The impact never truly came.
One moment, the world had been noise, hooves, breaking branches, bodies falling through empty air.
Next, there was only the sound of water.
I lay on my back staring at the sky, lungs burning, ears ringing.
Wind magic had softened the fall, water had broken the force further when we hit near the riverbank, and earth magic had risen just enough beneath us to keep bones from shattering.Not enough for everyone.
The smell reached me first.
Wet soil.
Blood.
Crushed vegetation.
I forced myself up.
The cliff towered above us, jagged and merciless, its edge barely visible through the broken canopy.
Rocks littered the ground where parts of the slope had collapsed during the fall.
The river ran beside us, fast and cold, cutting through the stone like a blade.
And scattered across the riverbank were bodies.
Most of the soldiers hadn't made it.
Some had hit the rocks before the magic took effect.
Others had been trampled during the chaos above and fallen already broken.
Armor bent in unnatural ways.
Weapons lost to the current.Three adults were still alive.
One groaned nearby, leg twisted badly beneath him.
Another lay against a rock, clutching his ribs, breathing shallowly.
The third older, one of the escort captains, was conscious but pale, blood soaking through the side of his gambeson.
Krystoff was already moving, checking pulses, dragging the living away from the waterline.
Valkyrie stood a few steps ahead, axe still in hand, eyes scanning the treeline as if expecting the monsters to follow us down.
"They won't," she said quietly, more to herself than to anyone else.
"Too steep."John knelt beside one of the injured soldiers, tearing cloth to bind a splint with surprising calm.
Joen and Nibbo were arguing softly about how much magic they could safely use again without exhausting themselves.
Supremo sat on a rock, breathing hard, staring up at the cliff with a crooked grin that didn't quite hide the shock in his eyes."…that was fun," he muttered.
No one laughed.
I forced myself to think.
Count the living.
Assess injuries.
Secure water.
Find shelter.
Avoid panic.
The riverbank was narrow but defensible.
Stone on one side, water on the other, forest beyond that.
Hard ground, uneven footing, good against charges, bad for retreat.
We were exposed.
"We need to move the wounded higher," I said.
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
"If the river rises or something comes downstream..."
Krystoff nodded immediately and helped drag the injured captain toward a flatter stretch of rock.
That was when Jucelis stopped moving.
He tilted his head slightly, listening.
At first, I heard nothing beyond the river.
Then faintly movement.
Branches snapping.
Voices.
Coming from the forest.
One of the injured soldiers exhaled in relief.
"Rescue… must be the patrols. They'll have seen the stampede."
Another tried to sit up despite the pain.
"Told you… Command wouldn't leave us."
Hope spread too quickly.
Too easily.
Jucelis didn't relax."That's fast," he said quietly.
Krystoff frowned.
"What?"
"The fall just happened," Jucelis replied. His eyes never left the trees.
"Even if someone saw it, they'd have to circle around the cliff, That takes time."
The voices grew clearer rough, loud, laughing, not organized, not cautious.
My stomach tightened.
Soldiers moving through dangerous territory didn't sound like that.
Jucelis met my eyes, and I saw the same realization forming there.
Too careless, too confident, too early.
"Hide," he said softly.
The word cut through the relief like a knife.
Valkyrie reacted instantly, pulling the wounded behind a natural ridge of stone near the riverbank.
John helped drag one of the injured men despite his protests.
Joen extinguished the faint glow of healing light around his hands.
Supremo crouched low, grin gone now.
Nibbo whispered, "If they were rescued, they'd be calling out."
They weren't.
The footsteps multiplied.
Metal clinked.
Someone laughed loudly, followed by another voice telling him to shut up.
Bandits.
Or worse, scavengers following the aftermath of the monster stampede.
The adults began to understand too late.
I saw it in their faces as hope turned into something harder.
Fear.
We pressed ourselves against the rock, hidden by shadow and uneven terrain.
From here, the river muffled smaller sounds.
Anyone passing above would have to look carefully to see us.
The first figures emerged between the trees.
Leather armor, mixed weapons, no uniform, no discipline.
One of them pointed toward the cliff above, whistling low.
Another kicked at something on the ground, probably a fallen weapon carried down by the current.
"They fell," one said.
"Told you we'd find something."My grip tightened.
We weren't ready for another fight.
Not with wounded, not with exhausted mages, not here.
Beside me, Jucelis whispered just loud enough for me to hear.
"We wait."I nodded.
For now, survival meant not being seen.
Around us, the river kept flowing, indifferent to the dead, the living, and whatever was coming next.
We waited until the voices faded.
No one moved for a long time after that.
The bandits lingered near the forest edge, searching through debris carried down by the fall, arguing over scraps, laughing in a way that made it clear they feared nothing here.
Eventually, the sound of them drifted away along the river, deeper into the trees.
Only then did we breathe again.
"We can't stay," Krystoff said quietly.
He didn't need to explain why.
The riverbank had saved us once, but it wasn't defensible if they came back in numbers.
The wounded needed shelter. Water, we had safety, we didn't.
I looked up at the cliff again, already knowing the answer.
Too steep.
Too exposed.
Even without injuries, it would have been difficult.
With broken bones and exhausted mages, it was impossible.
"We go around," I said.
"Follow the river until we find a slope or a path back up.
"No one argued.
The injured were stabilized to the best of our ability.
Spears became crutches.
Pieces of armor were stripped away to lighten the load.
Joen used what little magic he dared to dull pain, not heal yet.
We couldn't risk exhaustion again.
We moved slowly, keeping close to the rocks where the trees thinned.
Every snapped branch sounded louder than it should.
Every shadow looked like movement.
The forest felt wrong now.
Not wild watched.
The further we walked, the clearer it became that this area wasn't empty.
There were signs. Old cuts on trees.
Paths half-hidden by overgrowth.
Stones moved deliberately to mark directions only locals would notice.
Someone lived here.Or had.
An hour passed.
Maybe more.
Time blurred between steps and silence.
Then Valkyrie raised her hand.
Ahead, through the trees, smoke curled into the air.
We froze.
A village stood beyond the next rise.
Not large, maybe twenty, thirty structures at most.
Built unevenly, poorly maintained, and roofs patched with mismatched materials.
No walls.
No banners.
No roads leading in or out.
It shouldn't have been there.
This was deep inside Ayer territory.
Any official settlement would have been recorded, taxed, and protected.
This place looked… hidden.The people moved slowly between the buildings, thin... tired.
Heads down.
No children playing.
No animals roam freely.
No guards in sight, but that meant nothing after what we'd just seen.
One of the injured soldiers suddenly stopped walking.His eyes narrowed."…that can't be," he murmured.
Krystoff glanced at him.
"What?"The soldier pointed with a trembling hand toward a woman carrying a bucket near one of the huts.
"She disappeared," he said.
"Years ago. Caravan raid near the eastern road… they said no one survived."
The woman turned slightly, and even from this distance, I could see the exhaustion carved into her posture.
Not age... Wear.
Someone who had stopped expecting things to change.
The realization settled slowly over all of us.
This wasn't a village.
It was something else.
We moved carefully, staying within the treeline.
Bandits could be anywhere. The silence of the place made it worse, no laughter, no normal life, just movement driven by necessity.
Then a voice whispered sharply behind us.
"Don't move."
We turned.
An older woman stood half-hidden behind a cluster of rocks, waving urgently for us to come closer.
Her clothes were worn thin, her face lined by years of hardship, but her eyes were sharp.
"Quickly," she hissed.
"Before they see you.
"Krystoff hesitated, but the sound of distant voices from the far end of the settlement decided it for us.
We followed.She led us through a narrow gap between stones, down into a shallow hollow concealed by brush and fallen branches.
From outside, it looked like nothing more than part of the terrain.Inside, a few others were hiding.
Thin men and women, eyes wary but hopeful when they saw the uniforms among us.
"What is this place?" I asked quietly.
The woman exhaled slowly, as if the answer itself was heavy.
"Not a village," she said.
"A cage."
Silence followed."They take people," she continued.
"Caravans, travelers, sometimes, whole families from isolated farms. Anyone who won't be missed quickly."
Her voice hardened.
"We work. ,build, carry, grow food. Repair their equipment, day and night."
My stomach tightened.
"That's how they stayed hidden," Jucelis murmured.She nodded.
"You look for camps. For movement. For raids. But they don't need to move..."
"Everything they need is here."Everything hidden inside the duchy itself.
Suddenly, the monster stampede made sense in a way I didn't like.
Krystoff's jaw clenched.
"The attack…"
The woman's expression darkened.
"Not natural," she said. "They've been driving monsters closer for months.
Feeding them.
Agitating them.
Pushing them toward patrol routes.
"A trap".
The fall.
The timing.
The bandits arrived so quickly afterward.
"They were coming to finish it," she said quietly.
"To make sure no one went back to tell what they saw".
The weight of it settled over us.This wasn't just bandit activity.
This was organized.
Planned.
Hidden well enough that even the duchy hadn't seen it.Around me, my friends understood the same thing simultaneously.
We hadn't just survived an accident.
We had walked into something much larger than monsters or raiders.
And somewhere in the forest beyond the huts, the people responsible still believed everyone at the bottom of that cliff was already dead.