“For now,” Wren said, peering down the open hatch again, though she could sense there were no undead in the vicinity. She turned her gaze to the narrow windows that sat at regular intervals along the wall. All she could make out were tree branches. “I just don’t know where we’ve wound up. We ran for a while last night, but in what direction…”
Julian, who had been refolding some of the blankets, straightened. His gaze roamed the space before landing on the ceiling, where, much to Wren’s surprise, an additional trapdoor sat. It was currently closed, but Julian extended his arm and flicked the latch. “This was a watchtower once,” he explained, confirming Wren’s suspicion as the door groaned open, revealing a perfect circle of blue sky studded with clouds. Mounted next to it on the ceiling was a rusted metal ladder, which he tugged, and it too screeched and protested before coming loose, the steps perfectly meeting the floor underneath.
“Steel,” he muttered with distaste, shaking his head. “We never had to bother with this stuff until the Breach. Suddenly we couldn’t afford to waste good iron on anything other than weapons and armor.” He actually wiped his gloved hand on his leg, as if the steel left some sort of residue.
Shaking her head in amusement, Wren followed him up the ladder.
The roof slanted away from the hatch on all sides, allowing for proper drainage of rain and snow but making it difficult for them to stand on. Julian pulled himself onto the roof, still moving somewhat gingerly thanks to his chest and hand injuries, and sat down near the top. Wren did the same, and together they took in the view.
The height of the tower helped them see past the treetops in all directions, and the breath whooshed from her lungs as she turned northeast. There was a massive gouge marring the landscape. This was the Breach, the place where the ironsmiths had overmined and caused the land to shake, the ground to split, and whole cities and towns to come crumbling down. And that was to say nothing of what they’d uncovered there, a lost city filled with undead.
It was as jagged as a scar, deep and dark… save for a faint, unnatural green glow.
Julian pointed at the vista before them. “There were once three mines here,” he said, indicating each spot in turn. One was on the very edge of the Breach, which sat at the base of what Wren assumed was the Adamantine Mountains. “It was apparently Oreton, a newer mine, that caused it,” he said. “Not that it mattered. Undead spewed out of every mine within a twenty-mile radius. There was even a gold mine to the north that was overrun, but luckily it collapsed before the revenants could spread. Most of the people escaped, and when they built the Wall, they made sure to close it off with the rest of us.”
“Why did they build it underground?” Wren wondered aloud, unable to tear her eyes from the view. Julian shot her a puzzled look, so she clarified. “The ghostsmith city, I mean. It’s not like they were mining for dead.”
“No,” Julian agreed. “They were mining for magic.”
Wren turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, magic comes from the earth, right? So the anvils—our scholars,” he reminded her, “they think the ghostsmiths were looking for more. They didn’t just ‘go away’ when the rest of the smiths rejected them. They came here and started digging. The anvils think their whole society was built, defended, and maintained by the undead.”
Wren gaped. “You think they found it, then? More magic?”
“How else do you explain the walking undead? They aren’t all centuries-old corpses roaming the Haunted Territory. New revenants are rising every day. And they only rise here.”
Wren was stunned. Like the stories about the Corpse Queen, this was something she’d never heard before. Unless… what had Odile said? That something dark lived in the Breach? Something evil? Could she mean this magic?
Wren didn’t know if it was what Julian had just told her or the very real, very visceral sight of the Breach after a life filled with stories about it, but she felt a bit sick as she stared across the landscape. Even in the daylight, she could see the ghost glow, which added a surreal, sinister tone to the rocks and hillsides. She could only imagine the view at night. And the undead… Would they be visible, wandering to and fro, or did they mostly slumber until the living crossed their path? Everything looked barren, not a person or animal to be seen, nor a sound to be heard.
A question rose to the surface of her mind. “Where do we cross?” The Breach stretched, unbroken, from the mountains in the north to the dense forest in the south.
A short, sharp laugh. He extended an arm. “We don’t. We go around it, through those trees, which are a part of the Norwood—the same forest we’re in right now—and then turn north on the far side.”
Wren followed the path, which required a massive detour.
Julian dropped his hand. “I’d thought that sticking to the outskirts of the Haunted Territory would keep us mostly safe, but if last night is any indication…” He rubbed at his jaw, then shifted his gaze to the landscape nearer at hand. “Towers like this were built soon after the Breach, meant to keep track of any wayward undead that came anywhere close to civilization, so they could raise the alarm. They were placed well outside the danger zone. The fact these trees are apparently crawling with undead means the Haunted Territory has expanded. Exponentially.”
“So even your ‘safe route’ might not be safe at all?”
He sighed but didn’t respond. He squinted into the distance again. “I could have sworn the Breach didn’t extend quite this far south—as I understood it, it didn’t reach the Norwood, but…”
“Could it have grown?” Wren asked. The edges were difficult to discern, jagged and crisp in some places but obscured by rock and fallen structures in others. Entire towns had fallen into that gorge when it first cracked open, so it didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that the ground might give way further.
A visible shudder went down Julian’s spine. He hesitated, then shook his head resolutely. “No. It was mining that caused it, and no one would be fool enough to go digging down there anymore. It’s going to be a hard journey, but if we stick to the tree line…” He trailed off. “It’s our best chance.”
They climbed back down, Wren going over everything Julian had said. It was logically sound, and before their run-in the previous night, she might have agreed with it. But right now she didn’t.
Julian continued to pack up the bedding while Wren dug through their bags for breakfast.
As they sat together on the floor chewing dried meat and sour pickled vegetables, Wren asked about something she’d seen spanning the gaping maw of the Breach.
A bridge.
It had looked spindly and unfinished, a skeletal scrap of metal.
“Has anyone ever crossed it?”
Julian’s hand stilled as he reached for another piece of meat. He darted a glance up at her before focusing on his meal. “My father did,” he said shortly. “During the Uprising. It was built to sneak troops to the Wall.”
Oh. So that was how they’d tried to outsmart the Dominion soldiers. Instead of traveling miles to avoid the Haunted Territory, making it easy to predict their strikes, they’d decided to cut through, hoping to catch the Dominion soldiers and the garrisons at the Wall unprepared. Unfortunately for them, Locke’s scouting unit had found them first.