The pre-dawn shadows clung to Elliot's chambers like phantoms, but sleep had abandoned him hours ago. His mind churned with images of Emma and Emily—their shared laughter echoing through memory like ghost songs. The coins that had sealed both sisters' fates as guardians still gleamed mockingly on his father's desk, each silver piece a testament to their family's desperation.
A gentle hand pressed against his shoulder, though his eyes were already fixed on the cracked ceiling above.
"Elliot." His mother's voice carried the weight of unspoken grief, barely above a whisper. "It's time."
The floorboards groaned beneath his feet as he rose, the familiar sound now laden with finality. Through his window, tendrils of pearl-white mist crept between the cottages like searching fingers, swallowing the village boundaries with hungry silence.
"The mist approaches faster than we anticipated," Mother continued, her weathered hands trembling as she gathered his few possessions. "Chief Aldric has summoned all families to the obelisk."
Elliot's stomach twisted. The ancient stone monument had witnessed countless farewells, but never an exodus. As they stepped into the grey morning air, the acrid scent of extinguished hearth fires mingled with the metallic tang of approaching doom. Families emerged from their homes like specters, children clutching worn dolls while parents bore the haunted expressions of those who had gambled everything and lost.
The village obelisk loomed against the lightening sky, its weathered surface inscribed with protective runes that now pulsed with an ominous light red glow—a warning that made even the bravest hearts falter. The ancient symbols, carved by their forefathers as shields against darkness, had awakened to herald their doom. The closer the mist crept, the brighter the crimson light became, painting the gathered faces in the color of fresh blood.
The village chief's voice boomed across the gathering, though his words felt distant to Elliot's ears. The boy's gaze swept across the assembled families, searching instinctively for familiar faces that would never again stand beside him—Emma and Emily's absence more tangible than the cold stone pressing against his back, while above them all, their guardian obelisk blazed its scarlet warning into the dawn.
The old village chief's weathered hand trembled against his staff as he gazed upon the homes he had protected for forty summers. His voice cracked when he finally spoke, each word torn from depths of anguish. "My people... we leave behind more than stone and timber today." His eyes glistened as they swept across familiar faces—children he had blessed at birth, couples he had wed beneath this very obelisk. "These roots run deeper than any of us imagined, but the mist... the mist cares nothing for our love of this place."
He pressed his palm against the ancient stone one final time, as if drawing strength from ancestors who had stood here before him. "We carry our village not in our packs, but in our hearts. We move as one family now—stay together, trust in each other. And remember..." His voice broke entirely, barely a whisper. "Remember what we were, so we might become it again."
The procession began with reluctant footsteps on packed earth, then dirt, then the uncertain terrain beyond their village borders. As the refugees of Millhaven departed their ancestral home, the ancient trade route stretched ahead like a weathered scar through the equatorial wilderness—little more than packed earth and scattered stones where countless merchant caravans and pilgrims had worn away the jungle's attempts to reclaim it. Centuries of monsoon rains had carved deep ruts into the clay, now baked hard as pottery under the relentless sun, forcing the refugees to walk single-file along the narrow spine of higher ground.
By late afternoon, after hours of trudging through the oppressive jungle heat, they encountered the first grim testament to their shared peril. Thornwick emerged from the jungle like a battlefield dressed in tropical decay—but this abandonment bore darker scars than mere flight from mist. Doors had been smashed inward, their splintered wood bearing axe marks. Thatched roofs sagged where fire had licked them, and walls bore rust-brown stains that flies still visited with grim enthusiasm.
Several families from Millhaven had planned to shelter here, believing distance from their village might offer sanctuary. But as they picked through the devastation, the truth revealed itself in horrifying detail. The village obelisk still stood amid the carnage, its surface blazing with the same crimson warning light they had fled from in Millhaven—except here, the runes burned brighter, more urgent, as if screaming silent warnings of the mist's inexorable advance. The ancient magic recognized no borders, no sanctuary from what approached.
Elliot stared at the overturned looms, their threads cut and scattered like spider webs in a storm. Fishing nets lay slashed and bundled—valuable enough to steal but abandoned in apparent haste. The village smithy stood empty, its tools missing, while grain stores gaped open like hungry mouths. Even cooking pots and iron nails had vanished, leaving behind only what was too heavy or worthless to carry.
"What could have done this?" an elderly woman whispered, clutching her shawl tighter. "The mist doesn't steal copper kettles."
"Or bundle fishing nets," another villager added, his voice thick with growing dread.
"Raiders," the old village chief said grimly, his weathered hand gripping his staff until his knuckles went white. He knelt beside scattered pottery shards in the packed earth where the village square should have welcomed visitors. "They came after the people fled. Picked it clean like vultures."
The efficiency of the raiders' work became clear as they explored further. The village had been systematically stripped of anything valuable—metalwork, preserved foods, quality cloth, even the grinding stones from the mill. What remained were the broken remnants of a community that had fled in terror, only to have their abandoned homes ransacked by opportunistic scavengers.
The granary doors hung open, their contents long since plundered. Even the chickens had been taken, leaving only scattered feathers behind.
The refugees of Millhaven gathered in horrified clusters around the ransacked settlement, their planned sanctuary revealed as a gutted shell. Some wept for distant relatives they would never see again. Others clutched their children closer, finally understanding that the mist might be the least of their troubles.
"We cannot linger here," the old village chief declared, his voice heavy with exhaustion and determination. "If we push hard and keep moving, we might reach Riverside Crossing before nightfall. These... scavengers may still be prowling these roads after dark."
The weary column reformed with renewed urgency, leaving behind the corpse of Thornwick as the crimson runes of its obelisk pulsed ever brighter in their wake.