A tense silence settled over the camp in the days that followed. The rescued children were kept in a tent near the center of the settlement, isolated but not forgotten. Their low, unsettling humming was a constant reminder of the Blightheart's grip. Healer Maeve, face lined with concern, offered what comfort she could with broth and gentle care.
August lingered on the camp's edges, a spectral figure among the wary survivors. The survivors kept distance, their gazes a mixture of fear and blame. He was the outsider who had walked out into the twilight and returned with a new horror. Lyon showed his loathing through grueling orders: digging new latrine pits, hauling stones to reinforce the perimeter, and taking the longest, most exposed watches on the northern edge of the camp, where the wind bit with the chill of the wastelands.
August didn't complain. The physical labor was a welcome distraction from the disquiet in his own mind and the alien memories that were slowly, insistently, becoming his own.
During a shared watch, Kael joined him at the crude stone wall. The old man moved with a quiet economy, his presence a comfort in the deepening gloom. For a while, they stood in silence, watching the bruised sky bleed into darkness.
"He's testing you," Kael said finally, nodding his head toward the center of the camp where Lyon was directing a group of men. "Trying to break you or force you out."
"Let him try," August replied, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "There's nowhere else to go."
"There is always somewhere else," Kael said softly. "Just usually somewhere worse." He passed August a piece of dried, leathery meat. "The humming is fainter today. Maeve says the children are sleeping more. Maybe the worst of the echo has passed."
August chewed the tough meat, the gesture feeling more human than anything he had done in days. "And Lyon? Will the worst of him pass?"
Kael let out a dry chuckle. "Doubtful. His father led this group for twenty years. He was a hard man, but fair. Lyon has the hardness without the fairness. He sees you, a man who faces a Blightheart and walks away, and he doesn't see a miracle. He is afraid camp's safety."
Their conversation was cut short by a sudden change in the air. The perpetual twilight, normally a gradient of muted purples and grays, began to shimmer with an unnatural, sickly yellow hue. It was faint at first, like a stain on the edge of vision, but it grew steadily stronger, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to writhe on the ground. A low, vibrational hum resonated through the earth, a deep thrumming that August felt in his bones.
Around the camp, activity ceased. People looked up from their fires and their work, their faces pale and anxious under the diseased sky. The children's humming from the infirmary tent stopped abruptly.
"What is this?" August asked, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of a borrowed knife at his belt.
Kael's face was grim, his eyes scanning the horizon. "I don't know. This is new."
From the west, a lone figure appeared, stumbling through the ochre light. It was a woman, gaunt and dressed in rags that whipped around her thin frame. She was moving with a desperate urgency, her gaze fixed on the camp.
Lyon and a few of his guards moved to intercept her at the perimeter, weapons raised. "Stay where you are!" Lyon shouted, his voice tight with alarm.
The woman didn't stop. She staggered forward, collapsing just inside the camp's crude boundary. Kael and August were closer and reached her first. August knelt, turning her over gently. Her face was caked with dust, her lips cracked and bloody. She was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps.
"Water," she rasped, her eyes wide with a frantic terror that went beyond mere exhaustion.
Kael pressed his waterskin to her lips, and she drank greedily. Lyon and his men formed a tense circle around them.
"Where did you come from?" Lyon demanded, his spearpoint aimed at the woman.
The woman pushed the waterskin away, grabbing the front of August's tunic with a surprisingly strong grip. Her eyes locked onto his. "It's coming," she wheezed, her voice a fragile, terrified whisper. "The Silent Hunt. The No-Moon Night is a mercy… this is… a culling."
She coughed, a wracking spasm that shook her entire body. When she pulled her hand away from her mouth, it was stained with a thick, black fluid that seemed to absorb the sickly yellow light.
"What's a culling?" August asked, his own voice low.
The woman's eyes rolled back. "They don't turn you to stone," she whispered, her voice fading. "They just… erase you."
With a final, shuddering breath, she went limp. Fingers slipped from his tunic, her hand falling to the ground. The unnatural yellow light in the sky began to recede, draining away as slowly as it had appeared, leaving the normal twilight in its place. The deep hum in the earth faded into silence.
The camp was utterly still. Lyon stared at the dead woman, then at August, his suspicion now mixed with a new, raw fear. The stranger was dead, but her cryptic warning remained, a poison dropped into their already-polluted well of hope. The Silent Hunt. Erasure. The words hung in the air, heavier and more menacing than any stone.