The village vanished behind them quickly, swallowed by the dusk settling over the fields with the same stubborn slowness with which, over the previous days, Simon had watched every other sunset of this world fall — never quite like the ones he remembered, and yet familiar enough by now that it no longer tightened his stomach at every wrong shade in the sky.
The path leading out of the settlement wound between fields now in shadow, rows of low wheat rustling faintly at the passage of a warm breeze, the sky slowly shifting from the burnt orange of sunset to an ever-deeper blue, dotted with the first stars. Simon walked beside Corin, his stride by now used to the uneven ground, his ribs still aching a little at every too-deep breath — an annoying but bearable reminder of Fenrik's kick, one that time and a little more healing magic had eased without erasing completely.
They walked a long stretch in silence, the kind of silence that doesn't weigh on you, filled only by the sound of their footsteps on the dirt path and the distant song of some night insect Simon couldn't even name. It was he, in the end, who broke it.
"Since you've already traveled around plenty in your life," he said, "earlier you said 'honey in the sun,' talking about how the water smelled according to the village head. Pretty specific, as a description, to just toss out in passing. Do you already know what it means?"
Corin took a long breath, the kind of breath that precedes an explanation you'd rather not have to give. Her eyes stayed fixed on the path ahead, now lit only by the last glow of sunset.
"I think the spring was home to some Swamp Toads," she said.
Simon frowned, letting the name settle in his mind alongside the image of contaminated, foul-smelling water, drunk by an entire village of people now complaining of stomachaches and mild fevers. The name itself — toads — immediately suggested something negative to him, parasitic, the kind of infestation you see in wildlife documentaries right before someone calls in exterminators.
"Toads in the water an entire village drinks," he said, in a tone that betrayed all his skepticism. "Doesn't sound great, put like that, I have to say."
"You're wrong," Corin said, shaking her head with the certainty of someone who's repeated that correction to herself many times before, maybe learning it the hard way. "It's exactly the opposite of what you think. Swamp Toads secrete a mucus that neutralizes small toxins — if a spring hosts a colony of them, usually a dozen or so specimens, that's almost always a good sign. It means the water is cleaner than it would otherwise be, not less."
"Keep going," Simon said, genuinely curious now, his old habit of breaking problems down piece by piece resurfacing despite everything.
"The males are bigger," Corin explained, almost unconsciously tracing a shape in the air with her hands as she walked. "They stay at the edges of the spring, territorial, defending the group from predators or intruders. The females are smaller, more numerous, and they're the ones doing the real work — it's their mucus, released directly into the current as they swim, that keeps the water clear and safe to drink. A village lucky enough to have a spring with a healthy colony of Toads almost never has water-related illness."
Simon thought for a moment about that image — small, plump creatures lazily swimming in a pool, unknowingly purifying an entire village's water just by living their lives — and couldn't hold back a small smile.
"So," he said, "where I'm from, something that does exactly this job — cleaning the water, neutralizing toxins, keeping it safe to drink — is called a Filter. Or a Purifier, if you want to be technical. Less charming a name than 'Swamp Toad,' I'll admit, but the concept seems basically identical."
Corin didn't pick up on the joke. She kept walking, eyes fixed ahead, too focused on the thread of her own reasoning to allow herself the distraction of a smile.
"The problem," she went on, as if he hadn't said anything, "is what happens if the Toads suddenly disappear. If they get captured, or worse, killed. The mucus they normally secrete in small, continuous amounts, if released all at once — say, mixed with blood, in a violent death — produces a very particular sweetish smell as it disperses into the water. Exactly what the village head described at the market this morning. Honey in the sun, more or less, though personally I'd find it closer to rotten fruit mixed with something metallic, but I understand why someone with no experience with Toads might describe it differently."
"And if the colony disappears," Simon said, starting to see where she was going, "the water stops being purified."
"Exactly," Corin said. "All the toxin that used to be neutralized day after day starts flowing freely into the spring again. And the sweetish smell, the one from the Toads' own deaths, lingers for days, maybe weeks, before fully dissolving in the current. It's almost as if the spring itself were mourning what it lost, if you want to be poetic about it. I prefer to think of it in more practical terms: something wiped out the water's natural guardians, and now everyone in the village is paying the price."
They walked on for a few more minutes, the path starting to climb slightly as it approached a small wooded hill, trees thickening on either side, casting ever-denser shadows as the last light of day faded completely. Simon could hear the rustle of leaves above them, the distant call of some night bird, and underneath all of it, growing steadily closer, the light murmur of running water.
They reached the spring just as Corin finished her explanation — a small natural pool set into moss-covered rocks, fed by a thin stream running down a nearby slope, surrounded by trees that formed almost a small natural cathedral over the water, branches interlacing overhead, letting only a few thin rays of the sky's last glow filter through.
"Just as I thought," Corin said, her voice suddenly harder, more tense, any trace of lightness gone from her tone.
Simon stepped up to the edge of the pool, and his stomach tightened the moment he saw what was floating in the murky water, barely lit by the residual light filtering through the branches.
Three Swamp Toads, each the size of a brick, their green-brown skin now dull and unnaturally bloated, their golden eyes — once, presumably, lively and bulging — now opaque, half-closed, fixed on some vague point below the surface. They floated motionless in a position that left no doubt about their condition, bellies tilted slightly upward, small webbed feet swaying faintly with the slow rhythm of the current.
A sweetish smell, almost nauseating in its out-of-place sweetness, rose from the pool mixed with something sharper and more metallic — the smell of blood, Simon realized with a shiver, mixed with the dispersed mucus Corin had just described.
But it wasn't only the bodies that struck him.
At the edges of the clearing, the soft ground was marked by deep, parallel grooves — wheel tracks, still relatively fresh judging by the sharp edges of the disturbed mud, not yet fully reshaped by wind or rain. And several young trees around the perimeter of the spring had been cleanly cut, the trunks severed with a precision too clean to be the work of chance, or of some wild animal foraging for food.
"Someone was here," Simon said, quietly, his eyes running from the dead Toads to the wheel tracks and then to the cut trunks, trying to piece together a picture that still didn't quite fit. "And not by accident. This didn't just happen on its own."
Corin crouched beside the pool, studying the tracks with a professional attention that reminded Simon, for an instant, of the way Yorin had examined the Seal of Silas in his shop — the same silent concentration of someone who can read details that would remain invisible to anyone else.
"A cart," she said, running a finger along the edge of one of the grooves without touching it directly. "Heavy, judging by the depth. And the cut trees aren't random — look at the height of the trunks, all severed at roughly the same level. Someone needed room to maneuver something big in here, between the trees."
"To catch the Toads?" Simon asked.
"Or to haul them off once they were dead," Corin said, standing slowly, her gaze shifting back to the three small bodies floating in the murky water. "Swamp Toad mucus has a certain value, on the market — not huge, but enough to justify a small out-of-the-way trip if someone knows where to look. Though usually whoever harvests them with any sense always leaves a few alive, to let the colony recover. Whoever did this—" she gestured sharply at the three motionless bodies "—didn't have that patience, or that scruple."
Simon knelt cautiously at the muddy edge of the pool, leaning in just enough to get a closer look at one of the bodies nearest the bank, without touching it. What he saw made his jaw tighten.
"Corin," he said, his voice lower. "Look at this. That doesn't look like a random wound, or a bite mark."
She bent down beside him, following his finger pointing at the small dead animal's side. A clean, precise cut ran along a specific spot on the skin — not a random gash, not the mark of teeth or claws, but something that looked far too much like a surgical incision.
"Mucus glands," Corin said, after a long moment of silence, her voice gone strangely flat. "They cut them out. Precisely, too — this isn't the work of someone who just killed the animal to get rid of it, or out of pure cruelty. This is the work of someone who knew exactly what they were looking for, and how to take it without wasting anything."
"So not vandals," Simon said, standing back up, his knees creaking faintly in protest after the day he'd had. "Professionals."
"Unscrupulous professionals," Corin corrected, "which in a way is even worse. A vandal acts out of stupidity or anger. Whoever did this planned it, brought the right tools, worked calmly enough to make clean cuts on three different animals, without the slightest concern for what they were leaving behind for an entire village downstream."
Simon looked around, his gaze now following the wheel tracks to the point where they disappeared among the trees, into the depths of the woods. The last light of dusk was fading out entirely, giving way to a bluish darkness lit only by the first stars and a pale glow that must have been a moon not yet visible from where they stood.
"Do we follow them?" he asked, nodding at the tracks. "Now, I mean. While they're still fresh enough to follow."
Corin hesitated, her gaze shifting between the tracks and the now nearly pitch-black sky above them. "Not tonight," she said finally, with clear reluctance in her voice. "We don't know this area, we don't know what else might be out in the woods in the dark, and with your ribs still half-broken you're not in ideal shape for an improvised chase. Tomorrow, in daylight, the tracks will still be readable — a cart this heavy doesn't vanish into thin air in one night."
Simon nodded, reluctantly, feeling all the same that old restlessness pressing in his chest — the same one that had driven him, the night before, to go out alone instead of staying safe in his room. This time, though, he forced himself to listen to the more reasonable voice, however much it cost him.
"Fine," he said. "Tomorrow, then."
They made one last pass around the perimeter of the clearing before heading back, mostly to make sure there was nothing else immediately relevant hidden in the bushes. It was right at the edge of the path, half-sunk in mud churned up by one of the cart's wheels, that Simon noticed something — a small piece of dark fabric, torn, maybe caught on a branch and then dropped during loading.
He picked it up, wiping it off as best he could against his pants. There wasn't much to see — just a scrap of heavy fabric, a dull black, with what looked like a small fragment of embroidery along one edge, too damaged to identify for certain in the fading light.
"What is it?" Corin asked, stepping closer.
"No idea," Simon said, turning it between his fingers. "But it's the only thing these guys left behind, besides the bodies and the wheel tracks. Worth keeping, right?"
Corin nodded slowly, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studied the small fragment of fabric in the dim light, as if something about that embroidery struck her as vaguely familiar without her being able to pin down exactly why.
"Tomorrow," she said finally, "we'll look at it properly in daylight. Now let's get back to the village — we haven't eaten anything in hours, and tomorrow's going to be a long day of tracking."
Simon tucked the piece of fabric into his pocket, next to the small guild document he carried with him, and followed Corin down the dark path, his gaze drifting back, one last time, toward the spring now behind them — three small, motionless shapes in the dark water, silent witnesses to something that, it seemed, was only the beginning.
They walked in silence for most of the way back, the village slowly reappearing on the horizon as a small cluster of warm lights against the now complete darkness of night. Simon thought, without meaning to, about how different all of this was from the life he'd left behind — no desk, no emails to answer, no boss threatening to fire him by text. Just a torn scrap of fabric in his pocket, a mystery to solve at dawn, and a woman at his side who, however complicated, however full of her own secrets, hadn't abandoned him even once yet.
It wasn't an easy life. But for the first time in days, he thought, maybe it wasn't the worst one that could have happened to him either.