The outpost offered no answers beyond what the snow had already told.

Inside the barracks, the signs became impossible to ignore. There were no claw marks on the walls. No scorch marks or unnatural residue. Only overturned tables, broken stools, and dried blood frozen into the grain of the wood. Bedrolls were torn apart. Lockers stood open and emptied in haste, not looted with care.

It had not been a monster attack.

It had been panic.

One room bore the worst of it. A cluster of footprints circled the center floor, overlapping again and again as if the occupants had turned on one another in close quarters. Scratches marked the doorframe from the inside. The wood was split by repeated blows, not strong enough to break through in time.

The scouts had not fled together. They had scattered.

Outside, the remaining bodies told the same story. Shallow wounds. Defensive cuts. Blows struck too close, too frantic, too personal. None of the discipline expected of trained soldiers remained in their final moments. The cold had finished what fear began.

Whatever they had seen, whatever had taken hold of them, it had not been a creature with teeth and claws.

It had been something quieter.

Madness. Paranoia. A sense of being watched when nothing was there. Of betrayal where there was none. The sort of fear that convinces a man his brother is already lost.

By the time silence reclaimed the outpost, there had been no one left to defend it.

The conclusion was unavoidable, even if no one wished to voice it aloud.

The scouts had gone mad.

That would be the report. No monsters at the outpost. No breach from the west. No evidence of an outside assault. Only an internal collapse that ended in blood and cold.

The trail ended here.

Whatever larger horrors stalked the frozen land had not claimed these soldiers directly. But something had brushed close enough to unravel them all the same.

With nothing left to secure and nothing to save, there was no reason to linger. The wind already worked to erase the last signs of struggle, snow drifting into footprints and softening the edges of broken things.

The outpost would become another quiet marker on the map. Another place Rotia would avoid speaking of too closely.

When the group turned back toward the Bastion, the distant thunder of battle still echoed faintly across the plains. The walls still stood. The city still fought.

And the knowledge they carried back was simple, grim, and final.

The western scouts were dead.
They had killed each other.
Whatever touched their minds did not leave a mark that steel could answer.

The road back to the Bastion passed without incident. The main fighting had drawn the bulk of the roaming horrors elsewhere, leaving the western approach quiet once more. Smoke still rose from the walls in the distance, but the siege had not broken them.

Upon arrival, the report was delivered directly to Lord Roderic.

The findings were brief and grim. The outpost had not fallen to monsters. The scouts had succumbed to panic and internal violence. No survivors remained. The western route was clear of immediate threats, but the loss of the post meant Rotia would have to rethink how far it could safely extend its watch.

The lord received the news in silence.

There were no accusations. No punishment to assign. Only the heavy understanding that something unseen had already begun to erode his defenses, not through force, but through fear.

The task was marked complete.

The travelers were released from duty, their involvement formally concluded. Whatever awaited Rotia next would require planning, reinforcements, and time. For now, the western road was closed, the outpost abandoned, and the dead left to the snow.