South of Wild Reed Village, the royal highway narrowed into a sunken track between drowned reed marshes.
The natural twilight vanished, swallowed by an unnatural, curdled white fog that rolled off the stale water.
It wasn’t the clean, biting mountain frost of the Weeping Pass.
This cold was damp, greasy, and choking, clinging to the skin like wet grave-linen.
Along both embankments, twisted weeping willows leaned over the road like hooded mourners.
From their gnarled boughs hung hundreds of fraying white silk ribbons, their hems stiff with dried road mud.
Each ribbon had been tied there by grieving kinsmen to mark where a starved conscript or refugee had collapsed into the ditches.
Under the bitter gusts, the ribbons fluttered with a dry rattle that mimicked the chatter of frozen teeth.
