We had moved quickly through the thinning morning mist, the edges of the camp shrinking behind us with every step. A hundred mounted knights flanked the road like a wall of iron and flesh, hooves rhythmically thudding against the earth. Their armor caught the pale sunlight as we passed, glinting like sharpened warnings to whatever still hid in the shadows. The carriage stood at the edge of the camp, dark and unadorned, a waiting box of secrets.

  My boots pressed into the soft earth as I turned toward the ranks of soldiers. Not out of ceremony. Not out of sentiment.

  “Name?” I asked the first.

  He looked surprised, but answered. I stared hard into his eyes, reading the subtle twitches of muscle, the cadence of his voice. Too calm? Too rehearsed?

  I repeated this process with every one of them. One by one, each knight received a handshake or a glance or a whispered word. Not out of camaraderie. Out of suspicion.

  I wasn't looking for gratitude. I was measuring presence. The flicker of a soul. The depth behind their gaze. Only six of them failed to meet my standard. Six whose eyes didn’t move quite right, didn′t look colourful enough.

  I filed their faces away in my memory. One wrong move, and I’d see them burn.

  With that done, I entered the carriage. It creaked under my weight as I pulled the door shut behind me, sealing the three of us inside that cramped, wood-and-leather box of unspoken thoughts. The wheels groaned beneath us, and the journey began.

  “Markus,” I said, already leaning forward. “You’re watching the soldiers for at least the next two hours. Sit by the window, keep a torch at arm’s reach, and if any of those six act up—don’t hesitate. Light them up.”

  I cracked the door open again and gestured outward, offering him the best view of the riding escort. Markus raised an eyebrow, lips curling into a smirk.

  “And if they don’t act up?” he asked, tone light but the edge unmistakable.

  A silence fell like a guillotine. It didn’t hang long, but it was sharp enough to draw mental blood. Neither Tom nor I answered. We didn’t need to.

  Markus turned back toward the window, and I shifted my weight as the carriage rocked over uneven ground.

  “Tom,” I said, voice quieter now, “would you be so kind as to explain to our friend here the two strategic advantages we’re working with?”

  Tom tilted his head thoughtfully. “Hmm… how should I start so you understand it…” He gave Markus a sideways glance. “Markus, what is it the worms want?”

  Markus scoffed. “How should I know? Tea and cookies?”

  Tom ignored the sarcasm. “They want hosts. Numbers. Growth. That’s their short-term goal. Expansion. And guess who controls the largest pool of available hosts in this part of the world?”

  A long pause.

  “We do,” Tom finished for him. “At least for now, we direct where the humans go. The worms have to follow the feast.”

  He leaned forward, his fingers laced together loosely. “That’s the first advantage. We bait the trap because we carry the bait.”

  “And the second?” Markus asked, his voice quieter.

  “The queen,” I answered before Tom could. “She must remain close to her worms to control them. At least for now. Her range is limited.”

  “For now,” Tom echoed.

  But even as we said it, doubt flickered in my mind like a candle guttering in the wind. Something was wrong.

  I stared at the ceiling, counting seconds in silence. My thoughts crawled. In purgatory, mere metres were enough to turn her offspring into beasts, but the soldiers hadn’t behaved weirdly yet. The distance… it's growing. That shouldn’t be possible. Either the queen was growing stronger—or she’d found a way to circumvent her weakness.

  I didn’t wait. I threw the door open and climbed onto the roof of the moving carriage, the wind slapping my hair and cloak backward in violent gusts. I squinted into the rushing air, scanning the column of riders trailing us.

  There. One of them—the infected. I could feel it in the way he rode. His body wasn’t moving like it should, his arms limp at times, jerking at others. He weaved side to side on his horse, like a marionette controlled by drunken hands. But he wasn’t frenzied. Not yet.

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  “Coachman!” I shouted, gripping the rail. “Bring us closer to that knight on the left flank! Now!”

  I must have startled him—the reins jolted for a moment—but to his credit, the man obeyed. The formation twisted like a chain snapping at one end as the carriage veered out of line and pressed toward the knight.

  I grabbed a mounted torch from its holder and braced myself, holding it high as the distance closed. The infected knight made no move. His head lolled. His eyes were unfocused. Something about it made my stomach knot.

  “Shit!”

  Just as I raised the torch, four riders ahead collapsed, thrown violently from their saddles. Their bodies hit the ground like rag dolls. Horses screamed. The line broke.

  The knights behind them swerved instantly, trained instincts kicking in. But the carriage—cumbersome, slow—couldn’t maneuver like they could.

  We hit the bodies full force.

  The world lurched violently beneath me.

  Time bent. For a heartbeat, I was airborne—just long enough to know it was going to hurt.

  I barely managed to hurl the torch clear before I slammed back onto the roof, the air knocked from my lungs in a sudden crack of impact. My vision flashed white. My ears rang.

  “Everyone, halt!” I roared, my voice hoarse and muffled as I clutched my nose, feeling the warmth of blood trickling between my fingers. Pain throbbed in my face as I lay sprawled atop the carriage’s roof, winded and stunned, but very much alive. The convoy ground to a sudden, chaotic stop—hooves scraping dirt, metal clanking as a hundred knights pulled up their reins and circled us like a tightening noose of steel.

  The air was charged with confusion and readiness. Swords were drawn. Eyes darted through the trees as if expecting elves to come screaming from the shadows.

  Markus burst out of the carriage with impressive speed, landing hard and straightening up like a predator. Without hesitation, he snatched a torch from a nearby knight, his eyes already scanning the fallen riders and their twitching bodies.

  I rolled to the edge of the roof, coughing once before dropping down beside the carriage with a thud. My boots hit the ground hard, jarring my bones. Blood still dripped from my nostrils, and I wiped it hastily with the back of my sleeve as Tom approached. Without a word, he tossed me a pair of pristine white gloves. I caught them, snapped them on, and turned my focus toward the last of the fallen—a knight barely clinging to his saddle, held in place by twisted stirrups and dumb luck.

  He was still. Unnaturally so. The air around him felt heavier than it should have.

  I approached slowly, grabbing the front of his shirt with gloved fingers. The silence was deep, broken only by the distant crackle of fire as Markus did his work—burning the other corpses. The knights nearby looked on in shock, their disciplined formation wavering slightly as the flames consumed what had once been comrades.

  Then it happened.

  With a sickening squelch, something beneath the knight’s skin began to writhe. A thin, pale creature—like a serpent made of mucus and malice—forced its way free through the flesh of the man’s neck. The worm flopped onto the ground, wriggling blindly, its squeals sharp and unnatural.

  I stooped, plucking it from the dirt between two fingers, holding it up like the revolting thing it was. The parasite twisted violently in my grip, tendrils flailing. I brought the torch closer, and it let out a shrill screech that pierced the tense air.

  “Perhaps you’ve heard of the recent disappearances. The murders. The bodies found empty, hollowed out like discarded husks,” I began, projecting my voice with icy calm as the circle of knights turned their full attention to me. “These things—this thing—is responsible. A parasite. It infects humans, crawls into their nervous system, hijacks their thoughts, their will, their identity.”

  I held the torch even closer. The worm hissed.

  “This is our enemy,” I said, making eye contact with as many knights as I could. “Not the elves. Not the rebels. This. There are no more of them in this unit—only six were infected, and now they burn. But in the greater army? There are hundreds. Maybe thousands. And we will eradicate every single one of them.”

  With a practiced motion, I uncorked a glass bottle filled with water and dropped the parasite in. The instant it hit the liquid, it thrashed violently, its translucent body undulating as if trying to scream. The water clouded. It twisted. Twitched. Then, slowly, it stopped moving—drowned, suffocated, broken.

  Good.

  I tossed the bottle aside and peeled the gloves from my hands, flinging them to the ground in disgust. The slime clung to them still, even through the material. It was an affront to all things natural—its presence offensive on a molecular level.

  Disgusted, I dropped the torch onto the corpse I had just examined. The fire spread fast, faster than it should. A moment later, the body detonated in a gruesome burst—flesh, armor, and steaming blood sprayed outward like shrapnel. I took a careful step back as the knights recoiled, a few muttering prayers or curses.

  “And if we fail our mission,” I said darkly, eyes scanning the scorched remains, “this world will become a hellscape. One mind. One queen. A hive of monsters pretending to be us.”

  Tom climbed into the carriage behind me as the silence thickened. I followed, brushing soot from my coat. Markus stayed outside for now, still fielding stares and questions. The knights trusted him more, or at least wanted to trust someone.

  Inside the dim cabin, Tom leaned back and sighed.

  “The slime,” he muttered, “it’s highly explosive. But why do the corpses detonate so fast after death?”

  I sank into my seat, head against the rattling frame. “Sweat,” I said after a moment. “Or something like it. The blood didn’t smell much different, but their sweat smelled sweetly.”

  “Hmph.” Tom stroked his chin.

  My thoughts drifted. Could we weaponize that? Could we lure them into traps, force them to detonate among their own kind? Perhaps. But even so, I knew we were already doing the best thing available to us: purging them.

  Eradication was our strategy.

  And judging by the way the knights watched the burning corpses with new, trembling resolve, it was also becoming our doctrine.