CHAPTER 85: THE MARCH WITHOUT BANNERS

They left the Hollow before dawn.

No horns. No formation. No proclamation.

Just thirty-six riders and a silence that clung like ash. The fog behind them faded with each step, but none of them looked back. They didn’t speak of what had happened—not the battle, not the keeper, not the seal. Words felt small now. The kind of small that didn’t belong in the mouth of a survivor.

Leon rode at the front.

Elena was beside him.

The others followed in scattered order, weapons strapped close, eyes always moving. It was no longer a march of soldiers. They were something else now. Witnesses. Bearers of a truth few would believe.

The road east wound between cliffs that once held the banners of old kingdoms. Now the poles were empty. Splintered. The names they once carried had vanished in rot and weather. But even without cloth, the wind still whispered where they had once flown.

At midday, they paused beneath a broken tower. Just stone and ivy now, but it gave them shade enough for bread and water. Tomas sat near the edge, chewing slowly, still too young to know how to hide the tremble in his fingers. Leon passed him a heavier cloak without a word.

"Do you know where we’re going?" Elena asked.

Leon stared at the road. "We follow what stirs next."

She raised an eyebrow. "That’s not a direction."

"It is for me."

He didn’t say it aloud, but he could feel it already. The third seal. Farther east, beyond the Blackwood Verge, where rivers ran red not from war, but from something older. Something that never left bones behind.

The others ate in silence. A few of them laughed, quietly. Not from joy. From disbelief. From the sharp edge of exhaustion that sometimes made madness feel close.

At sundown, they moved again.

The road narrowed. Hills rose like teeth on either side. The wind picked up—no longer soft. A warning.

Then they saw them.

Villagers.

A small caravan, no more than ten people, walking with carts piled high with cloth and grain. Children among them. One of the men spotted the riders and froze. The others stopped too, fear blooming like frostbite.

Leon raised a hand—not in threat. Just greeting.

The elder at the front—a woman with hair grey as the road dust—stepped forward. "You’re not from the eastern pass," she said.

"No."

"Then where do you ride from?"

Leon looked past her, toward the fading line of the Hollow. "Somewhere long forgotten."

The woman studied him, then Elena, then the others. Her eyes lingered on the sword.

"You should come with us," Elena said. "Wherever you’re headed, it’s not safe."

"We know," the woman replied. "But there’s nowhere else to go. The water in our wells has turned. Our dead won’t stay still."

Leon’s gaze sharpened. "Where?"

"Gorehill."

He looked at Elena. "That’s not the third seal."

"No," she said, voice low. "But it seems like it’s been touched by it."

Leon dismounted. "You’ll travel with us."

The woman hesitated. Then nodded.

And so the march grew.

Not just riders.

But people.

Those with stories. With scars. With fears deeper than what blades could solve.

The march without banners.

Eastward. Toward the next truth.

They walked into the night, torches low, wheels groaning under the added weight of grain and children. The pace slowed, but no one complained. The air had changed—tenser, heavier, like they were being watched by something older than trees. Somewhere between the hush of branches and the crunch of boots, even the forest seemed to listen.

Tomas rode near the back now, cloak drawn tight, glancing often toward the youngest of the village boys walking beside a cart. He offered him a dried fig from his pouch. The boy stared at it like it might bite, then took it with both hands and muttered thanks.

They hadn’t gone far when the screams came.

Not loud. Just one—sharp, sudden, then cut off.

Leon’s hand went to his blade before the echo had faded. The column halted. Soldiers dropped beside wagons, arrows nocked, eyes on the dark.

A rider galloped in from the front. "Something moved near the ridge. Fast. But gone before we could see what."

Elena moved to Leon’s side, her voice cold. "This isn’t Velgrin. They don’t just vanish."

Leon’s eyes narrowed. "No. This is something else."

He left the trail.

No torch.

No signal.

Just steps toward where the scream had once come from.

The others followed slowly, hesitant. The villagers remained near the carts, clustering together, whispers spreading.

Near the ridge, Leon crouched.

Snow was disturbed. Not by feet. By something heavier. Dragged.

Blood trailed into the underbrush—thin, almost hesitant. Like whatever had taken the man hadn’t needed to bleed him.

He rose.

"They’re feeding."

"Scouts?" Elena asked.

Leon shook his head. "No tracks."

A cold silence answered him.

Then a whisper, faint, carried on wind not their own: "Not all who feed are seen."

Leon spun.

No shape. No shadow.

Just trees. And the taste of copper in the air.

He didn’t speak. He simply returned to the road.

"We keep moving," he said.

"But what was it?" one soldier asked.

Leon looked back once. "A warning."

—

By midnight, frost crept along every edge of steel. The riders remained silent. Even the horses seemed subdued, ears twitching, hooves placed with caution. Elena had moved to the rear, watching the trees. Leon remained at the front.

Then came the river.

It should’ve been frozen. But it wasn’t.

The water ran black, slow and thick, steam curling from its surface.

And it whispered.

Not words.

Names.

Each of them heard their own.

Tomas froze, wide-eyed. "It said—my mother’s name."

Leon drew his blade.

The whispering stopped.

And across the river, figures appeared. Thin, cloaked. Hooded. Faces hidden.

They did not move.

They did not speak.

Elena joined Leon.

"Do we fight?" she asked.

Leon studied them.

"No. Not yet."

One of the figures stepped forward. The hood slipped.

A woman.

Eyes like cracked ice. Lips bloodless. And a mark on her brow—three lines crossed by a fourth.

Leon stepped forward.

"You shouldn’t be here," the woman said. Her voice was like dead leaves.

"And yet," Leon replied, "here I am."

She tilted her head. "The Eye watches."

"I know."

"Yet you carry what should’ve stayed buried."

Leon didn’t deny it.

"What waits east," she said, "is not a seal. It is a mouth. It devours and it does not close."

Leon’s grip tightened. "Then we’ll find a way."

The woman simply stared. And vanished.

So did the others.

The river froze.

The path cleared.

And the silence returned.

—

Elena looked at Leon. "What was that?"

He looked toward the east.

"The third seal," he said, "has already broken."

...

The torchlight began to waver.

Wind shifted again—east to west now, and colder. It blew across the river, carried the scent of rot and turned earth. Behind Leon, the villagers clutched tighter to one another.

Tomas moved closer to Elena, his face pale.

"Do they always whisper like that?" he asked.

"No," she said. "This is new."

One of the carts creaked louder than it should’ve. A wheel shifted.

And beneath it, barely audible, a sound like breathing.

Leon turned sharply.

"Keep everyone on the path. No one wanders. Not even a step."

He knelt, pressing his palm to the ground.

It pulsed.

The dirt was warm.

"They’re under us," he whispered.

Elena looked back at the stone ridge, then to Leon.

"If the third seal’s broken..." she said.

"Then Gorehill’s already awake."