The camp was restless.

  Embers clung stubbornly to the remains of Perrin’s tent, glowing like dying eyes in the dark. Thin curls of smoke wove upward into the star-pricked sky, dissolving into the cold air. No one slept well. How could they? The metallic tang that had clung to the canvas - faint, but wrong - lingered in memory. The nest-like markings inside the collapsed tent. The earth trampled into curling, chaotic patterns.

  The kind no animal made.

  Ren stood with his arms crossed, watching the last flames gutter out. Dew had settled across the camp, cold as needles. His mechanical arm flexed unconsciously, the mana-synced plates giving a soft hum that sounded louder than it should have in the heavy quiet. They had searched the perimeter again and again, but no tracks led away. No drag marks. No blood.

  It was as if Perrin had simply… disappeared.

  Or been taken.

  Sinclair finally broke the silence. “We’ve looked twice. Three times. Nothing changes. No signs of struggle outside the tent. No blood. Perhaps he wasn’t fit for the job and decided to run.”

  A thin pause. Barely noticeable. But Ren caught it.

  His jaw tightened. The image of Perrin’s blank-eyed stare from nights ago flashed behind his eyes. There’d been no fear in it. No panic. Just hollow vacancy, like his mind had already been scooped out and thrown somewhere far away.

  “Running doesn’t explain the smell,” Ren muttered. “Or why the inside of his tent looked like it belonged to someone else entirely.”

  Leo stepped closer, hood pulled low against the biting cold. “We can keep circling this until we unravel ourselves, but it won’t change anything. Whatever happened to Perrin… we don’t have enough pieces to see the full picture. For now, best to burn what’s left and move forward.”

  And so they did. The tent was pulled down, soaked in oil, and burned until nothing but warped stakes and blackened canvas remained. No one said it aloud, but an agreement settled over the group - they would call it desertion.

  Naming it anything else would demand an explanation they didn’t have.

  By mid-morning, the caravan was moving again, beasts of burden plodding across the wide-open plains.

  The land stretched without mercy in all directions. The wind combed the grass in long, sweeping waves - green and gold ripples that shimmered beneath a hard blue sky. Under different circumstances, it might have been beautiful. But today it felt too vast. Too empty. As though the world had been scraped clean of places to hide.

  For a while, the openness was a relief after weeks of jagged mountain paths. But as hours passed, that relief curdled into unease. There were no birds overhead. No scurrying insects among the grass. No tracks of grazing herds.

  Even the air felt thinner.

  Leo noticed it first. “There,” he said, pointing toward a distant ridge. “Where are the antelope?”

  Ren followed his gaze. Nothing. No movement. The plains looked abandoned, as though everything with breath had fled.

  A pit tightened in his stomach.

  By the fifth day, water had grown scarce. They’d rationed carefully, but the chaos at the outpost had left their supplies lacking. When the river finally came into view - wide, glittering silver beneath the sun - a collective breath of relief passed through the group.

  “Camp here,” Sinclair ordered, wasting no time.

  The beasts were led to drink. Tents rose. Fires crackled to life. Buckets were lowered into the fast-running water.

  For a moment, the sound of the river grounded them. A normal, living noise.

  Ren crouched at the riverbank, letting the cool water run through his fingers. It should have felt refreshing. It didn’t.

  Something about it… bothered him.

  The river ran clean, its surface catching the light like polished steel. But beneath that shimmer - nothing. No minnows flickering in the shallows. No darting shadows of larger fish. Not even water insects skimming the surface.

  He dipped his hand deeper, searching.

  Nothing.

  “Leo,” he called quietly. “Something’s wrong.”

  The young mage joined him, kneeling. His eyes widened slightly. “You’re right. A river this size should be full of life.”

  “Maybe it’s upstream,” Raven said from behind them, arms folded. “We’ll know when we fill the pots. Just don’t drink until it’s boiled.”

  Reasonable advice. It still didn’t settle Ren’s gut.

  Morning came sharp and cold.

  They followed the riverbank - Sinclair at the front, Raven beside him, Ren and Leo close behind. Armor clinked softly. Weapons stayed within reach.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Half a mile upriver, they found them.

  Totems.

  Wooden poles rammed deep into the riverbed, wrapped in cords of dried grass and bone. Spirals carved into the wood turned inward, seeming to pull at the eye. Jagged glyphs were burned into the surface, dark lines curling like veins. The poles leaned at strange angles, forming broken half-circles pointing downstream, as if directing something along the flow.

  But worse were the offerings.

  Animal skulls, hollowed and blackened, strung with sinew. Clumps of riverweed tied into tight, unnatural knots. Pottery shards scattered across the mud, each marked with the same spiraling symbol.

  Leo crouched close, careful not to touch. His face had drained of color. “These aren’t random. They’re intentionally aligned. Ritualistic.”

  “Cultists,” Raven spat. She kicked a shard aside, though her voice held an edge of unease. “Marking territory. Polluting the water. Or feeding it. Gods know what they’ve been calling.”

  Ren’s gaze drifted back to the river.

  Still no fish. No insects. No movement beneath the surface.

  It felt hollow.

  Sinclair’s jaw hardened. “We’re breaking camp immediately. We follow the river, but at a distance. Whatever they’re trying to call - or cage - in this water, we won’t be here when it arrives.”

  They returned in silence.

  Ren packed quickly but couldn’t shake the connection forming in his mind: Perrin’s tent. The metallic smell. The nest-like patterns. The spores.

  He didn’t voice it. Not yet.

  The official line was desertion. And those who knew better had chosen silence.

  But the hollowness of the river… it wasn’t natural.

  Neither had Perrin been, at the end.

  The plains were too quiet.

  All day, the world felt muffled, as if sound refused to travel. Ren kept glancing back at the wagons, half-expecting something to be stalking them unseen. The beasts snorted and swished their tails lazily, unaware or pretending to be.

  By evening, the sky burned orange and purple, shadows stretching long across the grass. The outpost they’d left behind was now only a smear on the horizon.

  Ren chewed a strip of dried meat on the wagon step, bow across his knees. His mind drifted toward his next evolution - toward that suspended moment of void, power filling him like a rising tide.

  Not now, he told himself. Focus.

  They camped near a low ridge. Wagons circled. Fires lit. The familiar rhythm of camp life settled around them, offering a small, fragile illusion of safety. Leo pretended to read but kept glancing toward the horizon. Raven cleaned her staff with tight, measured movements. Even she was rattled.

  Sinclair alone looked unshaken, barking orders with clipped precision.

  For a moment, Ren almost felt anchored.

  Almost.

  Then the drums began.

  Low at first - like distant thunder rolling beneath the earth. A steady, hollow thrum-thrum-thrum, so deep it vibrated in his bones.

  Ren froze mid-chew. The strip of meat slipped from his fingers.

  Around him, heads lifted, eyes wide.

  The drumbeat grew clearer, deliberate. Rhythmic.

  “Up,” Sinclair ordered, already on his feet. Steel whispered as he drew his sword. “Eyes sharp.”

  The sound came from the east, beyond the ridge.

  Ren slung his bow over his shoulder. “Cultists?”

  “No doubt,” Raven muttered. “But what are they doing this far out?”

  The drums quickened, rattling across the plains.

  It wasn’t music.

  It was a call.

  A small group peeled away - Sinclair at the lead, Raven close behind, Ren and Leo following with a handful of mercenaries. The rest formed a defensive ring around the camp.

  The ridge was steeper than it looked. Ren climbed on hands and feet, heart thudding in sync with the drums.

  Then -

  Silence.

  They reached the crest and crouched in the tall grass.

  Below lay a shallow basin. More totems dotted the ground - bones bound with sinew, skulls mounted on poles, carved symbols glistening with something dark.

  Ren’s stomach twisted. The spirals were unmistakable now. Cult markings. Divine devouring spirals.

  But no cultists.

  The basin was empty.

  “Where are they?” one of the mercenaries whispered.

  “Quiet,” Sinclair warned.

  They descended carefully.

  Every crunch of soil sounded too loud.

  Ren’s eyes swept the basin, searching for movement - there - shapes, half-hidden behind a larger totem.

  Bodies.

  A dozen, maybe more. Draped in cultist garb.

  Ren swallowed, throat tight. He stepped closer as Raven lifted her staff, pale light illuminating the scene.

  The mercenaries cursed.

  The corpses weren’t just dead. They had been ripped apart. Limbs torn free. Ribs cracked open. Faces shredded beyond recognition. Some torsos were crushed as if by enormous pressure.

  These weren’t clean kills.

  “Gods,” Leo whispered, hand over his mouth.

  Ren forced his eyes to the ground - claw marks gouged deep. Trails of blood leading outward, fading into the plains.

  “They didn’t fight each other,” Ren said quietly. “This wasn’t human.”

  “No,” Sinclair growled, tracing a claw mark three times the width of his hand. “Beast tracks. Massive.”

  A thick, heavy stillness settled. No insects. No birds. No rustle of wind.

  The kind of silence left behind after something terrible has passed through.

  “What were they summoning?” Raven murmured. Her gaze swept the broken totems, the scattered ritual tools. “Or feeding?”

  Ren felt it too - that metallic taste at the back of his throat. A lingering wrongness in the air. As if something enormous had brushed against the world and kept moving.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t here anymore.

  And that somehow felt worse.

  Sinclair rose. “We’re leaving. Now. I won’t be standing in this basin when whatever did this comes back.”

  They confirmed the cultists were all dead, then retreated.

  No one spoke on the walk back.

  No drums resumed.

  Only the whisper of their boots through the grass.

  Ren kept replaying the scene - torn bodies, clawed earth, the spirals. The emptiness of the river.

  And their blank eyes.

  The resemblance struck cold and sharp.

  He couldn’t shake the thought that Perrin’s eyes had looked just the same.