Chapter 5
The canyon is wrong.
The commander raises a gauntleted hand, fingers curling into a fist. His troops halt behind him in accordance.
Even the black scouts with red seams melt back into shadow. The heavy-shielded Anthians steady their shields of iron. Pagoniá's conjurers choke off chants mid-word. Even the Logosians lower their books, pens dripping ink in silence.
A Therion soldier dares whisper, "Commander—" but he lowers his hand, and the word dies.
Now there is nothing.
No wind. No drip of water from the fleshy walls. The canyon itself has stopped breathing. It lies hollow, suffocated.
He steps forward. His boots grind grit, making sounds that feel like blasphemy against the quite. His shoulders tighten under steel. His men feel it too, their unease crashing against his back like a wave.
Then the scent reaches him.
Blood. Thick, stale, a sweetness turned putrid. Not victory's stench, but waste.
He moves deeper. Shadows ripple on stone-flesh walls, but none twitch on their own. Not anymore.
Then—the eyes.
The canyon's lidless watchers, normally darting and fixed to nothing now all of them looking below, staring into the blank floor as if refusing to look.
Something is here. Something even they will not see.
And then he finds it.
A body. Humanoid, massive. One eye rolled back, jaw slack, innards spilled.
The ogre. Their kill. Their claim.
But something is wrong.
At its feet, another shape lies folded in gore.
It wasn't there before. The kill had happened behind their backs—the ogre's kin, perhaps, laid down next to it.
He silences his troops' movement with a gesture. Even their breathing falls quiet. He advances with the lion at his side, the beast's golden eyes alert, horns low.
Something crimson catches his sight. Strands of hair, matted in purple blood.
His breath hitches inside the helm.
A girl? The thought strikes sharp, but outward he remains still, pushing his feelings deep under. He pushes closer.
And his skin crawls in unimaginable emotion.
Pale skin gleams against purple pools. Naked, except for a strip of cloth tied at her throat. Crimson hair spreads like flame over gore.
And she breathes.
Faint, but real.
Her jaw moves around, deep in the carrion's flesh. Lips glisten. Teeth grinding on bone. Even in unconsciousness she chews. A tendon slips from her mouth as her fingers twitch, clutching what remains.
Armor creaks behind him. Shields shift, blades angle instinctively toward her. Fear ripples down the line.
Revulsion grips him cold.
But pity grips him too.
She is frail, ribs showing like cage bars, her body trembling even in blood. She looks like prey—yet no prey dreams with gore in its teeth.
The lion growls low, mane bristling. Golden eyes burn into her. One step and it will strike.
But it holds.
Not calm—hesitation. Recognition.
He trusts the beast's instincts. But he cannot ignore what his own eyes show him.
She is human. She must be.
And if human, her life cannot be discarded.
"She is no beast. Do not raise a hand." His voice is iron.
His words chain the silence. Men freeze. The lion rumbles but does not move.
He kneels. The stench coats his mouth with iron rot. All of her streaked in gore, flesh caught between her lips, jaw faintly working.
Revulsion. Pity. Fear. Duty. They churn in him like a storm.
"She comes with us. Alive. Unharmed."
The canyon presses heavy around them. Only the lion growls, gaze fixed on her.
For the first time in years, he cannot tell whether the beast's warning is truer than his own heart.
They lift her carefully, gauntlets slick with gore. She stirs but does not wake. A robe of red—circles and words overlapping—put to cover her. Still she looks frail, too frail for the horror clinging to her.
The menmarches.
The canyon leads to the Tower where they descended. Its eyes remain shut just like when the arrive, it's carpeted worm-flesh swaying faintly as a red-robed man writes on her tome and chants beside a white-furred man with a frozen staff doing the same, flailing his staff in a pattern.
Flesh parts. Passage opens.
They file through. Wheels grind. The lion pads close as the marble flooring beneath them which is vast enough to hold his hundred men and three carriages begins its slow ascent.
At the top, sound returns. The interior of the Tower roar with life: merchants haggling, adventurers shouting, steel clashing. No one looks twice at his expediting party. Soldiers, beasts, mages—just another tide in the crowd.
Unlike the tower down below, stone replaces flesh. Obsidian and basalt walls as tall as the sky, black as night. The Tower looms vast, unbreathing.
He does not slow. Neither do his men.
Beyond the gates, desert stretches harsh and endless. To the right, the forest trail winds green toward home.
They have marched this road countless times, carriages heavy with spoils and wounded, horses straining. Yet now, silence clings to them still.
Though the sun blazes, he feels the canyon's shadow marching with them.