My stomach twisted into a violent spasm. How long had it been since I last ate? A day? Two? In this place, time flowed just as crookedly as the mana itself.
Zeno sat across from me by a tiny campfire he'd managed to build so that the smoke stayed low, dissolving instantly into the fog. Something was sizzling over the embers on a spit made from a charred branch. It was... I didn't even know what it was. Some creature that looked like a cross between a giant centipede and a hairless rat with too many joints. In short—a total abomination.
"It's done," Zeno said, removing the spit and handing me a piece of steaming gray meat. "Eat up. It's the only safe flesh you'll find around here."
I took the piece. It smelled like ozone, burnt rubber, and something subtly sour. My brain recoiled in pure revulsion; I wanted to throw up right then and there. But my stomach, conversely, was ready to accept anything.
I took a bite. The texture was stringy and tough. I gagged, nearly turning inside out, but forced myself to swallow. Starving to death felt like a much more immediate threat than being poisoned by the local fauna.
"Well? How is it?" Zeno watched me, narrowing one eye. "A delicacy?"
"Like licking a battery," I rasped, forcing the next piece down. "But it's food."
Zeno grunted and began eating his own portion. We ate in silence, listening to the chaotic drone of the Pass.
"By the way, how are you holding up, Iron?" he asked out of nowhere, keeping his eyes down. "Calmed down?"
I froze, a piece of meat still in my mouth. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, so you're fine then," Zeno muttered. "Alright, where to next? We can't hole up here forever."
"We can't. We're heading for the Mage Settlement. It's a long trek—two weeks if we're lucky. But once we're there, we can vanish or find people who can help us."
I nodded, staring into the fire, watching sparks fly upward only to instantly snuff out against the invisible barrier of chaotic mana.
"Zeno... doesn't this place strike you as weird?" I asked quietly.
"The Pass? This whole world is weird, kid."
"No, I mean the structure. Nature is inherently chaotic, but the chaos here on the Pass... it's too orderly. The boundaries of the zones are too sharp, the frequency of the interference too specific. It's like it's not just a random anomaly, but..." I hesitated, grasping for the right word. "Like someone purposefully calibrated this 'noise' to hide something. Or someone."
"Think less, Iron. As long as this place keeps us hidden, that's all we need to know. Pack your things. Time to move deeper before they box us in."
Meanwhile, at the border of the Pass...
The border of the Pass met Richter's detachment like an invisible wall. The moment the front ranks of the enforcers crossed the threshold, the formation faltered. Their perfectly synchronized stride broke. The tracker mages, positioned in the center of the column, simultaneously pressed their palms to their temples. Their locating crystals, which had been glowing with a steady blue light, began spitting erratic sparks and emitting a sharp, barely audible whine.
"Hold the line!" a junior officer shouted, but his voice sounded oddly muffled.
Richter marched at the vanguard, his face set in an immovable mask. One of the mages lurched forward, vomiting right at the feet of the soldier behind him. The crystal in his hand cracked with a loud snap, dissolving into fine dust.
"Lord Richter..." the mage wheezed, his face a sickly, ashen color. "The tracking network... it's tearing apart. We can't even perceive the general flow of mana. This place..."
Richter stopped. He turned his head slowly toward the mage.
"You are the Order's finest inquisitors," he said in a quiet, smooth tone that sent shivers down the soldiers' spines. "And you complain about 'noise'? If your artifacts are useless—use your instincts. If your eyes go blind—search with your feet. The target couldn't have vanished into thin air."
He peered into the depths of the twisted forest, where the fog swirled against the direction of the wind.
"Fan out into a skirmish line," he commanded. "Five-pace intervals. Comb through every bush. Anyone who loses the trail is a dead man."
The enforcers slowly began filtering into the depths of the Pass, their gray cloaks dissolving into the mist. They moved cautiously, spears leveled and blades drawn. Richter brought up the rear, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He was waiting. Waiting for the enemy to make a mistake.
Deep within the distorted forest...
Even though the Pass distorted sound, my hearing—heightened by fear and the background hum of "Will to Live"—caught something foreign.
Click.
I froze. My heart skipped a beat.
Zeno reacted a fraction of a second faster. Before I could even draw breath, his palm, smelling faintly of that wretched meat, clamped over my mouth. His other hand gripped my shoulder with an iron vice, literally crushing me into a narrow crevice between two giant, moss-slick boulders.
"Not a sound," his voice breathed right into my ear.
Out of the fog, a mere ten paces away, two figures materialized. The enforcers moved slowly. One carried a short spear at the ready, the other held his sword by the hilt. Their armor was matte, treated to avoid reflections, but that was exactly what gave them away.
One of the soldiers stopped right in front of our hiding spot. He slowly sniffed the air.
"Smell that?" he asked his partner quietly. "Smells like smoke. And some kind of roasted garbage."
"Everything smells like garbage out here," the other snapped. "Let's go. Richter will have our hides if we fall out of formation."
Zeno loosened his grip on my shoulder. He slipped out soundlessly, appearing behind their backs in the blink of an eye. It all happened in absolute silence.
Zeno wielded his staff like a club. With his left hand, he cupped the first soldier's head, snapping it backward with a sharp, sickening crack. Simultaneously, he brought the butt of his staff down hard against the base of the second man's skull. The soldier didn't even have time to scream—his body simply went limp.
Zeno caught them both by the armpits, preventing their armor from clattering against the rocks, and dragged the corpses into the thick brush beside us. I stepped out of the crevice, my knees shaking. Only a few dark droplets remained on the stones.
"Clear," Zeno whispered, emerging from the undergrowth. He wiped his palms on one of the dead men's cloaks. "Lucky they were scouts and not mages. Mages would have felt my surge."
He looked at me, then at the bodies in the bushes, and let out an annoyed grunt.
"Hmph... If I were forty years younger, and you were at least a few inches broader in the shoulders... we could have stripped their gear. In this mess on the Pass, no one would have noticed the swap."
He quickly searched the dead, pocketing their ration pouches and insignias.
"Why are you taking the tokens?" I asked, trying to keep my eyes off the bushes.
"Souvenirs," he cut me off bluntly, shoving them into his pocket. "And to keep them from realizing exactly who took them down right away. Let's move. If these two don't report back in ten minutes, Richter will tighten the line. We need to push deeper into the noise before they start combing the area."