"You want to know why they call it the Pale March?"
The merchant didn't look at me when he asked—just kept walking ahead, boots crunching over broken stone and dry moss.
The sun was setting, bleeding orange over the dying forest and ruinous road.
I didn't answer. He told the story anyway.
"Used to be a settlement here. Peaceful. Simple. People lived off the trees and traded crystals pulled from the riverbeds. Had a little shrine to some forgotten spirit. Nothing special. Nothing worth killing over."
He paused as we stepped over a collapsed arch, then glanced at me.
"Then a flag came."
He didn't name the kingdom. He didn't have to.
"Soldiers marched in with polished boots and silver blades. Told the villagers they were under protection now. Claimed they were spreading civilization. But what they really spread was disease, salt, and fire."
He ran a hand along the cracked wall beside us, where faint carvings of people dancing were now nearly erased by time.
"The men who resisted were hanged in rows. The ones who begged were forced into labor. And the women…"
He trailed off.
"They made a game of it," he said quietly. "To see how many could survive after the first child. Or the second. No shrine saved them. No gods answered."
A gust of wind passed through the trees.
"They say, when the soldiers left to join the war in the east, the dead walked behind them. Not angry. Not screaming. Just pale, silent… marching."
He stopped walking and looked out over the ruined courtyard, where the headless statue still watched the sky.
"That's what the name means. Not bones, not ghosts. Memory. The kind that never leaves."
I swallowed.
"And you still walk through here?"
He shrugged. "Dead men don't bother me. Living ones do worse."
We left the courtyard behind as the trees began to thin and the stone path dipped into a shallow valley.
Ahead, perched on broken ridges, were crooked tents, rusted wagons, and flickering lanterns swaying gently on strings of worn-out rope. Smoke drifted upward from campfires.
A half-settlement. Part merchant post, part scavenger rest.
Not a home, but enough.
I followed the merchant past quiet stares—hollow-eyed men polishing knives, women boiling herbs, children clinging to the shadows. None of them smiled.
The merchant gave a wave or two but didn't stop. He led me to a small canvas tent near the edge of the camp and ducked inside.
"You'll sleep here," he said simply. "Don't wander too far at night. Not unless you know how to bargain with the ones that remember."
I sat down, my legs aching. The ground felt oddly warm beneath the furs.
I looked at him for a while before I finally asked:
"Earlier… when you found me. You asked how I managed to arrive at the Pale March."
He didn't answer right away. He sat across from me and lit a thin, scented stick of incense, letting the smoke curl upward like a question mark.
"Yeah," he said. "I did."
He leaned back, watching the smoke fade into the air.
"Because most who try don't arrive at all."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You passed through the inner forest."
"And?"
"And it doesn't like strangers."
He looked at me now—really looked.
"That forest—before the March? It's watched over by something old. Something that doesn't answer to the gods or kings. They say it only lets people through if it wants them to pass. If they carry something it recognizes."
I went still.
The glowing flower.
The voice I didn't understand.
The woman made of mist and moonlight.
"What is it?" I asked quietly.
The merchant shrugged. "Spirit. Curse. Leftover regret. Depends who you ask."
"And what does it do?"
"Sometimes it lets the dead march through to the ruin. Sometimes it stops the living. Sometimes it just watches."
He leaned forward and blew the incense out.
"You didn't pass through the Pale March, boy."
"It passed around you."
I lay on the makeshift bed of furs and blankets, the merchant's words looping in my head.
You didn't pass through the Pale March.It passed around you.
The camp quieted quickly after dark. Only a few voices whispered beyond canvas walls. The wind outside had gone still—like the land itself was holding its breath.
I didn't remember falling asleep.
But suddenly, I was there.
The trees were the same—but younger. The stone paths still intact. No moss. No ruin.
People filled the space: children laughing, women fetching water from the basin, men carving into stone blocks with chants echoing through the hills.
And then came the banners.
Steel feet pounding dirt. Drums, not to celebrate, but to break rhythm into the hearts of the peaceful.
Soldiers lined the road—clean armor, eyes cold. The moment the flag crested the ridge, the laughter stopped.
What followed wasn't a battle. It was enforcement.
I watched—unable to move—as the village was twisted. Temples desecrated. Men vanished. Girls taken.
The spirit shrine was set ablaze.
And through it all… the sky stayed blue.
A woman clutched her child beneath a tree. Soldiers laughed.
The well overflowed. Not with water—but with something dark, thicker than it should've been. It soaked the ground in silence.
And then everything stilled.
The scene froze—like glass about to shatter.
And I turned.
She was there again.
The same spirit. Pale, flowing. Watching me, not the memory.
Her lips moved—this time I understood.
"By the well," she said. Her voice carried like a whisper through fog.
"That's where they sealed it."
I took a step toward her.
"Sealed what?"
Her eyes met mine.
"Their guilt."
The sky cracked like broken porcelain—
And I woke up gasping.
The tent ceiling loomed above me, dark and unmoving.
My heart pounded like I'd run for miles.
My hands trembled.
And from the edge of camp, barely audible beneath the waking wind—
I thought I heard a child crying by a dry well.
Morning came like a bruise—dull light and a restless wind brushing through the camp.
I didn't feel rested. I felt… pulled.
The dream hadn't faded the way dreams should.
I still remembered the cries, the fire, the blood-stained stones—and her voice.
"By the well.""That's where they sealed it."
I rose from the bedroll, the camp already stirring with quiet movement. Traders haggled over dried roots and cloth scraps, children ran with empty bowls, and a pair of hunters prepared a half-dismantled creature near the edge.
I stepped past the firepit and followed the wind, moving toward the faint sound I thought I'd heard last night.
The crying child.
There, between the old tents and half-buried archways, I saw it.
The well was half-collapsed, choked with ivy and bound in rusted iron. The circular frame had been reinforced with broken boards—as if someone had tried to cover it, not draw from it.
No one stood near. No one looked at it.
But I couldn't look away.
I knelt by the rim. Cold air rose from within, dry and sharp—like breath from an open grave.
Carved around the edge were words I couldn't read at first—then slowly, they rearranged, like the language book was still helping me decode the world.
"Here lies the silence of our sins."
The stones around the well were discolored—stained deeper than time should've allowed.
I leaned forward and called down.
"Hello?"
My voice echoed, then vanished. No splash. No depth. Just absence.
And then, again—soft, so soft I almost missed it—
A whisper.
Not a word.
A sob.
I drew back fast, heart in my throat.