The feral inhabitants of the mist did not wait for the cover of true night to strike. They came at us in waves, emerging from the churning grey fog like diseased phantoms. The first ambush happened near the shattered remnants of a stone aqueduct. Three Stone Men dropped from the ruined arches, their milky eyes wide with mindless, ravenous hunger.
Father met them with unyielding brutality. Without relying on the magic that the mist so eagerly sought to corrupt, he moved with the lethal grace of a seasoned warrior. His broadsword sheared through petrified flesh and bone, cleaving the first attacker in twain before seamlessly severing the head of the second.
But as Father engaged the vanguard, a fourth creature scrambled out from the thick underbrush, lunging directly at my flank.
I did not have the luxury of time to cast a rapid spell. I summoned the castle-forged short sword. The blade felt heavy, but my Imperial martial drills took over on pure instinct. As the Stone Man swiped at me with crusted, grey-scaled fingers, I ducked beneath its wild arc and drove my blade upward, burying the steel deep into its throat. Black, foul-smelling blood spilled over my crossguard as I kicked the creature away, ripping my sword free just as Father decapitated the final attacker.
We barely had time to clean our blades before we were forced to move again. The skirmishes became a relentless undertaking. Soon we were forced to cut our way through a pack of five stone men that dragged themselves from a stagnant mud pit. An hour after that, Father had to physically hurl a charging Stone Man against a boulder, shattering its petrified spine to save his blade from dulling on its rocky hide.
Yet, the physical exhaustion of the endless combat paled in comparison to the toll the mist was taking upon my mind.
The unnatural fog constantly probed at my consciousness, a creeping, insidious psychic intrusion that felt like cold sludge seeping into my thoughts. I was forced to maintain my Occlumency shields at all times, visualizing my towering walls of black marble to keep the dread at bay. But every time I violently rejected the mist's influence, the wailing returned.
The mournful, grief-stricken cries of the unseen woman echoed through my skull. It tore at my focus, dredging up the profound sorrow I had felt in my dream. As I marched over the damp, ruined earth, a haunting theory began to take root in my mind.
The mist was not simply projecting random terrors; it was preying upon my deepest, most fiercely guarded vulnerabilities. Was this wailing woman a deep, subconscious representation of my mother? Was the fog weaponising the hollow ache of the parent I never knew, wearing her face to finally break my mind? I gritted my teeth, forcing the thoughts down, gripping the hilt of my short sword until my fingers went numb.
By midday—or what I assumed was midday, given the uniform gloom—the thick fog finally began to part, revealing the still, dark waters of a small lake.
Nestled along the muddy shore lay a partially destroyed Rhoynish village. However, this settlement was starkly different from the dead, overgrown ruins we had previously encountered. Many of the ancient stone foundations had been cleared of vines, and several of the thatched huts appeared remarkably clean and newly constructed.
Father raised a hand, signalling me to halt. The mist was somehow thinner here.
We stood at the edge of a thick copse of trees, observing the perimeter which not more than fifteen paces from us. A crude but highly effective palisade of sharpened wooden spikes had been erected around the edge of the village, specifically designed to impale anything mindlessly charging out of the fog. Just beyond the spikes lay several large, scorched patches of earth. The heavy scent of charred meat and bone ash lingered thickly in the air—the unmistakable remnants of recent pyres.
"Fascinating" Father murmured, his emerald eyes scanning the fortifications.
Before I could ask what it was that fascinated him, movement caught my eye.
The heavy hide flap of one of the newer huts was pushed aside. A figure stepped out into the damp air, carrying a woven basket. Soon, another emerged from a neighbouring dwelling, followed by a third.
My breath caught in my throat.
They were not the feral, rabid monsters we had been slaughtering all morning. They walked upright, their movements deliberate and cautious. But as they drew closer to the lake's edge, the terrible truth of their existence became undeniable.
They were infected.
I watched a young woman kneel to wash a tunic in the dark water; the entire left half of her face was completely consumed by creeping, stony greyscale. A man carrying firewood possessed an arm that looked entirely carved from cracked rock. They were people—ordinary men and women clinging desperately to their fading humanity, abandoned in this cursed purgatory as the disease slowly turned them to stone.
We remained perfectly still as a figure detached himself from the cluster of newer huts and began to walk steadily toward us.
He was a tall, middle-aged dark-skinned man with a thick, greying beard that failed to hide the deep, weathered wrinkles of his jaw. The left half of his face was entirely consumed by the cracked, stony crust of greyscale, creeping perilously close to a milky-white, sightless eye. Despite his horrific affliction, he carried himself with dignity. His clothes were heavily worn and ragged yet carefully tailored and streamlined for survival in the ruins.
He stopped a few paces away, stopping just short of the sharpened spikes. A profound sadness was marked clearly in his one good eye.
"Oh, you poor souls," he greeted us, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "Life has not been kind to you. But please, come. Whatever remains of it, we will attempt to make as comforting as possible."