They rose suddenly from the marshes like the cries of a thousand whispering mouths, slipping between reeds and ruin, curling around the boy and the girl as they made their way down the forgotten causeway. With each step, the land beneath their feet gave way to the soft sponge of ancient peat too soft for comfort, too dry for trust.
"You hear that?" the girl asked.
He didn't answer, but his hand tightened around the hilt at his hip.
In the growing dark, will o' wisps blinked into existence pale green flames dancing above the waterline, moving in pairs, never singly. It was said in old tongue that if one ever saw a lone will o' wisp, it wasn't a flame, but an eye.
The girl pressed closer. "What's that smell?"
"Rot," he said. "But not of flesh. Memory rot. Old griefs, buried shallow."
The causeway led to the ruins of a stilt-village Khaim, the locals had once called it, though no map bore its name anymore. The huts still stood, barely, like hollowed ribcages propped above black water. Ropes dangled from the rafters. Chimes made from teeth clinked in the wind.
"Why are we here?"
He stepped into the nearest hut without answering. The floor groaned, but held. A circle had been drawn there crude, overlapping lines scored into the wood with a shaking hand. Inside the circle were bones. Not human.
He crouched, studying them.
"Dreyg?" the girl whispered.
"No. Vyethbound."
He picked up one of the bones long, twisted, with faint black glyphs burned into its length. A creature of sorrow. A creature bound to the river.
"They summoned it here. Fed it grief. Fed it lies. Let it loose on the southern villages."
The girl's voice was small. "Why?"
He looked up. "Because some monsters are cheaper than armies."
He stood. From the corner of the hut, a soft sob echoed not the girl's. Something had remembered it was once human. A shape moved outside, just beyond the will o' wisps.
He drew his blade. Steel whispered from leather.
A figure rose from the water.
Taller than a man. Wrapped in wet robes that wept mud. Its face was a knot of reeds, its mouth sewn shut with silver thread. In its hand, it held a jar.
The girl gasped. "A Mourning-Kin."
"Not yet," he murmured. "Not until it speaks."
The creature tilted its head. The jar rattled.
"Step back," he said. "And don't listen if it opens the lid."
She obeyed.
The jar clicked open.
From it came a whisper. Not words. Not even voice. Just loss pure, raw, remembered.
The boy staggered, eyes shut, teeth clenched. He stepped into the circle, pressed his hand to one of the glyphs, and spoke a word that cracked like old ice.
The circle blazed white.
The Mourning-Kin screamed no sound, but wind tore through the hut, throwing the girl off her feet. When she opened her eyes again, the creature was gone, and the boy stood alone, breathing hard.
He didn't speak for a long time.
Finally, he said, "It wasn't summoned. It was sent."
"By who?" she asked.
He looked back at the river. "The ones who remember too much. Or not enough."
The wind rose again, and the causeway behind them began to vanish beneath the tide.
"We move," he said.
And they did.