The third month turned against them.
Morning came cold and colorless. No birds sang. The road hummed underfoot, low and steady, like breath trapped beneath stone. The quiet felt wrong, the kind that makes you tighten your grip without thinking.
Ryn lifted a hand. "Hold."
The ditch to their right pressed flat. The ground bulged, shifted, and split.
A giant snake-like monster slid out of the earth, thicker than the cart's axle, longer than the cart and both horses together. Wet-slate scales. A broad head. Eyes that didn't seem to see.
Arin's field visor flashed: Captain-rank!
"Colossaconda!" Ryn shouted. "Cart inside! Shields up!"
Elen reached the shield-bearer and pulled him toward the carriage. Light gathered at her hands, but never finished.
The snake struck like a collapsing wall.
Elen went down without a sound. Her neck bent wrong. Blood soaked the dirt. The healer died first.
The serpent's head scraped past a wheel. Its tail whipped. Three soldiers hit the ground and stayed there. The bone-cracks were hard and final. The formation deflated like a punctured balloon.
Lira's eyes flashed with anger. Fire lit between her fingers. She slashed a bright line across the serpent's face. Steam hissed. The air went metallic.
The Colossaconda didn't flinch.
It struck again.
Ryn stepped in and cut under the jaw. Dark, hot blood ran down his arm.
The tail slammed into the road. Dirt jumped. A spear snapped. The scout moved late; the tail smashed his hip and threw him into the ditch.
"Left!" Ryn yelled. "Keep the cart clear!"
Arin held center. He kept his blade tight. When the head slid for the wheel, he jammed his crossguard into the mouth, kicked the angle off, made a short cut, and slid back to guard.
The snake coiled.
Two men vanished in that wrap. Ribs gave with a sick sound. One spat blood and clawed at scales until his nails tore. The other choked once and went quiet.
Lira stepped too close.
Arin saw it half a second late. The head snapped. It caught her at the waist and bent her wrong. Heat burst from her mouth in a breath that wasn't a scream but felt like one. The snake slammed her twice and let her fall. She lay still, eyes half-closed, like a blink that never finished.
Elen lay three strides away, staring past the sky.
Ryn's face emptied. He walked at the serpent the way a man answers an insult. His blade rose and fell in a steady rhythm. He cut the places that matter, soft under the jaw, the hinge of the throat, the muscles that turn the head.
The tail caught his back. He staggered. The coil reached for him. He slipped out, breathing hard, and kept working the edge.
"Blind it!" he barked.
"On it," Arin said and threw dirt at the eyes. The snake flinched. Ryn drove his sword into the mouth and leaned on the hilt. Blood poured into the ditch. The cart lurched. A wheel screamed. The serpent rolled to crush anything near.
It pinned Ryn's leg. Bone snapped.
He didn't stop. On one good leg, he carved a red line that didn't end. The head bucked. He stayed close, shoulder down, teeth bared, refusing to give space.
His final stroke split the hinge clean.
The snake convulsed twice and went still.
No one cheered.
Ryn stood in the ditch's steam, furnace-hot breath ragged. Snake blood plastered his trousers. Darker blood, his own, ran down his boot. His leg refused to hold him, his shoulder ground painfully with every slight movement. He forced himself upright by sheer will, stepping toward the cart like a man dragging his own weight through hell.
"Status," he rasped.
Arin scanned the edges, under the collapsed coil, into the brush. He counted stillness.
"Elen's gone," he said. "Lira too."
Ryn's eyes closed for a heartbeat, and Arin felt the shift in the air, something heavy settling like iron. "We move them to the ridge. No graves here." His voice was flat, steady, but every word carried the weight of a soldier's exhaustion. "Help him," he barked to Raul.
Raul stepped out of the brush, ashen hair matted with sweat, body compact and wiry, every muscle drawn tight. His pale grey eyes never stopped moving, cutting from ditch to treeline to the bodies on the ground.
Combat Sense. That was why he was still standing, why the slaughter had slid past him instead of through him. Awareness honed into instinct, instinct into motion, his talent tugging him half a heartbeat ahead of death, again and again, when the others hadn't been fast enough.
"I'm with you," he said.
They lifted the bodies. No gentleness remained. Shirts tore. Arms flopped like broken wood. Snake and human blood slicked the mud.
The flies hadn't come yet, but Arin imagined them, circling over the stench of failure.
On the ridge, they laid the bodies in a straight line, Lira in the middle, Elen to her right. Canvas barely held the horror at bay. Arin's stomach turned at the smell of burnt flesh, blood, and the metallic tang that made the world feel unreal.
Ryn climbed slowly. Every step drew a grunt from his chest. Every breath is a battle. He set his sword beside Lira, point buried in the dirt. He did not kneel. Could not.
"It shouldn't have been here," Ryn said. Voice low, hollow. "Captain rank on a soldier's road."
Arin nodded once, face tight. "We'll report it."
Ryn's gaze landed on Raul. "Go with him."
Raul dipped his chin. "I'll see it done."
Then Ryn turned to Arin. "Ashenvill. Baron's house. Write the ranks, numbers, and the place." He drew a breath for one last order, but it never came.
His knees gave. He hit the ground with a harsh thud. A sound of tearing sinew, something snapping. Blood poured from a wound Arin couldn't see, back, belly, or both.
Ryn held himself on his hands for three shallow breaths, eyes open.
Then he fell across his sword. Still. Silent. Not breathing.
Arin froze. Grief settled in his chest, heavy and silent. He stepped forward, careful, and closed Ryn's eyes. Raul moved beside him, covering the body with canvas.
Arin stayed crouched, chest heaving, tasting blood and dust, hearing only the whisper of wind over the ridge. He counted the dead. He counted the living. He counted the distance between failure and revenge.
Walking felt wrong. Speaking felt wrong. Feeling, feeling was a luxury he could not afford.
Ash wolves. A Giant Snake. This world did not stop for grief. It did not pause for pain.
And Arin understood, deep in the marrow of his bones: if he survived, it would not be by luck or mercy. It would be because he learned to be sharper than the night, harder than the dead, and colder than anything that crawled from the shadows.
He rose. Slowly. Every joint screamed. Every muscle burned. Every breath hissed like knives.
But he rose.
Because survival was not a choice anymore. It was a promise.
___________________________
Ashenvill lay three days east.
They went.
No horses. No carts. Just two boys on a road that offered nothing. Raul led. Arin followed, his right hand broken from blocking a strike. The fingers wouldn't grip, each movement sending sharp pain up his arm. He tied a sling from his sash and let the arm hang, dragging himself forward.
At dusk on the third day, stone posts marked the border, each burned with the baron's crest. The gate guard saw the canvas and opened the way.
In the steward's hall, the table was cold, the ink dark, the ledgers waiting.
Arin kept it simple. "Escort of twenty. Captain-rank Colossaconda anomaly on the soldier's road. Lira Ashenvill is dead. Eighteen others fell, including our captain."
The steward's jaw tightened. "Where?"
"Two miles west of the ridge," Arin said.
"You'll write the incident and sign," the steward said. "We'll send for the girl."
"We need rations," Arin said. "And a stamped copy of the report. Our unit's gone. We're moving on."
"You'll get two days' rations and the stamp," the steward said. "No pay. Contract ends with the casualties."
Raul nodded. "Understood."
Two hours later, a carriage took Lira away. No ceremony at the gate. Whatever came next belonged to walls and family, not the hired blades.
They slept in a stone shed by the wall. In the morning, they walked out alone. Riverdale was too far away. Failure ends work, not grief.
They returned to the ridge with two shovels, the steward lent reluctantly. The soil was thin. Roots held hard. They dug anyway, four pits, then eight more. No wood for markers. They set stones and carved names with a knife. The letters were ragged but honest.
When the ground settled under their boots, they sat by the last mound. Raul balanced on his heels. Arin leaned against a rock. The sling held his broken hand tight.
Raul set a small pot on the coals. "Water, salt, deer meat, greens," he said. "It won't be good, but it'll keep us standing."
"That's enough," Arin said.
They ate without talking.
Night took the ridge. The fire burned small. The stones kept their quiet row behind them.
Raul watched the flames. "I can't shake it," he said. "The front rank folding. It replays whenever I close my eyes."
Arin stared into the dark. "Same."
Raul nodded at the sling. "How bad?"
"Broken," Arin said. "No grip. Left hand until it heals."
"We're not going back to Riverdale?" Raul said.
"I don't think so."
"So what now?"
"We collect the stamped report and rations first," Arin said. "Then we start again."
Raul sat with that. "I'm in."
"Alright."
They ate a little more. A night bird tried a call and gave up.
They let the fire go to coals. The wind moved across the stones. The ridge held its silence.