The wastes began where color ended.
Yuna noticed it first in the grass, the way green faded to yellow, then to grey, then to nothing at all. The transition happened gradually, so slowly that she almost didn't register it until David pointed out they hadn't seen a living bird in over an hour. The sky above them stretched the same pale grey as the ground, and the wind carried no scent. Nothing rotting, nothing growing. Just absence, pressing against her skin like something solid.
They'd left the refuge before dawn, slipping through the eastern gate while most of the population still slept. Chen Wei had come to see them off, her grey eyes sharp in the pre-dawn darkness.
"Korvain knows the routes," she'd said, addressing the three scouts who would accompany them. "Trust his guidance on navigation. But if he makes any move against the team, kill him immediately."
The scouts had nodded without hesitation. Thessa, a lean woman with watchful eyes. Her younger brother Jarek, barely twenty, still carrying the rawness of recent grief. And Old Marsh, a grizzled veteran whose dry humor couldn't quite mask the losses carved into his weathered face. They'd all had family taken by the Hollowed. Trusting the Herald of the Maw, even a recovering one, went against every instinct they possessed.
Now, six hours into the journey, that tension hung in the air like the grey mist that crept between the dead trees.
"We should stop soon." Korvain's voice was pitched low, meant only for Yuna and David walking beside him. "There's a sheltered ravine about a league ahead. Good place to rest, check supplies. Let everyone adjust to the terrain."
"And let your guards get used to having you at their backs?" Yuna asked.
"That too." His mouth quirked, something that wanted to be a smile but couldn't quite manage it. "Thessa's been watching me since we left. Her hand hasn't moved from her knife hilt."
"Can you blame her?"
"No. But if she's going to protect you effectively, she needs to trust that I'm not the most dangerous thing out here." He gestured at the grey landscape around them, at the twisted trees and colorless sky. "Give it another day. Once they see how the wastes really work, they'll have bigger concerns than me."
* * *
The ravine was exactly as Korvain described: a deep cut in the earth, sheltered from the wind, with enough overhang to provide cover. The stone walls were grey like everything else here, but traces of old carvings marked the rock face. Protective symbols, Yuna realized, from before the Maw's corruption had spread this far.
Old Marsh knelt to examine them, his weathered face thoughtful. "Ward marks. Third Era, maybe earlier. Some scholar group used this as a waystation once."
"Before my time," Korvain said. He settled against the opposite wall, keeping deliberate space between himself and the scouts. "But I know the place. Hollowed avoid it when they can. The old wards still carry a trace of resonance. Not enough to hurt them, but enough to make them uncomfortable."
Thessa's eyes narrowed. "You're saying we're safe here?"
"I'm saying we're safer than we'd be on open ground. Nothing in the wastes is truly safe."
The scouts exchanged glances but said nothing. They began unpacking provisions while David checked the perimeter, sword drawn, eyes scanning the grey horizon for movement.
Yuna settled cross-legged near the ravine's mouth, close enough to feel the wind on her face but sheltered from the worst of it. She could sense the corruption now, a constant low hum at the edge of her awareness, like static bleeding through from somewhere else. It pressed against her consciousness, patient and cold, trying to seep in through the cracks.
She pushed back, using the techniques Korvain had taught her. Build a wall. Anchor yourself in your own memories. Remember what makes you human.
Her mother's face. The smell of the hospital room, antiseptic and fear and the beeping of machines. The weight of guilt she'd carried every day since.
The corruption recoiled slightly, and Yuna let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"You're doing well." Korvain had moved closer without her noticing. He sat a few feet away, his posture relaxed but his eyes alert, always watching. "Most people can't sense the corruption at all until it's inside them. The fact that you can feel it pushing, that means your Bridge is strong enough to recognize the threat."
"Is that a compliment?"
"An observation." He paused. "The corruption will get stronger the further east we go. By the time we reach the Monastery, it'll be a constant pressure. You'll need to stay anchored, or it'll find its way in."
"Through the Bridge?"
"Through any opening it can find. Grief. Fear. Doubt." His voice dropped lower. "The emptiness feeds on the parts of us we try to hide. The things we're ashamed of. The moments we failed." He met her eyes. "Your mother. The hospital. That's exactly the kind of wound it would target."
Something tightened in Yuna's chest. "You're saying my greatest vulnerability is the thing that makes the Bridge work."
"I'm saying the same pain that lets you reach people is the pain the Maw will try to use against you." Korvain's expression was unreadable, closed off in a way she'd learned meant he was remembering something he'd rather forget. "It's not a contradiction. It's just the truth. The things that make us strongest are usually the things that can break us."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Forty-three years of it."
They sat in silence for a moment, the grey wind whistling overhead, carrying nothing but cold.
"When we get closer," Korvain said quietly, "when you try to reach for Sera, you'll feel the emptiness fighting back. It won't want to let her go. You'll need something to anchor you, something stronger than the pull."
"What did you use? When I reached for you?"
"Her." The word came out rough, scraped raw. "Chen Wei. The memory of her eyes in that burning village. The one moment in forty-three years when I chose not to obey." He looked away, toward the grey horizon. "Find your anchor before we get there. Know it. Hold it. Because once you're inside the emptiness, you won't have time to think."
* * *
They moved again after an hour's rest.
The landscape grew stranger as they traveled. Trees twisted into shapes that defied nature, their branches reaching toward the ground instead of the sky, as if gravity had reversed for them alone. Rocks that seemed to shift position when Yuna wasn't looking at them directly, always in her peripheral vision, never when she turned to face them. A river that flowed uphill for a hundred yards before disappearing into a crack in the earth.
"The Maw warps reality," Korvain explained when Jarek asked about the river. His voice was matter-of-fact, the tone of someone describing weather patterns or animal migration. "The closer you get to its center, the less the normal rules apply. Out here, it's minor distortions. Closer in..." He trailed off, and something flickered in his eyes, a shadow of memory. "Things get worse."
Jarek swallowed hard but didn't ask any follow-up questions. Yuna didn't blame him.
By late afternoon, they'd covered nearly fifteen leagues. Good progress, according to Korvain's mental map of routes he'd walked for decades as the Maw's servant. They'd avoided two Hollowed patrol routes and skirted the edge of what he called a "concentration zone," an area where the emptiness pooled like water in a low spot, thick enough to drown in.
"We'll camp there." He pointed toward a cluster of dead buildings on a distant ridge. "Abandoned village. The structures will give us cover, and the wards, what's left of them, should mask our presence."
"Should?" Thessa's voice was sharp.
"Nothing's certain in the wastes. But it's the best option within reach before dark." Korvain met her eyes steadily. "I'm not trying to lead you into a trap. I have nothing to gain from your deaths and everything to lose."
"Everything?"
"Her." He nodded toward Yuna. "The Bridge. The possibility that I might become something other than what the Maw made me." His voice hardened, but not with anger. With something that sounded almost like desperation. "I've been a monster for four decades. If there's a chance to be something else, even a small chance, I'm not going to waste it by betraying the only people willing to give me that opportunity."
Thessa held his gaze for a long moment. Something passed between them, an understanding Yuna couldn't quite read. Then, slowly, Thessa's hand moved away from her knife hilt.
"Fine," she said. "We camp in the village. But you sleep where I can see you."
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
* * *
The village had been called Thornwell, according to a faded sign near the entrance.
Fifty years ago, it had been home to several hundred people. Farmers and traders, a small temple dedicated to the old gods. Children learning their letters in the morning light, lovers walking the streets at dusk, old women gossiping over bread still warm from the ovens. Now it was a skeleton. Buildings with empty windows like hollow eyes. Streets covered in grey dust that had once been something else, something alive. The temple's spire collapsed into rubble, its gods forgotten.
Yuna walked through the ruins unable to shake the feeling that she was trespassing. These had been homes once. Families had lived here, loved here, built lives that meant something. And then the Maw had reached out and taken everything, leaving nothing but this grey silence.
"They didn't all die here." David's voice came from beside her. He'd been following at a distance, giving her space but staying close enough to intervene if needed. "Most of them fled when the corruption started spreading. Abandoned the village before the Hollowed came."
"How do you know?"
"The graves." He nodded toward a small cemetery on the village's edge, barely visible in the fading light. "There aren't enough of them. A village this size would have had more dead if they'd all stayed."
It was a small comfort, but Yuna found herself clinging to it. At least some of them had escaped. At least some of them had found safety somewhere beyond the Maw's reach.
"We should head back," David said. "Korvain's got a fire going in one of the larger buildings. It's getting cold."
He wasn't wrong. The temperature had dropped sharply as the sun set, and Yuna could see her breath misting in the grey air. She followed him back toward the center of the village, where Korvain and the scouts had set up camp in what had once been an inn.
The fire was small but warm, burning in the old hearth with wood they'd carried from the refuge. Smoke rose through a hole in the roof, dispersing into the darkening sky. Thessa had set up a watch rotation: herself and Jarek taking the first shift, Old Marsh and David the second, Korvain under constant observation throughout.
"Eat." Thessa handed Yuna a bowl of dried meat and travel bread. "You'll need your strength tomorrow. Korvain says the next stretch is harder."
"Harder how?"
"More Hollowed. Less cover. And we'll be passing close to one of the major concentration zones." Thessa's jaw tightened. "He says we can avoid direct contact if we're careful, but..."
"But you don't trust him."
"I don't trust anyone who's spent forty years serving the thing that killed my parents." Thessa's voice was flat, but Yuna could hear the pain beneath it, old and worn smooth like river stones. "I follow orders. I'll protect you. But don't ask me to believe he's changed."
"What if he has?"
"Then good for him." Thessa turned away. "Doesn't bring back the dead."
* * *
Yuna couldn't sleep.
She lay on her bedroll near the fire, watching the shadows dance on the crumbling walls, listening to the creak of old wood and the whisper of wind through empty windows. The corruption pressed against her consciousness, stronger now than it had been in the ravine. She could feel it probing, searching for weakness, drawn to her like a moth to flame.
The Bridge made her visible to it. That was the price of her power. The same connection that let her reach across the emptiness also announced her presence to everything that dwelt within it.
She reached for her anchor. Her mother's face. The hospital room. The guilt that had defined her for so long.
But tonight, something was different. The memory didn't come as clearly as it usually did. Instead, other images crowded in. Korvain's spark, flickering in the darkness, refusing to die. Sera's lost future, the sketchbooks she'd never fill, the woman she'd never become. Daven's grief-twisted face when he'd asked why she would risk herself for a stranger.
Because trying matters, she thought. Even when it doesn't work. Even when you fail. The act of reaching, that's what makes us human.
The corruption recoiled. Not far, but enough. Yuna felt something shift in her chest, a loosening of the knot that had been there since the journey began.
She wasn't just using her grief anymore. She was using her hope.
* * *
The scream woke her.
Yuna was on her feet before she was fully conscious, her anchor stone clutched in one hand, the other reaching for the short sword David had insisted she carry. Around her, the camp erupted into chaos. Thessa shouting orders, Jarek fumbling for his crossbow, Old Marsh drawing a blade that glinted in the firelight.
"Contact!" Thessa's voice cut through the noise. "Southeast wall, three of them, maybe more!"
Yuna ran.
She reached the wall just as David did, both of them skidding to a halt at the sight that greeted them. Three figures stood in the street below. Their bodies twisted and grey, their eyes empty pits of darkness. Hollowed. Real ones. Not distant presences felt through the Bridge, but actual monsters standing close enough to touch.
They weren't moving.
That was the strange part. They stood perfectly still, heads tilted as if listening to something only they could hear.
"They know we're here," Korvain said from behind her. His voice was calm, almost clinical. "They can feel your presence. The Bridge, it calls to them."
"What do we do?"
"Nothing. Not yet." He moved to stand beside her, his ward-collar glowing faintly in the darkness. "They're scouts. Sensing, not attacking. If we stay quiet, stay anchored, they might move on."
"And if they don't?"
"Then we run. There's a passage through the temple ruins, I mapped it years ago. It leads underground, comes out a league to the north." His eyes never left the Hollowed below. "But running draws attention. More Hollowed will come. We'll have to move fast and not stop until we reach the Monastery."
Yuna watched the three figures standing motionless in the street. She could feel them now through the Bridge, the vast emptiness where their humanity should be, the hunger that drove them, the cold pull of the Maw reaching through their hollow forms.
And beneath it all, so faint she almost missed it, something else.
Pain.
These had been people once. They'd had names, families, lives. And some tiny fragment of that existence was still there, buried so deep it barely registered. Screaming silently for someone, anyone, to hear.
"I can feel them," she whispered. "Under the emptiness. There's still something there."
Korvain's hand gripped her shoulder. Hard. "Don't."
"But—"
"Not here. Not now. If you reach for them, you'll draw the attention of every Hollowed within twenty leagues." His voice was urgent, his grip painful. "You want to save people? Then stay alive long enough to try. These three, you can't help them. Not tonight. Not without dying."
The Hollowed tilted their heads again. Then, slowly, they turned and walked away, disappearing into the grey streets of the dead village.
Yuna let out a breath that came out half a sob.
"They're gone," Thessa reported from the opposite wall. "Heading east. Looks like they're moving back toward the concentration zone."
"They sensed me," Yuna said. "They came because of me."
"They came because the Bridge makes you visible," Korvain corrected. "It's not your fault. It's the price of your power." He released her shoulder. "But now they know something's out here. We'll need to move faster tomorrow. Get to the Monastery before word spreads."
"Can we make it?"
"If we push hard. If we're lucky." He met her eyes. "And if you can hold your anchor when the real pressure starts."
Yuna looked out at the grey landscape, at the empty streets where three monsters had stood moments ago. Three people, once. Three more lives swallowed by the Maw.
I'll come back for you, she thought. When I'm stronger. When I know how. I'll come back for all of you.
The corruption pressed against her consciousness, hungry and cold.
She pushed back.
And somewhere in the darkness, something pushed back harder.