As the trees thinned and sickened, and the smell of the land turned sharp and sour, we knew we were close to our next hurdle.

  The carriage train slowed, then halted, as the first true signs of the area’s malign presence made themselves known. Orders snapped through the line—short, urgent shouts from officers struggling to impose shape on unease. Scholars called for their aides, voices edged with strain. Horses stamped and snorted, whites of their eyes showing. Donkeys shrieked their protest without restraint, making certain their terror went unnoticed by no one.

  The Blue Grass.

  Once, this had been the village of Aamot. That was before the growth came—before it bloomed and rotted at once, rupturing the place from within. In its first years it had expanded at a terrifying pace, tens of meters each week, swallowing fields, roads, and homes in a creeping tide of color and decay.

  Now the growth had halted. The grass lay thick and vivid ahead of us, blue in a way that did not belong to any season or soil. It stood motionless, heavy, as if satisfied—content to sit upon its dominion and wait.

  “High Investigator.” That title was mine.

  I had been buried in the study carriage, maps and northern reports spread across the table, corners weighted with tools and stones. I had little appetite for company anymore. Solitude had become easier than explanation, and the quiet suited me well enough.

  I opened the carriage door and looked out at Hilda’s grim face. Much of it was obscured by the veil of God’s creed, the fabric stiff with use and sweat. She was an odd composition—deeply devout, yet relentlessly curious. Too reverent for the scholars, too inquisitive for the faithful. I had never decided where she truly belonged.

  “We are at the edge,” she said. “The growth has turned from green, to dead, to coloured.”

  “At the edge, indeed,” I replied. There was no use hiding in the carriage now. Anomalous Routes were my charge, after all.

  “Convene Renhard, Halvdan, and Johan. Bring the Master of Humours and Miasma.” I shifted my weight, preparing to step down from the carriage.

  A breath left me then—slow, heavy, drawn up from somewhere deep in the gut. Reluctant.

  “…Bring the Master Theologian as well.”

  I stood at the precipice of another world.

  At the edge of the dead vegetation clinging to the toll road we followed, a new shade intruded—then several. Purple. Yellow. Blue. Red. Grass in patches, a sapling here and there, stained as though a dyeworks had burst open above the land and never washed out. Color without pattern. Hue without season.

  The grass itself held. It bent with the wind as any healthy growth would. Its length was unremarkable. Neither stunted nor overreaching. Nothing in its posture suggested sickness.

  But as I followed the curve of the road—half-hidden behind an old earthen bank—I saw the thing that gave me pause.

  A sapling.

  It grew in a perfect spiral. No leaves crowned it. Instead, roots unfurled where branches should have been, curling outward in the same precise geometry, turning in on themselves again and again.

  No decay here, rather, a malign intention.

  A deep affliction had taken root here.

  “Otto, the assembly is here,” Hilda said softly, her voice lowered as though sound itself might offend the wrongness gathering at the edge of the field.

  I did not need the warning. The approaching footfalls told me enough.

  I turned from the crystal-glass meadows and watched them come. Renhard first, jaw tight, eyes hard—looking more prepared to break my neck than to discuss strategy. Behind him walked Theologian-Elect Peter, trailed by robed underlings whose pallor suggested they might faint if asked to stand still too long. Their hands clutched symbols and books with equal desperation.

  Halvdan was there as well.

  He did not look at me.

  His arms were wrapped around John—our ancient giant—holding him upright with quiet care. John had not been fit to speak since the heavens tore themselves open. Neither had I, if truth were told. But where my affliction had settled in the soul, his had claimed the body. He had not risen unassisted for days. He barely ate. And he spoke to no one but Halvdan.

  I looked to John’s face and found nothing there. His gaze was buried deep in the dirt at his feet, fixed on something I could not follow, unsettled by a weight I could not name.

  I turned to Halvdan instead. He met my eyes, but only briefly. The strain of our earlier exchange still clung to him, drawn tight across his brow, held in check by effort alone.

  “We have arrived at the Blue Grass,” I said. “Anomalous powers and afflictions lie beyond this border. We are convened to decide on the path forward, and on strategy.” I gestured toward the road behind me, the motion hollow, more habit than intent.

  A breath escaped me before I continued.

  “The Charters have been revised here numerous times. They offer no clear answer—only that passage is traversible, under the right circumstances and with sufficient preparation.”

  Renhard spat at the ground, leaving a dark brown stain where his tobacco-heavy mouth emptied itself. I resisted the urge to groan at the display. Just spill your bile and be done with it.

  “You speak as if this road’s certain doom,” he said. “’Tis road’s been no trouble for me before—unless you’re daft enough to touch anything.” He let out a short chuckle, pleased with himself, though there was nothing in his eyes that suggested humor.

  “In what season did you travel here?” I asked, cutting the sound short.

  He straightened at once, shoulders squaring, ready for the exchange.

  “When campaigning season’s over. No use being there when there’s naught to kill.”

  “The winter, then,” I said.

  He nodded—then hesitated. Understanding crept in, slow and unwelcome. His brow folded into a frown.

  “We are in High Sun,” I continued. “Summer is here. The Blue Grass behaves differently when the greenery blooms.”

  “It is true!”

  A raspy voice carried over the small assembly as the crumpled frame of Dass entered the circle. He bore his burdens like a penitent: a thick tome hugged to his chest, several vials of uncertain make clinking softly at his belt, and a small cage held out before him.

  Inside it, three rats were huddled together, noses twitching, whiskers trembling as they tested the air. They sniffed with the same nervous urgency we felt, as though the rot ahead had already reached them.

  “Though the land is tainted and unsound,” Dass continued, “it still obeys the seasons and habits of other vegetation. As it blooms, its danger is heightened.” He shifted his grip on the cage, peering at the rats as if they were scripture made flesh. “Plants desire nothing more than to spread their seed—and here, that very seed may spell our end!”

  He gave a short, wheezing laugh at his own remark.

  No one answered it.

  “And is there no way around, Otto?” Halvdan asked. He looked straight at me now, at last. “Must we brave this field of rot?”

  “No. No other way,” Renhard rasped before I could answer. “The woods are dense in all cardinal directions, and likely crawling with more shit like this. The road is the way.”

  “The grass is of no consequence if you hold true to your belief,” Theologian-Elect Peter said, voice clear and composed, almost serene. “God and Joseph have guided us through greater peril. Heed them, and this will be no matter.”

  I studied Hilda then. She offered no stance, no signal to follow. Perhaps she truly stood between them all—faith and measure, fear and method—unable, or unwilling, to choose.

  “Any wisdom to part, John?” I asked.

  I turned to the Blemmye. Only then did he lift his gaze from the dirt, meeting me with those searching eyes, heavy with something newly awakened.

  “N-no. I have naught. I am sorry.”

  He shook himself in a small, broken apology—unnecessary, and yet helplessly given.

  He had his own demons now. That much was plain.

  “Dass—consult your instruments, and your rodents. Renhard, ready the train to depart. The wagons must keep proper spacing, lest dust and ill humours take whatever lingers behind them. We move as soon as we know what danger we face.”

  Some manner of assent passed through the group—brief nods, tightened jaws—everyone but John and Halvdan, who were occupied with the simple effort of remaining upright.

  “Halvdan,” I said, quieter now, “find another to carry him. Your back is failing, and John needs rest.”

  Dass uncorked his vials and stepped forward, venturing onto the coloured stretch of road, cage held out before him like an offering. After a moment’s resistance, Halvdan relented. Two broad-backed mercenaries took John between them and led him away. When they were gone, Halvdan returned to my side.

  “Yes,” he said, smoothing his robes as he looked out across the rainbow meadows. “We must ready ourselves for a God-slaughter, after all.”

  I saw no reason to indulge the remark.

  “Yes,” I said. “We do.”

  Halvdan was unused to direct engagement, so my attention lingered on Dass instead. His vials had been emptied in careful measure—onto grass, onto bare road, into shallow cuts in the dirt. I assumed they reacted in some fashion to the land’s ill temper, though I could not yet see how.

  “Indeed,” Halvdan said at last. The word carried contempt I could almost taste.

  “Otto—we were men of reason. Both of us. We laughed at Sunday sermons together. Myths and superstitions, nothing more than reagents and weather.” He struck my shoulder with the flat of his hand, not hard, but deliberate, and fixed me with a stare that searched somewhere far behind my eyes.

  “Where did that Otto go?”

  “Otto the High Investigator,” he went on, his voice caught between whisper and accusation. “Otto the doubtful. You, of all men, argued spirits and fey and gods into dust. You swore none of them held intent for our world.” His jaw tightened. “How has this shifted so?”

  I looked away from him.

  Dass studied the rats. I could almost swear he whispered to them. Then he crouched and opened the cage, letting one slip free.

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes fixed on the animal as it tested the air and nosed at the dirt. “It has shifted beyond compare. God never spoke to me before. He still has not, to be precise.”

  The rat moved farther out, tentative, tasting its freedom one step at a time.

  “But the Devil did speak to me. The Void. It told me to die—plainly. Without metaphor.”

  The rat scurried toward the rainbowed verge and brushed against the spiral growth.

  At once it failed.

  Its body bloated, swelling to twice its size, skin tightening and splitting as lumps rose across it in rapid succession. One bulge darkened to a sickly blue, pulsing once before going still.

  “I was no believer,” I said. “Yes. Then believe me.”

  I did not look away.

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  “We are going to meet a force greater than any storm, devil, blemmye, or God.”

  Halvdan’s eyes left me and settled on the swollen rat instead. His gaze hardened there, fixed and unblinking.

  “Then what do you expect we find?” he asked. “A god?”

  Hm. Indeed.

  I lifted one shoulder, granting my doubtful self a brief intrusion. “Perhaps. Or their force. Or their servants.” My eyes followed the ruined thing on the ground. “I would be content if we can harvest even a measure of knowledge from this hell.”

  Dass returned then, brisk and unsentimental. There was a trace of contempt in the way he worked, as though the land itself offended his method. The two remaining rats were still alive, huddled and trembling, but whole.

  “It festers,” he said. “All that grows must be treated as death.” His gaze dropped to the bare road beneath our feet. “The dirt is sound.”

  I nodded to him—a brief gesture of thanks for grim, necessary work—and turned back to Halvdan.

  “The route is clear,” I said. “We continue until we find what we need.”

  I took the front.

  I would go on foot, ahead of the wagons, ahead of the men who dared follow, setting the line by my own steps. The path demanded it. Authority meant nothing here without proximity to consequence.

  I moved slowly, eyes fixed downward, measuring each pace. Even a single blade of wrongly coloured grass could end me where I stood if it brushed skin or cloth in the wrong way. I had read the reports. Men collapsing within minutes, bodies swelling like week-old corpses left in summer heat. Others—those who crossed in the most active seasons—had touched only fragments, inhaled pollen, caught the faintest scent of seed. They lived longer. Long enough to rot from within. Cancers blooming in their chests and bellies, tumours flowering month by month until death claimed what the grass had already marked.

  The dirt itself was the risk.

  In High Sun, with the blooms long spent and their seed scattered, the danger was no longer confined to colour alone. Even bare ground could carry death, hidden in dust and grit.

  No wagon, and no man, was to advance before the dust of the last step had fully settled.

  As I rounded the bend, I saw what remained of Aamot.

  Hovels, huts, and houses lay scattered along the slope, their frames slumped and sun-bleached by long neglect. Wood peeled and cracked where no hand had tended it. Roofs sagged. Doors hung open, warped beyond use.

  And from within them, things had flowered.

  In one house stood what might once have been called a tree—though the word barely fit. It rose as a single crystalline mass, immense and unbroken, thrusting straight through the turf roof as if the building had never been there at all. No branches. No leaves. Only height and density, a solid intrusion that had claimed the space by force.

  Elsewhere, other growths asserted themselves. A bush coiled inward upon itself in a perfect spiral, its surface washed in blue and purple sheen, as though light clung to it unwillingly. Some forms had already died—skeletal remnants of growths that stood rigid and pale, white spines frozen mid-gesture. They reached neither for sky nor sun. Their orientation obeyed no natural rule.

  The road continued on.

  It cut through the ruin, threading between the rainbow-coloured deathscape, past every warped relic of the old world. And between each horror—between crystal, spiral, and bone—there lay the grass.

  Blue.

  Violet.

  Deadly.

  A hum.

  My jaw and neck tensed against it—the tune I had grown accustomed to—but it would not leave me here. The call of the malign clung fast, threading through bone and sinew. It knew me still.

  What did it know? I required no reminder of death or horror. And yet the vibration persisted. It crept into my ears, dulled sound, drew water from my eyes until the world swam at the edges.

  A wagon rumbled up behind me. Wood creaked. Harnesses strained. Someone called my name.

  I turned.

  A bespectacled intellectual sat on the bench, posture rigid, knuckles pale around the reins. His mules stamped and snorted, uneasy. Beside him, his assistant said nothing, but his eyes asked the same question.

  “Am I free to venture?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Hold every breath not needed. Let no spore touch you. God speed.”

  Only after did I register the words I had chosen.

  The man nodded, drove the wagon on, and the mules obeyed with visible reluctance.

  I raised my sleeve to my face, bracing for the dust. It had begun to stir even before the wheels passed me, a thin veil lifted from the road. As the wagon drew level, it worsened. Powdered earth billowed outward, curling and rising as though drawn by the motion itself. The driver urged the mules harder, and the wagon surged ahead, fleeing its own wake—as if the dust might reach back for him.

  I pressed my sleeve tight over my mouth and nose and held my breath.

  Counted.

  The air burned in my chest as my lungs strained, each second stretching long and sharp. My body pleaded for breath. I did not grant it.

  At twenty, I lowered my arm with care.

  The dust had settled.

  Mostly.

  The wagon crested a rise farther ahead, a shallow hill that concealed whatever lay beyond it. I doubted it was worse there than here. The land had already shown its hand.

  I looked back.

  Several more wagons stood ready, spaced at a distance so wide it bordered on the absurd. Drivers covered their mouths with rags, eyes fixed on me rather than the road. From where I stood they looked hesitant, cautious to the point of parody. Or perhaps it was I who stood absurdly far ahead—alone, exposed, planted in danger that served no one but myself.

  But this was my place. My procession. My decision.

  And what did it matter if the land took its toll on me? I was already marked. Already carrying a curse that sang in bone and nerve. A tumour felt almost merciful by comparison—quiet, finite, honest in its intent.

  Perhaps it would silence the hum.

  I set the thought aside, filed it where I kept other unusable comforts, and raised my hand to signal the next wagon forward. After a pause—long enough for fear to argue—the driver snapped the reins. The oxen lurched, protesting, then moved, hooves churning up the road as they were driven on before instinct could overtake them.

  I turned back once more, toward the bend. Toward Aamot.

  The village lay before me like a dream badly remembered. The growths caught the light in impossible ways, facets and curves that would not have shamed an emperor’s crown. Color and form arranged with cruel elegance.

  Beauty can be found in the most horrid things.

  Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps they were horrid because they were beautiful.

  I did not know.

  I was not ready to decide.

  I looked back to the wagon as it drew closer, already preparing to hold my breath once more. The road demanded repetition. Discipline. No indulgence.

  Another glance toward the village.

  Horrid bushes jutted from the remains of a collapsed timber wall, their forms warped and knotted as if forced through gaps too small to allow them. Elsewhere, a stone well had taken on a deep ruby hue, its rim uneven—some edges jagged and broken, others smoothed to glass by some patient, indifferent process.

  Somewhere else—

  Movement.

  And sound.

  A rustle, faint but deliberate. The suggestion of weight shifting. A gait, perhaps. Slow. Or the careful tumble of something descending a grassed slope, testing its footing.

  Thirty meters ahead of me, something emerged from behind a rotted wall veined with blue moss.

  It stood upright.

  It seemed human. It held itself like one. It was no taller than I was.

  My stomach dropped. My heart stalled in my chest.

  Something had moved through the growth. Lived. Endured the hellscape unmade behind me. And it wore a shape like mine.

  The world tightened. My pulse thundered. Then—clarity. Vision sharpened. Time stretched thin, as if the land itself leaned in to watch.

  It looked human.

  At first glance.

  The Hum tightened its grip. Urging me to stare. Demanding witness. Refusing release.

  I broke it.

  I turned—toward the oxen drawing near—and raised my arm to halt them before they crossed the wrong measure of ground. And then I felt it.

  A pressure I had not known since the University hall.

  Since fear and death had shared a single breath.

  The oxen to my left took it first.

  A streak of shadow tore through the air and struck with impossible precision. Bone gave way like wet wood. The neck shattered. The head was severed cleanly from the body and flung aside, still twitching as the mass collapsed. The force did not stop there. It sheared through the second ox’s shoulder, carving deep, ruinous flesh from muscle and sinew.

  One beast was dead before it knew pain.

  The other screamed.

  I turned back.

  The Not-Man stood where it had been, one limb raised, held at an angle that made no sense for joints meant to bend. The air around it quivered, thickened, humming in sympathy with my own bones. Dust lifted in slow rings at its feet.

  I saw its eyes.

  They had no lids.

  “Move! Save yourselves!” I roared at the wagon, forcing the words out with everything my lungs had left, hoping speed alone might spare some of us before another strike found its mark.

  Chaos answered.

  The wagon lurched. Robed scholars tumbled from its sides, limbs flailing, voices breaking into shrieks as they struck the dirt and clawed their way clear. Papers scattered. Instruments cracked. One man did not rise at all.

  Others did.

  Bull Hounds—broad, hard-faced, already braced for violence. They hit the ground running, weapons coming up by instinct, eyes searching for something solid to break. Perhaps they had always been ready for this. Until now, they had only beaten back weather and grief. This—this was merely the next turn away from the mundane.

  They had not yet seen what hunted them.

  I threw myself flat.

  The impact drove the breath from my chest. Dust burst up around me, flooding my mouth and nose, dry and choking. I clamped my sleeve to my face and held my breath by reflex—then understood, too late, that the rule no longer mattered. I drew air anyway, ragged and burning, trusting necessity over caution.

  It was closer now.

  Footsteps—measured, unhurried—moved through the bushes to my left. Branches parted without resistance. Leaves did not snag or slow it. It did not follow the road.

  It advanced through the growth.

  And the growth yielded.

  My head hurt. The base of my neck drew tight, and an ache settled deep in my teeth, as if the bone itself were protesting.

  The Hum endured.

  It warped my sight, numbed my fingers, pressed meaning into me without language. It told me much without saying anything at all.

  Gunpowder smoke unfurled nearby. I never heard the report, though it was close enough to feel. Through the haze I finally saw the soldiers—saw them truly see what they were aiming at, and choose to fire regardless. They moved like steel made flesh. And like steel, they could still fail if the heat was high enough.

  Brush and deadwood shattered. I thought I saw a root bleed.

  The Being was struck. It shrugged the lead aside and raised another limb.

  This one I felt through the Hum. Heard it too, somewhere inside my skull.

  One of the men was hit square in the cuirass. The plate punched through as if it were cloth. He fell at once. His brethren—four more of the same kind—finally understood. The focus drained from their eyes, leaving only naked recognition.

  My breath came ragged. My vision swam. Sound could no longer reach me. The bones of my skull rang with it—the Hum, it goaded me to die, to swallow my tongue and let me choke.

  I lay flat, mind slipping, spirit faltering, and let my gaze drift back to the thing set upon ending us.

  What a horrid thing.

  A mass of muscle, sinew, bone, and cartilage. No flesh to bind it. Nothing to hide it from the world. Its eyes were fixed on its prey, lidless and exposed to wind and grit, yet dull—lazy with death.

  I saw it.

  And I understood.

  This could never have arisen on its own. This abomination had been made. A mirror cast against us. The form of a human, wrought by something that had never loved us.

  Horrid. Horrid.

  Made with an ungodly purpose—built only to destroy what it could never be. I saw that clearly now. It would never know the weight of a lover’s arm, the patience of dough beneath the hands, the satisfaction of raising a roof straight and sound. It would never argue a thesis into sense, never leave a mark that was not a wound.

  Warmth spread through me.

  In my vision, flame rose—raw, violent—an eruption held within iron. A cauldron. A woman entombed, lost to time, burning still.

  Then eyes.

  The eyes of a man bound between body and thought, clinging to himself by spite alone. Teeth set, will unbroken.

  Blood slicked my neck. I felt the cut there, my throat warm, open, vulnerable. Alive.

  The Hum crushed inward, a vice around my skull, pressing so hard I thought the bone would split, thought my mind would spill out and be done with it.

  I roared. I did not hear it.

  My hands struck the ground, my feet kicked beneath me, and I surged upright, the roar still tearing out of me whether sound followed or not. I do not know how loud I was, only that the thing turned. Its hollow eyes found mine. They carried the dull sheen of a corpse left too long in open air.

  I had never been so hot.

  My hands, my legs, my body moved without asking me. Faced with a being made of hate, I answered it in kind. This mockery was unbearable. Was this what the Void thought of us? Two-legged things shaped only to kill? Naked of craft, stripped of love, cut loose from any world that might claim them?

  My jaw clenched until pain flared. I think a tooth cracked.

  Then I threw.

  Pebbles and dirt were already in my fist when I rose. I hurled them. The monstrosity flinched.

  It lifted an arm toward me. Still I heard nothing. Yet I knew I was roaring hard enough to shake lesser men from their feet.

  I found a stone and cast it. It struck what could only be called its head. The thing recoiled.

  And so I went on. Step by step. One breath clawed from my lungs after the next. I hurled myself forward, my anger cast out at a universe that did not care for its own agent.

  I was furious.

  I wished for it to die. With every step, I wished for it to die. What did it think it was? By what authority did it act?

  More stones. Rocks. Handfuls of cancerous dust and dirt. I hurled it all. I did not take a step without a bellow from my lungs, without flinging another fistful of contempt.

  The thing recoiled.

  The Hum had thinned, turned to a distant whine—shrill, misplaced—no longer inside me, but somewhere beside my body, no longer in command.

  What haunted me now was spite. Fire. Dread. Nothing else.

  And as I closed in on it—

  As I stepped down into its ditch, brought it level with my eyes, close enough now to tear sinew and muscle with my bare fingers—

  A hole tore through it.

  Its head. That was where it was struck.

  Somewhere between one of its dead eyes and the base of a hollow nose made of bone, a void opened.

  It fell like a sack of dirt.

  And as it lay there, I saw it too clearly.

  Like a flayed man—lifted straight from the stories of the Holy War, from the atrocities laid at the feet of the unbelievers. Its form, stripped and exposed, no longer seemed wrong. Its dead eyes, once obscene, now felt fitting. As if this was the state it had always strained toward.

  The heat left me all at once. Sound returned in uneven waves.

  And the Hum was gone.

  Shouts reached me. The long, breaking wail of an oxen near death. I turned my head and saw the Bull Hounds scrambling around their fallen companion, their eyes darting from the unnatural wound torn through his armor to the grass beneath their feet, searching for more threats.

  I was soaked. Sweat clung to my back, my legs, my arms. Dust coated me in dull brown. There was no sense in holding my breath anymore. Whatever would come, would come. A soreness had begun to bloom in my throat.

  I met a soldier’s gaze.

  His eyes held mine, fixed and searching, but his brow told me what his mouth did not.

  Fear.

  He feared me.

  I breathed. The sound was ragged, hoarse, thick in my chest.

  In my left hand was a handful of pebbles. I had never thrown them.

  In my right hand—something softer.

  When I looked down, vision steady now, mind clearing, I saw what I was holding.

  A deep-red growth. No leaves to speak of—only spirals and hard, angular protrusions. It pricked faintly against my skin.

  It smelled of pears and wet leaves.