Raif moved first, pushing through low-hanging branches with his spear haft angled down. Eloin followed a few steps behind, his eyes sweeping the underbrush, shoulders taut. Naera came last, silent, carrying nothing. It was the morning after, and morale was at an all-time low. Nothing could be done though, it was just a part of the processes after a death of someone close.
They walked without speaking. The trail back was still visible in places, scuffed bark, broken vines, dark stains in the loam. The jungle hadn't swallowed the fight.
When they reached the clearing, they stopped. Raif let out an audible sigh. Eloin clicked his tongue, and Naera… Naera was silent
The body was gone.
The bark wolf's sap-black blood had hardened into flakes and patches across the soil. Thorny undergrowth had already begun curling around the flattened ground where it had died. Thomund's broken spear lay near the base of a tree, snapped just above the haft. But of him, the body, the blood, the final stand, nothing remained.
No drag marks. No footprints. No sign of scavengers.
Only stillness.
Something happened, but what?
Raif stepped forward slowly, crouched beside the spear, and ran one finger across the grain of the break. The wood was dark with age and sweat and something else. He looked up toward the trees, scanning. Hoping for an answer, but to no avail.
"Nothing," Eloin murmured.
Raif nodded. "Too clean."
Eloin shifted his weight. "You think something took him?"
"I don't know."
Naera said nothing. She hadn't said anything since they left camp.
She stepped into the clearing, slowly, like moving through fog. Her eyes traced the ground, the trees, the dirt. When she reached the spot where Thomund had last stood, she knelt. Her fingers touched the earth. Her head tilts to the side as if she was in a trance, and her breath was low.
There was no blood there.
Just crushed leaves.
Someone was here.
Thomund was here.
Raif watched her for a moment. Then turned away. He couldn't stand looking at her. The scene made his heart ache and stomach churn. They had a bond. They shared a connection. One made in this desolate place. One where they share each other's weaknesses. Friends. Comrades. Survivors.
"We go back," he said.
Eloin hesitated. "What do we tell them?"
Raif looked toward Naera again. She hadn't moved.
"We tell them the truth," he said. "That we found nothing. That he wasn't… here anymore."
They left in silence. Naera was the last to turn away, her gaze lingers. An image forms. A man. He sits. His eyes low. A taut smile. Then a wave.
They returned as the sun reached its peak. No one asked what they'd found. They already knew. It wasn't hard to tell.
Naera didn't speak. She walked past the firepit, past the stripped bark wolf carcass, and began to gather stones, along the ground.
No one stopped her.
She found a flat space at the edge of the clearing where roots curled low like twisted ribs. The soil was thin there, brittle from sun and ash. She set the first stone down with both hands, then another, then another. Slowly, steadily, shaping them into a rising mound.
Raif joined her before long. He didn't say anything at first. Just knelt beside her and began lifting stones. When her hands shook too badly to lift, he steadied them with his own. When her breath hitched, he said nothing, only kept moving. Like a fixed point beside her. Like a pillar, just like the one before him.
Eloin worked at the far side of the camp, packing wet mud over the bark-framed walls of the shelter. His hands moved quickly, almost frantically, though his eyes were empty. He didn't look over. Didn't stop. He couldn't. He felt like he would break if he did.
Lira sat a short distance away, on watch, the butt of a smoking stick in her hand. She burned curling vines where they encroached on the edge of the clearing, slow and methodical. Her eyes lingered more than once on the growing cairn. Her heart ached. But she stayed apart, her posture stiff. Her presence watchful. Standoffish. The way she always was when grief pressed too close.
A while later, they heard a grunt, low, strained. Goss.
He limped toward them from the shade of the shelter, favouring his left leg, clutching a smoothed branch as a crutch which he took from Lira. Sweat ran down his face in thin lines, and his breath was uneven. But he came anyway. He was on the cusp of recovery, but it didn't matter to him.
He crouched, slowly, painfully, beside the growing cairn and placed a heavy, flat stone on the mound.
"I used to train with him. We weren't close," Goss said quietly, after a long pause. "Back when the world still felt like it had corners. Thomund used to carve barkweights out of dryroot. Claimed it kept your spine straight."
Naera didn't answer.
"He was quiet, but he remembered things. Little things. Once I mentioned my sister liked beetles, and a week later he gave me a carving of one. Didn't say a word. Just handed it over like it meant nothing. Then I left to try to make some coin. He didn't say a word then either, but he was always nearby. Helped my sister find a husband, good lad."
Raif glanced at Goss, then at Naera. Her eyes stayed on the stones.
"He used to say the dumbest things with a straight face," Goss added. "Told me once bark could learn if you insulted it enough. I believed him for three days, kept cursing it with different insults. Made up new ones to give it a go as well."
Still no reply. But Naera passed him a smooth-edged shard, a stone, light and sharp.
Goss took it. Sat beside the largest rock in the pile. And began to carve.
The name took time.
The stone wasn't kind. Neither were the tools.
But slowly, letter by letter, they etched it in.
THOMUND
When Goss finished, he ran a hand over the name, brushing away the grit. Then stood and stepped back, wincing as he straightened.
Raif stepped forward. He placed one final stone atop the cairn, small, rounded, pale grey.
Naera stood beside him. The muscles in her jaw were tight.
"You don't have to carry all of it," Raif said, voice low. "Some of it's ours too."
She didn't look at him. But she didn't pull away either.
The moment the stone settled, the air shimmered.
It wasn't wind. It wasn't heat. It was something deeper, like the ground beneath them had exhaled. A low vibration passed through the soles of Raif's feet, not sharp enough to startle, but impossible to ignore.
Then came the pulse.
The orb, still nestled at the edge of camp, gave off a sudden, silent throb of light. It cast no shadows, but it reached everything. A flicker through stone and skin. Then came the words, sharp, white, and hanging in the air above the cairn.
[Challenge Survived: Honour the Fallen]
[Structure Recognised: Grave Site – Identity: Thomund]
[Reward: +5 KE]
[Total KE: 90 / 100]
Raif blinked. The shimmer hadn't faded before a second ripple passed through him, a pulse he felt behind his eyes.
[Loyalty Milestone Reached]
[Subject: Naera]
[Relationship Status: MAXIMUM]
[+10 KE]
[Total KE: 100 / 100]
Even after the glow faded, something lingered in the air. A kind of pressure. Like the world was still listening.
Raif turned his gaze toward the cairn. Naera was still watching the stones, unmoving. She hadn't seen anything.
He didn't tell her.
Didn't say a word.
But in that moment, something settled behind his ribs, a new weight, quiet and sure.
That evening, they ate in silence.
The bark wolf meat crackled over the coals, edges curling black and oily. No one said it tasted good. No one said much of anything. Only the crack of fire and the low hiss of fat hitting stone filled the air.
Naera sat near the grave.
She didn't eat. Didn't turn when Raif sat beside her. The stone cairn cast a long shadow over the firelight. Her hands were clasped in her lap, thumbs rubbed raw.
"I don't know what to say," Raif murmured.
"You don't have to."
They sat a while longer.
"He'd be angry we wasted the fat," Raif added after a beat. "Said everything in the wild should be used, even the useless bits. Especially those."
Naera gave the faintest twitch of a smile. It never reached her eyes.
Her hand drifted across the carved name, fingertips brushing stone. As if she could still feel his voice pressed into it.
"He shouldn't have died alone," she said.
"He didn't," Raif said quietly. "Not really."
Her jaw tightened. But she didn't argue.
Across the clearing, Eloin had fallen asleep with his back against the shelter wall, hands still streaked with mud. Goss sat nearby, staring at the fire, one leg extended. After a quiet moment, he passed the smoothed branch, his makeshift crutch, back to Lira. She took it with a nod, leaning on it as she began her slow circuit of the clearing. Her limp still lingered, but there was steadiness returning to her stride. In her other hand, she held the burnt stick, eyes scanning the treeline, jaw tight.
The orb pulsed faintly. Dim. Waiting.
Raif looked at the cairn. The carved letters caught the firelight just enough to glint.
"We're still here," he said.
Naera leaned against him. Just a little.
She didn't want to. But she let herself.
She told herself it was fine. Maybe she should've done it sooner. Maybe they all should've.
Too many maybes. And no answers.
They watched the fire until it burned to ash.
Wooden bones. Iron words.
What remained.