The road north was nothing like the mountains.
Helastine had expected forests, rivers, perhaps the occasional village—not this endless stretch of skeletal trees and mud that clung to her boots like greedy hands. The priest had warned her the lowlands were different, but he'd never mentioned the silence. No wind through pine needles, no foxes barking at dawn. Just the squelch of her footsteps and the too-close press of the sky.
She missed the shrine already.
A scream shattered the quiet.
Human. Young. Terrified.
Helastine froze, her fingers tightening around the hilt of the priest's knife. The sound came again—shrill, desperate—from beyond a thicket of brambles. She didn't think. She ran.
———
The boy was backed against a rotting oak, his arms raised in a guard she recognized from her own clumsy sword lessons. His opponent was…
Gods.
A column of black-gray smoke, thick as tar, pulsing like a living thing. It had no head, no stomach—just a half-formed torso, two spindly arms, and a single leg that ended in a hooked claw. Where its face should have been, the smoke writhed inward, as if sucking in air it didn't need.
The creature lunged. The boy dodged, but not fast enough—its fingers grazed his shoulder, and where they touched, his tunic dissolved, the flesh beneath bubbling like broth.
"Stay back!" the boy shouted—not at the creature, at her. His eyes, wide and panicked, flicked to Helastine. "Run, you idiot!"
The creature's smoke-body rippled. A wet, clicking sound oozed from its formless center. It was laughing.
Helastine didn't run.
She leapt forward, slashing the priest's knife through the creature's back. The blade passed through the smoke like cutting fog—no resistance, no blood. The creature didn't even turn.
What in the hells—?
The boy cursed. "You have to slice it—!"
The creature's arm lashed out, backhanding the boy across the face. He crumpled, blood spattering the leaves.
Helastine struck again, aiming for where a neck should be. The smoke parted, then reformed, thicker now. A mouth slit opened in its chest, jagged as a torn wound.
"Mmm… skin," it hissed. "Skin for my skin…"
The boy groaned, pushing himself up on one elbow. "Miss—cut his throat!"
The creature whirled. "No no no—!" Its voice was suddenly shrill, frantic. "Not the throat! Not the—"
Helastine didn't let it finish.
She drove the knife sideways through the smoke, right where a man's Adam's apple would be.
The creature shrieked. Its body convulsed, smoke thrashing like a dying fire. For one horrible second, Helastine saw shapes in the swirl—a jawbone, an eye socket, the curve of a rib—all straining to piece themselves together. Then, with a sound like a sigh, the creature collapsed inward, its smoke dissolving into the dirt.
Silence.
Helastine stared at the spot where it had been. Her hands shook.
"You… killed it." The boy gaped at her, his split lip dripping red.
The boy staggered to his feet, clutching his ruined shoulder. Up close, he was younger than she'd thought—maybe sixteen, with a mess of brown curls and the beginnings of a hunter's calluses on his hands. His eyes, sharp and too-old, scanned her face.
"Do you know what was that thing?"
"You've never seen a seaper before," he said. Not a question.
Helastine wiped her knife clean on her cloak. "A seaper?"
The boy laughed, then winced. "Oh, you really don't know?" But from her silence he could tell, "Are you joking lady? Or..."
"No, I am not" she started to walk.
"Hey wait.." the boy joined her.
"I am Nayl" he'd called himself—staggered after her, his boots crunching on dead leaves. "Wait! You can't just—ow—walk off after something like that!"
She didn't slow down. The image of the seaper's dissolving body clung to her mind like cobwebs. Skin for my skin. That thing had spoken. Had begged.
Nayl grabbed her wrist. "Hey! You're just going to leave me here bleeding?"
Helastine yanked her arm free. "You're alive."
"Yeah, thanks to you," he said, flashing a grin that was probably meant to be charming but looked more like a wince. His split lip had stopped bleeding, but his shoulder was a mess—raw, glistening flesh where the seaper's touch had eaten through fabric and skin. "Look, at least let me thank you properly. There's a village nearby. I've got supplies there."
She eyed him. His hair was an unnatural shade of navy blue, his eyes a bright, unsettling green. Cute, in a way that felt deliberate, like a fox pretending to be harmless.
"Why did that thing attack you?" she asked.
Nayl's grin faltered. "Why do any of them attack? They're hungry."
Since he can't walk, Hellastine gives him a piggyback ride.
"This is my village"
The village was dying.
That was Helastine's first thought as they trudged into the cluster of crumbling huts. The air smelled of damp rot and boiled nettles. Gaunt faces peered from doorways, eyes hollow. No children played in the muddy lanes. No laughter, no chatter—just the occasional cough or the scrape of a knife against wood.
Nayl led her to a shack near the edge of the village, its roof patched with mossy hides. Inside, the space was cramped but orderly—dried herbs hung from the rafters, a chipped bowl of rainwater sat by the door for washing, and a single pallet lay in the corner, blankets neatly folded.
"Home sweet home," Nayl said, wincing as he shrugged off his ruined tunic.
Helastine didn't ask where his family was. The answer was obvious in the way no one greeted him, in the silence that followed them through the village.
She watched as he rummaged through a wooden chest, pulling out a clay jar of salve. "Here," he said, tossing it to her. "Since you're so good with knives, might as well make yourself useful."
She caught it, frowning. "You want me to tend your wounds?"
"You're the one who got us into this mess."
"I saved you."
"Yeah, and now I owe you." He plopped onto the pallet, stretching out his injured shoulder. "So? You gonna help or just stand there judging my life choices?"
Helastine exhaled sharply but knelt beside him. The salve smelled of pine resin and something bitter. She dabbed it onto the seared flesh, her fingers careful.
Nayl hissed through his teeth. "So. You really didn't know what a seaper was?"
"No."
"Where are you from, then?"
"The mountains of Oshea."
His green eyes flicked to her hair—unnaturally pale, streaked with faint blue. "Huh. That explains it."
"Explains what?"
"Seapers avoid the mountains. Too cold. They like warm bodies. Warm blood." He tilted his head. "But no one has ever told you about them?"
Her fingers stilled.
The question slithered into her mind, unwelcome. The priest had never let her leave the shrine, had always insisted the lowlands were dangerous. But he'd never said why.
Nayl watched her face, his expression unreadable. "The Seapers are demons who devour humans or apparently human body parts, taking whatever they want."
Helastine's stomach turned. "Demons? Devoured humans?"
"Yes, they revive their bodies and turn them into full humans so that they can live among humans."
"But why do they want to live among us?"
"Good question, but I don't know either"
"Hey, damn devil, come out," some people shouted from outside.