The sky looked as if it had been scraped thin by claws.
The wind tasted of rust.
A pale, anaemic light seeped through the clouds above the Dry Lands of Sonderveld, illuminating the broken ribs of old trees that jutted out of the earth like the ribcage of some dead giant. Auden walked with a slow, cautious step, picking his feet around patches of desiccated grass that crumbled at a touch. His breath fogged only slightly in the cold morning air.
Winter had never fully left this place, nor would it. It clung to the air, crisp and biting, yet the ground steamed faintly in places, as if summer was pressing upward from beneath the earth. These days, the seasons themselves seemed confused, as if the world had dropped its sense of order long ago.
Auden carried a hooked iron pole over one shoulder, and an empty burlap sack over the other. His children needed something to eat.
His boots sank into the cracked clay with a faint squelch, still damp from last night's dew. The wind dragged itself across the wasteland with a low, continuous moan. It was the voice of this hollow place. The world didn't like being inhabited anymore.
As he moved toward the ruins of a collapsed watchtower, Auden tugged his cloak tighter. The cold wasn't what bothered him - no, by now that was quite familiar - but the silence beneath the wind. No insect chirps. No rustling of tiny animals. No birds. The Dry Lands had long since taken those.
Only the Herd remained.
He tried not to think about it too much. He certainly tried not to speak of it aloud. Words had weight, and out here, too much weight could draw attention. He had seen it happen before. Instead, he whispered a short verse under his breath, an old saying passed down from times before:
"What feeds the Herd cannot be named.
What stirs behind the skins of things cannot be claimed.
Walk soft, walk low.
Walk quiet, and go."
The words weren't magical, not really. But they were comforting, in their way, and in times like these, comfort was its own kind of armour.
Auden climbed through a gap in the fallen tower's stonework and ducked into the shade. The air carried the faint smell of old fire. Something had burned here years ago, blackening the stones. He crouched and began prying at the rubble with his iron pole. After a few minutes of grunting and levering, he unearthed a wooden crate half-rotten at the corners. Inside he found a shard of a broken sword, a mouldy leather pouch, and - miraculously - a tin of dried barley.
"Thank you," he murmured to nobody in particular. He tucked the tin carefully into the sack and kept searching.
While he worked, the wind shifted. A sudden gust blew in from the north, rattling loose stones and sending dust swirling. And then, he felt it more than heard it - a pressure behind the ears, like something vast and unseeable was holding its breath.
He rose slowly. The ruins around him seemed to tilt. He moved toward the southern wall of the collapsed tower for a better vantage point. As he peered over the broken stones, the horizon came into view.
At first, he didn't see anything. Just the usual emptiness - a bleak stretch of cracked plains, faintly shimmering under the weak sun.
Then the shimmer thickened.
It swelled and sank, swayed and converged.
They moved as a single mass, though they had no uniform shape. Some crawled. Some walked. Some dragged themselves along with too many limbs, some with not enough. Sinews that bent wrong, faces pasted on backwards. They existed in motion, a sweeping tide of shapes that absorbed the light around them and made the air taste of iron.
The Herd was heading west.
Toward his village.
Toward his children.
Ducking low, Auden's thoughts raced, but his body acted on pure instinct. He had survived this long not because he was particularly strong or clever, but because he had never stopped moving. Today would not be the day that he failed. He slung the sack over his back, tightened the rope across his chest, and pressed himself against the tower wall.
If he moved now - if he kept to the gullies and dugouts - he might outrun the outer fringe of the herd. He could make it home, warn the others, get the children out...
Swallowing hard, Auden felt his throat coarsen like sandpaper. He pressed himself flatter against the stone, listening.
Thump-thump-thump.
They were close enough for him to feel them.
He took a deep breath, then another. Panic would kill him faster than claws or teeth. He edged toward the tower's south side, keeping the stone between him and the swarm.
Fast. Quiet. Keep low.
He dropped into a shallow ditch carved by old floodwater and started crawling. His palms slid on the clay. He moved on elbows and knees, pushing himself toward a ridge that might offer cover.
He kept his eyes forward.
He did not look back, but he heard them. Heard the pattering, the slithering, the galloping, the wet clicking of joints that weren't joints anymore. The Herd cried out in a chorus that resonated in Auden's ribs.
He crawled faster. The ditch deepened as he moved, and soon he was able to stand, hunched, half-crouched. The ridge was only thirty paces now. Thirty paces to safety. Thirty paces to a chance.
Twenty.
Ten.
He reached the ridge and dropped over it, rolling down the far side into a cluster of thorn shrubs. The branches tore at his cloak, snagged his hair, and dug into his skin, but he held still. The thorns masked his heat. The shrubs muffled his scent.
He forced himself not to breathe too loud. His lungs burned, screaming for air.
Above him, over the ridge, something heavy landed.
Then another.
And another.
He felt the soil compact with each thud.
Auden clenched his jaw and went utterly still.
The sound was almost unbearable - the Herd spoke as it soared overhead, and he had to will himself not to listen. God, the voices...
Then - slowly, like a tide pulling back - the sounds began to recede. Footsteps thumped away. Scraping limbs withdrew. The voices dimmed. The Herd was moving on. Auden waited until his muscles ached from holding still. Then he waited longer. Only when he heard nothing but wind did he finally let out a breath.
He eased out from the shrubs, careful not to disturb the branches. When he crested the ridge, the plains to the west were clear. The Herd had passed, a black scar on the landscape now moving toward the horizon.
But the scar was heading straight for his home.
Auden tightened his cloak and began moving. He kept a jogging pace, every few steps glancing behind him to ensure no stragglers had broken off to follow. The sun climbed higher, but its warmth never reached him. His mind raced faster than his feet.
If I'm quick, I can warn them. We can pack supplies - whatever we have left. Maybe Old Kasa knows a route east. Maybe we can hide in the limestone caves near the river. Maybe -
He forced himself to stop thinking in maybes. The landscape rolled out ahead of him - dunes, dead fields, some old stone fragments that once belonged to houses. All of it marked by the same decay that had claimed everything.
He ran until the tower was a distant blot on the plains and the shadows of the Herd were no longer visible even as smudges against the far horizon.
He ran until the Dry Lands thinned into sparse, brittle scrub, and the faint outline of smoke from his village hearths appeared in the distance.
He pushed onward, unaware that something else had started moving behind him.
Something that had taken interest in the man who still dared to run.