Dawn broke across the salt flats like a bruised promise — pale and weak, bleeding sickly light over a land that seemed to recoil from it. The horizon stretched endless and empty, a brittle wasteland of bone-colored earth rimed in salt crust and dry mist. The sun hung low, pallid and heatless, painting the world in shades of dead gray and faded copper.

  The Vermillion Troupe moved in silence. No songs. No clatter of beads, no soft whistle from the children. Only the thud of oxen hooves on brittle earth and the weary groan of wagon wheels. The air hung thick with an ancient weight, tasting of old brine and rusted iron, carrying a pressure that tightened behind the eyes and made the skin crawl.

  ProlixalParagon rode point, ears flicking at every gust of air and shifting shadow. His sharp gaze swept across the barren land, the salt flats stretching in a desolate sprawl. There was nothing natural about the place. It wasn’t the emptiness — it was the way the earth felt watched, as though the dead here still held dominion over the living.

  Lyra drew up beside him, her silver fur dulled by dust and exhaustion, her yellow eyes glinting with a cold, stubborn light.

  “You see anything, boy?” she rasped, her voice carrying the dry scrape of old paper.

  ProlixalParagon’s gaze narrowed on the distant ridgelines. The mist clung low and slow, refusing to burn away with the morning light. Salt crystals glittered like broken glass in the dawn, and a faint, unnatural shimmer hung along the far ground.

  “Not yet,” he muttered. “But it’s here.”

  The oxen stamped and snorted, restless, their eyes rolling white at every flicker of mist. The children’s pale faces peered from behind canvas flaps, wide-eyed and silent. Even the elders’ expressions were tight, the old tales of Saltblight Hollow heavy in the air.

  Then Marx came up from the rear, his broad shoulders wrapped in a rough, weather-stained cloak. His olive-tanned skin bore old scars, and the sun-weathered lines around his sharp brown eyes spoke of too many hard miles. At his belt hung twin long-bladed knives — bone-handled and well-used. Every step he took had a faint, metallic hiss, the faint blue lines of his mana-powered prosthetic leg shimmering beneath worn leathers. The arcane glyphs embedded in the metal pulsed softly, each step steady despite the uneven, salt-rimed ground.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Marx said quietly, one knife spinning through calloused fingers. His voice carried the rough grit of a man who’d survived too much, and trusted too little.

  “No choice,” ProlixalParagon replied.

  Ralyria joined them, pale metal skin catching the anemic dawn. Her long iron-tipped spear rested easily in her grip, the weapon’s haft worn smooth by old calluses. Her forged face showed no fear, though her gaze never left the mist.

  “There’s an old Soohan ward-stone,” she murmured, voice low. “Carving’s worn to nothing, but it marks this place. It was a battlefield. Long before our time.”

  “Saltblight Hollow,” Lyra finished, her voice as brittle as the land beneath them. “And the dead here don’t rest easy.”

  The wind shifted — no true breeze, but a heavy, salt-sick breath from the earth itself. The mist thickened, curling between wagon wheels and oxen legs, rising in thin coils. The air grew heavier, pressing against flesh and fur like a wet cloth. ProlixalParagon’s skin prickled beneath his tunic, the fine hairs on the back of his neck rising.

  Then the shapes appeared.

  Half-seen, pale forms gliding through the mist — figures without color, skin leached of all hue, eyes dull and pearlescent in sunken sockets. Salt Revenants. Old soldiers bound to cursed ground and salt-stung air, long-dead and too full of rage to stay buried.

  Marx’s grip tightened around the hilt of his knife. “Damn ghosts.”

  Lyra’s voice cracked like a whip. “Form a circle! Salt lines, now!”

  ProlixalParagon leapt from his saddle, snatching pouches of coarse white grains from his belt and casting them in jagged, hasty lines around the wheels of the lead wagon. The salt left faint, shimmering trails on the earth, a barrier against what lingered beyond the veil.

  “Stay inside!” he called toward the wagons, catching glimpses of frightened eyes behind canvas. “Don’t leave the line!”

  Marx moved with deadly efficiency, his mana-powered prosthetic hissing softly with every step. He flicked one knife through the air, catching a Revenant that drifted too close. The blade didn’t strike flesh — it struck something less, a form of thin mist and old hate — but the thing reeled back as the weapon’s edge brushed salt-lined ground.

  “Back off, you sun-blasted corpse,” Marx spat.

  Ralyria’s spear shot out, burying deep into a revenant’s chest with a dull crack. The figure burst apart like brittle ash, mist curling around the iron tip. She jerked her weapon free, bracing for the next.

  “They’ll test the line,” ProlixalParagon warned, throwing more salt. “Hold it!”

  The Revenants circled, silent mouths moving, eyes gleaming with a cold, dead hunger. The mist swirled, carrying a faint keening sound that gnawed at the edges of hearing.

  One lunged.

  Marx was there — a blur of motion, his blade flashing in a brutal arc, followed by a hiss of mana as his prosthetic leg pivoted sharply, driving a foot into the thing’s gut with a hiss and crack. The spirit scattered like fog on stone.

  “Salt holds,” ProlixalParagon shouted.

  Another Revenant surged forward — Ralyria met it with a swift, precise thrust, impaling it clean through. It dissolved like mist in a rising sun.

  The salt shimmered faintly, the line unbroken.

  The Revenants hung at the edge, unwilling to cross. Watching.

  And then — slowly — they withdrew, melting back into the mist. The mournful wail faded, though it lingered on the ear like an unwelcome memory. The mist remained. The land remained wrong.

  But the Troupe lived.

  Lyra leaned on her staff, her breathing shallow. “We ride. Now.”

  ProlixalParagon wiped sweat and salt dust from his brow. “They’ll come again.”

  “Let them,” Marx growled, flicking a revenant’s dust from his blade. His prosthetic leg pulsed with a dull glow as he adjusted his weight. “Next time, I’ll leave one standing just long enough to ask who sent it.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Ralyria gave a grim nod. “We need to reach high ground before nightfall.”

  They moved — tired, marked, but alive. The salt flats stretched ahead, empty save for the watching mist and the dead things it carried.

  The Hollow had claimed them now.

  And it would remember.

  The Troupe moved again.

  Not because the danger had passed, but because the salt flats gave no mercy to those who lingered.

  The oxen strained in their harnesses, sweat darkening their thick hides despite the coolness of dawn. Their eyes rolled white, foam clinging to their mouths as they pulled the vardos through thick, choking mist. Every hooffall kicked up a puff of salt dust, and it clung to everything — skin, fur, cloth, and breath alike. The world felt muted, swallowed by a dense, unnatural silence where even the wind seemed to shy away.

  ProlixalParagon kept to the front, one hand tight around the hilt of his dagger, the other cradling a half-empty pouch of coarse salt. The grains stuck to his damp fur, burning against the raw skin where salt blisters had begun to rise along the pads of his hands and the crook of his elbow. The air here wasn’t air at all, but something thicker — like the very breath of the earth had soured.

  Each inhalation left a sour sting in his throat, a sharp bite of old brine and dust. His tongue felt heavy, thick with the taste of it.

  He glanced to his left. Marx walked beside the lead wagon, his olive-tanned face set in grim determination, a fresh sheen of sweat darkening his brow. His mana-powered prosthetic made a faint, soft hiss with each step, the runes along its polished steel frame pulsing in a steady rhythm. The faint blue light beneath the knee joint gave the mist around his leg a strange, ghostly glow.

  The man carried a long knife in each hand now, blades dulled by salt residue but still sharp. A grim line pressed his lips, though his dark eyes burned with steady, defiant focus.

  “No sign of ‘em yet,” Marx murmured, his voice low and rough, words carried only a few feet before vanishing into the clinging mist.

  “They’ll follow,” ProlixalParagon replied, eyes flicking to the shifting veils of white around them. “The Hollow remembers.”

  As if summoned by the words, a strange shimmer rippled across the salt crust ahead. It was like heat haze, but colder — a flickering distortion in the air that traced the outline of something buried. Ralyria appeared at his other side, her spear angled low, her expression set.

  “There,” she pointed with the haft.

  The three of them approached cautiously.

  The ground was cracked here, wide fault lines jagged through the salt like old scars. ProlixalParagon knelt at the edge of one, his fur bristling as a cold breath of air — not wind, but something deeper — issued from the darkness below. It carried the stench of old blood, rusted metal, and brine.

  He peered into the crevice.

  What lay beneath was a battlefield.

  The vision came swift and unwanted. Shattered banners bearing the faded sigils of Soohan and Draggor alike, broken spears jutting from heaps of long-dead bodies. Salt-crusted helmets and twisted bone. An ocean of ruin, half-seen through the haze of memory.

  Then — a face.

  A single pale visage turned upward, hollow-eyed, its jaw hanging slack as though screaming soundlessly through centuries.

  ProlixalParagon jerked back, breath catching in his throat.

  “They’re underneath us,” he rasped.

  Ralyria’s grip on her spear tightened.

  Marx crouched beside him, peering into the gap. “Hell take me… no wonder the land feels like this.”

  The earth itself shifted — a subtle, low groan beneath their feet. Cracks spiderwebbed further through the salt crust, fine grains trickling down into the darkness below.

  Lyra’s voice rose sharp through the mist. “Double pace! Move, now!”

  The oxen struggled forward, the vardos groaning in protest as the cracked ground grew more treacherous. The salt blisters on ProlixalParagon’s hands throbbed in time with his pulse, a burning ache that made it hard to hold his dagger steady.

  He gritted his teeth, forcing his aching legs to move.

  The mist parted just ahead.

  What it revealed was no safe haven, but an old stone marker — half-buried in a drift of white dust. It was taller than a man, carved with weathered glyphs now all but erased by time and salt. Only a single sigil remained legible, near the base — a jagged spiral etched in blood-black stone.

  ProlixalParagon felt his stomach knot.

  “The sign of Nagrun’Kar,” Ralyria whispered. “The Unburied God.”

  Marx spat dryly into the salt. “Figures.”

  The ground shifted again, a hollow boom reverberating beneath them like some great, slumbering heart.

  Salt Revenants would come again. Worse, perhaps. Things older than them.

  ProlixalParagon could feel it in his bones — the way his fur bristled, the tightening in his throat, the way even the oxen stilled, trembling in place.

  And then, a sound.

  A single, mournful horn blast.

  Not from Revenants.

  From men.

  Marx turned, knives flickering to ready. “Draggor.”

  Across the flats, blurred by mist, figures began to appear — dark shapes on horseback and foot, cloaked in red and dust-gray, helms catching the dawn’s dull light.

  “They’ve found us,” ProlixalParagon hissed. “They chased us through the night.”

  Lyra’s shout cut through the mist. “Form up! Defend the line!”

  It would be a slaughter, here on cursed ground. Between the restless dead below and the mercenaries above.

  Unless they ran.

  ProlixalParagon’s gaze snapped to the cracked salt ahead — to where the fissure widened, a dark gash cutting down into the earth.

  “The tunnels,” he said. “Under the flats.”

  Lyra’s head whipped toward him. “You sure?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But it’s that or bleed in the open.”

  For a breath, there was only silence — broken by another horn call and the soft hiss of Marx’s mana prosthetic as he shifted.

  “Then we go,” Lyra ordered.

  And so they would.

  Beneath the flats, into the veins of the cursed land itself — where ancient things lingered, and the salt remembered every drop of blood it had ever tasted.