SILINCE AND SHATTERING

The world was rotting away with a plague. And yet the sun still beat down with all its vitality, filtering through the dense branches of the forest. The stubborn green of the juniper trees surrounding them seemed to defy, alone, the world's relentless decay.

The squad, having broken off from the main road leading to the Brothers' Pass, had made camp in a sheltered clearing at the foot of the mountain. They'd lit no fire, so the smoke wouldn't draw attention. The night was cold, damp, and dark.

Vance sat wrapped tightly in his cloak, leaning against a tree root. The chattering of his teeth could be heard in the dark. "A camp with no fire," he grumbled to himself. "We'll freeze to death before the Summit Wardens ever find us. What military genius."

"We haven't gotten far enough from the pass. A day or two in the cold won't kill you," Garrick said. He pulled his coat tighter around himself and kept scanning the perimeter of the camp.

"When I die, you'll be the first person I come back to haunt, Captain," Vance kept muttering.

Broc, meanwhile, had his massive frame propped against a thick stump, tending to the heavy mace in his lap. With a rag, he patiently wiped away the dirt and damp clinging to the metal, then coated the steel surface with a thin layer of wax to keep it from rusting. Those huge, callused fingers moved with the gentleness and restraint of a man fully aware of the destructive power they held.

A few steps away, Alister sat with his knees drawn to his chest, wrapped in a thick blanket, watching him silently. The boy's colorful eyes drifted back and forth between Krazoc — sitting motionless with his back against the wagon wheel — and Broc, tenderly cleaning the weapon on his lap. Both were enormous. Both were deadly. But where one was a storm ready to break everything around it, the other stroked that crude weapon as carefully as if it were a fragile piece of glass.

The questioning spark in the boy's eyes, that silent gaze soaking up every detail like a sponge, did not escape Broc's notice.

The big man stopped wiping the mace and smiled faintly into the darkness. "It's a heavy weapon," he whispered, careful not to disturb the night's stillness. "No grace to it. But for a slow man like me, it's the one thing that keeps me alive — crushing an enemy's armor in a single blow."

The boy tilted his head slightly, pulling his eyes from the mace to fix them on Broc's face.

Broc let out a deep, weary sigh. His gaze moved over the boy with a tender sorrow. "I had a little brother, too," he said softly. He set the rag down on his knee. "After the harvest, the Clockwork Bards used to travel from village to village. Wandering craftsmen who entertained the people... My brother, unlike the other children who just wanted to hear the tales of heroism the bards acted out in those wooden boxes, wanted to understand how the box worked — how the gears inside it turned."

The deep timbre of Broc's voice trembled slightly, his eyes drifting into the depths of the dark forest.

"We Menvrin have always been big men, generation after generation. But him... with that frail, slight build so unlike a Menvrin, he wouldn't leave a single hole in the village he hadn't wormed his way into, always trying to learn something from someone. Everyone loved him. And why wouldn't they? He was the only Menvrin with any brains in his skull. Hah!"

His brief laugh twisted into a bitter knot in his throat. He clasped his large hands together. "Eight harvests passed and his body never grew. He grew weaker. He was sick."

A cold wind blew over the camp, and even Vance had stopped grumbling, listening silently to the big man.

"I tried to look after him during those weak spells. With a body three times his size, I'd break a sweat just trying not to hurt those thin little bones." Broc looked down at the thick calluses on his hands. "But my clumsy tenderness did no good. He needed a cure. In the Capital, the Empire's gleaming jewel, you can find any miracle you need. Any medicine, any essence... But..."

Broc's voice dropped to a whisper and hung there in the dark. "...every miracle has a price."

Alister didn't need to hear the rest of the sentence. In the boy's chest, an ache surfaced — not the searing, savage bond he shared with Krazoc, but something lighter, cooler. He could feel, in his own skin, the helpless, suffocating grief the big man carried — the pain of a piece of himself torn away.

The boy rose quietly from where he sat. Shivering with the night's chill in his small frame, he made his way slowly to Broc and settled against him, leaning into that broad body.

Not a word was spoken. But after that small touch, Broc felt the heavy, poisoned knot of grief sitting on his chest suddenly ease. It was as if a cool wind had swept through his mind; the suffocating mourning gave way to a strange, soothing acceptance and peace.

The big man looked down at the boy beside him in astonishment. It was as if something had cleared the murky water in his mind all at once. "Thank you, little one," Broc murmured, a warm, broken smile rising on his face. "I'm all right."

At the back of the wagon, Krazoc sat with his back against the wheel, eyes closed, listening to the moment unfold. The boy was the only warmth in this cold night.

The night wore on. Broc had fallen asleep at the foot of the stump. Alister, too, had drifted into a deep sleep, leaning safely against that broad, warm back. Elara stood watch deeper in the forest, swallowed by the dark.

Garrick cast a brief glance over the sleeping camp, then walked over to Krazoc on silent feet and crouched down on the dry leaves beside him.

"You need to learn to let yourself go. Your body's giving you away," he said quietly.

Krazoc opened his eyes. He fixed that empty, expressionless stare on Garrick.

Garrick held his gaze without looking away for a moment. Then he began to speak.

"In the Capital, I have children sleeping right now, completely unaware of this filth, this mud," Garrick said. His eyes were on Broc and Alister. His voice was tired. "One girl, one boy. They're saving up to open a little bakery. The greatest achievement of my career is becoming the man who took a family just trying to survive another day within the Capital's walls, and led the next generation into building something of their own," Garrick went on, a faint pride creeping into his voice.

"Now listen carefully to what I'm about to say," he said, his expression hardening.

"With every step we take, every day that passes, we draw a little closer to death. You don't need to go looking for it out there. It's the very thing we're made of. The foundation of our existence. There's no getting around it. That child will die one day. That's certain."

Krazoc's gaze hardened, but he didn't interrupt.

"When that child dies, what will he leave behind? Will he leave behind a generation that built something of its own? Will he come out the other side able to lead among his own kind? You're trying to protect the boy from death itself. Tell me — at the end of the day, who's going to protect that boy from you?" Garrick said, his voice a whisper, but his words cut like a blade.

He didn't wait for an answer, so he went on. "Teach the boy how to live first!"

Krazoc said nothing. He only listened.

Garrick looked into Krazoc's eyes once more. It wasn't the look of an officer regarding a prisoner — it was the look of an old man who'd watched the young die in war, who had managed to keep his own children far from a life lived merely surviving day to day.

"Decide what kind of man you're going to be. Decide it before the Tree of Wisdom decides it for you."

Garrick hoped he'd given Krazoc something to think about. He rose, withdrew to his own corner, laid his sword across his knees, and let his eyes rest.

The forest was strangely peaceful. Only the soft rustle of wind through the leaves and the rhythmic song of cicadas could be heard. Krazoc weighed Garrick's poison-honest words in his mind and slowly closed his eyes again.

Then... everything was cut off like a blade.

The cicadas' song stopped at once. The wind died. The forest fell into a silence so deep, so absolute, that Krazoc could hear his own heartbeat.

This was not a natural silence. It was the moment a predator holds its breath.

"Garrick..."

Elara's voice came out of the darkness, somewhere between a whisper and a scream, dread soaked through every syllable. "Wake up!"

Krazoc's eyes snapped wide open. There were no footsteps. No war cries.

Only an enormous crack split the air, like thunder.

The trunk of a massive juniper standing right beside the camp — centuries old — began to lean at an impossible angle, with unnatural speed. A sickening sound of rot rose from the roots on the side facing the camp, while the roots on the opposite side thickened with monstrous, accelerated growth, tearing through the earth.

Gravity merged with the magic itself, and the colossal tree toppled straight down onto the camp, as if flung from some giant catapult.

"Broc!" Garrick roared, drawing his sword.

But it was too late. The wooden trunk, weighing tons, slammed into the wagon and the heart of the camp with terrifying speed. The wagon's bed shattered like a matchstick, the horses' screams tore through the darkness of the night. The ground shook with the force of the impact, and a massive cloud of dust and splintered wood rose into the air.

Krazoc moved the instant the tree began to fall. He lunged forward, defying the chains. The falling trunk crashed down, missing the spot where he'd been sitting by a hair's breadth.

His eyes searched the dust cloud at once for that small body.

But all that emerged from the dust were silhouettes stepping out from the shadows of the trees. Men in light armor, faces covered with leather masks, deadly swords and drawn bows in their hands.

Krazoc's nose filled with the smell of churned earth and rotten wood scattered by the roots. The heavy iron chains on his arms trembled with strain.

Hell had come down right in the middle of the forest.

And Krazoc still could not see Alister.