The wind had turned cold by the time they reached the pass, biting through their worn clothing like an invisible predator. Elara pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders, her breath fogging in the sharp air. The sky overhead was a muted gray, heavy with the weight of an impending storm.
She glanced over at Kael, who walked a few paces ahead, his expression unreadable. The world had shifted between them in the last few days. The trust that had begun to form was fragile — a hesitant bond, like a new plant struggling to root in barren soil.
But it was something.
Something worth holding on to.
They had been traveling for days, moving steadily north, following the trail of the old highway. There had been no sign of the elusive "safe zones" Kael had promised. Only wilderness. Ruins. The remnants of lives long forgotten.
And now, the pass.
A jagged scar in the mountains ahead, the road narrowing to a thin, treacherous strip of crumbling stone. The path was lined with bones.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them.
Human remains — picked clean by scavengers, their skulls white as bleached stone. The bones had been left in such numbers that the road seemed to have been built upon them, as if the very earth had swallowed the dead, their remains forever memorialized by the landscape.
Kael slowed his pace as they neared the edge of the pass, his boots crunching on the gravel as he took in the sight.
Elara followed his gaze, her stomach turning. She had seen death before — up close and personal. But this... this was different.
It wasn't just the bodies. It was the sheer scale of the loss.
"This is it," Kael said softly, his voice low, almost reverent. "The Road of Bones."
Elara didn't reply immediately. She wasn't sure what to say. The road stretched ahead of them, disappearing into the mist that had begun to creep in from the mountains.
It was said that the road had once been a trade route, a passage between cities, vital to the survival of the old world. But after the war, it became something else entirely. A place where the desperate came to die.
The bones were a reminder of the price of survival.
"How far?" she asked.
"Not far," Kael replied, though there was something in his tone that didn't quite match the words. "A few miles at most. But it's dangerous."
Elara raised an eyebrow. "More dangerous than this?" she asked, gesturing to the vast wasteland around them.
Kael didn't answer. Instead, he stepped forward, his eyes scanning the horizon.
Without another word, they began the long trek down the narrow pass, the sound of their footsteps lost in the wind. The road was treacherous, the path barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Loose rocks and rubble crunched beneath their boots, sending echoes that seemed to ripple through the empty mountains.
As they walked, Elara's mind kept returning to the bones — the thousands of forgotten souls who had once passed this way, perhaps with the same hope they carried now. Hope that things might be different.
But the world had never been kind to those who hoped.
Still, she couldn't shake the thought. If this road had once been a passage to something greater, maybe it could lead them to something too.
"Why do they call it the Road of Bones?" she asked, breaking the silence.
Kael's response was quiet, almost reluctant. "It's not just the bones."
He didn't elaborate further, and Elara didn't press. She could see in his eyes that there was a story behind the name — a story he wasn't ready to share.
For a while, the journey passed in silence, the wind howling like a living thing around them. Elara's mind kept drifting, though. She thought of Tomas, of the letters never sent, of the people she had lost. But her thoughts always circled back to one thing: survival.
She had to keep moving.
She had to keep fighting.
And so did Kael.
The wind picked up, gusting sharply against her face, and she realized that they had reached the halfway point of the pass. The bones seemed to grow thicker now, a stark reminder that no one ever passed this way without cost.
Elara's breath quickened, and her instincts screamed at her to turn back. But she didn't. She pressed on, her boots crunching against the gravel as she followed Kael's steady lead.
The air was colder now, the mist thickening, obscuring their view. The world felt more distant, as if the mountains themselves were closing in around them. Elara could feel the pressure of the land bearing down on her, the weight of the unknown pressing against her chest.
It wasn't just the bones.
It wasn't just the land.
It was the silence.
They had been walking for hours, but the stillness of the road seemed to stretch time in unnatural ways. There was something suffocating about it, like the mountains were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.
Suddenly, Kael stopped.
Elara nearly ran into him, startled by the abrupt motion.
"Kael?" she asked, her voice low.
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he knelt down, pulling something from his bag. Elara peered over his shoulder, her eyes narrowing as she saw the object in his hands.
A radio.
She had seen one like it before. Small, rugged, designed to survive the elements. Kael fiddled with the dial, adjusting it, then held it up to his ear.
Elara watched him, sensing the tension that had suddenly appeared in his posture. The radio crackled to life, a faint voice coming through the static.
"Kael... do you copy?" the voice said, distorted but unmistakable.
His face hardened at the sound, and Elara's heart skipped a beat. This wasn't good.
"Kael?" the voice repeated. "Is that you?"
Kael didn't respond immediately, his fingers tightening around the radio. He looked up at Elara, his eyes filled with something unreadable.
"We need to keep moving," he said, his voice tight. "Now."