The groan came again—long, wet, and ragged—like a creature trying to speak through broken lungs. Mo motioned for Aylen to stay low. His fingers gripped the Azure Shamshir with an ease born of countless confrontations, but his eyes were calculating. The air around them was thick, not just with humidity but with pressure—subtle, squeezing, like unseen eyes bearing down.
They crested the ridge slowly. Just below, in a shallow depression where the fog pooled like spilled milk, a figure writhed.
Human—or what had been human.
Its limbs were distended, stretched unnaturally as if the bones beneath the flesh were growing in directions the body couldn't handle. Patches of skin had turned a sickly blue, webbed with black veins that pulsed in rhythm with the soil itself. The man—or woman—let out another moan. Their mouth opened too wide, and a low chittering sound escaped, not from their lips but from within their throat.
Aylen gasped softly. Mo didn't flinch.
"Don't touch it," he said. "It's not done changing."
"What is it?"
He shook his head. "Wrong. Whatever it was... it's wrong now."
The thing twitched violently and tried to rise, bones snapping and re-forming in jerky, erratic movements. Mo didn't hesitate. In a flash, the Azure Shamshir sang through the mist, cleaving through neck and shoulder. The figure dropped, spasming one last time before going still.
Aylen looked away, her hand over her mouth.
They stood in silence for several seconds before Mo spoke. "That's not just rift magic. That's possession—parasitic."
"You've seen it before?"
"Once. In the Northern Waste. It nearly wiped out a fortress in three nights."
"Then what stopped it?"
Mo cleaned the blade against the moss. "Fire. And the fact it couldn't possess the dead."
They burned the body. The fire hissed unnaturally, green-tinted smoke rising like fingers trying to claw back into the air. It didn't stop Mo from staring long into the flames, his jaw set, eyes distant.
Something was spreading. And fast.
As they left the ridge behind, a sharp whistle cut through the quiet. Mo froze. He knew that pattern.
One long. Two short.
Aylen raised a brow. "Signal?"
Mo didn't respond at first. His lips tightened. "An old one. From the Requiem Order."
Aylen narrowed her eyes. "I thought they disbanded."
"They did. Or were hunted into extinction."
"Then who's whistling?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he moved forward.
The trees parted to reveal a narrow path lined with sharpened stakes—traps, primitive but effective. At the end of the trail, standing in the clearing with a crossbow slung casually over one shoulder, was a man clad in tattered black, his hood down and his silver hair tied back with a leather cord.
"Mo," the man said, grinning. "Still not dead, I see."
Aylen watched the stranger warily.
Mo didn't smile. "Didn't expect to see your ghost here, Veyr."