Games Logs

The companions gather their courage and leave the ruined Ulrich Manor behind, its broken windows watching them go like eyes. The swamp swallows them almost at once. Fog curls around their knees, insects whine in the reeds, and every step squelches into black mud that clings and sucks at their boots as if the ground itself warns them about going on. No one says much. Nike hears it first: a dry, brittle rattling, like twigs knocking together in a wind that isn't blowing.

Morning in Berez arrives dim and damp, and it brings headaches. In Baba Lysaga's goat shed, Komzin and Vincent Yeager wake from a sleep that was not entirely their idea. Their heads are thick and throbbing. Their packs are gone. So are their weapons, and worst of all, so is Vincent's orb. Without it, whatever power he commands stays locked inside him.