The expedition left Valerion as the sun—what little there was of it—began its slow, hopeless climb above the horizon.
There were twelve of them. Kaelen had argued for fewer, Alaric for more. They had settled on twelve—enough to fight, few enough to move fast. Toren was there, his hand never far from his sword. Elyss had insisted on coming, and Kaelen had not argued; the Church would send someone regardless, and he preferred to know where the knife was aimed. Marok the mercenary brought four of his best, hard men with flat eyes and hands that knew every kind of weapon. And Seren—the scholar from the North, the one who had gone mad before anyone knew what madness meant—sat in the back of the supply wagon, muttering to herself and drawing symbols that made the other soldiers cross themselves.
They had been three days on the road, and already the world had begun to change.
The farms were the first to go. What had been fields of wheat and barley were now grey expanses of ash, the soil poisoned, the irrigation ditches dry. Then the villages—empty shells with doors hanging open, their walls scarred by claws, their wells filled with something that was not water. Kaelen had ordered them to keep moving, not to look too closely, but he saw the way Toren's jaw tightened with each abandoned home.
On the fourth day, they crossed into the Ashen Belt.
The air changed first. It grew heavier, thicker, tasting of copper and rot. The twilight deepened until they were moving through a perpetual dusk, the landmarks of the road swallowed by a haze that never quite lifted. The horses grew restless, their eyes rolling, their steps uncertain. By midday, they were walking.
"We should make camp soon," Marok said, falling into step beside Kaelen. He was a broad man, his face scarred from a dozen campaigns, his voice a low rumble that carried authority without effort. "The men are tired. And this place—" he gestured at the grey nothing around them, "—it's bad for morale."
Kaelen looked at the sky. It was impossible to tell how much light remained. The sun had not moved in thirty-seven years; the twilight was eternal, unchanging. Time was measured by exhaustion, by hunger, by the slow creep of dread.
"Two more hours," he said. "There's a ridge ahead. Good ground."
Marok nodded, but did not move away. "You know this road."
"I've walked it before."
"And the others? The ones who walked it with you?"
Kaelen said nothing. After a moment, Marok grunted.
"Thought so."
He fell back to his men, leaving Kaelen alone at the head of the column. The ash crunched under his boots, a sound like breaking bone. Behind him, someone was humming—a tune that might have been a hymn, might have been a lullaby. Seren, probably. She had been humming since they left Valerion, a melody that did not quite resolve, that always seemed to be sliding into something else.