It was the middle of the afternoon, and our caravan was halted in the middle of the road. We were about four days out of the capital and Hagen and Mara had been scouting the road ahead, and they probably did not have good news if my grandparents had decided to halt the caravan. The looks on their faces when all of the adults of the troupe were gathered only seemed to confirm this.

I was not the only one to come to this conclusion, since as soon as we were all gathered, our Wagonmaster, Godan, inquired, “What’s the bad news then?”

Mara shook her head glumly and replied, “There was a large mudslide up ahead, the road is washed out, and there’s no way around for our wagons. To be honest, I’m not really surprised with how unseasonably wet it’s been since we left Aikan’s Crossing. It’s been storming for most of that time, and the area up ahead follows the river pretty closely with the road carved out of the hills on the other side.”

“It looks like it happened recently,” Hagen agreed. “So, it will likely be some time before the soldiers that patrol the road can report it to the capital and get people there to clear the road, and then a lot longer to clear it. We could be waiting weeks.”

There was a smattering of cursing in Fae at that announcement. Then Uncle Bryden muttered, “I guess we need to discuss our options then.”

“There aren’t many options to discuss,” Glimma offered bitterly. “The way I see it, we have three choices. Option one, we find a spot to set up camp and wait for the road to be cleared, but like you said, that could take weeks. Option two is to go all the way back to Aikan’s Crossing and try to find a boat to take us downriver, but that would take just as long, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find a sympathetic captain to ferry us. Option three is to backtrack to the campsite we stayed at last night and then risk taking the old road. It branches off the main road near there.”

“The old road?” I asked. I did not know what she was talking about since I was one of the few in our troupe who had not travelled through Haydin before.

“Aye, tha’s right, you weren’t drivin’ when we passed it yesterday,” Master Nirlyn mumbled beside me.

“Did you notice how the quality of the road changed since yesterday?” my grandfather asked. When I nodded, he explained, “Most of the road from Aikan’s Crossing to the capital goes back to the time of the Ancient Ones, and they built things to last. The stretch that we’re on now was built a couple of hundred years ago to follow the river more closely, provide a more direct route, and cut down on the time it takes to reach the capital.”

“Yes, it saves about five days' journey since the road originally built by the Ancient Ones goes up through the hills to the north. It should be traversable, but…” My grandmother trailed off with a frown.

“But what?” Vesha asked in concern. She may have traveled this road before, but this was her first time doing so as an adult.

“There are tales that that stretch of the old road is haunted, and that’s part of the reason this section was constructed. People say that strange things happen in those hills, and nobody travels the old road if they have a choice,” Daivin clarified with a dark frown.

“Well, it looks like we don’t have a choice,” Joak, our Beastmaster, muttered as he glared northward. “It would only add a week to our journey, while the other options could take far longer.”

“Aye, we’ve already lost enough time on this trip, an’ the Guild Council wants a first-hand account afore they’ll take the Demon threat seriously. I know most o’ tha’ time wasn’t somethin’ we ‘ad control over, or was fer an act o’ mercy, but every day we waste gettin’ there, is another day the Demons are preparin’ fer war an’ Haydin an’ the guilds aren’t,” Master Nirlyn pointed out bitterly.

My grandparents both nodded glumly, and as my grandmother let out a long sigh, my grandfather said, “It’s decided then, we take the old road. Let’s get these wagons turned around; it will probably be dark before we get back to the campsite we used last night.”

“I believe that we should halt our training for the day now, and we will not be practicing our archery today,” I told Shava as I abruptly ended our morning sparring practice shortly after our sword lessons under Sharai. My cousin did not look surprised, nor did I expect her to be, since we likely would not have been able to see any targets that I set up anyway. We could barely see three or four arm's lengths in front of us through the fog, and we could only see that far due to the faerie fires that I had placed in a circle around us to provide light and ward away the strange, creeping miasma that we found ourselves in.

-A wise decision, Kaelyn,- Sharai offered in approval. Her voice in my mind sounded wary and agitated, but also strained and less clear than usual, as if my mind was filled with wool, and she was having trouble speaking through it. -We should not stray far from the rest of the troupe. Even if this mist did not feel strange, it would take the others some time to find us in it.-

“Aye,” I agreed as I looked around us guardedly. “This miasma bothers me; it is… suffocating.”

The fog had rolled in last night, sometime while we were all asleep, which was strange because there were no large bodies of water nearby, only a mountain stream that eventually ran into the Afshan River. We were roughly halfway along the winding road through the northern hills and had camped there because it was the only source of fresh water we had seen all day. As we were setting up camp last night, Mara guessed that we would likely be out of these hills in another two to two and a half days and reach the capital in five days or so of travel. That had been before the fog crept in.

If this fog did not dissipate, though, it would severely slow our progress, and the mere thought of that made me uncomfortable. There was something about this fog, something unnatural that was weighing upon my mind, and clearly, Sharai’s as well. I could sense magic in it, swirling around us and so faint and elusive that I was certain that the subtlety was why I had not awoken when the mist settled upon us during the night.

Usually, I was alert enough to magic, even while sleeping, that any unfamiliar magic appearing within the range of my magic sense would have woken me. With every minute I spent in this mist, though, I only became more aware of it, and it was so omnipresent that it was muffling my magic sense so that I could not sense much else. It was muddling my other senses as well.

I felt clumsy and uncoordinated, something that bothered me immensely, given how graceful I had become since getting used to my new body through swordplay and dance. I was not alone in that clumsiness either. My cousin seemed to be having as much trouble as I was, and it had caused a few near accidents during the short time that we attempted sparring, which was most of the reason I decided to end things early. It was as if the mist disoriented people by its very nature, and if we had continued sparring, someone was bound to get hurt.

With our training cut short for the day, Shava and I returned to camp, though to be fair, we had not gone very far away. Kalara, Vesha, and Master Nirlyn were still fast asleep in our wagon, so I decided to let them all sleep for a while longer. Usually, Kalara was up by the time Shava and I were done with our morning training, but such was not the case this morning, and given how poorly we had both slept last night, I felt that she could use the sleep while she could get it.

My daughter still had nightmares sometimes, but they seemed to be getting fewer and farther between as she got used to living with the troupe and was able to build up positive memories to soothe the negative ones. Last night, she had nightmares again, and while I might have normally dismissed them as memories of her time in the menagerie, this strange mist and the magic that I was feeling from it made me worry that it might be something else. Kalara was Mana-touched after all, and thus extremely sensitive to magic, even if she was too young to consciously use her magical gifts. It did not help that I had strange nightmares during the night as well.

In those vivid dreams, something was watching our troupe, stalking us. It was a hunter, and we were its prey, and that feeling of something out in the fog watching and waiting for its opportunity to strike persisted even now. With that foreboding feeling clutching my heart in an icy grip, I kept my armor on and Neva’kul hanging from my hip as I went to see how breakfast was coming along and check on the other members of the troupe.

To my surprise, Mara and Hagen were sitting by the fire alongside the other members of the troupe who were awake, and both bore frowns and furrowed brows. “I thought you two would be out scouting the road ahead by now,” I commented as I sat beside Mara. Ever since we started taking the old road, they had been leaving earlier than usual for scouting in the morning as they attempted to get the lay of the unfamiliar land ahead of us. This road was not well-traveled, and we were being extra cautious, given the rumors about it.

“We were. At least, we tried to, and several times at that,” the scout replied with a grimace. “I was sure that we were heading straight east, but each time we try to leave to scout ahead, we keep ending up back here. Something about this mist is… unnatural.”

Hearing my own thoughts echoed by one of our scouts was concerning, but both of them being disoriented enough that they kept ending up back at camp was even more so. “Torr’s balls,” I cursed silently before nodding. “Aye, there is magic in this mist; it is faint, but that is possibly because it is so spread out. I think it is confounding our senses. Have any of you been feeling clumsy or getting bouts of dizziness?”

Each of the members of the troupe currently sitting around the fire responded with, “Aye.” That was not reassuring; it only made that feeling of dread that was weighing heavily in my stomach more palpable and insistent.

I wondered if faerie fire could be useful against ghosts, if that was indeed what we were dealing with here. I had a disturbing feeling that it was not a ghost, though, that what we were dealing with was far more terrifying. Perhaps it was just my dreams, still fresh in my mind and influencing my thoughts, but I could not help but feel that there was something out in that mist, watching and waiting for its opportunity to strike.

It seemed that I was not the only one thinking along those lines. The frown that my grandmother was wearing deepened as she said, “Nobody goes anywhere alone; everyone sticks together in groups until we figure out what we’re up against and what we’re going to do about it.”

“Shouldn’t the Seeming protect us?” Sten asked.

Glimma and Joak both shook their heads at their son’s query, and my grandmother responded, “No, the Seeming protects us by masking our presence. This miasma is magical and inside the Seeming, and that means that whatever is out there has already found us. I can feel it out there somewhere, watching us. What do you and Sharai think, Kaelyn? Is it a Demon or a Tainted?”

I considered it for a moment, long enough for Sharai to share her opinion. -It does not feel so to me. It feels unnatural, and very old, but the aura does not feel dark, evil, or sickening like Demons or Tainted. I fear this is something different, but no less dangerous.-

“Aye, it feels… predatory,” I mentally agreed, pausing to come up with a word that described it properly. She was right, too. The magic felt old somehow, ancient even, and very dangerous. I swallowed the lump that had taken up residence in my throat before answering my grandmother. “No, this is something far worse, I think.”

The Gïr’Näuthrok watched the camp hungrily from the obscurity of its mists. That was the name that the Fae of old had given it; it meant soul devourer. In truth, though, it had no name, at least not one it could remember. It was far older than the concept of names in this world, just like it was far older than the creatures that it now watched. It preceded their entire civilization, the civilization of the ‘Ancient Ones’ before them, and even the ascension of those who now called themselves the Gods.

It was nearly as old as the world itself, the last of its kind, having come from another world. This was again something that it could not remember. It had long ago forgotten its origins and the intelligent creature it had once been. The Weave of mana on this world had changed it over the eons before the Gods ascended, twisting it through its own desire, the desire to survive. And it did indeed survive, by feeding on sources of plentiful mana. That knowledge was as lost to the creature as the intelligence it once possessed, for now all it knew was the hunt and the desire to feed and survive, its intelligence intact now only as vague memory and predatory instinct.

For over two hundred years, with no tempting prey in its territory, it had been content to feed on the magical barrier to the north. The mana sustained it, but it longed to get inside and hunt the prey protected and hidden within. It could smell them there, the scent of creatures and magical devices that it had gorged itself on once upon a time, when those Ancient Ones were known as the Sa’vash. They had been among its favorite prey, and it hungered for them, but it could not pass the barrier, not even the mist that served to conceal it and act as its sixth sense.

But now, new prey had entered its domain, and the Gïr’Näuthrok had caught their scent during the night. A sweeter prey than even those who cowered behind their barrier, and the scent was intoxicating, for the Fae had been the most delicious prey of all, like feasting upon the Weave itself. There were many there, but most were not tempting; they were weak and did not have enough mana to make the hunt worth it.

There were three, though, three who would each make a feast on their own. One was not like the others, unfamiliar and weaker than the other two, but still a feast compared to the weaker ones, and the scent of the unknown made it cautious. The other two were a reminder of days long ago, though. Days when it fed well and the hunt was good.

One was one of the annoying flying ones; they were crafty and slippery, but always made for a filling and delicious meal, and this one was no different. It had summoned hot, burning things of mana that hurt its mist and drove it away, it was painful keeping the mist around that one, so it could wait for its moment to strike. The pain made it hesitate; it had not felt that sensation in a very long time, so long that the sensation was new to it, and not one that it liked. In its hesitation, the moment to strike was lost as its prey, and the weak one with it, returned to their pack.

The last was strange; the scent was familiar, but different as well, the mana blinding in its radiance and a greater meal than it could ever remember feasting upon. The Gïr’Näuthrok salivated at the scent and in anticipation of the feast to come as it watched the strange den that its new prey hid within. All that remained was to wait for the prey to show itself, and when it did, the hunt would begin.