As soon as the deafening sound of the split apart ropes and metal anchors came in, it disappeared just as fast. From a distance we still could make out the faces of our parents. Dad’s face was as grim and stoic as always, Mom’s face was a mix of worry, fear as she was holding onto Dad’s arm and staring at our figures drifting further and further.

I kept shifting my eyes from the distant figures of our parents to my own shaking hands and felt the dampness and dirt stuck to my newly sewn travel dress. The gray and white became almost indiscernible with the white seemingly combining itself with the gray of the slick dust. My body was completely stiff and I couldn’t move a finger on my hand. The initial shock at the absurdity of the situation has faded and understanding of what is happening started to settle in. The Breaking has happened. I have never witnessed it before, not in this magnitude, but there were always stories passed around about how the Kasava Kingdom archipelago used to have a lot of more islands to it, before they eventually broke off due to various reasons, such as Gale Bridge anchors rusting off and whatever secret art holding them together fading with time, or with sabotage from rebelling islands, escaping from government retaliation. None of the stories mentioned anything resembling what happened here however, the breaking didn’t start because of the failing Gale Bridge, this was just a regular wood and iron bridge, not connecting islands to other islands, just a passageway above a ravine. It all started when the weird red and purple light started pouring out of the nets of cracked rock down in the ravine.

Suddenly, a distant cry broke off the spell of gushing thoughts.

“Om…in, Tri…n! Don’t wor… abou… us! Go … uncle! We wi…e okay! Info… the cons.…te” I saw the Mom’s sooty face shout towards us, her lines concentrated and set on reaching us with her voice. I couldn’t make out anything else due to the ever increasing distance and the swirls of dust in the air. I could barely make out Mom’s face trying to scream something else, but at this point I couldn’t hear it at all.

“What… what do we do, Omin?” I whispered.

I didn’t get an answer for a full minute. I swung my head to the right to see Omin, “Omin?”. What I saw is an unnerving combination of a completely pale face with red-purple strings of protruding veins, the look I have never before seen on my brother.

“Omin.. Omin!” I screamed into his face.

“Wha… what?” He weakly replied to my yelling, “ah, ah, sorry. I… I don’t know. Mom said they’ll be fine and… they probably will, they have food from crops… and from livestock,” Omin said, his voice getting stronger, “water shouldn’t be a problem either, they have a river, if they build dams on both sides, it’ll fill up from the Great Gray’s sediments over time and some wells are still good for a while. Good thing we were always pretty secluded, huh? Ha.. ha-ha-ha,” his laugh slightly hysterical “We… we should go to Rhawa, we can’t help them, unless we find a comically large rope somewhere around here hiding in the grass.”

“What do we do? Parents looked fine, at least until I could see them through all the dust” I asked, “Also I think Mom screamed to us to not worry about them and go to Rhawa and seek cons-something.” I looked at Omin’s face, color came back to it and he seemed like a usual self.

“Cons? Hmm, probably the city consulate…”

“Why though? How is the city consulate going to help?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but if Mom said so, maybe they are responsible for The Breaking cases and can help somehow? I think,” he took a sharp breath, “I think our plan is the next, we go to Rhawa as planned but also share the news about this to the city consulate and have some hope that they can help. I don’t know how, parents never told me about The Breaking, as far as I know it’s considered bad manners and a jinx to talk about it openly” Omin said.

“Are you sure we just go? Can’t we do anything to get to Mom and Dad?” I asked with the remnants of hope after his monologue.

“How do you imagine that? As I said, do you see a comically large rope here somewhere? Our best bet is to go to Rhawa, like Mom said. If you heard her right, of course. I was pretty out of it when it all happened,” Omin said, “Let’s catch a breath and go to Rhawa as fast as we can, we don’t know if there’s a time limit on how long it can wait before it’s still salvageable.”

I’ve left him without a reply, as I was gathering my thoughts and trying to keep my nervousness and fear for my parents in check. It was not going well, I kept thinking whether the village would really be able to survive without hunting and herb gathering outside of the village premises, my mind kept shooting to the last glimpse of Mom’s face scrunched up in the attempts to make sure her last words reach us. How will other people handle it, it’s never good when a disaster strikes and people are too close to each other at the height of their emotions. What if they will choose a black sheep to ostracize and somehow it will turn out to be our family for leaving the village. There’s no reason beyond an extremely superficial one, but I have seen people do things out of fear, when the village had a locust plague a lifetime ago, they would use anything and anyone as a reason for the disaster just to soothe their minds.

Absent-mindedly, I swiped my gaze around the surroundings. The remnants of the snow were nowhere to be seen, either pushed out by the blasts of wind after the earth split or covered completely by the ensuing dust and dirt. I could see the rolling hills so ingrained to the local scenery and the large mountain range so far away, it seemed small from here, while being nothing like from what I've heard. It's called Rhawa, just like the city, as the city itself was founded on the foot of the mountain range during times of five kingdoms and civil wars. Dad told us all about that period of strife, as it was unsurprisingly his favorite topic and pretty much the only one he would participate in actively. After holding my gaze on the mountain, I glanced back to the breaking line, where not so long ago I just said goodbyes to my parents and the anxiety I only just managed to keep down came back creeping like a prowling beast ready to pounce at an unsuspecting cattle. Trying to break out of the anxiety spiral I moved my eyes to the sitting figure of Omin, just as he started to get up.

“Good to move?” He asked.

I rolled my shoulders trying to invigorate myself and tried to get up, almost falling the first try from numb feet. Second try went better and I stood firmly on the ground.

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“Yeah, let’s go”, I said, throwing a last glance behind me at the barely a speck in the distance that I used to call home.

————————————————————

“We should walk for at least a couple more hours today, since we started a lot later than expected. Pick up the pace!” Omin shouted over his shoulder.

I didn’t have any strength to shout back, we were already walking for 4 hours straight with no stops over the hills, up and down. I was drained completely, while Omin seemed to be no worth for wear whatsoever. I couldn’t understand why, it’s not like he was doing any more physical activity than me, both of us are, or maybe were, farmers. I dragged my feet urging them to move and asking them to hurt a bit less. I should’ve listened to Mom, when she told me not to wear new leather boots on the trip. They were biting into my feet like leeches and would continue to do so, until I had worn them enough to make them fit properly, but of course I wanted to wear my shiny new boots right away, without even paying attention to what Mom implied by suggesting not to wear them. I never knew this happened with new leather because I was always wearing stuff after my brother.

As I continued admonishing myself and wincing every step from biting pain, I also thought about the trip. It was fairly uneventful after the Breaking. We continued on the way to Rhawa, targeting the Rhawa mountain in the distance. There were no proper roads or even dirt roads on the way, only the traces of animal trails and long forgotten and unwalked pathways peeking out under the yellowish grass and patches of snow.

We continued traveling in silence towards the mountain ranges until the Sun started hiding behind the horizon and turning the world around us into a fiery show of orange warring with dark shadows casted by hills and trees blocking last remnants of sunlight.

“We should stop and break camp for today. How are your feet?” Still bo-bo for my precious little brother?” Omin asked with his usual humor.

“Yeah, still hurting, probably won’t change much by the morning either. I don’t think boots will become any better until much later.” I didn’t bother shooting back at Omin for his annoying remark, just happy that his usual self was coming back. I didn’t think I could walk the whole day in silence again like we did today. It was eerie seeing my usually cheerful if introverted brother so downcast.

We found a nice looking alcove in a hill a bit further and decided to put the camp down there. I went to gather some firewood, while Omin put up a tent, if you could call it that. There was not enough leather for us to bring with us a proper leather tent, so we had to just patch up different pieces of cloth we had lying around the house. It wouldn’t help much if we got hit by the rain. It was a rare occurrence, as most of the Great Gray was usually below the island, but sometimes they formed higher than usual and on certain occasions produced rain, but it would at least shield us from wind on still cold spring nights. After getting some fallen off branches, luckily finding some of them dry enough for a campfire and turned back to the camp.

By the time I came back to the camp, it was already fully set up with a tent and a campfire lined with stones, only firewood missing from its insides. Omin had enough experience making campfires, from times whenever he went along with village hunters, so it didn’t take him too long to start one and both of us silently warmed our appendages by the welcoming warmth of the campfire. We didn’t talk much during this time, sitting by it until the Sun completely hid from us and we huddled inside the tent, trying to catch some much needed sleep.

I had trouble falling asleep, the events of today kept rolling through my head and the sounds of distant animal howls and rustle of birds finding the nearby branches comfortable for the night.

I missed the transition between the troubled night and the emergence of the Sun and the sounds of cooking coming from outside the tent. I must have finally fallen asleep when my body just couldn’t bother with the distractions anymore and shut off. I got the blanket off my body and scrambled outside the tent. Meeting me outside was a view of Omin already awake and sausages along with some eggs frying on a pan above the campfire, using a stone slab to transfer the heat from the fire. Smells of frying food filled my nostrils immediately reminding my still sleep-ridden body about deep hunger.

“Oh, you up? Food’s almost ready, can you get the camp cleaned up and prepare everything to move? Omin asked with a smile on his face. His soft smile immediately improved my mood, happy to see him in good spirits compared to yesterday.

I groggily started putting the sheets of patched clothes from the tent into the hunter backpack Omin wore. I wished we had stopped by a river so that I had water to wash my dusty body, but the closest one according to explanations from Omin was still a couple of hours ahead. I finished everything up, dusted my clothes as best I could without an access to water and sat by the campfire across Omin, waiting for food to finish cooking.

“Alright, it’s done. Let’s destroy this breakfast and move on. We’re still a long way from Rhawa, especially because of our late start,” A shadow crossed his face as he was reminded of reasons of the late start, but quickly passed, “We’ll take a rest by the river, once we reach it, wash off the dirt and fill up the canteens. You feeling alright?

“Yeah, never better. What do you think?” I said, wincing internally at the aggressiveness in my voice, “Sorry, I’m just still thinking about yesterday, I’m good to move at least, feet don’t hurt as much right now, but I imagine this will change fast.”

“It’s fine, I understand. Let’s try not thinking about it too much and try to look forward to you becoming a proper bloody blood mage, huh?” Omin tried to lift my spirits as best as he could, but it didn’t really work. I still felt grateful however.

————————————————————

We reached the river by noon, washing our clothes on the outside and wiping down our bodies. Spring days were still cold, so we decided to move right away to warm ourselves up, instead of breaking camp and wasting sunlight.

We continued on our way, well into the evening. We started seeing more dirt roads by this point with clear signs of carriages marked by the wheel dents. We were yet to see any people or villages on the way.

As soon as the sun started going down yet again, we set out to put the camp down. Unfortunately for us, we hit the planes and there basically no natural cover for us to use. Knowing that animals most likely wouldn’t get too close to human roads, we decided to pick a random flat place not too far from the road. As we were getting the camp ready and started the campfire, we noticed a group of shadows emerging from the road.

“Do you think they’re coming here? Are these bandits? Should we run?” I asked Omin, each question rattling out faster and faster.

“No, not bandits, clothes are too shiny. Armor? I think I can make out scabbards as well. Not bandits, but let’s run, just to be safe. Don’t bother picking up camp, we don’t have time.

Omin and me started off in the direction where we came from, but unfortunately for us they had horses and these were flat planes. There was just no chance to outrun them, but we still tried. The figures were looming closer and closer, only the sounds of the hoofs clamping the dirt and bright flames of the torches reminding us that the group was getting closer and closer.

“STOP! Do not move or we will shoot!” An extremely hoarse female voice shot out behind us.

“What do we do, what do we do? Do we keep running, they’re very close now?”

“Fuck… fuck, okay, I guess we’re stopping and pray to the Great Gray that they are not bandits.” Omin replied.

“By the order of the Church of Hegemony’s Ruin, stop and lay down your weapons, if you have them!