Stepping into the Whispering Marshes was like being submerged. The world contracted to a few feet of visibility as a thick, grey fog swirled around them, clinging to their clothes with a damp, chilling embrace. The ground beneath their feet changed from solid rock to a soft, squelching marsh that tried to suck at their boots with every step. Pale, willow-like fungi drooped from unseen branches above, their fronds trailing through the mist like skeletal fingers.
And then there were the whispers.
At first, they were just a trick of the ear—the sound of the fog moving, the gurgle of swamp water. But the longer they walked, the more distinct they became. Faint, incoherent voices murmuring just at the edge of hearing, a crowd of ghosts having a conversation they could never quite join.
Anya stopped, her body tense. "Alright, new rules," she said, her voice sharp and low, cutting through the ambient noise. "Rule one: Don't listen. The whispers will try to find a hook, a name, a memory. Ignore them. Rule two: Don't respond. The moment you talk back, you give it a piece of yourself. Rule three: Don't trust anything you see or hear that isn't me or the ground under your feet. The only thing that's real is this." She stamped her foot, creating a wet, sucking sound. "We keep talking. To each other. It keeps us grounded in the now."
Elias nodded, understanding the grim necessity of her words. This was a place that attacked the mind, the most vital survival tool of all.
They moved forward, a two-person island in a sea of grey. For a time, their only conversation was a practical back-and-forth. "Firm ground to the left." "Watch that root." "Did you hear that splash?"
Then, Anya suddenly froze. Her head snapped to the side, her eyes wide, staring into a blank wall of fog.
"Misha?" she whispered, the name a ghost on her lips, so quiet Elias almost didn't hear it. It was the first time he had heard her voice sound anything but strong. It sounded young.
"Anya," Elias said firmly, his voice a solid anchor. "What do you see?"
"I thought… a little girl. In a red scarf," she murmured, her focus still on the fog. A flicker of movement, a trick of the mist, seemed to dance just at the edge of her vision.
Elias moved to her side and placed a firm hand on her shoulder. "There is nothing there," he said, his voice steady and calm, the way he would speak to a delirious patient. "It's the fog. It's a lie. What's real is the ground beneath your boots. Feel it. What's real is my hand on your shoulder. Focus on that."
Anya blinked hard, shaking her head as if to clear it. The phantom image faded. The haunted look in her eyes receded, replaced by her familiar, hardened resolve. She looked at him, a flicker of vulnerability quickly suppressed. "Right," she grunted. "The fog."
They pressed on, but soon it was Elias's turn. He didn't see a person. He heard sounds, each one a perfectly rendered echo from his past. The metallic clang of a surgical tray dropped on a stone floor. The wet, ragged cough of a plague victim. The sharp, clipped voice of a corps commander: "The western flank is lost. Send in Thorne's unit. Buy us time."
He could almost feel the grit of the battlefield in his mouth, the weight of the lives he was ordered to sacrifice. Guilt, cold and familiar, washed over him. He faltered, his stride slowing.
"Elias!" Anya's voice was a sharp crack in the phantom soundscape. "Talk to me. What do you hear?"
"Just ghosts," he managed to say, forcing himself to focus on the feel of his satchel strap digging into his shoulder, on the sight of Anya's back in front of him. "They're not real."
"Good," she said. "Keep saying that."
It was in that moment of shared distraction that the marsh struck.
Without a sound, a creature erupted from the murky water to their right. It was a Mire-Lurker, a slick, amphibious predator with mottled grey skin that made it nearly invisible in the fog. Its head was a wide, flat horror of needle-like teeth, and it lunged towards Elias, the weakest target.
"Contact!" Anya yelled, spinning around, her crossbow already aimed.
But she couldn't get a clear shot; the Lurker was too close to Elias, and the fog obscured its vital points. Elias, reacting on pure instinct, didn't try to fight it. He slammed his hand onto the surface of the marsh water and focused his Resonance, not to heal, but to create a single, brilliant pulse of his golden light.
The flash momentarily blinded the creature and burned away the fog in a five-foot radius. In that instant of perfect clarity, Anya saw her shot.
Her obsidian-tipped bolt flew true, striking the Mire-Lurker in its exposed neck. There was a sizzle, and a strange, black frost seemed to form around the impact point, spreading rapidly. The obsidian wasn't just piercing the creature; it was actively unmaking its Verse-flesh. The Lurker let out a gurgling shriek and collapsed, half in and half out of the water, dissolving into black sludge.
They stood panting, the adrenaline coursing through them. The attack had been a brutal reminder that the psychological threat was merely a prelude to the physical one. The marsh weakened the mind to make the body an easier meal.
They were shaken, but their resolve was harder than ever. They had weathered the first assault on their senses and survived their first taste of the marsh's true danger.
As the silence descended once more, the whispers returned. But this time, it was different. They weren't a vague, incoherent babble. They coalesced, joined together, and for a single, chilling moment, both Elias and Anya heard the exact same word, spoken by a clear, cold voice that seemed to come from all directions at once.
"...Found..."