On the fourth morning, they crested a hill to find their path blocked. A sprawling military encampment blocked the path. A wooden barrier stretched from hillside to hillside, its gates reinforced with iron bands. Golden banners bearing San'Dioral's sigil snapped in the wind above watchtowers cobbled together from local timber. In the distance, mounted patrols rode circuits while sentries walked the perimeter.
As they approached the checkpoint, a captain with a gold rank insignia, stepped forward.
"Halt! State your business and destination."
Lucia gave a slight bow. "I am Lucia of House Thornwald, traveling on urgent business."
“House Thornwald?” The captain's eyes narrowed, taking in her noble bearing and well-made traveling clothes. He glanced at a knight beside him who shook his head in response. "The area ahead is the Twilight Zone, milady. By decree of Grand General Louis, on the authority of His Majesty King Thordan, these lands are sealed. No passage is permitted."
"We're trying to reach the Shadowfen," Lucia said. "It's a matter of life and death."
"I don't care even if you were from House Romanée-Conti," the captain snarled. "Vandiel troops have been spotted crossing the zone into San'Dioran territory. Raiders, scouts, maybe worse. The word of Lord Louis is law in these parts." His hand moved to his sword hilt. "Unless... you're some Vandiel spies trying to get back home."
Around them, the other knights drew their weapons. Steel shrieked against leather as blades cleared scabbards. Clive counted at least eight sword points now aimed in their direction.
"That's ridiculous," Lucia began, but the captain cut her off.
"Is it?" He stepped closer, forcing Lucia to crane her neck to meet his eyes. "Two travelers, heading straight for enemy territory, carrying enough supplies for a long journey. How do I know you're not carrying intelligence back to the demon king's generals?"
The knights moved in, forming a loose circle around them. Clive's mind raced. The wrong word here could turn deadly fast.
He upended his pack without warning. Brushes, pencils, and his precious sketchbook scattered across the dirt road.
“I’m no spy,” Clive said, crouching to gather his scattered materials. "Just a traveling artist. Nothing here but pigments and paper."
The captain picked up the sketchbook, flipping through pages of weapon and potion drawings. The other knights kept their swords ready, but no longer pointed directly at them.
"An artist." He tossed the sketchbook back to Clive. "What business does an artist have in the Shadowfen? That cursed place has been dead ground for decades. Nothing grows there but poison and corruption."
"The cure to the stone curse," Clive said. "We believe it lies within the fen."
The captain went still. Around them, the knights exchanged glances, some skeptical, others suddenly intent.
"The stone curse?" The captain said. "You're telling me you can cure that plague?"
"We can," Lucia said. "But only with midnight blossoms from the fen's heart. Every day we delay, more people turn to stone."
A gust of wind blew, stirring the checkpoint's banners. The captain stared at Lucia for a long moment, his gaze shifting between her face and the northern horizon.
"My orders are absolute," the captain said finally. "No passage through the Twilight Zone. The zone crawls with Vandiel raiders and worse things besides." He gestured toward the northern horizon. "You'd be corpses before sunset."
"Then we'll find another way," Clive said, shouldering his refilled pack.
The captain laughed. "What way? My orders cover the entire border. You won't slip past anywhere on my watch.”
The captain turned his back on them, striding toward the command tent. Around them, the knights began to disperse, the immediate threat over but the message was clear.
Clive and Lucia turned back from the checkpoint.
“So what now?” Clive asked.
"Maybe we should just head back." Lucia stared at the checkpoint's torches flickering in the distance. "Look at that blockade, three checkpoints, mounted patrols, signal fires. They're treating this like a war zone."
Clive studied the fortifications. "We've come too far to quit now."
"Have we?" She turned to face him. "The blossoms might not even exist. And here we are, staring at enough soldiers to siege a city."
"You said yourself the midnight blossoms were the only real lead you'd found in months of research."
"But…" Lucia shook her head. "What if I'm wrong about everything? What if there is no cure, and I'm just dragging us both into enemy territory for nothing?"
Clive placed his hand on her shoulder. "Then we find out together. But we're not turning back."
Lucia stared at the distant torches for a long moment, then shouldered her pack. "Fine. But if we're doing this, we do it right.”
They made camp a mile south of the checkpoint, hidden in a grove of twisted oaks where the road curved out of sight. As the sun died behind the hills, Clive crept to the edge of their camp and settled behind a fallen log. From here, he could see the checkpoint's torches and watch the guards' movements. He pulled out his sketchbook and began mapping their routines, marking patrol routes and timing intervals.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
An hour passed. Then two.
"The guard rotation changes at midnight," Clive said when he returned. "Three sentries patrol the perimeter, two remain at the main post. The captain sleeps in the command tent, but there's always someone awake in the watchtower."
Lucia looked up from her work. She'd arranged a collection of dried fungi in neat piles. "Leave that to me." She crushed dried mushrooms into a fine powder with a marble pestle, the acrid scent making Clive's nose wrinkle. "Shadowcap spores. They'll create a fog that clings low to the ground. It should provide us some cover."
Clive nodded, fog would help, but it wouldn’t be enough. He remembered an old military documentary about jungle warfare, soldiers using natural camouflage to move unseen through enemy territory. The key wasn't the colors, it was breaking up the human silhouette, disrupting the eye's ability to recognize familiar shapes. A person's outline was what gave them away in the dark, that distinctive bipedal form that every predator and prey animal learned to spot.
He opened his sketchbook to a fresh page and sketched a camouflage cloak. Instead of uniform coloration, he drew irregular patches that would fragment his body's outline. Browns and grays that matched the oak bark, darker greens for the undergrowth shadows. He added trailing edges that would blur the sharp line where fabric met air.
The pattern had to work at a distance, where guards would glimpse movement in their peripheral vision. Up close, any camouflage would fail under direct scrutiny, but twenty yards away in poor light, the human brain would struggle to separate the disrupted shape from the background noise of branches and shadows.
[Draw: Camouflage Cloak]
A light flashed and a green brown cloak materialized. He held it up against the surrounding foliage and smiled, happy that it blended right in. When Clive draped it over his shoulders, his outline blurred, becoming indistinct even in the moonlight.
[Item Created: Camouflage cloak (Normal Quality)]
A woodland camouflage cloak designed using military principles of visual disruption. Irregular patches of brown, gray, and dark green break up the wearer's silhouette, while textured edges scatter light to prevent clean reflections.
Durability: 10/10
[Note: "Camouflage isn't about being invisible, it's about not looking human"]
[Camouflage Illustration skill unlocked]
[New Skill Branch: Camouflage Illustration - Level 1]
[Current items: Camouflage cloak]
"Remarkable," Lucia commented. "You're barely visible."
"It won't hold up to direct examination," Clive said, studying himself. "But in darkness, it might work."
Lucia finished preparing her concoction, a small clay vial filled with gray powder that seemed to absorb the firelight. "This needs to activate slowly. We'll have maybe ten minutes before the fog dissipates."
They waited until the moon reached its zenith, then crept through the undergrowth toward the checkpoint. The night air carried the sound of snoring from the sleeping tents and the occasional murmur of conversation from the guard post.
Clive pulled the cloak tight around both of them. The fabric was large enough to cover two people if they moved carefully together. Lucia held the smoke vial ready, her thumb poised over the cork stopper.
A sentry passed twenty yards to their left, scanning the area with his torch.
They reached the edge of the checkpoint's clearing. The wooden barricades cast deep shadows in the moonlight, creating pools of darkness between the torch posts. The main gate stood closed, but they could see gaps in the barrier where maintenance had been postponed.
"There," Clive whispered, pointing to a section where two barrier posts had warped, leaving a gap barely wide enough for a person.
Lucia uncorked her vial. Gray smoke poured out, heavier than air, flowing across the ground like liquid shadow. The fog spread silently, pooling in the low places and creeping between the barriers. Within moments, the entire area around their target gap was shrouded in a gray mist.
A guard called out from the watchtower. "What's that fog?"
"Probably just marsh mist," another voice replied. "Gets thick this time of year."
"Should we report it?"
"And wake the captain over some damp air? You want to explain to him why his sleep got interrupted?"
The first guard grumbled but said nothing more.
Clive and Lucia moved into the fog, the cloak making them nearly invisible to the eye. The smoke carried a faint earthy scent, like mushrooms and wet stone. It muffled sound as well as sight, turning their footsteps into barely audible whispers.
They reached the gap in the fence. Clive went first, squeezing through the warped posts with careful precision. A splinter caught his cloak, and for a moment he thought the fabric might tear, but the garment held.
Lucia followed, her alchemist's belt clinking softly against the wood. She froze as the sound seemed to echo in the muffled air, but no alarm came.
On the other side, they found themselves in the checkpoint's main compound. Supply wagons sat arranged in neat rows, and the command tents loomed like dark mountains in the fog. A few steps more and they would be past the northern perimeter, free to continue toward the Shadowfen.
A torch flared to life directly ahead of them.
"Who goes there?" The sentry had emerged from behind a supply wagon, flame held high. The light cut through the fog in a golden cone, sweeping toward where they crouched.
Clive pressed himself against Lucia, the cloak wrapped tight around both of them. He could feel her heartbeat against his back. The torchlight passed inches from their position, so close he could feel its heat on his face.
The guard squinted into the fog, clearly seeing something, movement. He took a step forward, raising his torch higher.
Lucia's hand found a second vial at her belt. With a subtle motion, she cracked it open, releasing a sweet, cloying scent into the air.
The guard's eyes grew heavy. His head nodded once, twice, then his knees buckled. He slumped against the supply wagon, torch falling from slack fingers to gutter out in the damp earth.
"Sleep draught," Lucia whispered. "He'll wake with a headache and no memory of the last few minutes."
They moved past the unconscious guard, keeping low as they approached the northern fence. This barrier was newer, better maintained, but Clive spotted a place where the ground had washed away beneath the posts, creating a shallow depression they could crawl under.
Minutes later, they emerged on the far side of the checkpoint, the fog already beginning to thin behind them. The road to the Twilight Marches stretched ahead, empty and moonlit.
"We did it," Lucia breathed.
Clive nodded, but kept the shadow cloak wrapped around them until they were well out of sight of the checkpoint's torches. Only when the lights had disappeared behind a hill did he finally allow himself to believe they had truly escaped.
"Welcome to the Twilight Zone," Lucia said.
ROYAL DECREE - EMERGENCY SEAL
By Order of His Majesty King Thordan III, Lord of San'Dioral, Defender of the 1st Light
Issued by Grand General Louis Lafite Rothschild, Commanding General of the Royal Armies
PROCLAMATION OF SEALED TERRITORY:
Let it be known throughout the Kingdom of San'Dioral that the northern territories designated as the Twilight Zone, being all lands north of the Merchant's Road from Millhaven to Copperfield, including the settlements of Greywater and Thornbrook are hereby declared SEALED BY ROYAL COMMAND.
ENFORCEMENT:
- NO PASSAGE permitted without written authorization
- Civilians must evacuate within seven days
- Violators detained as enemy agents
- Lethal force authorized against resistance
DURATION:
This decree shall remain in effect until such time as the Vandiel threat is neutralized and normal border security can be restored.
By His Majesty's Will and the Authority of the Crown
Grand General Louis Lafite Rothschild
15th Harvestmoon, 847th Year of Light