PROSE – FOWC & RDP

The mist clung to the earth like old sorrow, curling around boots and stones, swallowing sound. Two figures stood before the monolith, cloaked in black, their outlines blurred by fog and fate. The stone towered above them, carved from the mountain’s spine. Its surface was worn by centuries but still bore the mark—an eye within a jagged star—that pulsed faintly, like something alive and watching.

They had come a long way to find it. Through dead forests that whispered their names. Across plains littered with the bones of better men. Not for glory. Not even for vengeance. Just the promise of an answer, or maybe an end.

Behind them, the others waited. Hooded. Silent. A dozen warriors who had followed them without question, bound by old oaths and older regrets. No one asked what lay on the other side of the fog. The question had been buried with the first man who hesitated.

The taller of the two stepped forward, boots crunching on frost-hardened gravel. His hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, fingers twitching like they remembered every fight that hadn’t gone his way. “We stand at the edge,” he said, low and certain.

His companion didn’t look at him, just stared at the monolith. “And what waits beyond?”

“Only those who boldly engage the old magic will know.”

The other figure stepped closer to the stone, his silhouette ragged with wear but upright and determined. He placed a gloved hand on the carving. The stone felt warm—too warm—as if it hadn’t forgotten.

The ground answered—not with light but with a deep, resonant hum that rolled through the valley like a warning. The fog began to move, twisting into strange shapes, pulling backward to reveal what waited deeper in the pass—a path, a gate, shadows shifting on the other side.

The second man drew his blade slowly, the sound of steel slicing the stillness. “Then we put on the gauntlet,” he said, quiet but resolved. “And we walk into whatever comes next.”

Not for glory. Not for vengeance. But for truth. And for the ones they couldn’t bring back.

Together, they stepped forward as the stone split open, the mountain groaning with ancient memory. Finally, the fog began to part.