The alarm bells started ringing ten minutes after they left the gates.
"They'll send riders," Elric panted, struggling to keep pace up the dune. "Fast ones. We can't outrun them in the open."
"We aren't staying in the open," Kael said. He pointed south, toward the Smog-Sea. "We're going into the Deep Ash."
Elric stopped. "The Deep Ash? Kael, the air there is poison. And the Visibility is zero. We'll die of exposure before the Inquisitors even find us."
"We need to disappear," Kael said. "And I need soldiers."
"Soldiers?" Elric wiped soot from his eyes. "You just terrified a tavern of drunks. You think they'll rally to a Void-demon?"
"Not them," Kael said. "You mentioned them back in the chaos. The 'Broken Branch'."
Elric stiffened. "It's a rumor, Kael. A story miners tell to feel brave. Deserter Knights who turned against the Spire. They say they hide in the smog, raiding supply lines."
"It's not a rumor," Kael said.
He remembered something. Back at the Academy, before he was deployed. He had seen a report on the Commander's desk. Sector 7. loss of signal. 40th Battalion defected.
"The 40th," Kael muttered. "Iron-Walkers."
"If they exist," Elric warned, "they kill Spire loyalists on sight. And you look like a walking Spire nightmare."
"I have the Ring," Kael said. "And I have the Truth."
He started walking down the other side of the dune, into the thick, choking fog of the bottoms.
"If they are knights," Kael said, "they'll listen. If they are bandits... I'll kill them."
Elric sighed, adjusting his pack. "Bandits or poison fog. My retirement is going swimmingly."
They descended.
The fog swallowed them. The bells of Black-Iron Rest faded, replaced by the silence of the Deep Ash.
Somewhere in that grey dark, an army was hiding.
And Kael was going to find it.