The Skyblight wasn't done with them yet.
Rain fell in waves—sometimes sharp like thrown gravel, other times soft as breath, but never stopping. It rolled across the forest canopy in a low hiss, soaking bark, stone, and soil alike. The world had no edges now—only grey and wet and the chill that came up through your boots and settled in your chest.
They'd found the cave two nights ago. It wasn't much. Shallow and uneven, the opening barely wide enough for three people to sit shoulder to shoulder if they didn't mind touching knees and just long enough for them to lie down. But it kept the worst of the weather off their backs. And right now, that made it holy ground.
Erias sat near the mouth, knees drawn up, arms looped loosely. His eyes never left the forest beyond, though the world had faded to a single color: ash-grey. Fog clung to the undergrowth like a second skin, and somewhere above it all, the sky pulsed with dim, unfocused light—sunlight diffused through mana-sick clouds.
He hadn't spoken in hours.
Behind him, deeper in the cave, Garran worked his hands around a jagged piece of iron. His breath came slow and rhythmic, timed with the scrape of metal against rock as he filed it into something vaguely usable. Not a blade. Not yet. But sharp enough, maybe.
Lyara knelt between them and the back wall, surrounded by what remained of their supplies: three packs—torn, weather-bleached, and nearly empty. She moved without sound, carefully unfastening a broken clasp or squeezing rainwater from a rolled-up cloth. Her fingers were red from the cold, nails dirt-stained and cracked.
The fire pit was dark. They hadn't lit one since arriving. Nothing to burn. No dry fuel. Not with the rains turning every branch to sponge and every fallen log to rot. Garran had built it when they first arrived, in hope they would use it.
There was one other in the cave.
A child, wrapped in a half-torn blanket so thin it may as well have been smoke. She lay curled near the back wall, face mostly hidden beneath a mop of tangled brown hair. No one had asked her name. She hadn't offered it. Just followed Lyara when they found her on the outskirts of the ruined village—mud up to her knees, eyes wide, body silent. She hadn't spoken since.
Her chest moved now—barely.
Lyara turned toward her, brushed damp strands from her face, and frowned. Then, slowly, she dug through her own pack and pulled free a scrap of cloth: a once-fine cloak, torn and rain-stained, fraying at the hem. She unfolded it with careful fingers, smoothing it against her thighs, then crawled toward the girl and wrapped it over her shoulders.
"There," she said softly. "It's not much… but it's warm."
The girl didn't move at first. But then, like a branch tipping in the wind, she leaned sideways into Lyara's frame, burying her face in the older woman's side.
A beat passed. Then a whisper—barely audible.
"…Thank you."
The sound turned Erias's head. Garran paused mid-scrape.
Nobody said anything. But the silence that followed felt different.
The rain didn't let up. It never did, not anymore.
Hours passed. Maybe more. There was no way to tell the time through the fog. The light shifted subtly, but not enough to name it morning or evening. It just changed shades—like bruises forming across the sky.
Erias hadn't moved from his place at the mouth of the cave. His legs were stiff. His back ached from sitting so long, but he didn't stretch or shift. Not because he was strong, but because stillness was easier. Safer.
Motion made it real.
Motion took him back to that night.
He could still feel the weight of the water on his chest. The drag of it trying to pull him under. Screams cut short. A door flung open and swallowed whole. A hand slipping from his grip—
He blinked hard. The fog beyond the cave wavered. Just mist, he reminded himself. Just mist and memory.
Behind him, Garran had finished sharpening. Now he sat cross-legged, palms on his knees, eyes half-lidded. Not meditating. Just waiting. Like a man used to killing time in worse places.
He grunted once, shifted his weight, then leaned forward to wrap a strip of torn cloth around the handle of his makeshift blade. Reinforcing it. Strength in preparation. It was the only thing left to do. His armor was long gone, and his shield had been splintered in the flood, left somewhere in the river's mouth.
Lyara hummed.
Soft. Almost tuneless.
She sat near the girl now, running her fingers through the child's hair with the slow rhythm of someone trying to anchor herself. The girl had fallen asleep—or something like it. Her breathing was shallow, but steady. A small mercy.
Erias tried not to watch them too long. He wasn't ready to feel anything about it.
He thought about the forge. The smell of burning charcoal and oiled leather. His father's voice, sharp and precise. "No wasted strokes. No softened edges."
He remembered the exact moment the heat turned from firelight to flood.
The forge doors had cracked open as if a titan had kicked them. A wave of black water crashed through like a living thing. His father shouted something—but it vanished beneath the roar. The roof went next.
Then everything turned cold and deep.
He'd surfaced alone.
A breath caught in his throat. Erias pressed his palms into his knees, hard enough to hurt, and dragged his focus back to the present.
Garran met his eyes briefly across the dim cave.
Neither spoke.
They didn't have to.
They were all carrying wreckage. Some of it floated. Most of it sank.
The girl stirred first.
Her head shifted slightly against Lyara's side, nose scrunching as if even in sleep she could feel how damp the blanket was. She didn't wake—not fully—but the movement was enough to break the spell of stillness.
Lyara looked down at her gently, then brushed her thumb along the edge of the cloak. "You're okay," she murmured. "You're safe here."
That word—safe—still felt like a lie. But no one corrected her.
Garran reached for his canteen and tipped it slightly, but it was almost empty. He let the drops fall against his tongue anyway. Habit, more than anything. Then he leaned back and gave a long sigh.
"Two mouthfuls left," he muttered. "Maybe three if I lie to myself."
Lyara's eyes flicked toward him. "We'll find more. Once the weather clears."
"It's been four days," Garran said. Not sharply, but not softly either. "The weather doesn't clear. It just shifts shape."
Erias turned his head a little at that. His body hadn't moved much since morning, but his mind had been pacing every second. Garran wasn't wrong.
"Still better than moving in the storm," Lyara replied. "If we leave too early, we might not get another place this dry."
Garran gestured toward the low ceiling. "If you call this dry, you've never had a proper roof."
Erias stood slowly, rolling the stiffness from his joints. The ache in his legs bit deep, but he welcomed it. It reminded him he hadn't drowned yet.
"No point arguing," he said, voice rough from disuse. "We'll ration the water. A few more hours and we'll decide. But we can't sit here forever."
The girl shifted again in her sleep, a small, broken sound slipping from her throat. Lyara pulled the cloak tighter.
"Food too," Garran added. "I've got maybe half a handful of dried grain left. You?"
Lyara shook her head. "Two roots. Uncooked. They'll go bad before they do anything useful."
Erias turned toward the cave mouth. The forest outside was still shrouded in fog, but the rain had softened to a mist. He studied it carefully. The sound of it was different—less violent, more uncertain.
"There might be mushrooms along the western ridge," he said quietly.
Garran raised an eyebrow. "You sure they're not tainted?"
"I've foraged them before," Erias said. "Low to the ground, White caps. They grow in rocky patches where the mana struggles to soak in."
"And you saw them?"
"Two days ago. Under moss near the base of the slope."
Garran grunted. "Still risky. And going backwards rather than forwards seems like a step in the wrong direction."
"Everything is," Erias said. "But if we wait until it's safe… we'll be bones by the time the sun breaks."
There was no argument after that. Just the sound of quiet breath, and the low pulse of rain sliding across stone.
As the hours dragged on, darkness came slowly in the forest—but thoroughly.
The fog deepened until it became a wall. What little light filtered through the clouds vanished, leaving the cave in shades of charcoal and smoke. Rain still hissed outside, quieter now. But it hadn't stopped.
Garran sat near the mouth, a stone in his lap, running the edge of his blade along it without thought. There wasn't much left to sharpen, but the motion helped. He wasn't a man made for waiting.
Behind him, Lyara had lit a small wick from her pack. Its flame was faint, stuttering, but it pushed back the dark enough to cast long shadows against the cave wall. She kept her hands close to it. Not for warmth—there wasn't much—but for comfort.
Lyara nudged him sternly and gestured toward the sleeping girl.
Garran obliged and replaced the grating sound of sharpening with the tapping of his foot.
The girl slept deeper now. Curled in the blanket, face slack with exhaustion. Every so often she twitched, but didn't wake.
Erias sat just outside the mouth now, hood up, eyes half-shut as he listened. Not for anything specific—just for change. A shift in the rain. A snapped twig. The buzz of mana threading the air in a way it shouldn't.
There was always a rhythm to Skyblight storms, even if you couldn't name it. A pulse. And sometimes… something else inside it.
Behind him, Lyara spoke. "When I was small, we'd tell stories during rain like this. My mother would light candles and braid my hair while my father burned salt branches to keep away the fog spirits."
Garran looked over his shoulder. "Salt branches?"
She smiled faintly. "They burned with white smoke. He said the spirits hated anything clean."
"Think it worked?"
She paused. "I slept better, so… yes."
Erias let out a breath that might've been a chuckle.
Lyara continued, "I don't remember the stories. Just the feeling. Like no matter how loud the storm got, the walls would hold."
The cave was quiet again.
After a while, Garran said, "We'll need real walls, someday. Not just rocks and luck."
"We'll build them," Erias said softly. "Taller than the floodline. Stronger than the wind."
His voice didn't rise with conviction. It was quiet and measured.
But it was enough.
The fireless night stretched on, the cave wrapped in shadow and flickering lamplight.
And outside, beneath the trees, something moved.
Erias didn't turn.
Then it came through the mist.
A shape.
At first, he thought it was a stag—four-legged, tall at the shoulder, with something like antlers. But it moved wrong. Its limbs bent at uneven angles, too smooth, too quiet. Its hide shimmered faintly with the sheen of damp scale or maybe chitin. And around its legs… the fog warped. Twisted like water circling a drain.
A distorted beast.
Mana-sick. Changed by the excessive mana from the Skyblight.
It stopped just beyond the clearing, head tilting toward the cave's mouth. The air grew colder.
Erias didn't breathe.
The creature stepped forward once—then paused. Its head cocked again, scenting the air. The antlers twitched. They weren't bone. They pulsed faintly with light, like glass filled with lightning.
It sniffed once, then recoiled slightly—as if tasting something sour.
It turned slowly. No rush. No threat. Just… disinterest.
And walked back into the fog.
Silence held for a long time after.
Erias waited until even the echo of its steps had faded. Then he let out a breath and turned to glance at the others.
Lyara hadn't moved. Garran met his gaze in the dark.
Neither of them spoke.
But the message was clear.
They wouldn't be safe here forever.