Northern wind ca early that morning, dragging a knife’s edge across the clearing.
The camp had been stripped to its bones—no lingering embers, no stray scraps of cloth, no sign that n and won had lived here for months.
Lan stood at the center of it, his pale-grey eyes sweeping the ground like a final inspection.
The talismans that had once shielded them from eyes both mortal and imperial lay in Miller’s hands, their faint glow dying as they were rolled and bound in oilcloth.
One by one, the protections fell, and the cold of the real world began to seep in.
The forest around them groaned under the wind. Branches creaked. Frost bit into bark. Beyond those trees lay the open wastes of Ranevia—a land stripped, gutted, and forgotten by the Solaris crown.
A land that still bore scars of gold fever, the shattered mines, and the bloody exodus that had followed.
Lan breathed in the sharp air and let it burn his lungs.
"We leave now," he said simply.
The n were ready before the words left his mouth. Venom adjusted the blackened pauldrons on his shoulders, the steel scraped and dented from past fights.
Garran stood silent as always, tightening the bindings on his fur-lined gloves, his eyes fixed on the path ahead as though morizing it in advance.
Halr’s limp slowed him as he moved to the front with a rolled map in his arm, but there was a strange eagerness in his step—like a man walking back into the arena after years of being forced to watch from the seats.
Miller fell into position at Lan’s right side. No words. No questions. Just the rhythm of boots breaking the frost-crusted earth.
They left the clearing and moved into the narrow forest trails.
---
The first hours were uneventful except for the sound of their own march. Every so often, snow would give way beneath soone’s weight, sinking a boot deep into the crust and cursing under breath.
Dead leaves crumbled beneath fur and leather.
The forest began to thin after a league, revealing the distant skeletal shapes of Ranevia’s abandoned watchtowers.
They were nothing more than black smudges against the pale sky, but their silhouettes carried weight. Lan had once seen them manned with Solaris soldiers—bright banners snapping in the wind, spears gleaming.
Now, they leaned like drunkards, their stones eaten by frost.
Halr broke the quiet. "Once we cross that ridge, there’s no more shelter until we hit the outer ruins."
"Then we’ll cross before night," Lan replied.
The ridge ca quickly. Snow drifts thickened on the incline, forcing the n to brace each step. The air sharpened, cutting at their faces, and by the ti they crested the rise, the land ahead opened into a frozen sea of white and grey.
Ranevia.
From here, the southern mountains were only jagged shadows on the horizon. In between lay rolling plains stripped bare by mining roads long since abandoned. The remnants of scaffolds rose, and here and there, dark pits in the snow marked old shafts—dangerous even in their death.
Venom stared at it for a mont, then let out a low sound that was half laugh, half scoff.
"Ho sweet ho."
The descent was harder. Without the cover of trees, the wind howled at them without pause. They moved in tight formation to break it, Lan at the center, Miller keeping his pace slow and steady.
Midday ca, though the light was weak and flat, making it hard to judge the hour. They stopped by the carcass of an old miner’s outpost, nothing left but a roofless fra and the rusted skeleton of a furnace.
They didn’t light a fire. Lan wasn’t ready for their return to be announced by smoke. Instead, they ate cold rations—salted strips of at, hard bread, and canteens of half-frozen water.
Halr crouched over a patch of ground where the snow had been disturbed.
"Fresh tracks. Not human."
Garran ca over. His calm eyes scanned the indentations, then flicked up to et Lan’s. "Mana beasts. A big pack. They’re moving south. If we keep to our path, we’ll skirt them."
Lan nodded. "Good. We conserve strength today. Tomorrow, we’ll need it."
---
They marched again. The land began to change—more pits, more ruins of wooden fras where carts once carried ore from the mountains to the slters.
Each ruin was a reminder of a ti when Ranevia’s blood had flowed into the Solaris war machine. Now, those bones lay in silence, snow dusting their remains.
The Mad Vipers didn’t speak much.
Venom’s gaze wandered constantly, as if trying to decide whether to grin at the familiarity of the terrain or spit on it.
Garran’s silence was less guarded than usual; his eyes traced the land with the precision of a craftsman seeing an unfinished work. Halr muttered under his breath as he checked landmarks against his mory.
Miller remained unreadable as always—just a constant presence, like a blade drawn but sheathed in discipline.
---
By late afternoon, they reached the edge of what had once been the Vipers district. Even after years, the air here carried a faint, tallic tang.
The snow was stained in places with rust, and the blackened shells of slter buildings around them.
Venom stepped over a broken chain as thick as a man’s arm. "Never thought I’d walk here again. Not after..." He trailed off.
Lan glanced at him. "After?"
Venom’s scarred jaw tightened. "After the king’s dogs drove us out. After they left our dead in the snow for the crows."
Lan said nothing, but the silence that followed was heavy enough to be felt by all.
They didn’t linger in the district. Halr led them to the outer ruins of Ranevia’s main settlent—now a graveyard of stone and timber.
The streets were barely visible beneath snow and ice, but so buildings still stood with roofs intact. Most had collapsed inward, swallowed by the years.
"This is as far as we go today," Lan decided.
The Vipers moved into motion, checking corners, clearing any signs of threat. Garran returned first. "Clear. No movent."
They sheltered in what had once been a tavern. The long counter lay on its side, and shattered mugs were half-buried in frost. Upstairs rooms were collapsed, so they huddled in the main floor’s shadow.
Lan took first watch, standing at the gaping window fra that looked out over the ruin.
The wind pushed through the streets like a restless ghost, carrying the groans of old wood and the faint echoes of a city that had once been alive.
Sowhere far off, a wolf howled. Another answered.
Lan’s grip tightened slightly on the talisman paper tucked inside his coat.
Tomorrow, they would march deeper. Tomorrow, they would begin the work of taking Solaris.
But tonight, the wasteland watched them in silence.
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