The fog does not lift. It ends. Just like that, as if someone has drawn a curtain aside. One second Tarin's boots are still groping through gray nothingness, then he stands on solid earth, and before him Otanheim stretches into the pale afternoon sun.
He blinks. The village lies in a hollow, ringed by gentle hills that loom like sleeping giants. The houses are built of dark wood, with shingle roofs that shimmer almost copper-colored in the light. Smoke rises from three, four chimneys. Somewhere a rooster crows. Normality. Ridiculous, impossible normality.
Behind him, Elin lets out a shrill laugh. "We're dead," she whispers. "We're all dead and this is heaven."
"Be quiet," Vara hisses, but her voice trembles. She holds Lora so tightly in her arms that the child whimpers.
Tarin turns around. He counts automatically. Tarin. Elin. Lora. Vara... Only five left. Yesterday there were still sixteen.
The gate—a simple wooden arch, no wall, merely a symbolic boundary—opens before they reach it. A man steps out, broad-shouldered, with a red beard that flames against his dark smith's apron.
"You seek refuge." Not a question. He sizes them up, and Tarin feels the gaze like physical pressure on his shoulders. "I smell ash. Not just from your fires."
"We just came from Yulong," Tarin says. His voice sounds hoarse, foreign in his own throat. "In case you've heard of that place—"
"We hear much." The red beard smiles. It does not reach his eyes, which are small and dark as wet pebbles. "I am Bramk. This is my wife Doreth."
A woman joins him, considerably younger, with a face that was once pretty and now merely looks tired. She wears an apron with bloodstains—fresh, Tarin notices, too fresh for butchery. But she smiles, and this smile seems more genuine than her husband's.
"Come," she says. "You are shivering. There is warm water and bread."
They lead them through the gate. Tarin notices that no guards are posted. No palisade. No ditch. Otanheim trusts that no one comes who is not welcome—or that no one comes who dares to try anything.
The village square is small, paved with irregular stones. In the middle stands a well, and above it a wooden scaffold with torches attached—not lit, but ready. Preparation for something.
"The Moonfeast," Bramk explains when he notices Tarin's gaze. "Tonight. When the moon reaches its zenith, we honor the gods who gifted us this valley." He lays a heavy hand on Tarin's shoulder. The fingers are short, the knuckles white-rimmed with dirt that no longer washes off. "You are invited. After what you have been through"—he sniffs demonstratively—"you need festivity."
Another man steps from the shadow of a house. He is tall, a giant, with a scar that divides his face from left temple to chin. He carries no weapon, but his hands hang too still at his sides. Fighter's hands.
"Varnok," Bramk introduces him, and something creeps into his tone that sounds like caution. "Our... patron. He and his people arrived three days ago. Also seekers of refuge."
Varnok does not nod. He merely stands there, his eyes—pale gray, almost colorless—wandering from one face to the next. Tarin feels Elin pressing behind him. The silence stretches.
"Marenlor," Varnok finally says. His voice is a whisper that sounds louder than screaming. "You speak as if from Marenlor. But you come from Yulong."
"We worked in Yulong," Vara says quickly. Too quickly. "A quest. For the guild. We are—we were—adventurers."
"Why?" Varnok takes a step toward them. "Why Yulong? No one goes there willingly."
Tarin opens his mouth, but the memory constricts his throat. The silence in the village. The shutters that opened without anyone visible. The way the villagers had smiled—all with the same false smile, as if cast from a single face.
"Money," he forces out. "We... we couldn't have known."
Varnok's mouth twitches. Not into a smile. Something else. Recognition, perhaps. Or memory of his own foolishness.
He turns to Bramk. "They do not smell of death. Not like the others." He sniffs again, this time deliberately theatrical, and Vara feels the damp breath at her neck. "Human. Exhausted, frightened. But human."
"That gladdens me to hear," Bramk says, and now he sounds genuinely relieved. He claps his hands. "Well then! Chambers! Rest! And then—the feast!"
He leads them on, chattering about the village's history, about the valley's fertility, about their goats' milk that allegedly tastes sweeter than any other. Tarin barely listens. He watches Varnok, who follows them, maintaining three paces distance, his eyes never leaving them for long.
And he notices something else.
The villagers—the few who are outside—work too quietly. A woman hangs laundry, but she does not sort the pieces. She hangs them, takes them down, hangs them again. A man chops wood, but his movements are mechanical, without the natural rhythm of real labor. A child sits on a house threshold and stares at a point in the distance. It does not blink.
"Here," Bramk says and opens a door. A simple room, two beds, a table, a window facing the square. "For the woman and the children. And here"—a second door—"for the men."
"We are not married," Tarin says.
Bramk blinks. Then he smiles again, that broad, red smile. "Pity, or? Quite fetching, but whatever. Rest. The feast begins when the first stars become visible."
He leaves. Doreth remains a moment, her hand on the doorknob, her eyes on Tarin's face. She wants to say something. Tarin sees it in the tension of her jaw muscles, in the twitching of her lids.
Instead she only says: "There is wine. Drink it. It helps."
Then she is gone.
Tarin stands in the room. He hears Elin begin to weep in the adjacent chamber, suppressed, angry. He hears Vara's whisper, too firm to be truly soothing. He hears Lora asking where Mama is.
And he hears Varnok outside, who does not leave. The man's breathing is so quiet that Tarin only notices it when he leans to the window and looks down. The giant stands there, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the window. He knows that Tarin sees him. He makes no move to hide.
He wants Tarin to see him.
Tarin draws the curtain closed. Not quickly—that would be weakness. Slowly. Deliberately.
The room smells of fir wood and old smoke. Somewhere, deep in his memory, Tarin recalls another place that smelled of fir wood. Another curtain he drew closed. Another window through which he looked while something waited outside.
Yulong.
He shakes his head. This is not Yulong. This is Otanheim. This is refuge.
But as he lets himself sink onto the bed, the mattress hard and unfamiliar beneath his weight, he still hears Varnok's breathing. Or perhaps it is only the wind in the chimneys. Or his own heartbeat hammering in his ears. "Tessa, where are you?"
Outside, the sky begins to color. Orange. Red. The blood of day bleeding into night.
And somewhere in the village, someone begins to sing. A melody Tarin does not know, but which sounds too much like home. Far too much like home.
He closes his eyes.
Not sleep. Just rest. Just for a moment.
But when he closes his eyes, he sees Yulong. The empty streets. The empty houses. The smile.
And he wonders whether Varnok truly smelled death—or whether he merely searched for something else. For something worse than death.
The voice outside swells. A choir now. The Moonfeast prepares.
Tarin opens his eyes again. He rises. He must go to Vara and the children, must ensure they are ready, that they remain watchful.
But when he opens the door, Doreth stands in the corridor. Not directly before the door—further away, at a window facing the hills. She does not turn around.
"You felt it," she says. Not a question.
"What?"
"The wrongness." Doreth turns now, and her face lies in shadow. "In Yulong. You felt it before you saw it. The wrongness in the people."
Tarin says nothing. His hand still rests on the doorknob.
"Me too," Doreth says. "In my village. Before the night came. When they arrived." She takes a step toward Tarin, and now her face is in the light, and Tarin sees that her eyes are vacant. Not three weeks. Three days, perhaps. "I see it again. Here. Now."
Tarin feels his throat constrict. "Bramk, Varnok and his kin—"
"No people." Doreth spits the word out like a bad taste. "No real people." Frightened. She does not know it with certainty. Or she knows it, only dares not think it. She comes closer, close enough that Tarin inhales her smell—sweat, something metallic that smells like fear. "But the others. The singers. The workers. Those are still people." She shrugs, a movement that would look casual on another man, but on her looks like a spasm. "Empty. Hollow. Like..."
"Like Yulong," Tarin whispers.
Doreth nods. Once. Sharply. "The feast. They invite everyone. Every time. When the moon stands high." She lays a hand on Tarin's shoulder, and her fingers are ice-cold. "Do not go."
"We have no choice. They know we are here. If we hide—"
"Then you are next." Doreth releases him. She goes to the window, her silhouette against the reddening sky. "I will go. My people too. We have no choice—Varnok does not trust us, he watches us. But we will not eat. Not drink. Not touch anything they offer."
"And if they notice?"
Doreth does not turn around. "Then we fight. Or die. But together, as in Yulong."
She falls silent. Tarin stands in the doorway, caught between the room behind him and the corridor before him, between the past he has survived and the future he does not know.
"Why warn us?" he finally asks.
Doreth laughs. It is an ugly sound, raw and without joy. "Because you have children. And because I lost mine. Everything. My husband. My child." She turns, and in her face is something Tarin cannot read—pain, perhaps. Or memory of pain so long ago that it has become mere habit. "Go to your family. Keep them awake. And when I call—run. Do not ask. Do not hesitate. Run."
She walks away, her steps loud on the wooden floor, and Tarin remains alone in the corridor.
The singing outside swells. The voices are harmonious, almost beautiful. They remind him of something he long wished to forget—of his mother, who sang when he was small. Of a life he no longer has.
He opens the door to Vara and the children. Elin sits on the bed, her eyes red but dry. Lora sleeps, finally, her face relaxed in a way that makes Tarin envious. Vara stands at the window, the curtain opened a crack, observing the square.
"Who was that?" she asks, without turning around.
"Doreth. She warns us."
"Of what?"
Tarin sits on the second bed, beside Lora. The child moves in her sleep, murmurs something incomprehensible. "Of the feast. She says something is wrong with the villagers."
"Like Yulong?"
"Not quite. But... similar." Tarin rubs his eyes. "She says we should eat nothing. Drink nothing. And when she calls, we should run."
"Run where?"
That is the question. Tarin has no answer. The hills around Otanheim are unknown, the fog might return, and outside in the darkness wait things he dares not imagine.
"We will find out," he says instead. "When the time comes."
Vara comes to him, sits beside him. Her shoulder touches his, and the warmth is surprising, almost painful after the cold outside. "I am afraid," she says quietly, so that Elin will not hear.
"So am I."
"In Yulong... when they came... I thought, this is the end. The true end. Not merely death, but... vanishing. Being unmade." She shivers. "I do not want to end that way. I want to fight, even if it means nothing."
Tarin lays an arm around Vara. It is the first time he has touched her, and it feels like a confession, like a promise. "We fight," he says. "Together."
Elin clears her throat. She still sits on her bed, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on them. "Me too," she says. Her voice trembles, but she lifts her chin. "I am no longer a child. I can fight."
Tarin wants to object, wants to say that she is precisely that, a child, his child, whom he must protect. But he sees something in her face—the same stubbornness he saw in Tessa's eyes, the same determination that carried him through Yulong three days ago when all reason said he should give up.
"Yes," he says instead. "You can fight. But you fight by watching over Lora. That is your task. Whatever happens—you run with her. You do not let her go."
Elin nods. Once. Her jaw muscles tense.
Outside, the singing falls silent. A moment of stillness so complete that Tarin hears his own heartbeat. Then—a single gong. Deep. Resonant.
The Moonfeast will soon begin.
Tarin rises. He goes to the window, draws the curtain aside. Below in the square, the villagers gather, their faces dancing in the torchlight like masks. They all smile. The same smile. The smile of Yulong.
But not quite. Here is something else. An expectation. A devotion.
And in the middle of the square, upon a stone podium that Tarin had not seen before, stands something. A statue, perhaps. Or an altar. It is too far, too much in the shadow of the torches.
But it does not move. And despite this, Tarin feels that it lives.
"Come," he says, and his voice sounds foreign in the gloomy chamber. "We must go. Pretend to be welcome guests."
"And then?" Vara asks.
Tarin thinks of Doreth's words. Run. Do not ask. Do not hesitate.
"And then," he says, "we wait for the flame to show us where to run."
He does not know why he said that. The flame. It is merely a word, an image that appeared in his head. But as he speaks it, it feels right. Like a prophecy he does not understand, but which he trusts.
They leave the room. The corridor is empty, Doreth long gone. Below in the courtyard wait Bramk and Doreth, their faces friendly, their eyes full of expectation that Tarin cannot read.
Suddenly another gong. And another. Something is not right.
"Ah, more guests! Wonderful!" Bramk calls. "Welcome! Come, come! The Moonfeast awaits you!"
The villagers turn to the arriving guests, their faces dancing in the torchlight like masks. They clap. A slow, rhythmic applause that does not sound joyful, but like the heartbeat of a vast beast.
Tarin walks. Vara walks. Elin follows, Lora in her arms, the child now awake, her eyes wide with wonder or fear—Tarin cannot tell.
They stand apart from the circle of torches. The heat is intense, unnatural for the cool night air. And in the middle, upon the podium, Tarin now sees what waits there.
It is a statue.
It is a circle.
White. Still. Then it burns, without fuel, dances without wind, and when Tarin looks at it, he believes for a moment that it looks back.
The place of the flame, he thinks. That is what this place is called.
And then, from nowhere, a voice sounds in his head. Not his own. Not human.
Welcome, it whispers. Welcome home.
Tarin flinches. He looks around, but no one else seems to have heard anything. Vara stares at the flame, her face empty with fascination. Elin holds Lora tighter. The villagers smile.
Only Doreth, somewhere at the edge of the circle, her face in shadow, only her eyes visible—only she looks at Tarin. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head.
No, says the gesture. Not welcome. Not home. Run.
But Tarin cannot run. The flame holds him, its warmth embraces him like a hand, and he feels something in him respond. Something he did not know, that he did not want.
Something that feels like coming home.
The gong sounds again. The feast begins.