Korvath's Guild Hall carried a rare heaviness that morning—a kind of tired silence that only seasoned adventurers understood. The great lamps burned low, casting long amber lines across the stone floor as Team Juweru pushed through the doors, boots dragging, cloaks dusted with the gray ash of travel.
Juweru, their leader, didn't bother with greetings. He simply raised a hand toward the nearest attendant. "Debriefing room. Now."
The staff parted immediately.
Inside the chamber, maps covered the walls, red pins marking territories that once teemed with life. Today, those pins represented only questions and fears.
Jyurei slumped into a chair, face pale. Chiriyana dropped her pack on the table with a thud while Kiroko stood by the door, arms folded, eyes hollow.
A senior officer cleared his throat. "Report. State of Giggleburg?"
Juweru let out a breath that seemed to carry the entire guild's growing dread.
"Giggleburg," he said slowly, "is gone."
The officer blinked. "Destroyed?"
"Worse."
Juweru leaned forward, hands clasped. "Empty. Completely empty. No Dargath raiders. No Valerian troops. Not even corpses. Just buildings… hollow. Picked clean by wind, weather, and scavengers."
Chiriyana nodded, voice trembling with disbelief. "Even the usual monsters vanished. No tracks. No mana residue. It felt abandoned for months, not days."
Jyurei rubbed his temples. "We searched every district. Warehouses, barracks, the granary. Nothing but echoes. At one point I thought I heard voices, but it must be the wind."
Kiroko's jaw tightened. "Giggleburg isn't a battlefield. It's a graveyard without the dead."
A silence settled over the room—cold, suffocating, like the first warning breath of winter.
The officer dismissed them with a nod far more solemn than procedure required. "Rest. Eat. Your report will be sent to Commander Iroko immediately."
But the hall did not warm again after Team Juweru left. It remained cold, as if Giggleburg's emptiness had followed them home.
---
By afternoon, the dread had grown a new face.
Korvath's War Room erupted into motion as a second scout team stumbled in—half-running, half-collapsing. Their leader, Reiji Onnazuki, looked seconds away from fainting. Sweat soaked through his archer's tunic, and his bow hung limp at his side.
"Kouki-sama is in Reflynne," an officer warned. "Commander Iroko is on prison rotation. War Room protocol requests your full report now."
Reiji swallowed hard. "S-send someone else for them later. You need to hear this now."
They ushered him inside. His team huddled near the doorway, shaking.
The War Room's map of Bustleburg glowed from concentrated scrying spells, but no spell prepared the officers for what Reiji said next.
"We reached Bustleburg… the outer ruins first," he said, voice cracking. "Everything was torn apart. Houses collapsed, walls shattered. Same destruction we expected."
"Then what scared you?"
Reiji forced the words out.
"We saw ogres."
That alone shouldn't have shaken a trained team. But the way he whispered the next sentence froze the entire room.
"They weren't acting normal."
"How?"
"They were wandering… not hunting, not patrolling. Just wandering the ruins like they were lost. But that wasn't the worst part."
His hands trembled.
"Their eyes. Glowing blue. Bright, unnatural… like something inside them was burning cold."
Murmurs erupted around the chamber—speculation, fear, denial.
Reiji pressed on, voice hoarse. "They didn't see us, thank the gods. We didn't stay. We ran. The moment we felt the cold wind behind them, we didn't look back."
One officer managed, "Any signs of Valerians?"
"None. Not soldiers. Not scouts. Not even footprints. Just ogres with blue eyes… in a dead city."
The War Room fell into an uneasy stillness. Bustleburg wasn't empty like Giggleburg.
It was changing.
And whatever changed it was now wandering freely.
The news spread through Korvath like a winter gust—quiet, invisible, but leaving everyone shivering. The frontier wasn't just collapsing. It was mutating.