The first breath of open air nearly stopped Alaric's heart.
It wasn't clean — far from it — but after days in the choking stone veins beneath the earth, the wind's touch felt almost holy. The scent of dust, charred wood, and something faintly metallic filled his lungs.
Behind him, Corren emerged from the narrow crevice, pushing aside a curtain of dead ivy. "Don't look so eager," he said. "Up here, the air might kill you slower, but it'll still kill you."
The Vein's mouth was hidden in the lee of a jagged hillside. They had to scramble over loose shale to reach open ground, the slope ending in a stretch of grass that was brittle and yellow. Beyond that…
Alaric froze.
The horizon was the color of old blood.
Clouds hung low and heavy, their undersides glowing a sickly orange as if lit from some fire beyond sight. The sun was only a pale smear, its light weak and cold. The wind stirred the grass in slow waves, but the sound it made was wrong — dry, crackling, almost brittle enough to break.
"This…" Alaric whispered, "this isn't how the world looked."
Corren squinted toward the distance. "No. It isn't."
They started walking, keeping low to the uneven ground. The hills rolled in strange shapes here, like the earth itself had been gnawed at by giant teeth. Once in a while, they passed skeletal remains of trees, their blackened branches reaching toward the dying sky like twisted fingers.
Alaric glanced back more than once, but the Vein's entrance had already vanished among the rocks.
By midday, they reached the first sign of habitation — or what had been habitation.
The village was dead.
Houses sagged under collapsed roofs. Shards of pottery littered the ground, half-buried in dust. A single well sat in the center, its bucket rope frayed and the stone lip darkened by some black residue Alaric didn't want to name.
Corren stepped carefully, scanning the empty doorways. "It wasn't bandits. No scorch marks. No looting."
"Then what?"
Corren didn't answer.
A faint sound rose on the wind — like whispers, far away but circling closer.
Alaric stopped, tilting his head. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere, threads of it tugging at his thoughts. It didn't feel hostile, exactly. It felt… expectant.
"You hear that?" he asked.
Corren gave him a sharp look. "Ignore it. Keep moving."
But as they left the village behind, the whispering grew softer, fading into the steady hiss of the wind.
By the time the sun began to sink — though here it seemed to simply dim, not set — they reached the edge of a wide plain.
It stretched endlessly, grass broken only by the occasional patch of dark stone jutting from the ground like exposed bone. The far horizon blurred under a haze of drifting dust.
And in that dust… movement.
At first Alaric thought it was the wind shaping the grit into vague forms, but then he saw the way it shifted — deliberate, circling.
Figures.
"Stalkers," Corren said quietly. "They hunt with the dust. You won't hear them until they're right on you."
"How do we get across?"
"Fast."
They broke into a steady run, boots crunching over the brittle ground. The wind picked up, whipping grit into their eyes. The haze thickened, swallowing the horizon. Shapes flitted through it — tall, thin, moving with an unnatural lope.
One broke from the haze, and Alaric caught a glimpse before Corren shoved him forward — a long, pale face stretched too thin, eyes like shards of obsidian, and a mouth that seemed to smile far too wide.
The creature didn't follow immediately. It simply watched.
Then, as if some signal had been given, the Stalkers moved.
They came low and fast, kicking up spirals of dust. Corren pulled a short blade from his belt and tossed Alaric a weighted cudgel. "Don't let them get behind you."
Alaric swung as one lunged from the side, its limbs too long, too jointed. The cudgel cracked against bone with a sound like splintering wood, and the thing shrieked — not in pain, but in rage.
Corren cut another down, but three more appeared from the haze.
The fight was chaos.
Dust blinded him, grit scraped his throat raw, and every shape in the storm seemed ready to leap. Alaric lost track of time, of strikes, of how many fell. He only remembered the feel of the cudgel growing slick in his grip, his arms trembling from the weight of each blow.
When the wind shifted suddenly, revealing a break in the haze, Corren grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward. "Go!"
They sprinted the last stretch toward a jagged ridge of stone.
By the time they scrambled over the top, the dust storm had swallowed the plain behind them. The Stalkers did not follow.
Alaric collapsed to his knees, coughing. "What… were those?"
"Old things," Corren said. "Left behind when the world still had teeth."
They moved on until they found a small hollow in the ridge where the wind died down. There, Corren built a small fire from dried roots and brittle grass.
The dying sky hung above them, orange clouds unmoving.
Alaric lay back on the cold stone, staring up. "It feels… wrong. Like the sky's holding its breath."
Corren didn't answer. He was looking at something in the distance — something Alaric couldn't see through the dim haze.
"What is it?" Alaric asked.
Corren's voice was low. "Storm's not done. And we're not the only ones moving under it."
That night, Alaric dreamed of the whispers.
They came from the sky this time, curling down through the clouds, speaking in words he couldn't quite understand. But he felt them in his bones, the way one feels a storm before it breaks.
When he woke, the fire was nearly out and Corren was already on his feet.
"Up," he said. "We've got ground to cover before the Stalkers remember us."
Alaric rose, glancing once more at the sky. It hadn't changed. Still bleeding orange. Still holding its breath.
And somewhere in the wind, he thought he heard it again — that same expectant whisper.