From the account of Wald, fisherman of Mudtown, as told to travelers on the western road
The eels came first.
Wald had been fishing the Blackwater Swamp for fifty-three years - since he was a boy learning his father's trade, through the raising of his own son, and now in the years after, when it was just him and little Mira to feed. He knew the swamp's rhythms like he knew the lines on his own hands. Knew when the mudfish ran shallow, when the reed frogs sang, when the waters turned murky with stirred sediment.
He'd never seen eels like this.
A week ago, the catch had changed. Not gradually. Suddenly. One day normal, the next day the swamp edges writhed with eels. Fat ones, healthy ones, so many you could dip a basket and pull up a dozen without bait.
Wald had been pleased at first. Easy fishing meant more time with Mira, more time to teach her the letters her mother had known, the ones Wald had never quite mastered himself.
But within two days, his sales died.
Who would buy eels when they could wade to the water's edge and catch their own? Mudtown was scant - barely more than a collection of houses built on stilts to avoid the wet season floods - and its people were practical. They saw free food, they took it. No one needed Wald's catch anymore.
Yet Mira still needed to eat. And a child couldn't live on fish alone, no matter how plentiful. She'd grow sick of it, grow sad, and Wald had seen enough sadness in the girl's young life.
He'd gone to Chief Torrin. Complained about the eels, about the strange abundance, about how it was unnatural.
Torrin had laughed, his belly shaking beneath his worn leather vest.
"The swamp god has blessed us with bounty, old man! Don't complain when fortune smiles. Catch your eels and be grateful!"
The swamp god. Wald had never put much stock in it. The swamp was the swamp - it flooded when the rains came, dried when they didn't. No god required.
So Wald had taken his raft and set off alone to find the cause.
The swamp was vast, its channels and waterways a maze that could swallow the unfamiliar. But Wald knew them all. He poled his raft through narrow passages choked with reeds, past the old deadfalls where the mudfish liked to hide, toward the eastern edges where the swamp met drier ground.
That's where he'd seen it.
A jagged line running across the sky.
At first, Wald thought it was his eyes - fifty-three years of sun glare off water could play tricks. He'd blinked, rubbed his face, looked again.
The line remained.
Like someone had taken a knife to the heavens and drawn a cut. Faint, almost invisible, but there.
He'd poled back to Mudtown faster than he'd ever moved. Told Torrin. Told anyone who would listen.
No one took it seriously. Wald was old, they said. Seeing things. The sun had gotten to him.
Even Torrin, after humoring him with a brief look eastward, had shrugged. "It's probably just... clouds. Don't work yourself into a panic, old man."
One week later, Wald had to try logging.
The fish had become so plentiful, so constant, that even Mira had grown queasy of them. She'd looked at her dinner bowl two nights ago with such resignation that Wald's heart had broken.
"Again, grandpa?" she'd asked quietly.
No child should sound so defeated by their food.
So Wald had taken his wood axe and headed into the forest that bordered the swamp's northern edge. Dangerous territory - the forest was home to wild pigs and wolves, sometimes worse things. Normally you didn't venture in without a warrior escort, without multiple people watching each other's backs.
But Wald had no choice.
He'd walked into the trees, axe ready, expecting at any moment to hear the snap of a branch, the growl of something hungry.
Nothing happened.
The forest was silent. Like the animals had all left or gone into hiding. Wald had found mushrooms growing in clusters he'd never seen so abundant. Edible leaves that normally required climbing or braving thick underbrush, now easily accessible.
He'd gathered quickly, filling his sack with variety. Mushrooms, leaves, even some wild onions. Mira would be so happy. They could make a proper stew, something with flavor, something different.
On his way back, basket heavy with foraged goods, Wald had noticed it.
The sky had cracked open.
The jagged line - the one no one had believed, had widened. Torn. Like the sky itself had developed a wound that was slowly festering.
Wald had stood frozen, staring at the impossible thing above him.
Then he'd run.
Dropped the basket at home, told Mira to start cooking with what he'd brought, and sprinted to Torrin's house. The chief had tried to wave him off - Wald was becoming tiresome with his panic, he'd said.
But Wald had grabbed the man's arm and dragged him outside. Pointed.
The chief had gone pale.
Over the following weeks, the crack became the only thing Mudtown talked about.
It grew. Slowly at first, then faster. Spreading from north to south like a wound in the sky itself. The line became a tear. The tear became a gash. The gash widened until it spanned the entire eastern horizon.
Sunrise changed. Instead of the sun climbing clear and bright, it rose behind the crack, its light filtered and wrong. Mornings grew darker. Fog formed thick enough to reduce vision to mere feet, rolling in from the east with unnatural density.
People stopped fishing. Stopped foraging. Just stood and stared at the thing in the sky that shouldn't exist.
Torrin finally sent letters to the Kingdom of Aldoria. Formal requests for aid, for explanation, for someone to tell them what was happening. The riders who carried those letters had looked as frightened as everyone else, casting nervous glances at the eastern horizon before galloping west.
Two weeks ago, Torrin had called a town meeting.
"We're leaving," he'd announced. "Packing what we can carry, abandoning the rest. This..." he'd gestured vaguely eastward, "...this is beyond us. The swamp god is angry at us. He is setting his rage against us so we will leave. We move west, find new land, rebuild."
Some had protested. Mudtown was their home, their ancestors' home. You didn't just abandon generations of history because the sky looked wrong.
But most had agreed. Including Wald.
They'd left four days ago - the entire population of Mudtown, maybe two hundred, walking west with whatever they could carry. The elderly on carts, the young on shoulders, everyone else trudging through mud and marsh with increasingly heavy steps.
Wald walked near the middle of the column, keeping pace with Mira. She was ten years old, small for her age, but determined. She carried her own pack without complaint, her grandmother's shawl wrapped around her shoulders despite the warmth.
"How much further, grandpa?" she asked that evening as they made camp.
"Don't know, little fish," Wald admitted. The nickname made her smile, as it always did. "Until we find good land. Clean water, maybe some forest nearby. Somewhere we can build new houses."
"Will it be like Mudtown?"
"Better," Wald said, with more confidence than he felt. "Mudtown was good, but it was small. Maybe we'll find somewhere with more people. More children your age to play with."
Mira considered this, then nodded. "Okay. But I'll miss the swamp."
"Me too, little fish."
Wald looked back east, even though distance and trees now blocked their view. The crack was still there. Still growing. He could feel it somehow, like a pressure at the back of his mind.
The swamp god's curse, some were calling it now. Divine punishment for some forgotten transgression.
Wald didn't believe that.
He looked at Mira, at her small hands gripping her pack straps, at the determined set of her jaw. She was trying so hard to be brave, to not complain, to keep up with adults whose legs were twice as long as hers.
The journey was hard. Would get harder as supplies dwindled, as the elderly grew too tired to continue, as the weather turned.
But they'd survive. They had to.
Because whatever was in the east, whatever that crack in the sky meant, Wald knew with absolute certainty that staying would have been death.
The Kingdom of Alderon might send help. Might send soldiers and mages to fight whatever came through that tear.
Or they might not.
But Wald and his granddaughter would be far away when it opened. Would be building a new life somewhere safe, somewhere the sky was still whole and the eels stayed in their proper numbers.
"Come on, little fish," Wald said, ruffling Mira's hair. "Let's see if we can find some good mushrooms for dinner. Take your mind off the walking."
She brightened immediately. "Can I help cook?"
"You're the head cook now. I'm just your assistant."
Mira giggled , the first time in days, and some of the weight lifted from Wald's chest.
They'd survive this. Whatever came.