"Kill that beast! Hurry up and kill it! There are more of us and only one beast!" The woman with one eye roared. She brandished a large blade and gave a battle cry that rattled the four to their bones as she charged toward Ice. "To me, you cowards!"

"No! Ice, get away!" Anre cried.

Yunkef hefted Anre to his feet. "We don't have time, we have to go!"

"But I can't leave Ice!"

"I know, I know." Yunkef suddenly stopped talking. As he was about to say that the loyal beast was a lost cause, something hanging from the side of the cliff, just above the tunnel exit they had come out of, caught his eye. It was a net laden with large boulders stationed just above the exit, possibly as a trap or to block the flow of beasts coming from the caverns. "Cross, how good is your aim with that spear?" he asked.

"What? I don't throw it, what are you talking about?" Cross replied, bewildered. Then Red snatched the spear from her twin's hand. Without pausing, she reeled her arm back and hurled the spear towards the net, aiming for the clearly strained and fraying rope that held the net.

The spear didn't slice the entire way through the rope, but it didn't have to. The great weight of the rocks was enough to snap the weakened rope, causing the whole bundle to crash suddenly onto the ground, shaking the earth with its force. The darkness-touched were stunned from the shock of the impact and began to run as boulders tumbled towards them at speed.

"Run!" Yunkef screamed, pushing Anre and Red forward. "They're distracted, run!"

"Ice! Come here!" Anre whistled for the beast who whined back and limped as fast as she could towards the group. They sped off from the darkness-touched camp as quickly as they could, running full tilt into the uncharted surroundings.

"I think we lost them." Red wheezed after a while of running. They came to a stop by a large rock and rested against it, with Anre falling onto the ground and laying there as he tried to catch his breath. "There were so many of them."

"Yes, too many for comfort. But I want to know why they're here." Yunkef said between gasps of breath.

"What do you mean? They had made camp in a defensible area." Cross muttered.

"I know, but I mean why a crowd of darkness-touched are out here, at the edge of the darkness? Past the caverns? Even Night couldn't get here, yet there were so many people."

"Maybe they were driven away from their Settlements?" Red mused. "I mean, if they were darkness-touched, they wouldn't have any place among other people, right? They could have come out here for refuge."

"To start their own Settlement of darkness-touched?"

"Well it's kind of like us, isn't it?" Anre wheezed from the ground. "We have nowhere to go being how we are, so we ended up together."

Silence fell upon the group as the others thought about Anre's words. He was right.

"I really can never return to my Settlement then," Yunkef said, a somber tone in his voice. "And you three can never rejoin one. We're permanently outcasts."

"That might not be true though," Anre replied, raising a hand. "Night said something about finding the thing Lady Black doesn't want us to find out at the edge of the darkness, to lift the curse or something. Maybe if we find it, then everything will be alright!"

"That is if we find it and if it lifts the curse. But I suppose we have nothing else to do but try." Yunkef said with a sigh. "We'll figure out what to do once we get there, but for now we need to regroup. Where are we anyway?"

Red suddenly put a hand over Yunkef's mouth, glaring at him as he tried to protest. She put a finger to her lips and shushed the other three. Slowly and cautiously, she signaled for Cross and Yunkef to crouch, to get low and stay by the base of the large rock they were resting by. She pointed out towards the darkness, and some distance away were the glow of several campfires. As the group watched, a dozen or so smaller fires split off from the nearest campfire.

"Torches," Red whispered. "Those men might still be looking for us."

Yunkef signaled to Red, who took her hand off his mouth. "Why would they be using torches to look for us though?"

Red and Cross looked at Yunkef like he had grown another head, till he continued his thought.

"Don't the darkness-touched see in the dark?"

The three looked at each other, confused and with a feeling of rising concern and dread.

"Then that means whoever is out there aren't darkness-touched." Anre chimed in. "We could go to their camp and see what they want?"

"We can steal supplies, and hopefully they would have maps or something else we can use," Red said.

Yunkef gasped. "We can't just steal from people!"

"Why not? I agree with Red, it's either them or us and I'd rather we have all the advantages we can get." Cross gestured with his hands. "Besides, I need a weapon since you threw my spear away, Red. I don't mind grabbing theirs."

"Alright! Alright, here's what we can do." Yunkef dropped his voice back down to a whisper. The glow of the torches was approaching their hiding space. "We wait till they're close and go around them, doubling back to their camp. Then we find what we can use and leave quickly. Anre, leave Ice somewhere as a lookout, she can alert us if this group is coming back. Is everyone agreed?"

There were no disagreements to the plan, and the group moved swiftly through the darkness as the group of torch-bearers crept closer to them.

The camp was moderately large, with a single campfire in the center that burned brightly enough to illuminate the edges of the camp. The camp itself seemed designed in such a way that it ends just before the edge of the light. There were tents constructed of canvas, tables of piled-up stone, and a short wall of rock and beast claws all along the perimeter.

As the group crept closer to the illuminated camp, Yunkef stopped in his tracks and gasped. A symbol was emblazoned on all the tents: the circle-with-rays motif of the Citadel. Yunkef threw out a hand and signaled the rest of the group to stop. As they did, they gathered around a large rock just before the camp, well out of the way of the campfire’s light.

“What is it? Why are we stopping?” Cross whispered. “There’s no one there!”

“I know, but we need to be careful. Very, very careful.” Yunkef whispered back, wringing his hands. He stole glances at the camp, uneasy that while the camp looks unguarded, it simply might not be. “This is a camp of zealots from the Citadel!”

“What’s a Citadel?” Anre asked. “I can’t hear anything from the camp other than the campfire so it should be safe.”

“The Citadel is…” Yunkef trailed off for a moment. “The Citadel was a fortified Settlement that was constantly lit by torches and lanterns, and they had a large tower with a beacon that burned constantly. There were no shadows anywhere inside, there were that many lights on all the time.”

“Ugh, it sounds painful,” Cross muttered.

“The people of the Citadel worshiped the Church of the Eternal Flame, where they said the Eternal Flame once existed and it was a fire that burned in the sky and dispelled the darkness.” Yunkef peeked around the rock and took stock of the camp again. “The motif they have painted on the tents were everywhere in the Citadel, on banners, walls, clothing. Everything.”

“Why are you so scared of them though?” Red asked.

“I’m scared of how people from the Citadel treat people who are darkness-touched.” Yunkef continued. “Beasts and people affected by the darkness are to be killed, put out of their misery. So if they find us, we’re dead. So I think we should just go and stay far away from this camp.”

“Hmm, and we have a beast and no weapons to protect ourselves.” Red trailed off and looked Yunkef up and down. “Actually, I have another idea. You go in.”

“What?”

“Those are the robes you got from the Citadel, right? I remember you mentioned as much when we were with Night. If there are any guards or traps in there, you could just say you’re one of them.”

Cross laughed. “I love that idea. Get in there Yunkef, see if you can find me a new spear. And supplies while you’re at it.”

“What? Why me?”

“Get going, while the torch-bearing team is away from the camp!”

After a short moment of bickering, Yunkef reluctantly approached the camp. The campfire crackled quietly in the center of the camp, and its light made sure as much of the camp was lit up. Smaller lanterns were placed in each of the tents, and in every area that the campfire’s light could not reach. Beast weapons were laid out on a table, and a chest lay open with spare white robes.

Yunkef craned his neck this way and that but he could not find anyone else in the camp. Glancing back at where he had left his friends, he saw Cross waving and gesturing towards the tents. Hesitantly nodding back, Yunkef entered one of the tents. It was a simple shelter, with a canvas sheet propped up by poles, a bedroll laid out on the floor, and a bag of beast-leather sitting at its foot. Yunkef bit his lip and hesitated, reaching towards the bag, then pulling his hands back, only to change his mind and reach for it again. Taking things that did not belong to him did not sit well with him at all. The people of the Citadel were out beyond the edge of the darkness, unable to see in the dark if ever their fires went out. And the Citadel itself had fallen so recently! Did these people even know that they had no home to return to? Yunkef shook his head and balled his fists, leaving the tent empty-handed. He passed over the bag of carefully wrapped meat left inside another tent, and the assortment of beast-weapons laid out on the table. There was a letter left behind in another tent, and he allowed himself to peek at its contents.

The letter was from Righteous, and it bore orders to travel as far in one direction as was possible for the team to go and explore the land and document their findings. Yunkef put the letter back where he got it and rushed out of the camp without taking a thing.

On seeing Yunkef returning empty-handed, Cross raised his voice. "What do you think you're doing? There were weapons right there! A chest, and bags!"

"It's a cartography mission!" Yunkef said, hands out trying to placate Cross. "They were sent by the Citadel to explore the world! If I take their things, it might condemn them to death!"

"Why do you care?" Cross shot back. "Better us than them, and if you haven't noticed Yunkef, we barely have anything after we almost got caught!"

"I'm not going to steal from them. Let's just find things we can use elsewhere." Yunkef started to walk away when Cross grabbed him by the arm.

"I'm not going to die defenseless out here because of you." Cross gritted his teeth. "We need those supplies, so go get them!"

"Guys!" Red said in a shouting whisper. She pulled both Yunkef and Cross down into a crouch and quickly put her hands over their mouths. Meanwhile, Anre pointed past their rock cover.

The small crowd of torch-bearers was coming back towards the camp.

Red motioned for the group to follow, and they quickly left the area of the camp and moved away from the light. Just as they made it a short distance away, shouts rose from the Citadel camp, followed by the clash of beast-weapons and cries of pain.

People bearing jagged blades and dressed in the pelts of beasts surged out from the darkness, ambushing the torch bearers and attacking them. One by one, the torches were snuffed out, and the Citadel explorers’ cries went silent.

Yunkef watched the scene unfold in shock. They were only seconds away from discovering their own group before, and in a flash the people of the Citadel team were dead.

"What just happened?" Anre whispered in disbelief. He could not believe what he just heard.

Red sighed and signaled to the boys to keep moving. "Better not think about it, since it might happen to us. There are darkness-touched people everywhere, and they can see in the dark just like us. Let's keep moving, but stay low and stay quiet."

The group walked on intense silence, flinching at every rock that clattered as it was displaced. There were no more torch-bearers in the darkness, and the Citadel camp's fire was quickly extinguished as the band of darkness-touched raided the supplies. Cross quietly grumbled about how they could have and should have taken the Citadel camp's supplies and weapons if in the end, they were going to be raided anyway, but Yunkef paid him no mind.

"Hey, Yunkef." Anre said quietly as they walked, keeping close to Yunkef. "You said you wouldn't steal supplies, right?"

"Yes, I did. Why?"

"What if those supplies were from other darkness-touched? Looks like they can handle themselves better than those Citadel ones."

"What are you saying? We should steal from them instead?"

Anre hesitated, then shrugged. "Yeah, I guess that is what I'm saying. I know it sounds bad, but hear me out. Nothing good will come from them having more things. You did see what they did to those Citadel people, right? Killed them. In cold blood. If what you said is right, that those people were exploring, then they were not fighters at all. Never were. Might not even have attacked us if we came up to them looking like we needed help."

"What are you getting at, Anre?"

"We really need more stuff if we have to keep going. I say we find a 'touched camp and raid them for a change."

Cross and Red heard what Anre said and turned back to look at Yunkef. Cross looked smug and ready to challenge Yunkef if the latter said no again, while Red looked between the two, ready to spring between them.

Yunkef sighed. "What do we have left?"

"I lost the bedrolls we were carrying, along with all the food. They had taken my backpack after we left the tunnel." Red answered.

"You took my spear, and my backpack was taken too," Cross said.

"And Ice is still badly hurt, and getting hungry too," Anre said, gently petting his beast. "I guess that means we have nothing."

Yunkef sighed even heavier than before. "We don't have much of a choice then. Alright, Anre and Ice, find us a darkness-touched camp, please."

Anre nodded with grim determination and set off into the darkness with Ice at his heels. Red and Cross followed in Anre’s direction, though at a slower, more cautious pace. Yunkef trailed behind, deep in thought and wondering if this was the right decision to make.

It didn't take long for the group to find a darkness-touched camp within the darkness. The earth was marked with tall yet thin sheets of rock with a vague curve to them, and after passing a dozen of these rock markers, Anre called for a halt. Keeping to the base of one of the rocks, he pointed out to a flat area marked with massive beast bones hammered upright into the earth as a towering palisade. There were no fires to illuminate the camp from within, but the group saw the guards stationed at the camp's main gate clearly.

"Two guards at the gate, both holding spears with blades on their belts." Cross scoffed. "You just had to pick this one, Anre?"

"Hey, you try looking for a camp in the middle of nowhere." Anre shot back. "Can we sneak into this one or not?"

Red shushed them as she squinted at the camp. "Quiet, both of you. I can't see from here, but there's a large building towards the back I think. And there, by the fence, can you see it? There's a gap."

"Might be wide enough for us to squeeze through," Anre muttered. "Not Ice though... And not Cross, with that big gut of his."

Red shushed them again before Cross could retort. "There are a lot of guards though, and I don't think it would be a good idea to sneak around a full camp."

Yunkef took a breath and hesitantly spoke. "I have an idea, but you are not going to like it, Anre."

As Yunkef explained his plan, the grin on Anre's face grew wider and wider. "Are you kidding me? I love it, let's do it."

The darkness-touched camp was a Settlement in and of itself, with its beast-bone palisade as its outer wall. A watchtower rose from the center of the camp and was tall enough to see some distance away from the camp in every direction, serving as a massive stone monument in the dark. The shacks and buildings were constructed mostly of rough stone, unlike the cut and polished stone structures of the Citadel, or the reclaimed materials of Yunkef's Settlement. The building materials available so far out in the darkness were limited to rock and beast parts, but it suited the exiled darkness-touched well. Despite having such an affinity for the darkness and those that lurked in it, the guards stationed at the gates still raised their spears in defense as Anre rode past them on his beast. The wild man yelled a taunt at the gate guards, who surged forward to chase the young man on a beast, leaving their posts. The cacophony of shouts and yells alerted more and more people who were in the camp, and they likewise took up arms and rushed out of the gates to see what the commotion was about. While Anre led the guards away on a wild chase with Ice, Yunkef and the twins squeezed into the gap in the palisade one by one.