Chương 5: The First Patrol

The summons came before dawn. Voss shook Keth awake with his left hand. His right hung at his side, fingers curled, the smell of ash and cooked meat rising from his sleeve. The Echo of Flame used too recently. Again.

"Up," Voss said.

"Patrol. You're observers." Keth sat up, blinking. Across the room, Elian was already sitting on the edge of his mattress, fully dressed, boots laced, face blank with the calm that came from not having slept.

"How long you been awake?" Keth asked.

"Sunrise." Voss grunted.

"Yard. Five minutes. Boots, coat, no breakfast." He turned. His boot caught the doorframe. He muttered something, not a word, just a sound of frustration and stumbled into the hallway. Keth heard him bang against the wall, then the kitchen table, then a long pause.

"Commander?" Keth called out.

"I'm fine," Voss said, voice muffled.

"Just... fought with the furniture. It won." Elian stood.

"He's Voss." They dressed in the dark. Keth's coat was Voss's spare, hanging past his wrists, smelling of smoke and old sweat. He rolled the sleeves twice, then gave up. Elian's coat fit better, Voss had found him one somewhere, probably traded a favor, probably hadn't mentioned it. In the yard, Aurelian leaned against the wall, hair sticking up in the back, coat too big, eyes puffy.

"Morning," Aurelian said.

"Anyone else thrilled to be awake?" Voss was by the gate, buckling his sword belt one-handed, his right arm held close. He looked up, and for a moment his face was completely open—just a tired man in a coat that needed mending, squinting against the dawn.

"Thrilled," Voss said.

"Ecstatic. I might compose a poem about it." He finished buckling the belt, winced as the leather caught wrong.

"Meeting Lira's squad at the eastern gate. Twelve Unmarked, three Ash-Signs. You're observers. You don't fight. You watch, you learn, and if you get in the way..." He paused, scratched his jaw with his left hand.

"I'll probably yell. Might feel bad about it later. Depends on how much sleep I get." Aurelian blinked.

"He's... he's joking?"

"He's tired," Keth said.

"Commanders aren't supposed to joke."

"Real people do," Elian said, and followed. They walked through streets gray with dawn. The harbor was invisible, wrapped in fog, but the sound followed them—creak of ships, call of gulls, a memory of a better world. Keth's boots were Voss's spares, two sizes too large. He curled his toes to keep them on. The eastern gate was black stone, older than the houses. Soldiers moved like ants—torches not yet extinguished, rope being hauled, others standing still, watching the wall.

Lira Vane leaned against the arch, shaved head catching torchlight, throat tattoos visible above her coat collar. She was reading something, lips moving, forming words she couldn't hear. When she saw Voss, she folded the paper and tucked it away.

"You're late," she whispered.

"You're deaf," Voss said.

"We're even." Lira's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

"Squad's ready. Twelve Unmarked, three Ash-Signs. Plus your attachments." She looked at the boys. Her eyes lingered on Elian. Then Keth. Then Aurelian.

"They're wearing my spare coats."

"They're wearing my spare coats," Voss said.

"Then they're swimming."

"Better than freezing." Lira nodded. She pushed off the arch and walked to the squad, silent, no wasted motion. Keth watched her, trying to see what Voss saw, and realized he didn't know enough about command to recognize competence. The gate opened. Not the small door for messengers. The big gate. The one that opened for patrols, for armies, for the dead. It groaned on hinges that hadn't been oiled—Voss's sector. He hadn't had time. He'd been training them. Beyond the gate, the Wild Evolution.

Keth had expected a wasteland. Ash and bone. Darkness. The kind of landscape that matched orphanage stories told to frighten children into obedience. He had not expected beauty. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Overgrown. Everything grew, and grew wrong, but grew vividly. Trees spiraled upward in corkscrew patterns, bark silver-gray, leaves almost blue.

Vines hung like curtains, rooting where they touched the ground, forming new trunks, new branches—a forest that was also a single organism. Grass tall as Keth's waist, rippling when there was no wind, patterns suggesting something traveling beneath.

"Don't touch the blue moss," Lira whispered. She pointed to a patch on a nearby trunk. It glowed faintly, the color of a bruise.

"Rot-spores. Breathe them in, your lungs turn to soup in three days. We have a cure. Tastes like piss and works half the time." A girl stepped forward from the Unmarked ranks. Keth's age, maybe a year older. Freckles, nose broken and healed crooked. Short spear, pouch clinking with glass vials.

"I'm Talia," she said, not to the squad, but to Keth specifically. She looked at his face—really looked at the scar, not with pity, but with the curiosity of someone who cataloged damage for a living.

"You're the scar boy. The one the deer got."

"How do you know?"

"Everyone knows." Grin too wide, enthusiastic.

"Barracks gossip is our only entertainment. So. Want to learn something useful, or you just going to stand there looking tragic?" She pulled a vial from her pouch, held it to the light. Yellow liquid, slightly cloudy.

"Rot-spore test. Drip it on moss. Turns red, run. Turns green, you're already infected and running won't help. Want to try?" Keth took the vial. Warm from her pocket. He walked to the tree, let a single drop fall. It turned red.

"Good," Talia said.

"You're not dead. Yet." She took it back, recapped it, returned to her place. All while Voss and Lira organized formation. She'd slipped away, talked to him, slipped back. A small rebellion. A breath of personality in a place that tried to erase it.

"Move out," Voss called. They walked. Diamond formation. Lira at front, Voss at rear, Unmarked in center, Ash-Signs at flanks. Keth, Elian, Aurelian in the middle—officially observers, practically luggage. Grass whispered against their coats. Trees creaked in wind that didn't exist. Keth watched Voss. The commander walked with sword drawn, right hand hidden in his coat pocket. But the pocket moved—fingers twitching, curling, uncurling. The burn was worse than he admitted.

The Echo of Flame used too much, and the hand was paying.

"How's the hand?" Lira asked, not turning. Deaf, or nearly. But she felt the rhythm, the hesitation.

"Fine," Voss said.

"You're lying."

"Then stop asking." Lira's shoulders rose and fell. Silent laugh. They walked for an hour. The Wild Evolution changed. Trees grew taller, spirals tighter. Grass gave way to coral—pale, branching, fragile. It crunched underfoot like bone.

"Stay on the path," Voss said.

"Coral's fragile. If you Break it, you release spores. Different spores. Worse spores."

"Everything here tries to kill us," Aurelian muttered.

"Everything here is alive," Voss said.

"Alive things defend themselves. Don't take it personally." Aurelian looked at the coral, then the sky. Pale. The bravado cracking. Hand moving to his belt, where there was no weapon. Eyes darting to every movement in the grass.

"You're allowed to be scared," Keth said quietly.

"I'm not scared. I'm processing."

"You're scared."

"Fine. I'm scared. Happy?"

"Not really." They walked on. The first monster appeared at mid-morning. Small. A rat-thing, but wrong. Too many legs, six or eight, Keth couldn't count before it moved. It scurried across the path ten feet ahead of Lira, stopped, looked at them with eyes clustered like grapes, too many, too bright.

"Hold," Lira whispered. The squad stopped. The rat-thing watched. Then it turned and scurried into the grass, many legs making a sound like rain on stone.

"Not hungry," Lira said. Keep moving." They kept moving. The second monster was larger. It came from the trees, a wolf-thing, two heads. Both heads were arguing. Low, guttural sounds, not human words, but clearly disagreement. One head wanted to approach. The other wanted to flee. They snapped at each other, teeth clicking, while the body stood frozen between their instincts. Voss stepped forward. Sword sheathed. Right hand came out of the pocket.

"Wait," Elian said. Quiet. Not loud enough to command. But Voss paused. Looked at Elian.

"Don't," Elian said.

"It's not going to attack."

"How do you know?"

"I just know." The two-headed wolf-thing looked at Elian. Both heads went silent. Four eyes, yellow and slitted were fixed on his face. The body lowered, not to attack, but to... acknowledge? Keth didn't have a word for it. The monster recognized something. Not threat. Not prey. Something else. Then the head that wanted to flee won. The wolf-thing turned and loped into the trees, both heads now in agreement, moving fast, not looking back. Voss's hand went back into his pocket. He looked at Elian for a long moment.

Then walked on, saying nothing. But Keth saw his face. The fear he hid poorly.

"That was weird," Talia whispered, falling into step beside Keth.

"Even for out here. They don't usually stop. They run or attack. Stopping is... new."

"Maybe it's getting smarter," Keth said.

"Maybe." She didn't sound convinced.

"Or maybe it's recognizing something it shouldn't." She looked at Elian, then away. Keth realized Talia wasn't as simple as her grin suggested. She saw things. Chose to joke about them. They walked another hour. The patrol found nothing else, no monsters, no spores, no threats. The Wild Evolution was quiet, almost peaceful, a garden that had grown wrong but still grew. Coral gave way to grass again, then to moss soft and green and almost normal.

"Break," Voss called. The squad stopped. Unmarked sat on rocks, grass, packs. They drank from canteens. Ate dried meat. Didn't speak much. Patrols taught you silence was safer, sound carried, the Wild Evolution listened. Keth sat on a fallen log, boots sinking into moss. Elian sat beside him. Aurelian on the other side, head in hands, breathing slowly.

"You okay?" Keth asked.

"Fine."

"You're not fine."

"Fine, Keth." Voice tight. Hands shaking. Sweat on his forehead despite the cold.

"First time out here does that," Talia said, appearing from nowhere, canteen in hand. She sat next to Aurelian, close enough that their shoulders touched.

"I threw up my first patrol. Right in front of my squad commander. He made me clean it up with my own socks."

"I didn't throw up," Aurelian said.

"Yet."

"I'm not going to throw up."

"Everyone throws up eventually. It's a rite of passage. The Census should give you a certificate." She drank, wiped her mouth.

"So. You're the deserter?" Aurelian looked up.

"How do you know that?"

"Don't. Just guessing." She grinned.

"You have that look. Like you're running from something but can't remember what." Aurelian was quiet. Then: "I'm not running anymore."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Standing still. With friends." Talia nodded.

"That's either really noble or really stupid."

"Both," Aurelian said.

"Fair." She stood, stretched, walked back to her squad, spear bouncing against her shoulder. Aurelian watched her go.

"She's..."

"Optimistic," Keth said.

"Annoying."

"Same thing." Voss called the patrol to resume. They stood, shouldered packs, formed the diamond. Keth noticed Voss's right hand was out of the pocket now, and it was shaking... fine tremors, barely visible, constant. The Echo of Flame used too much. The hand protesting.

"Voss," Keth said, falling back to walk beside him.

"Don't."

"Your hand—""Don't."

"But—""Keth." Not angry but Tired.

"I know. I know what my hand is doing. I know what it means. I've been doing this twenty years. You've been doing this four weeks. The gap between our knowledge is not a conversation. It's a lecture. And I don't have the energy to lecture." He walked faster, pulled ahead. Keth let him go. The return journey was shorter. Path known, threats mapped, monsters either fled or not hungry.

They reached the gate by afternoon, sun high and cold, fog burning off to reveal a harbor that looked almost normal from this distance. Lira dismissed the squad. Unmarked filed through, back to barracks, back to walls and rules and rot-spore tests. Talia paused at the threshold, looked back at Keth, and mouthed something, he couldn't read it, face half in shadow, but it might have been "see you" or "stay alive" or just a grin with no words. Then she was gone. Voss stood by the gate, watching the Wild Evolution.

His hand was in his pocket again, but the shaking had stopped. Or he was hiding it better.

"Tomorrow," he said, not turning.

"Same time. Same place. You're observers until you're not."

"Until we're not?" Keth asked.

"Until you have to fight. Which will be sooner than you want and later than you're ready for." He walked through the gate. Shoulders slumped, steps uneven, the gait of a man who had used himself up and was running on memory. Elian stood beside Keth, watching the Wild Evolution. Trees spiraled. Grass rippled. Coral crunched somewhere out there, fragile and deadly and beautiful.

"Keth," Elian said.

"Yeah?"

"Did you see the way the wolf looked at me?"

"I saw."

"What did it see?" Keth looked at his brother. The calm mask. The eyes that were still Elian's eyes, still brown, still human. For now.

"It saw my brother," Keth said.

"And it was scared of him." Elian's mouth opened. Closed. For a moment for just a moment, the mask cracked, and something flickered across his face. Not mystery or prophecy. Just surprise. Like he'd expected a riddle and gotten an answer instead. Then he smiled. A real smile, small and tired and almost normal.

"Yeah," Elian said.

"Maybe it was." He walked through the gate. Keth followed. Behind them, the gate closed with a sound like a sigh.