The heavy haze arrived at dawn, seeping between the long-fingered giants of the forest. Unlike mist—which curled and pooled —this thing clung to the air, motionless and suffocating, as if the world had been swaddled in damp wool. Skylar squinted into the diffuse opalescence, but the haze swallowed everything beyond the silhouette of the youths ahead, whose hunched shoulders blurred into the pallor.

  Still, they had no choice other than to press forward. The path slithered, ambivalent, each twist revealing yet another bend, until the trail seemed to fold in on itself before repeating the same pattern, stretching into a horizon the whiteness refused to surrender

  Skylar tugged his cloak tighter, though it was not cold. The fabric, once fine, hung limp as a shed snakeskin, its frayed edges crusted with soil and old blood. He no longer recognized the tattered material, just as he no longer recognized the boy who wore it or the world that had birthed him fifteen years past.

  A stray acorn glinted dully below, brown as the dried mud staining his boots, a shining gem in the haze. His sluggish mind registered it too late—his heel skidded upon his next step, and he collided with the broad-shouldered boy ahead.

  That’s… better. Skylar blissfully hugged the earth, not bothering to wipe the dirt from his dry lips. The soil tasted of thyme – sharp, bitter – and for a heartbeat he was back on the sun-scorched slopes of home, where the herb clung defiantly between stones.

  Memory surged of the day it all changed, gray-robed figures glinting like blades in the noon sun, their parade into the village. He and the others, whooping, jostling, drunk on the promise of pilgrimage—the imperial city, the holy spires, adventures spun from the whispering fantasies of imaginative children with not enough chores.

  They hadn’t noticed their fathers’ trembling hands. Hadn’t seen how the light caught the tears their mothers hid with jubilant laughter. Was it age, or was it knowledge, that which made the elders’ wrinkled faces sagg, their spines hunch and laughter dull? Had they too once marched beneath these trees, on this curving endless path, beside these mockeries of edictorians?

  If so, why say nothing?

  A warden yanked Skylar upright, grip iron. He stumbled back into line, catching a flicker of something—resignation? pity?—in the stony mask of the man who shoved him onward. The firming of a jaw, tenseness in the shoulders – what did it mean?

  Barker clicked his tongue behind Skylar as the line lurched forward again. “Skylar, my ass.” he muttered, barely audible. “Should’ve named you Tripp…”

  Ahead, the broad-shouldered boy Skylar had collided with turned, his oak-brown eyes narrowed. Thick brows, delicate as moth wings, framed a face weathered by distance, not malice. The boy shook his head as their gaze met and resumed walking. Snorting, Skylar followed.

  Soon, the haze cleared and noon arrived. Clarity returned to the world, though not to him. His mind unravelled, the fatigue and stress too acute, uncertainty birthing chaos. He watched clouds fray and knit themselves into animalistic tufts, traced the whorls of bark upon tall trees, and listened to the wind hum its wordless hymn through leafy crowns.

  The sky yawned vast and blue, like a sea without shore. He craned his head and imagined gulls wheeling beyond the cloudscape, their wings slicing currents unseen. What vistas did they behold, in a sky so high the world blurred into myth? And what secrets did the wind carry from places where roads did not curve and cloaks did not smell of blood?

  Days bled into weeks. The forest thickened, its canopy devouring the sun. More children joined the procession—faces from neighbouring villages, strangers now crowding the dishevelled line until it stretched beyond sight.

  Why the lies? The question gnawed. Homage to the Edictum? Sunlight speared through the canopy, glinting off a warden’s pauldron—armor that should have been gray cloth, on whom commands should have been blessings. Where were the gentle edictorians from the hearthside tales? Where was the promised path to holy spires?

  “Halt!” The lead warden barked with a voice that didn’t echo so much as crush. His voice was hard to describe, so toneless and utterly devoid of feelings it fooled the mind. He imagined shadows clinging to the warden like evil spirits, the light too terrified to approach. “Time to set up camp. You know what to do, you shits.”

  Skylar drifted apart from Barker and Hug, joining his designated group. The wardens herded them lazily through the maze of trees.

  Yes, all was routine now, like walking, obeying… and getting struck.

  The river emerged first as an amalgamation of sounds —a liquid song cutting through the monotony of wind. It was almost twilight now, and the riverbank sprawled before them, fringed with willows whose branches drooped like elderly arms.

  Skylar knelt by the wet, grassy bank, craving a glimpse of the boy he’d been – round-cheeked, energetic, with blue eyes alight –but the water showed only shards as it flowed ever onward, just like the forest path slithered into eternity.

  He drank some, the sweetness blooming on his tongue, and smiled as he filled the water skins. Skylar’s fingers brushed his pocket, where a faint tremor stirred. It was a reminder that not everything about their situation was bad.

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  Back at camp, flimsy tents sagged between wooden beams. Skylar found Barker and Hug hunched by a fire pit. Hug stacked twigs with slow care, while Barker prowled the edges, agitation written in the lines of his expression.

  Soon, the fire spat to life, its flames greedily biting into the dry moss, They watched it burn while chewing leathery, tasteless jerky and taking swigs from their skins.

  Barker groaned. “How long is this shitty journey going to take?”

  “To the Edictum?” Hug mumbled into his knees.

  “You– you still believe we’re going there?” asked Barker with a laugh.

  “We are… not?”

  Shaking his head, Barker looked at Skylar in aspiration.

  “They don’t seem very much like edictorians, hug.” Skylar pointed out. “And this forest path doesn’t exactly seem like the main road.”

  Hug looked up at him, through the flickering fire. “Have you seen edictorians before?”

  “No, bu–””

  Barker’s laugh interrupted what he was about to say. Skylar glared at his friend, who seemed not to notice. Hug bobbed his head, as if that was that.

  There was a brief lull in the conversation as Skylar added another log to the fire.

  “The edictorians, or whatever they are, they are not– well, they are not what I was expecting. Where they are taking us, why our parents lied, nothing makes sense any more.”

  Barker sighed. “If you’re so curious, why don’t you go ask them again?”

  Skylar flinched, touching his stomach on reflex. It still hurt.

  “Sorry, that was unnecessary”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Maybe I’ll ask them this time.”

  Skylar laughed. “Well, you could use a beating or two.”

  Mouths stilled as night deepened, stars pricking the darkness like needles. Barker and Hug slept, but Skylar lay awake. He fished his new friend from his pocket and sighed in wonderment. Moonlight caught its scales—an impossible blue, as if it had slipped through a crack in the firmament.

  He traced the limber form, unsure if it shuddered in pleasure or objected in protest. What are you? A worm, a snake?

  Pulling his cloak tight—stiff with old blood and river mud—Skylar stared at the stars, the little creature nestled in his bosom. They offered no answers, the stars, only an ancient, indifferent glow which gave no reassurance.

  The fire died, the night grew colder, and he fell asleep soon after.

  The following days bled together in a confused mesh of forced marches and snapped orders. How often had they collapsed, only to be dragged upright? How many kicks had bruised their ribs, as wardens barked about pace?

  At long last, the path yawned open, trees retreating rapidly. The forest spat them onto an ocean of grass, over which a brilliant clear sky lorded and made the green, soft blades glimmer like legions of liquid jade.

  Beyond, however, stretched not mountains but madness–a wall devouring the sky. Skylar's throat clenched. This wasn't masonry, but a fever dream given physical form, stones stacked high enough to scrape the bellies of the stormclouds, so long across the horizon it seemed the edge of the world. His neck craned until his vertebrae protested, still the battlements vanished into the cloudscape.

  "How do you even build such a thing?" The whisper escaped him before he could cage it, but received no answer. Everyone seemed equally baffled and lost in astonishment.

  As they trudged closer, the wall’s horrors sharpened. Dozens of figures had been carved into the stone—soldiers frozen mid-stride, their blank eyes tracking the children’s approach. Skylar’s sweat cooled as the smallest statue turned its crescent glaive toward him. A trick of the light, he told himself. Had to be.

  "Halt!" called their chief warden as he stopped at the front of the procession, which in turn spread out before him. Skylar’s pulse thundered, for the man suddenly removed his mask, revealing a face that would forever haunt his dreams.

  Damp hair clung to a monstrous skull, pale eyes swimming in pockets of scar tissue.

  The children froze, breath trapped in their throats. The warden’s chuckle split the silence, spraying spittle. His teeth gleamed like decayed tombstones, and there was a madness to him not seen before now.

  This was no man, this was something else.

  "Your shit-stained pilgrimage ends here." The warden’s meaty thumb jabbed at the wall as he proclaimed. "Past that lies your new purpose. Run, disobey, do anything I dislike… well, let’s just say you know what happens then.”

  Indeed, they did, for Skylar could still hear the echoes of that unfortunate boy’s wet gurgles as he collapsed during one of the first days. Still saw the pleased twist of the lead warden's mouth as blood pooled around feet that would never walk again, a face that would never smile or eyes that would never shine. And that sucking sound, that terrible moment the warden pulled out his cleaver, as innards fell out like bundles of wet, twisted cloth. Skylar would never forget that.

  “You fucking monster.” shouted someone.

  The warden’s eyes zoned in like an eagle, but he could not make the figure out from the packed crowd. Skylar saw the knuckles of the warden whiten on the cleaver strapped to his waist, and so must the others have done, for everyone took a step away, even some of the other wardens.

  “Who said that?” asked the man in a tone so cold Skylar felt it in his bones. Like ice, if ice was death. The lead warden took a step, scrunched his nose, and took another, somehow seeming to grow larger as he approached. “They don’t really care if one or two goes missing. They haven’t counted them. That’s right, they haven’t even–”

  Suddenly the iron portcullis in the middle of the visible section of the wall ahead groaned upward, rusted teeth retracting into the wall's gullet. Somewhere in that dark throat, mechanisms clanked like a giant's arthritic bones.

  The lead warden snorted, visibly relaxed, then signalled something to the other wardens with those undecipherable hand gestures they used.

  “Get going or die.”

  Upon the lead wardens words, the procession of herded children began to make their way toward the now gaping mouth of madness manifest.