rockslide!” Pobur shrieked, his voice thin and reedy against the roar of colliding crags. Khaydruk spotted a momentary knot of stability holding fast. It wouldn’t last. He drew a stout, obsidian-tipped iron stake from his cloak, its surface etched with glowing copper sigils. “Hold tight!” he barked, planting his feet wide. The ledge pitched violently, throwing him off balance, but he steadied himself with a grunt. He pinpointed a volatile nexus, a rupture where the soil was splitting wide. With a savage yell, he drove the grounding stake down, slamming it into the fractured dirt. A metallic shriek sounded, met by a resounding crack deep in the cliffs. A ring of force snapped outward from the stake, locking the soil solid within a narrow circle. The chaotic grinding slowed, then halted, the debris frozen mid-fall. Khaydruk barred his teeth, arms vibrating under the violent kickback. The spectral owl-shape recoiled with an ear-splitting screech, its plumage flickering into thin vapor. “Now!” Khaydruk roared, hauling Pobur, who had gone limp with terror, across the stabilized patch. They scrambled over a jagged ridge of freshly thrust shale, landing hard on a narrow plateau. Behind them, the brief reprieve ended, and the slope resumed its violent rearrangement, the iron stake remaining as a lone pin fighting the slide. The monstrous dark above them dissipated, melting back into the bruised clouds, leaving behind only the cold echoes of its cry and the mangled slope. Khaydruk leaned against a newly raised boulder, breath catching in his ribs. They had reached the heart of Qeng-Dhar, on a wide, flat tier. The air tasted of rot and zinc, choked by a swirling miasma of corrupted currents. This was the eye of the disruption. “We’re here, you blithering fool,” Khaydruk rasped, his eyes narrowed, scanning the immediate surroundings. There was no disturbed grave, no ancient ruin. Just the familiar, weathered wood of the communal grain silos, their massive forms squatting on the plateau, strangely untouched by the recent upheaval. But as Khaydruk focused his geomantic sight, he saw it. The dark miasma, a sickly, yellow-green rot, pulsed not from the bedrock, but from within the timber storehouses themselves. The hex was anchored not to a dead man’s vengeful shade, but to the very grain meant to sustain the settlement.

The Shifting Labyrinth