The night exploded into chaos.
The blue lamps lay extinguished or had been torn from their positions, and the mist rushed upon the camp like a hungry beast. Ash couldn't see more than a few meters ahead. Everything was gray, dense, suffocating.
Then he saw them.
Figures emerging from the mist.
They weren't human. Not entirely. They had vaguely anthropomorphic shapes, as if someone had tried to sculpt people from mist and had failed miserably. Their bodies swirled and shifted constantly, arms stretching and thinning, heads appearing and disappearing. But they had eyes. Tiny points of dim, cold light, staring with a disturbing intelligence.
Mist Spawn, Ash thought, though he didn't know where he'd gotten that name. He simply knew it. As if the mist itself had whispered it to him.
"Take up arms!" the leader shouted from somewhere in the darkness above their position.
The knights were the first to react.
Ash saw one of them, a man in plate armor mounted on a nervous horse, charge at three of those creatures. His sword traced a silver arc through the mist, and one of the figures dissolved with an agonizing shriek. But the other two leaped onto him, and the horse fell with a heart-rending whinny.
Further ahead, another knight fought dismounted, backed by two mercenaries. Their swords danced in the gloom, but the creatures were fast, elusive. A mercenary fell, his cry cut off abruptly as the mist engulfed him.
Ash heard curses. Cries of rage and fear.
"Damn it!"
"Fall back, fall back!"
"I can't see, I can..."
Then, a wet sound. Something falling to the ground.
Silence.
Ash was paralyzed.
His sword trembled in his hand. His feet seemed nailed to the ground. His mind, the same one that had written hundreds of pages about battles and heroes, was blank. Empty. As if someone had flipped a switch.
This is real, he thought. This is real. They're going to die. I'm going to die. This is—
"ASH!"
A hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him violently. Ash turned his head and saw Kael. The young man's eyes were wide with terror, his face smeared with something dark that Ash didn't want to identify.
"Snap out of it, idiot!" Kael yelled, shaking him. "If you stand still, you die! YOU DIE! Do you UNDERSTAND!?"
And then Ash saw it.
A figure emerging from the mist directly toward him. A Spawn. Its cold eyes stared fixedly at him, and from its formless body emerged what looked like an arm ending in a claw of solid mist.
Kael let go of his shoulder and stepped in front.
The arm-claw pierced through Kael's side.
The young man opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Just a trickle of blood. His eyes met Ash's for a fraction of a second before he fell to his knees.
"Ka... Kael..." Ash whispered, his eyes widening as the smell of blood hit him.
The young man's body crumpled to the ground.
And something inside Ash broke.
But it wasn't his will.
It was the fear.
The fear shattered into pieces, and what remained underneath was cold.
The Spawn was upon him now. Its claw raised to repeat the motion.
Ash didn't think.
He simply acted.
His sword, that common steel blade, moved upward with all the strength he could muster. It wasn't an elegant movement. It wasn't a refined technique. It was a desperate, clumsy, savage strike.
The blade met some resistance.
And then it pierced through.
The Spawn let out a shriek that pierced Ash's ears, and its body dissolved into swirling gray mist.
For an instant, there was silence.
Then, the voice of the status whispered in his head.
[You have killed a latent beast: Mist Spawn]
Ash stared at the empty space where the creature had been. His chest heaved violently. The sword still trembled in his hand.
Kael lay at his feet. He wasn't moving.
Under the gaze watching the seventeen-year-old youth making his third journey through the misty mountains, he had given him real advice and had sacrificed himself to save Ash's life even though he didn't need to. Now he was dead, all because Ash had frozen with fear.
His fingers tightened around the sword's hilt.
But there was no time for lamentations.
Another roar resonated in the mist. More figures approached.
Ash raised his sword.
And for the first time since he'd arrived in this infernal world, his hands didn't tremble. He was angry. He would not die at the hands of those mist creatures. He would survive until the end.
---
Later, when the battle ended—or at least when the first wave subsided—Ash found himself sitting against a wagon wheel, staring at the blade of his sword covered in a grayish residue that was slowly evaporating.
A mercenary approached. An older man, with a scar crossing his face. He offered him a canteen.
"Drink," he said. "You did well, in the end."
Ash took the canteen with trembling hands. He took a sip. The water was warm and tasted of metal.
"I'd never wielded a real sword before," Ash said quietly.
The mercenary looked at him strangely.
"What? But if—"
"I bought replicas," Ash interrupted, not looking up from the sword. "Straight swords, curved swords, things like that. I collected them. I practiced in my free time, just swung them around like an idiot."
He fell silent.
The mercenary said nothing. He just nodded slowly, as if that explained something that didn't need explaining.
"Well, now you have a real one," he said finally, pointing at Ash's sword. "And you killed one. That's more than many can say for their first time, and much more than many survive. Don't blame yourself for those who died, kid. That'll only eat at you. Just focus on surviving."
Ash didn't respond.
He looked toward where Kael had fallen. His body was no longer there. Someone had moved it. Or the mist had claimed it.
He didn't know which of the two options was worse.
The mercenary walked away, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Ash clenched his jaw.
It won't happen again, he promised himself. Never again.
But deep down, in that cold, empty place he now inhabited, he knew promises meant nothing in the Misty Mountains.
Here, you only survived.
And he had just learned that lesson in the worst way possible.
...
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. In the mist, time lost all meaning.
Finally, when the attacks ceased and the creatures retreated into the depths of the mist, the survivors began to gather. The flames from the still-functioning lamps cast dancing shadows on faces marked by exhaustion and terror.
Ash stood up with effort. His legs barely supported him. The sword, which moments ago had felt light as a feather driven by adrenaline, was now leaden.
He walked towards where the others were congregating. He counted them mentally as he approached.
Twenty-five. There had been twenty-five at the start of the journey. Seven knights in their gleaming armor and the rest mercenaries hardened by years of working the caravans. People who knew what they were doing. People who had survived the Misty Mountains before.
Now there were seventeen.
Eight less.
Eight people who had been alive an hour ago, who breathed, who talked, who cursed and prayed and shivered from the cold just like him. Now they were memories. Names Ash would never know. Faces the mist had devoured.
Kael was one of them.
Ash clenched his jaw and pushed that thought away. Not now. He couldn't afford to think about that now.
The caravan leader—a tall man with broad shoulders and a salt-and-pepper beard—stood on a supply crate so everyone could see him. His armor was dented and his face had a fresh cut on his cheek, but his voice remained steady.
"Listen up!" he shouted, and the murmur of the survivors died down. "I know we lost people. I lost two of my best men myself. But if we stop to mourn them now, we'll join them before dawn."
No one said anything. No one dared to contradict him.
"The mist will keep attacking," the leader continued. "This isn't over. Those were just the first ones. The weakest. If we want to see the sun"—he paused, a bitter grimace crossing his face—"or whatever passes for sun in this damn place, we need to set up a guard and reposition the lamps."
He pointed to the knights who were still standing.
"You, with me. We're going to recover whatever lamps we can and set them in position. The rest..."
His eyes swept over the group of mercenaries, pausing briefly on Ash. Maybe he noticed something in his gaze. Or maybe it was just coincidence.
"The rest will prepare positions. Those with more experience, up front. The new ones..."
Another pause.
"The new ones will stand guard with the others. Learn fast. It's the only way not to end up like... like those we lost."
Ash felt the weight of those words. Learn fast. Or die.
The leader jumped down from the crate and began giving orders. The knights followed him towards the camp's periphery, where fallen lamps lay on the ground, some broken, others still smoldering with an ember of blue light.
A mercenary approached Ash. It was the same one who had given him the canteen. The one with the scar.
"You," he said. "With me."
Ash nodded. He didn't ask where they were going. He didn't ask why him. He simply followed the man.
He led him to a point on the camp's perimeter, right where the road began to curve towards the precipice. The mist was less dense there, but he could still feel it caressing his boots, hungry, waiting.
"We'll take turns," the mercenary said. "Two hours each. You watch that way"—he pointed toward the curve in the road—"I'll watch the precipice. If you see something, don't shout. You don't want to attract more of those things. Just... make a signal. Like this."
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers twice. A sharp sound, barely audible.
"Understood?"
"Understood."
The mercenary looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded, as if he'd seen something he liked.
"I'm Dren," he said. "You must be the new one they were talking about."
"Ash."
"Well then, Ash. Welcome to the worst night of your life. If you survive, tomorrow I'll tell you what a really bad night is like."
Ash almost smiled. Almost.
Dren took his position, his back to the precipice, staring into the gray abyss. Ash stayed where he was, his gaze fixed on the curve of the road.
The mist swirled. The silence was absolute.
Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the camp: spoons against tins, low murmurs, the occasional crackle of a lamp. In front of him, only mist.
And within the mist, something that breathed.
He didn't see it. He didn't hear it. But he felt it. His [Soul] attribute, perhaps, or that strange intuition his Aspect gave him. Something was out there. Waiting.
The hours passed slowly.
Nothing attacked.
When his turn to rest came, Ash lay down against a wagon, but he couldn't close his eyes. Every time he tried, he saw Kael. His face. The moment the claw pierced him.
If you stand still, you die.
Ash opened his eyes and stared at the gray, eternal, starless sky.
'I won't stand still,' he thought. Never again.