The mire was worse than Karathra had imagined.

The water, if it could be called that, was the consistency of oil and the color of old bruises. It clung to everything it touched, leaving residue that burned faintly against the skin. Even walking along the narrow strips of solid ground that wound between the pools required constant vigilance.

"Don't touch the water directly," Lady Pelica warned. "The liquified essence will drain your reserves in minutes. And if you fall in completely..."

She didn't need to finish the sentence. They'd already seen what happened. A small creature, a kind of rodent monster, had slipped and splashed into a pool. It had dissolved in seconds, leaving nothing but a brief scream and a spreading stain.

The masters moved in single file, testing each step before committing their weight. Karathra followed close behind, ready to catch anyone who stumbled.

But the water wasn't the worst part.

The voices started about an hour into the crossing.

At first, Karathra thought it was the wind, some quirk of the mire's acoustics creating sounds that resembled speech. Then the words became clearer.

"Karathra..."

She froze. That voice. She knew that voice.

"Karathra, why did you leave me?"

It was her mother. Her mother who had died when Karathra was a child, before her father became what he was. Her mother whose face Karathra had spent years trying to remember.

"Don't listen," Lady Pelica said sharply. "The Forgotten Voices. They're spirits trapped in the mire, and they try to lure the living to join them. They'll use anything. Memories. Fears. Desires."

"How do they know....."

"They pull it from your mind. The mire is saturated with psychic residue. The moment you entered, they learned everything about you."

Karathra gritted her teeth and kept walking. But the voice followed her, whispering words her mother had never had the chance to say.

"I'm so proud of you, daughter. So proud of how strong you've become..."

"Shut up," Karathra muttered. "You're not her."

"I watched you grow from afar. Every battle. Every victory. Every tear you shed when you thought no one was watching..."

"I said shut up!"

Ahead of her, Drakira had stopped. The barbarian was standing rigid, her eyes wide and unfocused. The voices had found her too.

"Drakira!" Karathra snapped. "Keep moving!"

But Drakira didn't respond. She was listening to something only she could hear, and whatever it was saying, it was drawing her toward the water.

Karathra lunged forward and grabbed her arm. "Drakira! Snap out of it!"

Drakira turned, and for a moment, her eyes were completely empty. Then recognition flickered back, and she shuddered.

"I heard... I thought I heard..."

"It's not real. None of it is real." Karathra pulled her back to the center of the path. "Everyone, link arms. We stay connected. We keep each other grounded."

The masters obeyed, forming a chain with Karathra at its head. They moved forward together, step by careful step, while the voices whispered from every direction.

Brakthar heard his father, dead twenty years, apologizing for being too harsh. He heared the chief.

Zargoth heard the sister who'd been sold away when they were children, begging him to find her. Hrothgar heard the warriors he'd killed in battle, forgiving him for their deaths.

Each voice was perfectly crafted, perfectly targeted. The spirits knew exactly what each of them needed to hear, and they offered it freely, asking only that they come a little closer to the water.

"Stay strong," Karathra kept repeating. "It's not real. Stay strong."

Then Brakthar broke.

A voice had been speaking to him for several minutes, a woman's voice, soft and loving. Karathra didn't know whose voice it was, but she saw the moment Brakthar's resistance crumbled.

"I can save her," he whispered. "The voice says I can save her. I just have to open myself. Let the spirits in. They'll show me the way."

"Brakthar, no!"

But he was already moving toward the water, pulling free of Ashclaw's grip with strength born of sudden desperate and hope. His hand reached toward the surface....

Karathra hit him.

Hard!

A a full-strength punch to the jaw that snapped his head back and sent him crashing to the ground. He lay there, stunned, the light of the spirits' influence fading from his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Karathra said, rubbing her knuckles. "But I'm not losing anyone to this place."

Brakthar blinked up at her. Slowly, understanding dawned on his face. "I... I almost..."

"You almost died. Now get up. We keep moving."

Lady Pelica stepped forward, reaching into her robes. "Perhaps this will help."

She produced a small silver bell, no larger than her thumb. When she rang it, no sound emerged. But the voices suddenly cut off, as if a door had been slammed shut.

"The Silent Bell," Lady Pelica explained. "It suppresses auditory phenomena in a radius. I was saving it for emergencies."

Karathra stared at her. "You had that the whole time?"

"I wanted to see how you handled the challenge." Lady Pelica's smile was thin.

Before Karathra could respond, maybe with violence, Drakira called out from ahead.

"There's something here! A camp!"

The masters hurried forward, grateful for the distraction. The camp was small, just a few tents and supply crates arranged on one of the larger solid areas. Everything was covered in dust and the faint sheen of essence residue.

"Someone tried to cross before us," Ashclaw said. He was examining one of the tents. "Looks like they didn't make it."

Inside the tent, they found a body. Or what was left of one. The liquified essence had partially dissolved the corpse, leaving something that was more suggestion than remains.

But beside the body, they found something intact.

A relic.

It was a cloak, dark fabric that seemed to shift and blur when Karathra looked at it directly. Even covered in grime, she could feel the power radiating from it. It was Exalted ranked.

"Veil of the Unseen," Lady Pelica said, her eyes lighting up with interest. "Warded rank. It grants limited invisibility, though it drains the user's stamina rapidly."

Karathra picked up the cloak carefully. It was lighter than she expected, with almost weightless. "This could be useful."

"Give it to Drakira," Brakthar suggested. He was back on his feet, a bruise forming on his jaw but his eyes clear. "She's already our scout. This will make her better."

Karathra nodded and handed the cloak to Drakira, who accepted it with reverent hands.

"We've been lucky," Karathra said, looking around at her battered team. "Let's not push it. We rest here for an hour, then we push through to the other side."

As the masters settled in to recover, Karathra stared out across the mire. Somewhere beyond it, the Fiendish monster waited. Beyond that, the core. The banners.

And somewhere below them all, the Chief was fighting his own battle.

'...Hold on, Chief. We're coming...'

She didn't know if he could hear her thoughts. But she sent the words anyway, hoping that somehow, across all the distance and twisted space between them, he would know he wasn't alone.

She quietly began praying.

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