What Comes Ashore (Completed)

One

The fog was thick as wool, so dense you could carve it with a blade. We rowed in silence, the creak of the oars swallowed by the mist, the sea a black, dead thing beneath us. I stood at the prow, eyes fixed on the smudge of land just beyond the veil. We were close now, close enough to smell the damp earth of their fields, the smoke that should have risen from their hearths. But the air was wrong. It carried no sound but the faint lap of the tide and the pulse of our own breath.

I knew the rhythm of a village, the sounds it should make even at rest. No dogs barking. No children running through the shallows. Just silence. I thought of the feast we'd have, of the riches waiting to be plucked from the hands of those too weak to defend them. Yet still, the quiet gnawed at me.

The hull scraped the beach, and we disembarked without a word, slipping into the pale light of the shore. The mist parted in slow, dragging curls, revealing the village like a corpse pulled from the sea. Houses sat half-sunk in the mud, their doors ajar. People moved through the streets like cattle, their heads bowed, eyes fixed on the ground. They were pale, too pale, as if something had drained the blood from their bodies.

"Look at them," Ingrid whispered behind me, her breath a hot cloud. "They don't even see us." No one spoke. There was something in their steps, something off in the way they swayed—not like men and women but like stalks in a dead wind. We drew our blades, ready. Not for battle. Not for glory. Just to quiet the unease that settled heavy in our chests.

Ingrid was the first to step forward, her axe gripped tight in her hand. She moved like a hunter stalking lame prey, no fear in her eyes, no hesitation. The rest of us followed, the mist clinging to our boots, our weapons drawn, though it felt more like habit than need. The villagers—or what remained of them—barely registered us. Their movements were slow, dragging, as if their bones had turned to lead.

"Too easy," Gunnar muttered beside me, his voice low and hard. I could hear the sneer in his words, but I couldn't shake the cold coiling in my gut. This wasn't right.

Ingrid swung first, her axe splitting the skull of a man who barely lifted his head to see it coming. The crack of bone rang out, a hollow sound in the fog, but there was no cry of pain. The body crumpled to the dirt in silence, like it had never been alive to begin with.

I glanced around; the others had begun to move, swinging swords and axes with practiced ease. Each strike brought down another villager—no fight, no resistance. Just bodies hitting the ground like sacks of grain. The air filled with the dull thud of meat and bone, but none of us were laughing. None of us spoke.

I took a woman down myself, a swift blow to the neck, and the way she folded was wrong. It wasn't the violent collapse I'd seen so many times before. She didn't clutch at the wound, didn't gasp for air. She just slumped, eyes open and empty, face slack like the life had been gone long before I struck.

"They're sick," Bjorn said from behind me, his voice tight. He'd just felled a man, his eyes wide and glassy, mouth hanging open like he'd forgotten how to close it. "It's not right, any of it."

Ingrid spat into the dirt. "They're weak. We'll take what's ours and be gone." But I couldn't shake the feeling that something had taken what was theirs long before we arrived.

We moved through the village like shadows, blades drawn but hands growing heavy with doubt. The air hung thick, not with the smell of death but with something worse. Rot, yes, but something old, something that had been left to fester too long in the dark. It clung to the back of my throat, turning the taste of the sea into ash.

The bodies piled up, limp and lifeless in the mud. But there was no satisfaction in it. No spoils worth the taking, no challenge to fuel our bloodlust. Just the slow shuffle of those left standing, their eyes blank, their faces slack. They stumbled over the dead without a glance, without care, as though they couldn't feel the cold creeping up their limbs, couldn't sense their own dying.

"Look at them," Gunnar said again, but this time there was no sneer. He stood over a woman he had cut down, the body splayed in the dirt at his feet. Her skin was waxy, stretched tight over her bones, and her eyes were still open, staring up at the sky. Her mouth hung slack, as if in the middle of a word she'd forgotten how to finish.

"Something's wrong with them," Bjorn muttered. He stood nearby, wiping his blade clean, though there wasn't much blood to show for it. "This isn't just sickness."

Ingrid narrowed her eyes, scanning the desolate homes. "They're dead on their feet. Does it matter? We take what we came for." But there was nothing to take. The houses were bare, their hearths cold, their walls empty of life. Food rotted in pots, untouched. We found no coin, no treasure—only the signs of a people who had stopped caring, who had left their lives behind without ever leaving their homes.

I glanced toward the shore, the mist still thick, swallowing the edges of the village, making it feel like we were caught in some half-world, stuck between waking and dream. Something wasn't right, but I couldn't say what. The quiet was too deep, the sickness too old. "We should leave," I said, my voice low. "There's nothing here for us."

Ingrid shot me a look, but she didn't argue. She could feel it too—the wrongness that seeped up through the mud, the weight of something unseen hanging in the fog. She nodded once, a silent agreement, and we turned back toward the shore, our steps quicker than before.

The villagers we left behind didn't move, didn't breathe. But the village felt alive in a way that made my skin crawl.