Last Watch

I’ve never seen the mist move like this before.

Three years on night watch, and you learn to read the darkness like a book. Every shadow, every sound has meaning. The way sand travels in the wind, how clouds pass over stars, even the rhythm of night birds calling to each other – it all tells a story. But tonight… tonight the story feels wrong.

The mist hugs the ground too closely, flows too purposefully against the wind. And the silence – gods, the silence. No insects. No night birds. Nothing. Even the usual phosphorescent glow of the Wastes seems dimmer, as if something’s consuming the light itself.

I shift in my tower post, trying to ignore the growing unease in my gut. Old Jerome trained me for this position, spent three years teaching me every sign and signal. “Trust your instincts,” he’d say, “but don’t let fear make you stupid.” Right now, my instincts are screaming.

The watch tower creaks softly as a breeze picks up, carrying the acrid scent of the Wastes. I’ve always hated that smell – like burning metal and decay. Usually, the sweet fragrance of fresh baked breads from the bakery on the edge of Steelwatch drifts this way and helps mask it, but not tonight. Tonight the wind brings only corruption.

Movement. There – just at the edge of where the Wastes meet fertile ground. I lean forward, straining to see through the moonless dark. Three figures, moving fast. Too fast. My heart stops as realization hits: Grays.

The stories flash through my mind – Lord Solomon’s “experiments,” the gloomash corruption, what it did to them. What they do to people. Everyone in Steelwatch knows the stories, but few have ever seen one and lived. They were peaceful creatures once, before Solomon forced them to consume gloomash, before that rare earth element twisted them into something monstrous.

I slowly sink down in my watch post, making myself as small as possible. The warning bell hangs silent above me, useless. Ring it, and they’d be on me before help could arrive. Ash Calder’s cousin, who was a watch guard years ago, tried to sound the alarm when he spotted Grays. They found pieces of him scattered across half a kilometer.

Stay still. Stay quiet. Maybe they’ll pass.

But they don’t pass. They’re moving in patterns below, like wolves circling prey. Can they smell me? The stories say the gloomash changed them in ways we still don’t understand. I can barely make out their shapes through the darkness, but their movements are odd – too jerky, too quick. Nothing human moves like that.

My hand inches toward the knife at my belt. Not that it would help much. Grays are known to shrug off sword wounds, keep fighting with arrows in their chest. The gloomash makes them difficult to kill. But the weight of the blade is reassuring, a small comfort in the growing horror of this endless night.

A scratch. Wood splintering.

No. Please, no.

I force myself to peer over the edge. One of them is on the support post, claws digging into the wood, pulling itself up. In the darkness, I can just make out its twisted form – the elongated limbs, the way its joints bend wrong. The stories don’t do them justice. Nothing could prepare you for seeing one up close. My throat closes around a gasp, but it’s too late.

It looks up.

Its eyes – gods, its eyes – find mine. They’re clouded with gloomash corruption but somehow still aware. Still hungry. And something worse: intelligent. These aren’t mindless beasts. They’re hunters, and they know exactly what they’re doing.

My hands fumble for the warning mallet, but panic makes me clumsy. The sound of it clattering down into the darkness seems deafening in the unnatural quiet. Then I hear them – all three of them – scratching their way up the tower.

I scream. I bang on the bell with my fist, but the sound is pathetically weak. Not enough. Nowhere near enough.

The noise I’m making seems to excite them – their breathing becomes heavier, more ragged. I hear what might be laughter, if laughter could be tortured into something cruel.

Light in the distance – torches from Steelwatch.

They heard something. They’re coming.

Hope flares in my chest.

The scratching is closer. I can hear their breathing now, wet and ragged.

Sometimes, in the tavern, the older guards talk about what gloomash does to the lungs, how it gradually crystallizes them. How the Grays are always in pain, always hungry because of it. Some say that’s why they’re so vicious – they’re trying to escape their own agony by causing it in others.

The torches are getting closer, but too slowly.

Too slowly.

I can smell them now – that burning metal scent of the Wastes, but stronger, mixed with something else. Something coppery and wet.

Searing pain explodes across my throat.

Hot. Sharp. Final.

I’m on my back, staring up at stars I can no longer see. Weight on my chest. Hot breath on my face.

One of them leans close, and I see intelligence in those corrupted eyes. It knows what it’s doing. It wants me to know too.

I feel my abdomen ripping open. Warm wetness spreading. Tears roll down my temples into my hair.

I think of my brother, how he’ll wait for me at breakfast tomorrow. I think of Old Jerome, who trained me, who believed in me. I think of all the nights I spent in this tower, watching over the town, believing I was keeping it safe.

The torches are still coming, but they’ll be too late. They were always going to be too late.

I can hear shouts now, boots running, but it’s all so distant, so unimportant compared to the weight on my chest, the hot breath on my face, the pain that’s becoming almost gentle as darkness creeps in from the edges.

In my last moments, I see the Gray’s face clearly. Through the corruption and mutation, I catch a glimpse of what it once was, what Solomon took from it.

There’s recognition there, a shared understanding between two victims of forces beyond our control. Then its jaw unhings, and I see too many teeth.

The darkness takes me, and my last thought is of the morning sun on the kiju orchards, of life and light so close to where the shadows rule. Of all the stories I’ve read in the night, and how mine will end here, another tale of warning for those who guard the edge of light.

I hope they find enough of me to bury in the light. I hope my death at least gives meaning to my watch.

But in those final seconds, as consciousness fades and the Grays feed, I know better. There is no meaning here, no noble sacrifice, no lesson to be learned. There is only the darkness, the hunger, and the ever-present threat of the Wastes.

The night takes its due, as it always has, as it always will.