The trench mud felt different after Kael's death. It was colder, heavier, as if it had absorbed his blood and his stolen future. The triumphant return Fireteam 7-Alpha should have had was a silent, shamed shuffle. They didn't meet the eyes of the other soldiers. They had left one of their own in the muck.
The command bunker was a low, oppressive space, lit by a single flickering lantern. Corporal Harlow took their report with a grim face. When they finished, he just grunted. "Medic Kael. Marked KIA. You got the intel on the patrol. Mission accomplished." The words were so clinical, so utterly devoid of the horror they represented, that Leo felt a surge of sick anger.
Sergeant Voss stood in the corner, his arms crossed, his face an unreadable mask. He said nothing.
Back in their section of the trench, the silence was a physical presence. Rourke sat on an ammo crate, furiously scrubbing Kael's blood from his bayonet with a chunk of gravel, the scraping sound setting everyone's teeth on edge. The usual fire in his eyes was gone, replaced by smoldering embers of guilt and rage.
"It should have been me," he muttered, not for the first time. "I was in the open. I was the bigger target. Why him? He was a damn medic."
Lysander stared at the grenade launcher in his lap, the weapon that had saved them. "My smoke... it must have given away our position. I did that." His belief in the rightness of their cause seemed to have been buried in the same crater as Kael.
Finn, his injured hand wrapped in a rough bandage, flinched at every distant sound. "He was just... there. One second, he was fine. The next..." He couldn't finish.
Leo said nothing. He leaned against the trench wall, his forehead pressed against the cold, wet earth. He could still feel the phantom vibration of the single sniper shot, the exact point in the ground where Kael had fallen. He had sensed the patrol, the Jotun... but he had missed the one man who mattered most. The land had whispered of many dangers, but it had kept that one, cruel secret. His gift felt like a betrayal.
It was Colm, the quiet giant, who broke the cycle. He walked over to Rourke, placed a massive, steadying hand on his shoulder, and simply shook his head. No words. The gesture was enough to make Rourke stop his frantic scrubbing. Then, Colm went to the squad's ration box and silently began handing out hardtack, forcing sustenance on them like a mother bird.
Two days later, the order came. The silence in the command bunker was even heavier this time.
"We've lost contact with Listening Post Gamma-7," Corporal Harlow said, pointing to a spot on the map behind their own lines. "It's a rear-echelon relay station. Last transmission was a fragment. Something about 'lights' and 'cold.' A patrol was sent to investigate. They didn't report back."
He looked at Voss, then at the remnants of Fireteam 7-Alpha. "You're the only squad not currently chewed up or on the line. Get to Gamma-7. Find out what happened. Re-establish comms. This isn't a front-line assault. It should be a quiet walk."
No one believed him.
The journey to Gamma-7 was through a landscape of eerie quiet. They were behind the main lines, but the war had still scarred this place. Abandoned farms, fields choked with weeds, and the constant, distant thunder of the artillery. The silence around them felt wrong, a vacuum waiting to be filled.
They found the outpost nestled in a small, wooded valley. The first thing they noticed was the silence. No birds, no insects. Nothing.
The second thing they noticed was the gate. It was intact, but frozen open, sheathed in a layer of glistening, purple-tinged crystal.
"By the King's beard... what is that?" Jax whispered, his hand hovering near the strange material.
"Don't touch it," Voss ordered, his voice low and tense.
They moved inside, weapons raised. The scene that unfolded was one of surreal, silent horror. There were no bodies torn apart by shrapnel. No signs of a firefight. The Aethelgard soldiers stationed here were where they had fallen, but they were not decomposing. They were preserved. Encased in the same translucent, violet crystal as the gate. Their faces were frozen in masks of ultimate terror and agony, their final screams silent behind the glittering prison. One man was caught mid-stride, another reaching for his rifle. It was a snapshot of instant, inexplicable death.
"The fragment... 'cold'..." Finn murmured, his face pale. "This is what they saw."
Lysander bent down, staring at a crystallized hand. "This... this wasn't a weapon. This is... an effect. Like a plague."
Leo felt it before anyone else. A deep, wrongness in the earth. The very soil here was sterile. The natural energy of the land was gone, drained away, leaving a void that felt like a physical wound. He knelt, pressing his fingers into the ground. It was cold. Not the cold of winter, but the absolute cold of emptiness.
"Sergeant," Leo said, his voice tight. "The land is... dead here."
Before Voss could respond, Finn, who had been scouting ahead, came sprinting back, his eyes wide with a fear that surpassed anything they had seen in the trenches.
"Leo..." he gasped, skidding to a halt, his voice shaking so hard he could barely form the words. "We have a problem. I see a Vorlag uniform... but he's not carrying a rifle."
He pointed a trembling finger toward the main communications shack.
Standing there, as if waiting for them, was a figure in the distinct grey and black of the Vorlag Empire. But he was no soldier. He stood with an unnatural stillness, his hands held loosely at his sides. And they were wreathed in a crackling, violent aura of pure purple energy.
His head turned slowly, and his gaze, ancient and utterly devoid of humanity, locked directly onto theirs.
The air grew thick, and a low, psychic hum began to vibrate in their very bones, making their teeth ache and their vision swim.
The quiet walk was over.