## The Husk Cities
The air tasted like wet iron and blooming rot. Old Man Tiber, they called him, though he couldn’t be more than sixty, the marsh leeched years. He adjusted the oilskin cowl tighter around his face as the first flicker of blue-green ignited across the water. Not a gentle glow, but a pulse, like a bruised heart beating beneath the dark surface.
The marsh wasn’t water, not exactly. It was a congregation of life, ancient and unknowable. Amphibian spirits—some shimmering like oil slicks, others hulking shadows with eyes like dying stars—moved between the reeds. Tonight, they were restless.
“Configurations aligning,” he rasped to Wren, his granddaughter, who expertly steered their flat-bottomed skiff through the thickening gloom. “Hold tight.”
Wren didn’t need telling twice. Her hands, calloused from years of navigating the mire, gripped the oars with a strength that belied her slight frame. She was seventeen, and already knew more about the marsh than most seasoned peddlers.
The blue-green intensified, casting an ethereal light on the skeletal forms rising from the water. Shell husks. Massive, bleached bone structures—the remnants of a leviathan whose grief had birthed this whole, strange world. Villages clung to them like barnacles – the Husk Cities.
“See those lights, Wren?” Tiber pointed with a gnarled finger. “That’s Aethelburg. Trade night.”
Aethelburg wasn’t visible until the planetary configurations locked into place, a precise alignment of three moons and a wandering crimson star. The spirits calmed as the constellation mirrored itself in the marsh’s surface, and pathways of solidified luminescence bloomed between the husks. They weren’t permanent roads; they dissolved with the shifting skies, making navigation a perilous art.
“Think old Man Hemlock will be there with his star-silk?” Wren asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Tiber grunted. “Hemlock’s always there. Greedy old buzzard. Don’t trust him further than you can throw a stone jellyfish.”
They glided onto the solidified light, the skiff skimming over the glowing surface. The air thrummed with energy. Aethelburg bustled with activity. Peddlers from the drylands displayed wares—tools, fabrics, preserved meats—alongside the strange offerings of the marsh dwellers. Crystalline fungi that pulsed with light, preserved spirit-scales said to grant visions, and woven nets of bioluminescent reeds.
“Stay close,” Tiber warned as they tied up at a makeshift dock constructed from interwoven roots and polished bone. “And don’t talk to anyone unless I tell you.”
The marketplace smelled of brine, incense, and something faintly metallic. Wren scanned the crowd, her eyes drawn to figures draped in shadow. The marsh dwellers were… different. Their skin often bore the iridescence of oil slicks, and their eyes held a depth that made her uneasy.
“Grandfather,” she murmured, pointing to a group of figures huddled around a towering shell fragment. “The Shell Architects.”
They were easily identified by the intricate bone tools they carried—instruments for harvesting and shaping the leviathan’s remains. Rumor had it they charted “coral veins”—invisible pathways of energy that ran through the husks, expanding their cities to capture celestial effacements.
“Stay away from them,” Tiber said sharply. “They don’t take kindly to outsiders.”
He began haggling with a woman selling preserved spirit-scales, her face obscured by a veil of woven reeds. Wren moved through the market, her senses on high alert. She needed to find Hemlock. Their family depended on his star-silk—a rare fabric woven from the light of fallen stars, prized by collectors in the drylands.
“Looking for something, little one?” A smooth voice startled her.
She turned to face a man with eyes like polished obsidian and skin that shimmered with an oily sheen. He wore robes of dark velvet embroidered with silver symbols, and a single spirit-scale hung from his ear.
“Just looking,” Wren replied cautiously.
He smiled, a slow, unsettling movement. “The marsh chooses who it reveals its secrets to.”
“My grandfather’s trading,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “With the scale woman.”
“Tiber,” he mused, his obsidian eyes narrowing. “A stubborn old soul. He refuses to see the inevitable.”
“What’s inevitable?” Wren asked, her grip tightening on the small pouch of coins hidden in her pocket.
“The fading,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The marsh is dying, little one. The leviathan’s grief is spent.”
Before Wren could respond, a commotion erupted near the docks. Shouts and curses filled the air.
“Hemlock!” Tiber roared, pushing his way through the crowd. “What in the blazes is going on?”
Hemlock, a gaunt man with eyes like chips of flint, was arguing vehemently with a group of Shell Architects. He clutched a roll of star-silk to his chest, his face flushed with anger.
“They’re claiming it was harvested illegally!” Hemlock shouted, his voice cracking with fury. “From a vein they’ve already mapped!”
The Architects remained impassive, their obsidian eyes fixed on Hemlock.
“You have trespassed,” one of them said, his voice devoid of emotion. “The coral veins belong to the Husks.”
“I found it adrift!” Hemlock countered. “Free-floating, unclaimed!”
“The leviathan remembers all,” the Architect said, raising a hand. “It knows what is rightfully its.”
Suddenly, the solidified light beneath their feet began to flicker and dissolve. Panic erupted in the marketplace as peddlers scrambled for safety.
“The configurations are shifting!” someone yelled. “We have to get out of here!”
Tiber grabbed Wren’s arm, pulling her toward the skiff.
“Come on! Now!” He shoved her into the boat, then leaped in himself, frantically paddling against the current.
The marsh was descending into chaos. The spirits were agitated, their forms swirling and shifting in the darkness. The Husks loomed like skeletal giants, their shadows growing longer with each passing moment.
“What’s happening?” Wren cried, her voice barely audible above the roar of the wind and water.
“The Husks are reclaiming their territory,” Tiber said grimly, his eyes fixed on the retreating shoreline. “The leviathan remembers.”
As they fled through the darkness, Wren caught a glimpse of Hemlock, desperately trying to hold onto his star-silk as the solidified light dissolved beneath his feet. He was being pulled into the swirling darkness, swallowed by the marsh’s embrace.
“Grandfather,” she whispered, her voice trembling with fear. “What will happen to us?”
Tiber didn’t answer. He simply paddled faster, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon, desperately seeking a path to safety. The marsh, she realized, wasn’t just a place of trade and wonder. It was a living entity, ancient and unforgiving. And it was slowly, inexorably, reclaiming what was rightfully its.
