I was Drafted Into a War as the Only Human

As they pushed deeper into the wilderness toward Caelgor the Hollow, the air grew heavy with unease. Lucy felt it tighten around the group like an invisible noose. No one said anything, but their movements grew stiffer, and glances became more frequent. Even the silence had teeth.

The terrain had changed.

Gone was the rough stone road that led east—solid, predictable, familiar. In its place, a strange forest had swallowed the world.

Towering bone-white trees loomed above, their trunks as smooth as polished ivory. Their translucent leaves shimmered faintly, catching what little light pierced through the mist in glints of violet and silver. The ground was carpeted with soft, silken grass the color of moonlight, and each step felt like walking across a dream—or a graveyard.

Then came the sounds—not the rustle of animals or wind, but distant, warped echoes—like laughter heard underwater or breathing just out of sight.

But it wasn’t the forest that set their nerves alight. It was the fog.

It had returned.

Thick and unnatural, it crept along the forest floor, coiling between their legs, rising in tendrils to obscure the trees. It wasn’t poisonous. No spectral soldiers emerged from its folds. And yet, it dragged a cold tension across their skin, as if the forest was watching.

Llarm walked directly behind Lucy, his shoulders hunched, steps light and cautious. His golden hair seemed duller in the pale mist. Fenric, of course, strolled with his fingers laced behind his head, whistling some tuneless melody, while Carlos trotted smugly beside him, tail high, paws skipping with too much confidence for a pup who’d been terrified out of his mind days prior.

Gindu walked quietly with Eri. She was better now—still pale, still haunted—but speaking again, even if only in clipped, emotionless phrases. Her eyes barely lifted from the path.

Bruma took up the rear. She always did when visibility was low. The ogre’s sheer size turned her into a walking wall, and no one wanted to walk blind behind one of her shoulders.