He should've died in the fog that night. Everyone else did.
The rope split when it shouldn't have. Tension snapped — not loud, but enough. Aren stumbled forward, the alarm bell behind him still ringing somewhere deep in his skull. Rain smothered everything, even the groans.
They had been ambushed an hour before dawn. His squad of nine scattered between rocks, trees, mud slicks. Someone yelled to regroup. Someone else stopped mid-sentence.
Aren didn't fire. He ran. Then turned. Then crawled. His knee hit something soft, too warm — he didn't check.
When he reached the ridge above the southern trench line, a soldier from a different squad pulled him up and cursed.
"Lucky shit," the man muttered. He spat blood and smoke.
Aren blinked rain from his lashes. "Are we—"
"Whole squad's down. Yours too. Didn't anyone tell you that rope's too brittle to trust?"
Aren looked back, then at the frayed cord still looped loosely around his left wrist. The knot should've held. It always had.
The survivors counted five, all from different squads. The officer didn't speak until morning.
"You'll be reassigned," she said. "Luck like yours needs a better post."
He didn't answer. His boots were dry. Everyone else's squelched.
The following week, it rained again. The tents in Sector 9 collapsed when the ground softened. Thirty-two injured. One dead — a medic who had treated Aren's twisted wrist the day before.
Coincidence, he thought. Then shook his head and thought nothing.
The reassignment came folded in wax and tied with red twine. The ink was still wet.
Aren carried the note in his coat pocket for two days before reporting. He told himself he wasn't waiting. Just cautious. Careful with timing. But he lingered outside the transport post long enough to see two others turned away — reassigned out for disciplinary fatigue.
He stepped forward. The guard read the letter and whistled.
"One of the high fens? You must've impressed someone."
Aren didn't answer. The guard stamped the pass anyway.
The high fens were always misted. A dozen observation towers stood crooked between black marshes and coiled tree roots. Insects swarmed like fog, and the sun was a rumor.
They gave him a bunk in Tower Nine. Six other soldiers rotated there. They didn't ask questions. One offered him boiled root and a cracked mug. Another showed him how to read the tower's worn storm-dials.
Aren learned quickly. He always did. He memorized the coordinates of each ridge. He mapped wind curves and storm tides without needing second takes. It didn't feel strange. Just efficient.
The others said so too. At first, with admiration. Then, quieter.
On his seventh night, the dials jammed.
A storm swept in from the northeast without warning. The tower held, but two others didn't. Reinforcements came too late. Eight men drowned in the rising basin. One survivor surfaced, hysterical, asking why Tower Nine hadn't collapsed too.
Aren hadn't moved. He'd been staring at the dials before the wind changed. He'd said nothing.
He said nothing now.
The commander mentioned the word again: "Lucky."
He looked at Aren too long when he said it.
The next morning, the sky was too clear.No mist, no clouds. Just a wide, pale dome pressing down on the basin like a lid on silence.
Aren sat on the tower's outer platform, one boot swinging off the edge. His fingers traced the rust at the base of the storm-dial — three chips wide where the shaft had buckled and re-formed overnight. The metal had cracked during the pressure shift. It hadn't broken.
He remembered the way the wind had shifted: sudden, unnatural. How the towers to the west had leaned too early. How they'd gone silent before the first wave hit.
He'd known.Not consciously — not something he could explain or measure. But there had been a pressure in his chest, a turning point in the noise. The kind of pause the world made when waiting to see who blinked.
Behind him, someone climbed the ladder. The boards creaked.
It was Leven, the youngest of the station crew. Blond hair darkened with swamp sweat. She carried a dented tin cup and a cloth bundle.
"I saved the clean root," she said. "Or the least dirty one."
He accepted the food, but not the eye contact. She didn't push.
"They're sending a scribe," she said after a pause. "To log the damages. Official cause is 'equipment defect.' Again."
Aren chewed slowly. "Again."
"You're not on the list."
"What list?"
"Transfers. Most of us are getting cycled to the outer marsh. Except you. Tower Nine stays."
Of course it does.
He didn't say that. He didn't say anything until she left. Then he sat still until the sky dulled and the flies came.
That night, the tower lanterns sputtered. Wind scratched the windows.
Aren couldn't sleep. Not from guilt — he hadn't given it a name yet — but from the weight of stillness. Something in the air around the tower felt too taut, like a thread stretched near breaking.
He sat at the mess table with his back to the stove, the kettle cooling beside him.
Footsteps came sharp down the stairs. Then a pause.
It was Maren — older, sharper, from Tower Six before it collapsed. His face looked carved in bark and years. He walked like he expected something to give underfoot.
"I've seen it before," he said.
Aren didn't reply. He poured tea, even though the cup wasn't his.
"You show up. People die. And someone says 'lucky.' Like that's supposed to mean something."
The tea steamed quietly. Aren watched it swirl.
Maren leaned forward. "There were twenty-one men in Tower Six. I knew every one. I read the dials right. We all did. But somehow your tower — with its half-rotted supports and bent lightning rods — stays standing? Again?"
Aren finally spoke. "You think I planned that?"
"No," Maren said. "I think you don't know what you're doing. That's worse."
His knuckles were white on the table edge. He didn't raise his voice.
"I had a brother," he added. "Name was Sella. He moved out of your path in the trench two months back. Two hours later, he stepped on the first minefield we'd mapped in three years."
Aren closed his eyes.
Maren stood straight. "I'm not going to shoot you. I've seen what happens to people who try."
He walked out. Didn't slam the door. That would've meant he expected to hear it echo.
Just before dawn, Aren stepped outside.
The mist had returned, thin and pale like a forgotten breath. His boots left shallow prints on the wet planks of the outer watch, but the fog swallowed them in minutes.
He reached into his pocket, not thinking, and found a coin. Not one he remembered carrying.
It was bent — barely noticeable — like it had been stepped on once and then smoothed over. The face was worn smooth, its edges dulled.
He turned it between his fingers. Once. Twice.
Then he set it on the railing.Left it there.
When he went back inside, he didn't look to see if the wind took it.