The sun sat like a coin over the world, dull and unspun. Shadows lay like spilled ink. I watched the sunrise, feeling the warmth of a sun that felt foreign yet familiar.
When we finally reached the valley that led to the Veiled Marsh, the air grew colder, and the stillness thickened until it was almost waxy against our skin.
Cyrus folded out another map and squinted like an older man trying to read the future in tea leaves. “The marsh edge should be just beyond those reeds,” he said, pointing. “There’s a low ridge. If the stories are true, it’s where the ground stops pretending and starts remembering.”
“Poetic,” I said.
I tested the soil with the tip of my toe. It was softer than it looked, like the kind of mud that ate shoes if you so much as blinked at it. The first reeds brushed my knees, cold tips whispering secrets as we pushed through.
A thin mist clung to the surface of the water, moving in no direction I could see. Beneath it, the reeds bent the way a thing bent when something heavy moved under the skin of the ground. Not wind. Not fish. Something else.
“Do you hear that?” Ami whispered.
A hum, low and bodily, rose from the marsh. It wasn’t wind, and it wasn’t sound exactly; more like the earth tuning itself to a note it hadn’t used in a long time. My teeth ached from the vibration.
Cyrus straightened, eyes wide for the first time. “That’s… that’s not right.” His hand gripped his maps so tightly the parchment creased.
Something tunneled under the mud and slid along the water’s belly. The ripple moved against the mist, deliberate, patient, and then the surface broke—not with a splash but with a slow, polite parting, like curtains in a theater. A single black vine rose, slick and glistening, uncoiling toward us as if reaching for a word.
I drew my dagger without thinking. The metal felt good, small, and honest in my hand.
The vine twitched. Something wet and dark pushed itself through the gap and rested on the surface: a shard the size of a man’s fist, veined with a pale inner light that breathed like a sleeping thing.
Cyrus swore under his breath. “The shard. The marsh is showing us the shard.”
I swallowed. The Stone of Ilina, or a breadcrumb of it, stared up at me from a world that wouldn’t wake.
We weren’t past the Veiled Marsh yet. But the marsh had noticed us.
I dug my toes into the mud, steadying my stance. The ground squelched, cool and slick between my feet. I closed my eyes the moment before everything broke loose.
This was a technique that should only be used when you couldn’t find your bearings, when the whole world was spinning, and you couldn’t slow it down.
The memory of that voice, of a long-gone monk, cut through the roar in my head.
I breathed in, then out, slow and deep. I let the sound of my heartbeat fade until all I could hear was the mud sighing beneath me. I opened my eyes and moved.
The world caught up. A hiss ripped through the fog, something slicing the air where my head had been a moment before. I dropped low, dragged my dagger across the ground, and felt it catch on something solid that shouldn’t have been there. Sparks. A screech.
The black vine jerked back, leaving a smear of dark ichor that burned where it touched the mud. Another tendril rose, thicker, pulsing with light that wasn’t light at all, like the glow of rot under a dead log.
Cyrus was shouting something behind me, his papers scattering again. Ami’s voice followed, sharp and clear, words in a language that sounded like breaking glass. The air shivered with power.
I lunged, twisted, and cut. The tendril fell limp, melting into the water. My breath came fast, the taste of iron and damp earth thick in my mouth.
Then, silence.
Only the ripples remained, circles spreading across the surface, widening until they faded into the still reflection of the sky.
Ami lowered her hand. “It was testing you,” she said quietly.
“Great,” I muttered, wiping my blade on my leg. “Did I pass?”
Cyrus exhaled, shaking his head. “If it wanted you dead, it would’ve tried harder. That was a greeting.”
“Your world has terrible manners,” I replied.
Ami didn’t answer, but her eyes flicked toward the water’s edge where the faint light of the submerged shard still glowed, waiting.
I walked over and grabbed it, since everyone else just wanted to stare at it. The mud clung to my feet, cold and heavy, but I didn’t care. I reached into the water and pulled it free.
It was smaller than I expected, smooth and pale pink, the color shifting and rippling under its surface like something alive. When I tilted it, it moved, almost as if it were breathing.
I held it up. “It’s smaller than I thought it’d be,” I said. “You’d think something that can bring people back from the dead would be… I don’t know, bigger?”
A wet snap cut the air. I barely registered the movement before a vine whipped across my face, knocking me backward into the mud.
“Well, I didn’t mean to be rude.” I groaned, spitting out a mouthful of muck.
Ami was already between me and the water, her hand raised, light blooming faintly around her fingers. The air hummed again, that strange note from before, but sharper now, angry.
“The legend says,” Cyrus began, breathless but awed, “that the Stone of Ilina was split into ten pieces, one for each of Ilina’s maidens. Each piece carries part of her gift: sight, breath, light, song, life, shadow, knowledge, soul, love…” He gestured toward the shard still glowing faintly in my hand. “…and blood. You found the blood piece.”
I blinked. “Of course I did.”
Ami glanced over her shoulder, eyes narrowing. “The marsh won’t give up its relics easily. It’s defending what remains.”
“Good to know,” I said, wiping sludge off my cheek. “Next time, maybe someone could mention the part where grabbing shiny things equals attempted murder?”
Cyrus opened his mouth, thought better of it, and instead started scribbling notes on a damp scrap of parchment.
The shard pulsed again, once, twice, then went still in my palm. The pink hue darkened to a deep rose, threads of silver swirling inside it like veins. I felt it then, a faint thrum beneath my skin. Not magic exactly. More like… heartbeat.
Ami oversaw me. “It recognizes you.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “So did the vine. Let’s hope this thing has better manners.”
The ground trembled beneath us, a slow, dragging sound like something heavy shifting under the marsh. The pink light in my palm brightened, throbbing against my skin.
“Uh, Ami?” I started.
“Run,” she said.
I didn’t argue.
Mud splashed against my legs as we sprinted through the reeds, Cyrus shouting directions that made less and less sense.
“Left! No! Right! Past the trees that look like they’re watching you!”
They were watching. I swore one of them turned as we passed.
Behind us, the marsh churned. Something vast stirred below the surface; not chasing, just aware. The hum we’d heard before deepened into a sound that felt like it was coming from inside my chest. The shard’s glow flickered with each vibration.
Ami muttered a word I didn’t recognize. A flash of light rippled from her hand, and the air split. We burst through a curtain of reeds, stumbled onto firmer ground, and didn’t stop running until the wet smell of the marsh faded from the air.
When we finally collapsed beneath a crooked tree, the silence felt wrong in a new way—too empty after the marsh’s hum. My breath came in ragged gasps, my clothes plastered to me with mud and cold sweat.
Cyrus dropped beside a rock, clutching his maps like a dying man clutching holy relics. “Remind me,” he wheezed, “to never doubt your instinct to run again.”
Ami stayed standing. She looked back toward the marsh, eyes glowing faintly in the fading light. “It let us go,” she said. “For now.”
“Comforting,” I muttered, trying to scrape mud off my arms. The shard still sat in my hand, dimmer now, its color dulled to a soft rose. “Does this thing come with an off switch? It’s kind of… pulsing.”
“It’s alive,” Cyrus said between breaths. “Or… resonating. Hard to say which.”
“Great. I’m holding a magic heartbeat.”
He chuckled weakly. “You’re holding one-tenth of a goddess. Try not to drop her.”
Ami finally turned toward us. “We’ll make camp here,” she said. “We’ve already drawn too much attention.”
We found a dry patch near the tree and started setting up. Cyrus built a small fire with shaking hands; the flames sputtered blue before settling to gold. I sat nearby, running a cloth over my dagger. The reflection of the firelight danced along its edge—steady, familiar.
Cyrus spread out one of his maps, tracing a finger across the ink. “The Veiled Marsh was only the first site. There are nine more fragments hidden across Celentra.”
“Of course there are,” I said. “Can’t ever just be one rock.”
He smiled faintly. “The stories say each fragment protects the next. They’re connected. Find one, and the others start to awaken.”
Ami nodded, eyes on the shard. “Then our task has truly begun.”
The wind stirred, faint and cautious, like the world remembering how. The leaves overhead rustled for the first time since I arrived in this frozen realm.
Cyrus noticed too. “That shouldn’t be possible,” he whispered.
Ami didn’t look away from me. “It’s the shard. You’ve disturbed the stillness.”
“Fantastic,” I sighed. “First, I wake up an angry swamp, now I’m breaking the laws of your world. At this rate, maybe I’ll trip over the rest of the stones by accident.”
But when I looked down at the shard resting near my knee, its light faintly pulsing in time with my heartbeat, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was looking back.
I rolled out my bedroll and lay back, the ground still humming faintly beneath me. A pang bloomed in my chest, as if something inside me was still waiting to be found.
The second my eyes closed, the world shifted.