CHAPTER 94: SHADOW FOLLOWER

Emerius shook Charon awake.

He jostled up, being stilled by a hand gripping his shoulder. A finger raised to the blonde swordsman’s lips, followed by a quiet hushing sound.

His eyebrows knitted in confusion before Emerius leaned in.

"The shadow is back. It is not moving, so we are going to see what we can learn."

Still confused, Charon pushed himself up and looked around the camp. The fire was gone, only a few smolders remaining in their makeshift pit. A small pile of unused wood sat beside it.

The others were already awake, standing in a line a few yards away. His skeletons were also over there, preparing to intervene in any altercation.

Walking over, he saw a vaguely human figure opposite them, like a mannequin had been set into the mist.

It was about as tall as an average man, with a semi-built form. It had no physical hair, yet the fog still framed a full head.

"Has it done anything?"

Darius shook his head.

"Nothing at all. I was on watch when it appeared. It had just checked this angle one moment, and the next time I looked back, here it was. Unmoving."

Charon instinctively turned to Annie, who seemed like the person most educated on a topic like "strange fog silhouettes that watch you in destroyed lands."

She just shrugged.

"I’ve never seen anything like it. The closest I have to an idea is a lost soul of some sort. I don’t know why it’d be here, though, or why it would be watching us."

"Should we touch it?"

Everyone turned to stare at him as if he were crazy, Annie voicing their opinions.

"Touch it? It is obviously unnatural. Millions of magical traps trigger on contact. It could be inert until we try and involve ourselves with it. So long as it remains useless, we should ignore it and press on."

The others emphatically nodded their agreement.

’Well, I can’t outvote the rest.’

Still, he felt a draw towards the shape, as if he could reach out and feel it. He focused more on packing up camp to distract himself.

The cloth he was using as a bed was packed into a bag, followed by some of the tools they had used to construct the fire. Some of the wood was kept, and Liam was all too eager to carry it.

"I haven’t been getting much of a workout since we left. It’s good for me!"

Charon supposed it was easier to be excited about physical effort when you looked like you ate the second-largest guy in your city.

Before they left, they decided to elect someone to constantly watch behind them in case they were followed.

Charon and Red were both quickly removed from the list of considerations, the former so he could focus on his summons and the latter due to her excessive silence, which no one seemed ready to comment on.

Annie was the next off, so she could try and identify other indicators of their location, and possibly a way out. That just left the three warriors, which was made easier by Emerius volunteering.

"My agility makes me uniquely suited to engaging any unexpected threats. I can buy the rest of you time to prepare."

They learned that having a lookout was a good idea almost instantly when Emerius reported that the humanoid figure was still right behind them, even after they had long left the perimeter of the encampment.

"He is not changing form, nor is he openly hostile. It could be nothing, but I will watch him closely. Only the gods know what this thing is capable of."

With Emerius’ words as their only comfort, they continued moving through the Dead Lands in the vague direction Darius identified as the way North. They all would shoot glances behind them at random intervals, no one feeling confident in the pacifism of a magical human in a place like this.

Still, it followed.

Not like a person. Not even like a predator. It never moved when watched, never shifted position while anyone had their eyes on it. But whenever they blinked, or turned their heads, or stepped too far ahead... it was always there again.

Charon checked six times. Each time, the silhouette had repositioned, standing a few paces closer than it had before.

It never made a sound.

By midday, the group had stopped pretending to ignore it. Even Red turned her head once, staring long enough to leave Charon mildly unnerved. Her expression didn’t change, but something in her shoulders stiffened, like she was ready to run.

No one ate lunch.

Annie scribbled furiously in her notebook, sketching the figure from different angles.

Occasionally, she muttered hypotheses under her breath. Most of them involved obscure magical theory and far-flung folklore. None of them sounded hopeful.

Darius remained calm. Or at least, his posture did. His hand, however, rested tightly on his sword, even as they walked, his knuckles white and unmoving. At one point, he quietly asked Emerius if the thing had done anything new.

"No, but it is closer. I believe it understands we are watching."

That didn’t help.

The terrain changed again. The lifeless grass vanished altogether. What had once been stone and withered tree roots gave way to fractured black shale, cracking beneath their steps like glass under pressure.

The air smelled faintly metallic, like rusted iron and smelted bronze, and sterile, like a forgotten forge still spewing its toxic fumes into the sky.

Liam was the first to speak after hours of silence.

"So, what’s the plan if this thing suddenly goes from standing there to charging us?"

Charon answered before anyone else could.

"I order every skeleton I have to charge right back at it while we all do our best to fight it.

Liam nodded.

"Sounds good so far. And what if we start to lose?"

Charon shrugged.

"Someone else better die first so I have more time to run."

The brute laughed. No one else did.

They crested a ridge not long after. Below it was what remained of a town. Not ruins. Not ancient rubble. A town.

Whole. Intact.

Rows of cobbled streets and wooden buildings that looked lived in. Wear and tear were everywhere, but never excessively, like the maintenance crew would arrive any day.

Whisps of gray smoke left a few stone chimneys, the fires long since put out. A central manor sat in the very middle, gray hedges flanking it on every side.

Color had been ripped out, root and stem. Brown wood was now gray, and stone was black, as if Death himself had spread his essence across the area.

What was the most unnerving about it all was the sound. There was no chatter of crowds or food cooking in the restaurants. No news was screamed from the corners, no animals raced along the sides of the road, no industrial grinding of gears.

Only silence.

They stared down at it from the ridge, the rooftops cracked but standing, the roads choked in dust.

No lights. No sound. No movement.

Emerius squinted.

"There is no rot, blood, or signs of battle. Can anyone spot something to suggest otherwise?"

No one mentioned anything.

Charon felt a chill crawl down his back.

"Did they leave willingly? Or did something just take them?"

Annie leaned forward.

"That would suggest people have lived there recently. Look."

She pointed at a spire coming from the top of a church. At its top, there was a cracked hourglass.

"That building must have been dedicated to the God of Death, the Cult of Relentless Passing. They haven’t been active for centuries."

Darius stepped forward and unslung his pack, pulling out a battered spyglass. He passed it to Annie, who began scanning the buildings one by one.

After a minute, she spoke.

"Shutters are open. Some doors, too. There’s no damage that I can see, just abandonment. Like everyone stood up and walked away."

Red whispered for the first time in days.

"The roses withered in the garden until the seeds could do naught but scatter."

Everyone turned to look at her. Her voice was flat, but her eyes were wide.

"They fluttered quickly, can’t you feel it?"

They could, like a memory being pressed into them from a force unknown.

Turning around, Charon saw the shadow still there, waiting. Watching. As it always had been.

And, like usual, it was a little closer.