By the second night, two of them were dead.
Not during a fight. Not from a monster.
Just… gone.
No blood. No screams. Just empty bedrolls and the cold air they left behind.
Marx didn't sleep after that. Neither did Eudora.
They took turns watching the treeline, backs pressed together near the dwindling fire. The others had stopped talking. Eyes hollow. Morale broken.
The deeper they went, the less the world felt real.
The fog never lifted. Time didn't move. The trees whispered nonsense in languages older than memory. And beneath the soil, things breathed.
"We should turn back," someone said.
No one answered.
Because turning back wasn't an option. Not for the Bound Path Guild.
Not when the Guild's name was carved into the contract of their bones.
---
A Voice in the Dirt
The third night, Eudora heard it again.
A voice.
Not from outside.
From within.
"Break again. Deeper this time. You've barely scratched the marrow."
He clenched his fists. Pain returned instantly.
Not because he was hurt—
Because something inside him needed it.
The wounds now healed faster. Much faster. The flesh didn't even bleed. It closed like melting wax—no seams, no scarring. The others hadn't seen it clearly yet. Only Marx knew what he suspected.
And Marx had stopped looking at him the same way.
Not with fear.
With pity.
---
The Buried Altar
On the fourth day, they found what was left of the missing squad: nine bodies arranged in a circle. One stood in the center, impaled vertically on a wooden stake driven into a black altar.
Eyes removed.
Tongue missing.
Their blood had been used to paint sigils across the stones.
Old words.
Forbidden ones.
Marx fell to one knee, retching.
Eudora didn't move.
He remembered this. In the other timeline, he never made it this far. But the altar was the same. As were the whispers curling off the rocks like smoke.
One of the recruits stepped forward and reached for the stake.
"Don't—" Eudora snapped.
Too late.
A pulse of black light erupted from the altar.
And something woke up beneath the forest.
---
The Screaming Ground
The next hour was slaughter.
They didn't see it clearly. Just shapes. Claws. Movement. The trees shifted. Roots turned to limbs. The fog screamed. Not voices—memories.
One recruit ran. Vanished.
Another drew their blade against their own throat—not in fear, but in silence. As if the voices had told them to shut up forever.
Marx fought like a man possessed. Efficient. Brutal. But he was slowing down. The fog clung to him.
Eudora didn't fight to win.
He fought to break.
He let himself be cut. Crushed. Torn.
And then he healed.
Faster now. Bone resetting in seconds. Skin crawling back together before the blood even spilled. His body twitched with energy not his own. A new voice hissed in his ear:
"You're no longer human. You're becoming correct."
Eudora screamed as something in his spine cracked. Not broken. Changed.
He didn't fall.
He kept fighting.
Because something needed to be fed. Not with food. Not even pain.
With survival.
---
After the Silence
When the forest went quiet again, only three of them remained.
Marx.
Eudora.
And a silent girl named Cray, who hadn't spoken since the first night.
They didn't speak as they dragged the altar apart and set fire to the stake. They didn't cry when they found the teeth of their missing comrades buried in moss like coins.
They walked.
Hours passed.
Days maybe.
The forest let them go.
And Hollow Pike faded behind them like a nightmare that never wanted to be remembered.