They retreated from Italk without looking back, moving a full ten li west, finally setting up a temporary camp at the edge of a low-lying hill.
Night was falling, the setting sun, like a giant, half-melted bronze disk, pressed heavily on the horizon at the edge of the tundra.
No one spoke when the campfire was lit.
There were twenty-eight people in the team, and only about half of them had truly converted to the new god.
The rest were mostly outcasts who had chosen to pledge allegiance to Skala himself but still believed in their old loa.
There were also a few trolls who had given up their faith and were now just following Skala, wanting to understand what was different about his new loa.
This structure should not have affected anything.
But from the moment they retreated from Italk, the entire team became strange.
At first, it was just Toka.
He almost went the wrong way during his second watch, circling half a turn with the sentry map before finding due south.
And that was a map he had drawn himself.
"Maybe I didn't sleep well last night," his explanation was simple.
But soon, similar situations began to spread.
Someone woke up in the early hours and mistook their own sleeping mat, insisting it was the one he brought.
Someone else couldn't find his personal bone pouch but found an "identical" one at someone else's campsite.
The person himself couldn't even tell if it was his, only saying, "I remember this thing wasn't this color."
Even stranger, two accompanying shaman apprentices began to argue about the details of a certain custom; one insisted "the incense should be lit first," while the other said "the incense never goes out."
The two even pulled out their copied tribal scriptures, and they were indeed written differently—
But they came from the same tribe, and their teacher was the same person.
Skala called them over for an interrogation, but he couldn't get anything out of them.
Among those who didn't believe in the Dragon God, a few began to whisper around the campfire at night, saying they were increasingly "forgetting things" these days.
It wasn't poisoning, nor was it a fever; it was just... forgetting what things should look like.
"Which way did yesterday's river come from?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"I remember it was from the east. But looking at the sun this morning, why does it seem like it's from the west again?"
"It's fine as long as you remember clearly."
"But I'm not sure if what I remember is false."
These conversations were not officially recorded, nor did anyone discuss them loudly.
But Skala knew.
He stood at the edge of the camp, looking at the beast hide banner embroidered with the Dragon Eye divine emblem, and heard someone discussing it—
Not with reverence, but softly saying, "Maybe it's blocking something."
He turned to look at Siye and Toka, who were sitting in silence; neither of them spoke.
The divine emblem hung heavily on Toka's neck, still and silent.
The divine emblem on Siye's chest armor was also dim.
At the other end of the camp, Gollon was squatting by the snow, stirring a pot of wild boar bone soup with a wooden stick.
He stared blankly at a few sets of footprints on the snow.
Those footprints were made by them during the day; there was clearly no wind, and no snow had covered them, yet a few sets looked as if they had changed direction.
It wasn't the kind of blur caused by wind, but the entire direction had changed.
He stood up and walked a circle around those prints, then looked at the soles of his own feet.
He tried a few steps, and the new prints he left were still facing south.
He frowned and turned to look at Skala in the distance.
"I still don't quite believe in loa," he muttered softly, "but I believe in my own intuition."
He tossed the wooden stick out of the pot and pulled out the divine emblem from his waist, the one he had never really valued.
This time, he wore it a bit tighter.
Skala, unaware of Gollon's new discovery, was studying the anomalies he had noticed.
The campfire between the three of them crackled, but it warmed nothing.
His palm hovered above the flames, an old habit of his from years of testing temperature.
But this time, he felt no warmth.
It wasn't that the wind was too cold, nor that the snow was too thick.
Rather—
The divine emblem on his body was emitting a more intense heat.
Almost scalding.
It wasn't scorching heat, but a strange, contained warmth.
It was as if an invisible barrier was keeping the fire out, leaving only the divine emblem's own warmth swelling, throbbing, and subtly vibrating against his chest.
He lowered his eyes to look; the emblem, carved with the obsidian dragon eye, lay quietly against his chest, and the flames at its edges looked more real, as if they were truly burning.
He suddenly understood.
It wasn't that the fire had grown cold.
It was that he had become "hot."
More accurately, his divine emblem was resisting something.
The people in the camp didn't notice.
They were still discussing whose pot was whose, whether a certain bone tile was lost, the "minor confusions" of memory details, sense of direction, and camp objects.
They were just muddled, just tired, just felt like they "didn't sleep well last night."
They didn't realize they were being changed.
Skala realized it.
Because this wasn't their problem.
Rather, something was quietly polluting their consciousness.
He tried to observe the logic of this pollution: it wasn't a sudden hallucination, nor was it a forceful direct control of the body, but a slow distortion of "daily perception."
Making you think you've misremembered, are tired, or are overthinking things.
Just like a freezing river, it doesn't solidify instantly, but sinks layer by layer, eventually sealing the entire river.
He tried to re-mark the camp's position on the map, but found that his pen would always deviate at a certain point.
It wasn't a problem with his hand; it was... telling him that was the "exact center."
Skala frowned.
He understood that if this influence continued, in a few days, the team would disintegrate on its own without a single battle.
Because they would begin to stop trusting themselves, and then stop trusting each other.
The divine emblem was still radiating heat.
The one on his chest was personally bestowed by the Dragon God during his first display of divine power on that hunt.
He tried to establish a connection with it.
This wasn't difficult; he just needed to close his eyes and call out the name of the god, now called "Dragon of Blazing Embers," in his heart.
But this time, it wasn't as quick as before.
The firelight illuminated his face as he waited silently for several breaths.
Until he almost thought the god was busy with something else and wasn't going to respond—
A faint tremor came from the divine emblem.
Not words, not images, but emotion.
Gentle, inclusive, and a little… hesitant?
Then, a vague thought entered his mind:
"...Reinforcements are on the way."
The voice wasn't as clear as usual, with a divine echo, but like speaking underwater, slowed down by a sense of distance.
Skala's anxious heart finally settled.
He knew the Lord would come, it was just a little slow this time.
The camp was still murmuring softly.
No one realized what this meant.
Skala tightened his grip on the divine emblem and said to himself:
"Come quickly."
The firelight reflected in his eyes, burning with exceptional clarity.