She meant to argue more, but his heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, and the rocking motion of the horse was lulling despite her fear. Her eyes drifted closed.
She didn't dream. Or if she did, she didn't remember it. When she woke, the quality of light had changed, grown dimmer, and she realized hours had passed.
"Better?" Eliam asked, feeling her stir.
"A little." Her neck ached from the angle she'd been sleeping at, and her mouth was dry. But the crushing exhaustion had eased to merely bone-deep tired.
He shifted her slightly, adjusting her position to something more sustainable, and she finally looked around properly.
The forest had changed.
It was subtle at first, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. The leaves on that oak weren't quite the right shade of green, the color muted as if someone had drained the vibrancy away. The bark on the ash tree held an undertone of gray that didn't belong.
And the stream they were following, she could see it through breaks in the trees, had patches where the water caught light wrong, reflecting with an oily sheen that made her stomach turn.
"When did it start?" she asked quietly.
"About an hour after you fell asleep." Eliam's voice was grim. "It's been getting worse."
She watched a bird flit between branches, noticed how its movements were slightly jerky, not quite right. Another landed nearby, and she saw its feathers held that same wrongness, colors that should have been vibrant rendered dull.
"Karse?" Arion called from ahead.
The Drak had stopped, standing in his stirrups to scan the forest around them. His expression was troubled.
"It's spread," he said finally. "Last time I came this far, the corruption didn't start for another day's travel north. Now..." He gestured at the discolored trees, the oily water. "It's creeping outward. Claiming more territory."
"How much further to the seal?" Thaine asked.
"Three days at our current pace." Karse settled back into his saddle. "Maybe two if we push hard. But the corruption will only get thicker from here."
They rode on. The changes became more pronounced as afternoon faded toward evening. Whole trees with bark that wept dark sap. Mushrooms growing in spiraling patterns that made no sense. The undergrowth had taken on shades that existed somewhere between brown and green and gray, colors that didn't quite resolve into anything natural.
When they stopped to refill water skins, Sian had to spend long minutes cleansing each container, her magic pushing back against whatever taint tried to seep through.
"Don't drink anything I haven't cleared first," she said, and no one argued.
By the time Karse called for them to make camp, everyone was on edge. They'd found a small clearing that seemed relatively untouched, the grass still mostly normal colored, no visible signs of corruption in the immediate area.
Eliam helped her down from his horse, and her legs nearly gave out again when her feet hit the ground. She caught herself against his chest, feeling his hands steady her automatically.
"Easy," he said.
"I'm fine. Just stiff." She forced herself to stand on her own, to move away and help with setting up camp even though every muscle protested.
The group worked in tense silence. Ward stones placed with more care than usual, Halian murmuring over each one as he strengthened the protections. Sian cleansed the ground where they'd lay bedrolls, pushing back the subtle wrongness that tried to seep up from the soil itself.
Briar gathered firewood from the edge of the clearing, staying within sight of the others. Even dead branches felt wrong in her hands, the bark too smooth in some places, too rough in others, textures that shifted when she wasn't looking directly at them.
The fire took longer to catch than it should have. The wood burned with smoke that was too dark, too thick, and the flames themselves were tinged with colors that didn't belong. Green at the edges, purple in the depths, orange that was too bright and too dimat the same time.
No one commented on it. Everyone had seen enough by now to know that nothing here would behave the way it should.
They ate in silence, food that had been perfectly good that morning now tasting faintly of metal, of something spoiled. Briar forced herself to swallow each bite, knowing her body needed fuel even if her stomach protested.
The forest around them was too quiet. No bird calls, no rustle of small creatures, no normal night sounds. Just wind through branches that creaked wrong, and the distant sound of water moving over stones with a viscosity that water shouldn't have.
Briar sat with her back against a log, Eliam beside her, and tried not to think about how exposed they were. How easy it would be for something to approach through the corrupted wilderness, for Malus to find them here in the dark.
