The clearing sank into silence after Lady Gaga's declaration.
It wasn't only the children who fell quiet—the forest itself seemed to hold its breath. No wind stirred the trees. No bird dared to sing. The mist that drifted low across the ground thickened as if it wished to smother every word that had just been spoken.
The silence was suffocating.
Branches creaked faintly overhead, their skeletal limbs rattling together like brittle bones. Fog coiled between roots and trunks, weaving across the earth in pale ribbons until the whole world dissolved into smoke. Only the gray light of morning pressed faintly through, too weak to banish the shadows.
The group moved forward with heavy steps.
Jon Snow, pale and trembling, lay across a stretcher of broken branches bound with belts and cloth torn from their own garments. His breaths were shallow, each one sounding like a knife scraping against stone. Yet stubbornness clung to him—he lived, because he refused to let go.
At the front of the stretcher, Rowan's knuckles whitened around the frame. Sweat streaked down his brow, but he didn't complain. Behind, Thomas carried the rear, his shoulders hunched under the weight. The two boys exchanged no words, but each step was a promise they would not let Jon Snow fall, no matter how heavy he became.
Beside them walked Twilight. His rifle rested on his shoulder, though his eyes never rested anywhere for long. They darted from shadow to shadow, from the mist curling at his boots to the faint outlines of branches above. He looked less like a boy than a wolf pacing its cage—ready to snap, ready to bolt.
And then there was Zero.
Their gazes crossed again and again, like blades scraping each time they touched. Neither spoke. Neither smiled. But something unspoken swirled in that silence—a recognition, perhaps, of the way war had burned childhood out of their eyes. Twilight studied him as though trying to weigh his soul: this reckless boy who had run headlong toward corpses as if fear did not exist.
Was it courage? Or was it madness?
The march continued, quiet and grim. Not looking back. Not looking forward. Just walking.
Their boots pressed into wet leaves and moss, the sound muffled by fog. Each step was swallowed almost before it was made. Sight shrank to only a few paces. The children felt smaller inside the fog's grasp, their shapes blurred as though they walked in a dream they might never wake from.
The silence gnawed at them until it was broken.
"How?"
The voice was soft, but it carried, slicing through the damp hush.
Ema.
Her head was bowed, her hood drawn tight, but her words slipped into the air like a blade unsheathed.
Thomas glanced back, his tone wary. "How what?"
Ema's lips tightened. She lifted her eyes, and for the first time since dawn, anger flashed there.
"How are we supposed to survive this?"
The words hit like stones.
Rowan faltered but kept walking, jaw clenched. Daria's hand twitched toward the dagger at her waist—not to draw it, but to remind herself she still had steel left in the world. Aria lifted her gaze, lips parting as though she wanted to speak, yet no sound came.
Ema pressed on, her voice rising, cracked by the weight of fury and despair.
"We are from the Naryan Kingdom… but just because we passed a stupid test, we were sent into the first battleground. Why are other groups—hundreds, thousands—sent to the second? Why us? It's like they chose us to die. What is it you told us back in the Kingdom? You said the war had already been lost. So why didn't you protest to the commanders? Why did you let us face this fate?"
Her words echoed against the trees.
Nobody answered at first. The only sound was Jon Snow's strained breathing and the faint creak of the stretcher.
But Ema wasn't done. Her voice rose again, sharp and demanding.
"You said the soldiers marched the other way. You swore it! And yet here we are, still on this path. By morning, we should have been deeper in the woods. By now, the kingdom's eyes should have been far behind us. But the border… the border isn't even two days away, is it? Not for us. So tell me—how is that possible?!"
Her last word cracked through the fog like thunder.
The group slowed, their steps hesitant. Even Twilight stopped scanning the shadows for danger; his eyes flicked toward Lady Gaga. The mist pressed closer, as though it wished to hear the answer too.
At last, Lady Gaga spoke.
Her voice cut clean through the silence—firm, but not without warmth.
"The two kingdoms share more than just borders," she said. Her cloak swayed as she stopped walking, her figure dark against the white fog. "They share trust. Old trust, older than banners, older than your maps. An alliance forged in war. An oath sealed in blood. The distance between them cannot be measured in miles alone."
Ema's fists clenched. "You speak in riddles."
Gaga's eyes narrowed slightly. "Perhaps. But riddle or not, it is truth. You look at a map and see days of marching. I see the scars carved into the land. Kingdoms do not shift on parchment, child—they shift in memory. In sacrifice. In betrayal. What you think is two days… may be one. What you think is safe ground… may already belong to another."
Her words dropped heavy on them all.
Rowan's voice, softer than Ema's but tinged with doubt, rose from the front.
"Then… if maps lie, how do we know which path leads home?"
The fog swirled thicker, the trees bending over them like skeletal hands. The world seemed to grow smaller.
Lady Gaga looked into that mist, her eyes sharp, her jaw set. For a long time, she said nothing. Then, her voice lowered into something nearly a whisper.
"That is why we keep walking. Because sometimes the land itself does not want to be crossed. And sometimes… the forest does not want us to leave."
A chill rippled through the group.
The children exchanged glances, but none dared to voice the fear pressing into their throats.
Jon Snow groaned faintly, his lips shaping words none could hear. For an instant, it seemed he was speaking to someone not in the clearing, not even in the world of the living. His fingers twitched against the stretcher, reaching for ghosts.
The fog shifted.
Was it a trick of the eyes? Or did shadows move within it, shapes that didn't belong to trees or stone?
Twilight's hand tightened on his rifle. Zero's eyes narrowed. Aria, who had been silent all morning, drew a sharp breath.
And still, the march continued.
One step.
Then another.
Deeper into the mist.
As though the forest itself was watching.
The silence had changed. It was no longer merely the absence of sound. It was a presence—dense, suffocating, alive.
Each step sank into wet leaves, the sound dulled and swallowed before it could carry. Boots slipped on moss slick with dew. The stretcher groaned faintly under Jon Snow's weight, every creak echoing like a scream in the void.
The fog pressed thicker, climbing now past their knees, swallowing their shapes until they were little more than shadows to one another. The gray veil reduced the world to fragments: Rowan's clenched jaw, Thomas's hunched shoulders, the glint of Twilight's rifle, the faint flutter of Lady Gaga's cloak. Beyond that—nothing.
Jon's lips moved ceaselessly now, whispers spilling into the air, too soft to grasp, too fragmented to understand. Rowan strained to hear and caught only broken shards:
"…shadows… waiting…"
"…not alone…"
"…the roots… watching…"
Thomas swallowed hard. "He's delirious. He doesn't know what he's saying."
But even as he spoke, the words rang hollow. Because they all heard the truth in Jon's voice.
The forest was listening.
The march dragged on, timeless. Minutes stretched into hours, hours into eternity.
Ema whispered at last, "…What if this is it? Not a battle. Not enemies. Just… this. Walking. Forever. Until the forest swallows us whole."
The words poisoned the air.
Lady Gaga did not stop. Her stride was steady, her figure tall, though the fog shrank her shadow.
"The forest is old," she said, her voice stone against stone. "Older than your kingdoms. Older than your wars. It has seen blood spilled, oaths broken, children carried into its heart. It does not forget. It does not forgive. But if you keep walking… it will decide."
"Decide?" Rowan's voice cracked. "Decide what?"
Her cloak shifted.
"Whether you leave. Or whether you stay."
Jon Snow groaned, his eyes fluttering open, pupils wide and empty. His lips parted, and this time the words were clear, slicing through the mist.
"…it's already watching."
The fog stirred. Shapes twisted within it—long, bending, too large for men, too big for trees. Then they were gone.
Twilight raised his rifle. Zero's hand brushed his blade. Daria stepped forward, dagger trembling.
But the shapes had vanished.
The forest was still.
And so, step by step, they pressed on.
One step.
Then another.
Deeper into the mist.
As though the forest itself leaned closer.
As though it hungered.
As though it was waiting for the moment they could no longer walk.
And still, they marched.
Into the gray.
Into the unknown.
The forest did not move.
The forest only watched.
But from far, it was not only the forest.
At first, it seemed like nothing more than the echo of a distant cannon, the kind that once marked holidays and festivals. A ghost of sound. Yet as the silence thickened, the children felt it wasn't memory at all. It was presence.
And then they realized—something else was missing.
Their commander.
He had been walking at the front with them. Even Lady Gaga had glanced that way moments before. But now… he was gone. As though the mist had swallowed him whole.
Zero's jaw tightened. "He knew. From the very first step, since we helped Jon Snow and Twilight. That's why he went ahead. To find it."
At first, none of them could name what it was. Through the fog loomed a shape—massive, curved, gleaming faintly in the gray. The children whispered it was an eye, a great lidless eye staring at them. Rowan swore it blinked. Aria thought it breathed.
But only their commander knew the truth.
It was no beast. No phantom.
It was an Odyssey cannon.
A relic of wars long past, dragged into the woods and abandoned, its barrel like the throat of some dead god, its gears rusted but intact. The cannon's hollow mouth gaped from the mist, its glass sights glinting like pupils, its black steel veins running down into the earth.
The children did not know this. Their weapons were steel-oiled rifles, small and clumsy by comparison. They thought in powder, in fire, in bullets. But this—this was something else.
To their eyes, it was no cannon.
It was a watcher.
And perhaps, in a way, it was.
The Odyssey cannon had been built not only to fire but to see. Though it had not roared in decades, its hollow eye still searched the forest as though waiting for a target.
Behind him, the children shivered beneath the weight of its stare.
They thought it was a beast.
They thought it was an eye.
And in their fear, they might not have been wrong.
Because though the cannon was dead, the forest seemed to breathe through it.
And in the mist, the difference between machine and monster no longer mattered.