Grey Mist
The Grey Mist Canyon was silent from the very entrance. Saying the birds weren't singing wasn't entirely accurate. It wasn't just the birds. There was no sound of wind, no buzzing of insects, no rustling of leaves. The only things that could be heard were the footsteps of two men and Hugo's breathing.
"...Hey. It's way too quiet."
Hugo whispered. It was only a tenth of his usual volume.
"Isn't quiet better?"
"No, it's not. You know what the most dangerous alley in the slums is? The quiet one. No sound means everything that could make noise has either run away or died."
Hugo's words were light, but his eyes weren't joking. The way he gripped two daggers reversed in both hands showed the survival instincts of someone who'd made it out of the slums alive.
This was the second day. The canyon was deep, and the tracks of the fallen forest grew fresher the deeper they went. On the first day, they found one of the missing hunters. He was wedged between rocks. There were no bite marks from beasts, no slash wounds. He had simply been crushed. It was the same kind of death as the shadow wolves they'd seen near the canyon entrance a few days ago. Running, then caught, then crushed from above.
Hugo had thrown up for a long time on the spot. After vomiting, he grew even quieter. The two of them covered the body with a pile of stones and marked the location on their map. It wasn't a weight they could carry out.
That night at camp, Hugo built the bonfire twice as large as usual.
"I've seen plenty of dead people in the slums. Guys stabbed, guys frozen to death, guys starved. But I've never seen anything like today."
"..."
"A stabbed corpse makes you angry. A frozen corpse makes you sad. But that... what the hell is that? It's not like a person did that to another person. It's like an ant stepped on by a foot, that's what it is."
Hugo poked at the embers with a stick for a long time without speaking, then suddenly asked,
"Aren't you scared?"
"I am scared."
"...What? You? The guy who knocked the captain down in one strike?"
"Fear isn't something you can cut with a sword."
Kyle said, gazing into the darkness beyond the bonfire. Somewhere deep in that darkness, the canyon was breathing.
"I learned that knowing how to be afraid is what lets you live long. Fear is measurement. It's weighing whether something is bigger or smaller than you. The ones who don't know how to measure die first."
"...That wandering swordsman really taught you all sorts of things."
"He really did teach me all sorts of things."
The embers crackled and popped. On the second day, a demonic beast appeared. It was a bear spirit. Normally a creature that hibernated in caves on mountain slopes, it staggered out from the middle of the canyon. Its gait was wrong from the start.
"Kyle, that thing... its eyes."
The bear spirit's eyes were grey. As if the sockets had been filled with mist. And in those grey eyes, it seemed the two of them weren't visible. Even though it couldn't see them, the beast charged straight at them. As if it had found them with something other than sight.
Kyle's sword moved once. Steam rose from the wound on the fallen bear spirit. Along with the blood, a faint grey energy leaked out and mixed into the mist on the ground before vanishing.
"...Is it sick?"
"Something like that."
Where breath leaks, demonic beasts go mad. The sentence he'd memorized as a child was coming to life before his eyes. Kyle stood for a moment in front of the dead beast. It hadn't gone mad. It had suffered and died. The entire canyon was suffering, and everything within it suffered together.
And now, on the morning of the third day, the mist began.
It was grey. The mist rising from the bottom of the valley reached up to their knees. Though it was the bottom of a canyon that felt like midsummer, their breath fogged in the air. And that smell— the smell of iron and ash mixed together, the smell of the world suffering, permeated the mist.
"Kyle. I saw something weird."
Hugo stopped walking.
"The mist... it's moving, but there's no wind. No wind, so why is it rolling in and out like that?"
"..."
"It's exactly like it's breathing."
It was the same thing the old fur trader had said. Kyle watched the rhythm of the mist for a moment. Inhaling. Exhaling. Long, slow breaths. The breathing of something asleep. This was as far as it went.
"Hugo. You turn back to the entrance from here."
"What? Hey, we came together, so we should—"
"From here on, if our breathing doesn't match, we'll both die. I don't know your rhythm, and you don't know mine."
It was a lie. To be precise, it was only half a lie. The real reason he was sending Hugo away was because what lay ahead was something Hugo shouldn't see. If he saw it, he would know. And if he knew, he would become entangled. Kyle didn't know what happened to those who became entangled in his master's affairs. He couldn't put his friend in a danger he himself didn't understand.
"One day. If I'm not out before sunset, report to the captain and return to Valk. Suggest closing off the canyon."
"...Hey."
"You can take all the commission payment."
"Who cares about the payment right now!"
Hugo huffed and puffed for a long time before finally pulling out a horn and tying it to Kyle's waist.
"Blow it if you're in danger. If I hear the sound, I'll come running in no matter what. Got it?"
"You'll just end up dying too if you come."
"That's for me to decide when the time comes. Don't you decide for me."
Hugo wouldn't back down on that point. Kyle answered by not removing the horn. As Hugo turned to leave, he took two steps, then shouted,
"Hey! Before sunset! If you're even one breath late, I'm coming in, I mean it!"
"Understood."
"And don't forget you promised to buy the drinks! If you die, that's skipping out on the bill!"
"I won't skip out."
Hugo's footsteps receded above the mist. Even at the end, they were quick and loud. When that sound could no longer be heard, the canyon finally fell into complete silence.
Under the same sky, on the highway leading south. A single black carriage had not stopped for fifteen days. Inside, a silver-haired woman had spread a worn sheet of paper across her lap and was gazing at the grey sky outside the window. She didn't know that the grey that had begun at the northern border stretched in a single line all the way to the southern end where she was racing toward. Nor did she know that he was standing at the very center of that grey.
The only thing she knew was this: that he had entered the canyon where no one who went in ever came out, and that he had gone in of his own accord without even taking a commission. After reading that single line in Walter's report, the carriage had not once traveled at its normal speed.
Time was dead inside the mist. With neither sun nor shadow, only the grey grew steadily darker. Kyle walked without a sound, following the voice from his childhood.
Twelve years ago, in the grey lands of the Grey Boundary, the things his master had taught him.
Listen well, Kyle. I'll only say it once.
Ten-year-old Kyle had stood before the grey horizon. His master leaned on Grau like a staff, his face stripped of all its usual playfulness.
There are things in this world called scars of the dimension. Places where the world was torn long ago and then healed. The Grey Boundary is one such scar. The scar has healed, but what lies inside it has not died. It has only fallen asleep. Do not ask its name. Even knowing the name carries weight.
The ancients put it back to sleep. The lullaby is the seal. The seal consists of one main body and seven wedges. The main body is in the deepest part of the Grey Boundary. The seven wedges are driven into seven places along the continent's ley lines.
Think of a tent. One central pole and seven stakes. Every time a stake is pulled out, the tent flaps, and through the gap, its breath leaks out. Where breath leaks, demonic beasts go mad, beasts flee, and the mist breathes.
Young Kyle had asked: What happens if all the stakes are pulled out?
His master answered after a long pause. Then a person must stand in place of the pole.
That night at camp, ten-year-old Kyle finally asked what he'd always wanted to know.
Why did you take me in? There were plenty of kids bigger and stronger than me in the orphanage yard.
His master flipped the roasted sweet potatoes as he answered. Because you had the least talent for the sword. Talented ones swing the sword because they love it, but you're the kind who only swings it when there's something you need to protect. And there's a sword that can only be passed on to someone like that.
At the time, he hadn't understood what that meant. Even now, he only understood half of it. The only thing that remained beyond his grasp was that his master had always given him the largest roasted sweet potato. It was only two years later that Kyle came to understand what that meant.
The demonic beast wave had erupted. His master had left his twelve-year-old disciple standing before the snowstorm-battered castle gates and entered the Grey Boundary. The wave had stopped. But his master never returned. A person had stood in place of the pole.
Do not reveal your power. Hide beside the strongest family in the North until the day the seal weakens. That had been the final will. He had never said what to do when that day of weakening came. Perhaps he had hoped that day would never arrive.
Kyle had lived according to that will for ten years. And now, at the bottom of a canyon in the farthest south from the North, he walked while smelling the scent of that weakening day.
Where the mist parted, it stood. At the dead end of the canyon floor. On a black rock altar, a grey stone pillar about twice the height of a man stood at an angle. The surface was worn so smooth that any letters or drawings had vanished, but one symbol at chest height remained clear. A hawk sitting on a blade. The same symbol that had been engraved on the guard of his master's sword, Grau. The one his master had only ever called "the mark of the old masters."
It was a wedge. One of the seven. The stake driven into the southern ley line.
Kyle approached slowly. The rocks around the altar were strangely smooth. They had been ground down. As if something enormous had coiled around this stone pillar for a very long time. The thing that had created the fallen forest had coiled here and—what had it done?
He found half the answer below the altar. It was a shed skin. A snakeskin the size of a house lay discarded in the shadow of the rocks. Each scale was as large as a shield, and its color was grey. Snakes shed their skin when they grow. Something this size had grown even larger here.
And on the rock beside the shed skin were scratch marks fanning out like a folding fan. Marks of thrashing. The kind left by a bound beast circling around a stake. This thing hadn't been guarding the wedge. It had been bound to it. As part of the seal.
And from some day onward—from the day the leash had loosened—it had begun to gnaw. At its own collar.
Now the owner of that leash was nowhere in the canyon. The tracks of the fallen forest had entered the canyon and continued into some deeper darkness. Leaving behind only the mist of sleeping breath.
He knew before touching the pillar. The stone should have been singing. His master had taught him that. A living wedge would hum lowly when touched. Because it was a stone entrusted with one verse of the lullaby.
The stone did not sing. Kyle removed his glove and placed his bare hand on it. His fingertips slowly traced up the ice-cold surface of the stone. And a span above the symbol, his fingers stopped. There was a crack. As thin as a single strand of hair, yet running in a single line from the top of the pillar to the heart of the symbol.
Kyle recalled the emergency measures his master had taught him. If the wedge is suffering, pour mana into it. Slowly, as if teaching the first verse to a stone that has forgotten its song.
He gathered mana in his palm and let it flow into the stone. The mana he had hidden for ten years was being used for the first time somewhere other than his sword. The stone trembled faintly. For a very brief moment, a low resonance traveled up his palm. The first verse of the lullaby. And then—
Crack.
The resonance cut off. Even when he poured more, even when he poured even more, the stone would tremble briefly before stopping again. It was like lungs that couldn't continue breathing on their own even when air was blown into them. The stage where emergency measures would work had already passed.
Kyle withdrew his hand and looked up at the cracked pillar. The seven stakes of the tent. One of them had already stopped singing here. What kind of sound were the remaining six making, and where? And the main body—the pillar his master had filled with his own body?
From the crack, the smell of the world suffering leaked out like breath.
The sun was setting. Kyle turned his steps toward the upper part of the canyon. He had to admit it now. There was a place he needed to go.
It was to the north.