The solid earth ends where the mist shrouding the marshes begins. Wolf Squad halts their march at the edge of the old world’s ruins: a desert of black slime and stagnant pools reflecting a leaden sky. The ruins surrounding them are no mere rubble; they are the skeletal remains of an era that sinned through hubris, much like the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, now turned against their own creators.
The marsh reveals its necrotic architecture. Before them, the Cursed Swamp breathes like a sick animal, exhaling vapors of sulfur and rust.
Vargo Cortez thrusts a staff of rotting wood into the mud. Half the wood vanishes with a wet, sucking sound. ?Single file,? he orders, his voice reduced to a dry rasp. ?Follow my lead. If the mud bites your knees, you are dead.?
They advance. The mud is a shifting trap beneath the weight of their boots. To their right, the carcasses of disemboweled ancient industries rise like the skeletons of forgotten giants.
By now, they are safe from the danger of the Yellow Cloud. Vargo signals the group to remove their masks.
They tread through the mire with great effort, dragging leather sleds laden with metal. Vargo realizes the weight of the iron threatens to sink them too quickly where the stagnant water or mud runs deep. The only limit to the mud's depth is found upon the remnants of old paths that once served as roads and sidewalks for the people of the old world. He opts for a bold but necessary choice: ?The weight of the metal we carry makes us sink too fast. We must take a risk and walk close to the ruins.?
Silence falls over the group for several moments: everyone knows that the closer one stays to the ruins of the Cursed Swamp, the greater the risk of encountering strange and lethal phenomena. But they have no choice.
To survive the crossing of that unpredictable territory, Vargo orders the Bond. It is a thick hemp rope, greased and stiffened by the frost, passing from waist to waist like an umbilical cord between the damned. Every soldier of Wolf Squad is tied to it with a slipknot—a brutal precaution: if one sinks, the others must act as an anchor, but if the marsh decides to pull one down with too much force, the weight risks dragging the entire line into the black abyss.
The rope is never taut. It sways, slick with slime, vibrating at every misstep. Through that hemp, Dax Stern’s fear travels down the line like an electric shock. Dax is the heaviest; every time the mud bites him, the rope jerks the life of Mira Vance preceding him, throwing her off balance. Mira snarls, fingers clutching the rope to avoid being dragged backward, smelling the scent of sweat and terror emanating from the Bond.
Kael Wald observes the rope with analytical eyes, but his hands tremble. To him, that bond is the evidence of their fragility: they are a single wounded organism limping through an unknown land.
When a broken voice from the ruins hisses his name——he grips the hemp so tightly the fibers flay his palms, seeking in the roughness of the material a foothold against the vertigo of the absurd. ?Perhaps it is only suggestion,? he thinks.
At the rear, Don Thomas holds the rope as if it were a rosary of atonement. He feels it tighten and slacken, a hypnotic rhythm marking their march toward the unknown. For the cleric, that rope is the symbol of the sin that holds them together: no one is free, no one is safe until the last of them is out of the quagmire created by the sins of their ancestors.
The lanterns sway, illuminating sections of rope covered in mud that seems alive—a black slime connecting their destinies. Their shadows merge into a single shapeless mass against the facade of a gutted building: a many-headed monster bound by a single, fragile thread of hemp.
It is in that moment, between the screeching of sheet metal and the gurgling of a gas bubble, that an unknown voice breaks the silence. It is a sound that has nothing human about it, yet it chews upon the language.
— —
Vargo freezes. His jaw is so tight the muscles in his neck look like strained cords. He does not turn. He knows Dax Stern is behind him, that Kael Wald is trying to rationalize the sound, and that Mira Vance is already gripping her knife.
— — a guttural voice hisses from an old tank.
Dax stumbles, his weight sinking him to the calf. His breath grows labored; his wide, empty eyes search for an enemy to strike, but find only mist.
Don Thomas clutches his rosary. His knuckles are white. His heart hammers against his ribs not for fear of death, but for the horror of the illogical.
?DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM!? Vargo Cortez bellows. ?These voices are part of the Cursed Swamp. If you heed them, you will be consumed by terror and, far worse, you might allow one of these “things” to enter your head: the so-called “possession” I told you about. And that would truly be the end for us all.?
?How can those entities know our names?? Dax asks. Vargo is honest in his reply: ?It is one of the mysteries of the Cursed Swamps. Ask no more questions and focus your mind on our mission.?
— —
The cleric stumbles in turn. It is a truth that should not exist, an evil not contemplated by the Doctrine of the Church. His faith wavers in the mud. ?Why are demonic voices given the freedom to speak to men?? he whispers. That thought agonizes him and, paradoxically, makes him the least suited to offer comfort to the rest of Wolf Squad.
Giada walks with her head down, but there is no protection against what the marsh knows of her. — —
A tear carves a path through her grimy face. The memory of the young man she rejected, of the life she betrayed to follow the Castle, to spite her mother, explodes in her chest like a lead bullet.
Martel, nearby, feels his ego burn under the taunts of the voices. — —
Martel growls, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword. His gaze betrays a rage directed not at the words preferred by the dark, but at the captain who led them into this nightmare. The Cursed Swamp is dismembering Wolf Squad, word by broken word.
?I repeat, do not focus on the voices!? Vargo roars, struggling himself not to dwell on what he hears. He had heard voices in the dark during past expeditions, but this time it is different. The Evil producing them seems to be crafting a refined strategy against the psyche of every member of the group.
They reach a platform of cracked concrete as the remaining hours of sunlight prove insufficient to cross the marshes. In the distance, a combustion tower forgotten by time spits a flare of orange gas that tears through the darkness, illuminating the ruins like a chemical hell.
It is Kael Wald who breaks the silence, his glistening eyes reflecting the bluish flames roaring atop the steel structure. His voice is a clinical whisper, a desperate attempt to cling to reason while the rope binding them still vibrates with tension. ?It is a flare stack from an old extraction plant. Beneath this mud, hydrocarbon deposits have been rotting for centuries. Underground pressure pushes methane gas and sulfurous vapors upward through the corroded pipes of this skeleton.?
He points a trembling finger at the top of the tower, where the flame dances with unnatural violence. ?The automatic ignition system must have remained stuck in an infinite cycle before the collapse. What you see is permanent flaring. It burns to prevent the pressure from exploding the entire crust of this portion of the marsh. It is a wound that never stops purging fire.?
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Kael Wald, after carefully describing the flame as a process of oxidation, a predictable chemical reaction, watches the captain stop. ?Enough! We halt here.? Those words leave everyone stunned, including the imperturbable Don Thomas.
?But if night comes... it is the end!? Giada exclaims. The captain is already prepared to explain their only chance of survival: ?Night is not the problem; the darkness is. The sky is overcast, and we will not have the moon’s light. And those “things” you heard... well, they only manifest if the dark envelops us. This flame is our chance to survive all this. A true stroke of luck.?
Julien Martel tries to compose himself, remembering that the captain's experience is the only thing that can lead them out of this nightmare: ?The captain is right. If we light a campfire nearby and keep our lanterns burning as long as possible, we can make it.?
Thus, while the voices continue to worm their way into the minds of Wolf Squad, they light a small campfire—a precarious flame fueled by grease, debris, and branches from a twisted tree growing in a clump of earth amidst the swamp mud. Their shielded lanterns sway in their hands, creating circles of yellowish light that struggle against the long shadows cast by the external gas beacon.
They are besieged. Sitting in a circle, no one speaks. Each is isolated in their own torment. The voices continue to whisper from the edge of the light, where the mud gurgles. — — — —
Vargo looks at his people. He looks at Mira staring into the dark with hatred, and Kael shaking his head, overwhelmed by the absurd. He knows the night will be infinite. He knows every minute spent in that silence will break something inside them, another piece of their soul.
The only hope is the horizon in the direction of the Castle. A gray dawn that will be slow to arrive, but which is the only thing that can silence that chorus of deformed truths.
?As you have gathered, tonight we all stay awake and vigilant. If someone falls asleep... the nearest comrade must wake them. It is of vital importance to remain lucid within the perimeter of the lights protecting us from the darkness.?
Don Thomas sets aside his pride and his role as cleric, reinforcing the importance of what Vargo just said: ?I would like to give you some explanation, be it logical or religious, but I have none... For this reason, do exactly as the captain says. Nothing else matters.? For the first time, Vargo finds Don Thomas’s presence not so inconvenient.
The ruins of the gutted building seem to draw closer; the rope tying him to Vargo and the others transmits a sinister vibration. All are shivering or shaking, even as they do their best to ignore the voices coming from the dark.
— — the mist rants. — —
Then, the killing blow, a sequence that lays bare her guilt: — —
Under the raw, violent light of the combustion tower, Giada’s face becomes a mask of pain. Those words strike the truth she tries to bury every day: she traded the warmth of a man who loved her forever for the cold of metal and blind obedience, in the name of a pride that threatens to bring her to ruin.
Julien notices the suffering on Giada’s face, to whom he is tied by the hemp rope, and instinctively tries to take her hand. Giada is too pained to refuse the comfort he offers and accepts the physical contact. Both fight those demons, but their joined hands seem to provide only a slight relief.
Julien takes a step forward into the acrid smoke; the rope between them slackens for an instant. His hand grips Giada’s tighter. The warmth of his skin acts as a levee against the swamp's frost; it is a solid, real contact, the only thing not rotting in that desert of ruins.
Giada closes her eyes, surrendering to that pressure, grateful that someone is trying to bridge the abyss. But it is at that moment that the marsh transforms comfort into condemnation. The warmth of Julien’s hand, instead of reassuring her, evokes by contrast the tactile memory of Elian, whom she left with such coldness. Julien’s skin is rough, scarred by military labor, smelling of gun oil and chemical smoke. It is the "meat of the Castle." Every callus on the boy’s hand reminds her that she bartered unconditional and pure love for a companion in misfortune tied to her by a hemp rope and a simple need for survival.
The broken voices, sensing the contact, strike with surgical precision:
— — the darkness hisses beneath the gas tower. — —
The pain explodes when Giada realizes the truth: she is using Julien as a sedative. She is not holding his hand to find someone who knows how to love her, but out of desperate loneliness. Julien is only a substitute, a shadow of what she has lost, and using him this way makes her feel even more abject. Julien’s hand suddenly becomes heavy as a chain. The boy’s warmth burns her skin as if it were molten metal, because it reminds her that she no longer belongs to herself, but to a squad of the damned.
Giada feels the pulse in Julien’s wrist, and it seems to her like the ticking of a clock counting the time she has left before becoming entirely like the surrounding carcasses of the buildings: an empty shell, inhabited only by specters. — — the voice concludes, snickering in the dark.
Giada does not withdraw her hand immediately, but her grip becomes rigid, almost claw-like. Julien feels her grip tighten much harder, understanding that her psychological state is worsening.
At that point, Julien surprises himself with the words that leave his mouth: ?I am not Elian, I know, but I am here and I want to give you all the help I can. Be at peace.?
The unexpected empathy shown by Julien astonishes her greatly, for even she did not believe him capable of such words. Thus, despite the voices continuing to insult and snicker, Giada finds a minimum of mental balance to get through that endless night.
***
Hours pass, marked occasionally by Vargo Cortez’s encouragements; having experienced similar trials in the past, he is the only one with the awareness that Wolf Squad can overcome the horror of this night.
Then what everyone knew was inevitable happens: the lanterns go out, for there is no longer a single drop of oil in their reservoirs. The darkness advances just enough to reveal amidst the black something dark yet possessed of a kind of shape: a deformed being, yet partially human, staring at the Wolf Squad with two red eyes.
It lasts only an instant, but the vision of the demon is so terrifying it freezes the blood even of Captain Cortez. So his fears were true: the demons are not illusions; they truly exist within the darkness of what remains of the old world.
?Oh, God Most High, protect us from these demons!? Don Thomas exclaims in desperation. He holds the cross of the rosary toward the spot where the demon was glimpsed, but Vargo Cortez presses him: ?I appreciate the attempt, but pay no heed to voices or to whatever might be submerged in the darkness. Your minds must think only of the mission and the dawn that will rise in a few hours.?
***
Time, in the hours preceding the dawn, ceases to be a linear progression and becomes a vice crushing the lungs. The darkness of the Cursed Swamp becomes solid, a wall of ink and mist that even the roar of the combustion tower can no longer pierce. The tower's chemical light casts violet reflections on the mud pools, making the entire surrounding bog look like a pulsing open wound.
Wolf Squad is at its limit. The hemp rope binding them is no longer a means of rescue, but the exposed nerve of a single agonizing organism. Every shiver from Dax, every gasp from Giada, travels along the slimy rope, shaking the entire line. The silence is broken only by the gurgling of the chewing mud and the whistle of the wind through the bones of the buildings. Then, the broken voices return—lower, almost intimate, as if the mysterious entities were crawling just inches from their ears, shielded by the yellowish smoke of wood that refuses to burn.
— —
Don Thomas has stopped praying the rosary. His lips move without sound, his eyes staring into the void. The logic of the world has vanished: if God has allowed hell to merge with Earth, then morning is no longer a right, but a miracle that is not guaranteed to occur.
Kael Wald counts his own pulse to keep from going mad. He tries to calculate the Earth's rotation, the refraction of light, but his mind stumbles over the illogical. — — the marsh laughs. The boy presses his hands over his ears, but the voice seems to be born from within his own skull.
Vargo stands, a statue of mud and rust. He feels the rope’s weight; he feels his people fading away.
Giada and Julien are still joined by their hands, but the contact has become a torture of ice. Giada’s fingers are rigid, clawed into that human flesh to avoid slipping into a mental void. Julien’s warmth is no longer comfort; it is the memento of a betrayal returning to hollow out her chest. — —
Dax Stern is slumped over; the ox has fallen to its knees. His breath is a heavy rattle agitating the mist. His muscular strength can do nothing against words telling him he is only a beast for slaughter. Mira Vance rests a hand on his shoulder, but it is a mechanical gesture, devoid of hope; even the stray has run out of nails to claw at life.
Then, when madness seems the only way out, the absolute black shifts. It is not yet light; it is only a thinning of the darkness. The sky above the gutted buildings turns to a dirty gray, the color of molten lead.
The broken voices grow angry, rapid, as if in a hurry to finish their psychic banquet before the world becomes visible again. — —
The dawn does not rise with warmth, but with a cold, merciless clarity. Slowly, the outlines of the ruins emerge from the mist, revealing that Wolf Squad has spent the night on the brink of a chasm they had not seen. They look at one another: their faces are masks of mud, their eyes ringed with black, their features aged ten years in a single night.
They are alive, but the silence following the end of the voices is more terrible than the insults. The gray light reveals the hemp rope, dirty and worn, still holding them together. Vargo gives it a sharp tug.
?Up,? he says. And his voice sounds as if it comes from a grave. ?Dawn is here. The mud awaits us.? But Vargo Cortez truly does not know if, after such a night, Wolf Squad still possesses the strength to return to the High King’s Castle. Even Don Thomas, who had never shown signs of breaking, is reduced to an empty shell.
