The darkness wasn't just the absence of light. It was a physical pressure against his eardrums, a weight crushing his chest and turning every breath into pure agony. Varig woke curled up, knees jammed against his chest, back pressed to a damp wall that throbbed like living flesh. The foul water still came up to his waist, cold as a blade, and the stink of rotting wood and decaying fish filled his throat with every breath.

  He opened his mouth to shout.

  "Father..."

  His voice came out like the dry snap of a broken branch. No echo. It died right there, strangled. Panic clawed at his throat. He tried again, louder.

  "Father!"

  Only the distant plop-plop of water dripping somewhere invisible answered. The silence wasn't calm; it was oppressive, like the swamp itself had clamped a heavy hand over his mouth.

  He stretched his arms. His hands brushed wood overhead — thick, rough planks full of splinters. The trapdoor. Still closed. Still solid. But there was weight on it. Too much weight. Rubble. Dirt. Maybe bodies. The thought hit fast, twisting his stomach.

  They buried me alive.

  Panic came in waves. First the racing heart; then the short breaths; finally the feeling that the walls were closing in. He was too small for that hole. Too frail. Too weak. His legs shook in the freezing water. His fingers hurt just from touching the wood. His chest burned.

  Varig pushed. His palms slipped on the wet timber. He tried again, harder. His nails scraped, a splinter drove deep into his left index finger. He bit his lip to keep from screaming. Blood mixed with the mud taste. He pushed once more. The wood groaned, but didn't give.

  He flexed his narrow shoulders, ignored the pain in his broken nails, and shoved with everything he had. A plank cracked. Another moaned. A bigger splinter tore into his right palm; warm blood ran down his fingers. He didn't stop. He shoved again. The wood gave with a sharp, dry crack.

  A beam of grey, sickly light cut through the darkness. Dust floated like falling ash. Varig blinked, eyes stinging. The light wasn't warm; it was cold, filthy, like the sun itself had been poisoned. He pushed one last time with what strength he had left, and the trapdoor opened enough for his shoulders to pass.

  He crawled out like he was being born from a grave. Arms first, then head, then torso. Water ran from his clothes in dark streams. He fell to his knees on the ruined platform, gasping, hands bleeding onto splintered wood.

  Around him, the village was a corpse.

  But a clean corpse.

  The elves didn't burn out of rage. They purified.

  Every stilt-house still standing had been consumed exactly halfway: the fire climbed with surgical precision, licking thatch roofs and beams until they turned to fine ash, but without letting the main structures collapse. The platforms hadn't given way; the elves had measured exactly how far the fire could go without sinking the whole village into the swamp. They didn't want to destroy the place by accident—they wanted to erase it. Erase the people who lived there, the houses that sheltered them, the lives that dragged on day after day. Everything with the meticulous elegance of someone wiping away an unwanted stain.

  Varig started walking. Each step was a low creak on charred wood. Beneath his feet, the ashes of his neighbors piled in thin grey layers. He recognized the outlines: here, the vague shape of a woman who used to sell dried roots, now just a twisted silhouette; there, the skeleton of a basket that belonged to an old village man, bone fingers still clutching what was left of the handle. The bodies weren't whole. Some were just scorched shadows on the ground, dark prints left by the fire like a signature. Others, the ones who tried to run, were twisted into impossible shapes, hands reaching for help that never came.

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  He stopped in front of a cast-iron pot warped by the heat. The metal had melted into grotesque shapes, like wax dripping from a giant candle. Next to it, a fishing tool — a harpoon of wood and bone — lay carbonized, its tip curled inward like it had screamed before dying.

  Then he saw where their house used to be.

  In the center of what remained of the wooden deck, a fallen figure lay motionless like a statue of flesh.

  It was his father.

  Varig dropped to his knees beside Vitor. The body was riddled with elven arrows — at least seven driven into his chest, back, and legs. The fire had licked half his torso, leaving the skin partially charred, black and cracked like dry bark. His face was still recognizable, but his open eyes stared at nothing, mouth slightly open like his last word had been cut off. Dried blood pooled around him, mixed with ash.

  Around him, at least ten elven bodies lay withered, dry as ancient mummies. Skin wrinkled, eyes sunken into sockets, bodies shrunken like years had passed in seconds. They hadn't been killed by arrows or blades — they had been drained. Life sucked out to the bone. His father had fought. He had used what he taught his son. And he had paid the price.

  Varig reached out with trembling hands. He turned his father's body slowly. The weight was wrong — too light, too empty. He touched Vitor's cold face, wiped the soot from his forehead with bloody fingers. The skin was cracked, but it was still his father's face: the greyish beard stained with blood, the eyes that always laughed before his mouth did.

  "Father..."

  The word came out hoarse, almost inaudible. Varig collapsed over the motionless chest. The sobs came low, stifled, like he was afraid of being heard. He buried his face in the scorched tunic, the smell of smoke and blood filling his mouth. Thoughts came in fragments, sharp as splinters:

  He told me not to go out. He said he would protect me. He laughed yesterday. Laughed while he taught me how to drain the frog. Said I was good. He can't be dead. He can't. He promised we'd get out of here together. I should have stayed with him. I should have fought. I should have died with him. He always shared the bread. Always gave me the bigger half. Always called me 'pup'. I can't breathe without him. I can't.

  Every thought was a stab. Varig squeezed his father's chest tighter, as if he could force the heart to beat again. Warm tears fell on the burnt skin, evaporating in the residual heat. He felt the void — not just in his father's chest, but in his own. A hole that grew, swallowing everything that remained of the child in him. He wanted to scream, but the scream stayed stuck in his throat, turning into sobs that shook his entire frail body.

  As he did, his right hand tightened around the crow-skull necklace beneath his tunic — the necklace Vitor always wore, now hot against his skin.

  The runes etched into the crow's bone glowed with a pale light, nearly invisible under the grey sunlight. The necklace warmed suddenly, as if it had a life of its own. Varig felt a suction — not physical, but in his soul. Something pulling from within, as if a part of him were being torn away.

  Then came the whisper. An echo of Vitor's voice, hoarse, warm, and tender.

  "Son..."

  The word was spoken in something he didn't understand — an ancient, fragmented tongue, like overlapping whispers. A thin mist began to flow from his father's body, fine and greenish, snaking through the air toward the necklace. The pendant pulsed. The light of the runes grew stronger.

  Varig tried to let go, but he couldn't. The necklace stuck to the palm of his hand. The world around him darkened. Not like the darkness of the trapdoor — it was something else. He felt the ground vanish, the air turn thick, his body being pulled down, inward, as if falling into a bottomless pit.

  Then everything stopped.

  He was somewhere else.

  Dark. Inhospitable. A void where there was no floor, no sky, only a black mist that moved like living smoke. The cold here was not from the swamp — it was something deeper, sinking into the bones and staying there.

  And in the midst of that darkness, a voice spoke.

  "Son... you came."

  Varig froze. His heart hammered in his narrow chest.

  The voice was familiar in a way that hurt. The same hoarse tone that always calmed him after a bad day in the swamp. The same affection that made him feel that, no matter how much the world ached, someone cared. It was like hearing his father calling from the other side of the cabin, like the days when he'd come back from a hunt and say, "Get up, pup."

  And the necklace stayed hot against his skin, pulsing slowly, like a heart that refused to stop.