“Ready?” Brother Edgar asked. The young priest breathed hard, his pudgy features covered in dirt and sweat, but his expression remained determined.

I nodded, and we both lifted the heavy corpse of Caelfall’s only innkeeper into the pit. It settled into place in the darkness below, half-hidden in the failing light.

The mist had burned away, and the onset of dusk cast the marshes in a somber red light. I stood behind the village chapel with Edgar, and there were already many fresh graves. We were both filthy with gore and mud, and neither of us cared.

We’d survived.

“You didn’t know them,” Edgar said suddenly, as we stared down into the most recent pit. “They were strangers.”

Strange he was asking me now, after we’d been at it most of two days.

I shrugged and grabbed a spade off the ground, starting in on filling the grave. How could I explain it to him? That I was sworn to protect everyone, and I’d failed.

My whole blasted order had failed.

There was work I couldn’t help with and didn’t have time to remain for. The graves needed to be soaked in blessed water. Gravestones had to be carved and set over the mounds, each inscribed with lines of scripture and blessed to draw in the ghosts of the dead and hold them, so they wouldn’t fade or be eaten in the wilderness. It was painstaking work, and the monk might not have the strength.

I didn’t mention as much. I just helped, knowing it wasn’t enough.

After we’d finished the most recent grave, the shuffling of cloth from the edge of the graveyard drew my attention. I turned to see Lisette standing there, clad in the same humble brown robes, a heavy satchel tied to her back. She lingered by the gate.

I looked around, but saw no signs of the old doctor. I walked over to her.

“He isn’t with me,” Lisette said, having seen my survey. “He’s waiting out on the road with the wagon.” She waved off beyond the village.

“Then why are you here?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be unkind — I didn’t blame the girl for anything, but her power made me wary. She’d been strong, and she’d nearly gotten the better of me twice.

“I wanted to help.” Lisette said. “I’m ordained. I can hallow the graves.” She licked her lips and shuffled. “It’s… the least I can do.” Her next words were bitter. “We didn’t help anyone here.”

I nodded, not arguing, and let her go to the monk. They conversed for a while, then Lisette began to walk among the graves, her auremark in hand. Edgar marched behind her, having produced a jar of incense hanging from a long chain, which he swung back and forth. A pleasant scent, I imagined, to draw in the lost souls.

Draw them in so they can be bound, I thought darkly. Perhaps some of Orson Falconer’s mad ravings had stuck in my thoughts, after all.

“It was good of you,” a voice behind me said. “To stay and help bury them.”

I turned to see a shadowed shape lurking at the edge of the woods, leaning against a tree. There wasn’t much daylight left, but Catrin still needed to be wary of it.

“I’d have helped,” she said. “But…” she waved toward the setting sun with one hand. Though her expression was nonchalant, I saw the tension in her shoulders. The frustration.

“You did help,” I said. “We both noticed there were more graves dug this morning. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Catrin shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “Maybe it was the elves?”

I just snorted and moved to stand next to her, folding my arms as I watched the young cleric work.

“This was a dark thing, big man.” Catrin sighed. “I feel like we just watched a tragedy happen from the sidelines.”

“That’s how it often is,” I said. “I wish…”

When I paused, Catrin stirred at my side. “What is it?”

I shook my head. “When I started this path, it was to punish people like Orson… but, I thought, it was also to stop them. To prevent things like this. But, almost every time, I feel like I’m just putting down a mad dog after they’ve already spread their sickness into the world. It’s like trying to stop a river with my hands.”

“I’m not going to pretend like I understand all this stuff about elves and holy knights and the bloody God-Queen,” Catrin said. “Sounded like madness… but there was something about you. I saw it that first night when I took you to the castle. Like you’d just stepped out of a story.”

“Sad story,” I noted, eyeing the graves.

“So what’s next for the mighty Headsman?” Catrin asked.

“Please don’t call me that,” I sighed. “It’s just Alken.”

Catrin nodded. “Alright then. What’s next for you, Alken?”

I closed my eyes, breathing in the last of the fading daylight. “I wander. I wait for the Onsolain to send me some sign or messenger… then I do this again.” Less badly next time, I thought.

“And this demon Orson unleashed?” Catrin asked. “All those other bastards who were part of this?”

I glanced toward the castle. “I don’t know. I’m sworn by oath to my duty, and the consequences for ignoring it would be… unpleasant.”

Catrin was quiet a moment. Then, as though tossing a leaf onto the wind she said, “let me see what I can dig up. All sorts of strange sorts and stories pass through the Backroad. I’ll keep an ear to the wind, see if something of your Council of Darkness comes up.”

I winced. “That’s a terrible name.”

“Works though, doesn’t it?” Catrin laughed, then shifted closer to me. I noted it and went on guard. Not because I thought I was in danger, but because I sensed something in the movement, and didn’t want to encourage her.

I had no room for it in my life.

Catrin must have sensed my lack of response, because she drifted away again, the movement casual, as if she were just adjusting her balance. “I’ll teach you how to find the inn. There’s a trick to it, but once you know the way you can find it any time, any place. I’m there most times.” She didn’t quite keep the hopeful note from her next words. “You’ll stop by sometime, right?”

I nodded. “Seems like it might be a useful place to gather information.”

“That it is,” Catrin agreed with a wry smile. “Just don’t come in swinging that fancy cutter, alright? Hard for my like to find steady work.”

The sun set, casting the land in shadow.

“Alken…” Catrin folded her arms as though cold. “It’s strange to say it, but… I feel like the world got darker here. Like nothing’s ever going to be the same again.”

I knew what she meant. Only, that realization was ten years gone for me.

***

I tried returning to the Hall of Irn Bale, to return the elf’s armor. I gave up after two days of wandering the woods. Whatever paths had brought me to that house, they’d been closed.

As dusk approached at the end of the second day, a ghostly music lured me deep into the woods. I knew to be cautious, but followed it all the same. The song, played on the strings of a lute, brought me to a stream fed by a short waterfall. On the smooth rocks along the brief cliff sat an elf, dressed in bright clothes and strumming a lute of inhumanly fine craft. They had a single golden eye, which glinted like a freshly minted coin beneath the shadow of a three-pointed hat.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I stood by the stream, listening to the song until it ended. “I know you,” I said, when the woods grew quiet.

The elf smiled. “From my cousin’s hall, yes. I watched your duel.”

I shook my head. “No. You were in Castle Cael. The hunter.”

Their faces were different, their clothes… but I knew it.

The elf remained quiet a long while. “What gave me away?” they asked after some time had passed.

I tapped my skull. “The hat’s almost the same. And…” I shrugged. “I have intuitions. My Oath.”

The elf inclined their head, smiling.

“Why didn’t you talk to me then?” I asked, feeling anger rise in my chest. “We could have worked together to stop all of this.”

“You know our ability to interfere with the human nobility is limited,” the elf said. “Our own oaths bind us, Sir Alken.”

I turned my back on him, scoffing. “Right.”

Before I’d gone more than a few paces, they spoke at my back. “Why are you here?”

I paused, half turning. Hesitated. The excuse about returning the oradyn’s gift seemed shallow, now. “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I suppose… I’d hoped for more closure.”

The elf nodded. “I am the bard Tzanith. I say this, Alken Hewer — you will be hard pressed to find closure in this war. It has endured for many an age.”

The name sent a shudder of recognition through my aura. I’d never heard it, not with my mortal ears. “Do you have a message from them?” I asked.

Tzanith’s smile turned sad. “I’m afraid not. That is not my role.” They leaned back on the rocks, considering, then placed their fingers to the strings of their beautiful instrument. “I think I will make a song for this thing. For the lord of Caelfall, for what he became, and what he might have been.”

“And how many lives of men will pass before it’s finished?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

The bard only laughed.

***

Weeks passed before I received the message I’d been waiting for.

I’d strayed far from the dark woods and haunted marshes of Caelfall. I didn’t know the name of the forest I’d found myself in, but it was depthless and dark, quiet as a grave.

I sat by a crackling fire within the ruins of an old temple. Some precursor to the Urnic Church, I thought, back when the Onsolain were worshipped as gods without a celestial queen to lead them. The ancient edifice had worn down to little more than a few crumbling walls and sunken foundation.

But there was still power in it enough to let me rest.

The forest ghosts lurked in the darkness beyond my camp’s light, pooling in murmuring schools like amorphous fish along the edges of the ruin walls. I could just barely make out their faces in the gloom. It was a moonless night, overcast, but the dead seemed to produce an unearthly light all their own.

Faen Orgis lay at my side. I had not slept in some days. I ran a thumb over my ring. Red patterns like blood swam through its normally empty black stone.

“Failed again,” the forest ghosts whispered. “Failed us. Didn’t save us. Let the Dark One rise out of our corpses like a great maggot.”

Some of the ghosts were from the village I’d left behind weeks ago, clinging to my shadow. Lisette and Brother Edgar hadn’t managed to bind all of them.

“Perhaps you hoped it would be her?”

My head shot up, looking for the source of that last voice. It hadn’t sounded like the others.

I settled back down. “I did not want that,” I hissed at the darkness.

The darkness only laughed.

“You shouldn’t talk to them,” a voice more tangible than the forest spirits said. “It only makes them stronger.”

I looked up from the fire to see a figure leaning against one of the ruined temple’s walls, just outside the true radius of the firelight. A short man in his late thirties, with a homely face covered in dense dark-brown stubble and a mop of hair loosely tied behind his head. He wore studded leathers over a lean frame.

I could almost see the stone wall through him.

“Donnelly,” I greeted the ghost. “You can share my fire. Just you.”

Donnelly lurched forward and sat cross-legged across the fire from me, holding his hands out. It wasn’t a cold night — we were well into Summer — but he shivered as violently as if he’d come out of a blizzard, shaking his hands in gratitude for the warmth. Immediately he began to grow more substantial, until he seemed the man he’d been in life — below average in height, all wiry muscle and cocky attitude, his peasant’s features tanned by sun.

He didn’t much look like a hero of the Ardent Bough.

“Thanks,” the roguish man said. “Been a while since I got some flame in me. Thought I was starting to fade, like them.” He jerked a thumb toward the shadows.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked, tossing a twig into the fire. Sparks danced into the air, and a few elf-wisps emerged with them to twirl playfully. They’d followed me from Caelfall, too, though most had wandered off into the wilds over the weeks.

A sour expression crossed the ghost’s face. “Working. Feels like all Urn’s bloody burning, some days. Parts of it still are, in truth…” his gray eyes went distant, then snapped to me. “I heard you did a job for a member of the Choir.”

I nodded, and told him about what had happened in Caelfall. I left some details out, such as my alliance with a dhampir and confrontation with the itinerant monster hunter.

“Damn…” Donnelly folded his arms, rubbing warmth into them. “You really think it’s one of the demons from the Fall?”

I shrugged. “It felt like it. My powers aren’t always reliable… Could have been a stray, or something lurking in the Wend. But I think… I think it was one of the monsters the Archmagus released, yes.” I shook my head, setting my jaw. “We should have worked harder to seal them all.”

“Without ol’ Tuvon, it’s a tall order.” Donnelly shrugged, and I had to suppress a smile at his casual mention of the elven king.

“I want you to ask them to let me hunt those other Recusants,” I told him.

Donnelly’s expression fell into neutrality. “You know it doesn’t work that way, Al.”

“Tell them what happened,” I insisted. “This is what I’m meant for. I need to follow through on what happened at that lake.”

“You’re not a knight anymore,” Donnelly said bluntly. He ignored the angry look that passed over my face, holding up a hand to stall my next words. “You’re the Headsman. Your job is to carry out sentences of execution when and where the Choir tells you to, just like my job is to be their courier.” He shrugged. “Neither of us have a fine gig, kid.”

I scoffed at that. I was old as Donnelly had been when he’d died.

The ghost sighed. “I’ll tell them what you’ve told me, but no promises. You know the Onsolain don’t see everything. Besides…” here he hesitated.

I leaned forward and clasped my hands, eyes on the fire to watch the wisps play. “You have another mark for me.”

Donnelly spread out his hands in a what can I do? gesture. “Guilty.”

A while passed before I replied. To his credit, Donnelly didn’t try to make excuses or hurry me.

“Tell me,” I said after several minutes.

“They want you to head west, to Reynwell,” Donnelly said. “Can’t say much more as of yet.”

I frowned. “Reynwell?” A large kingdom that bordered the coastlands. The new capital stood there.

I hadn’t been since the wars.

“That’s a populated country,” I said after some thought. “Not the kind of place I’d think they would send me. Lot of towns. Lot of nobles.” Lot of soldiers, I thought darkly. I wouldn’t be able to vanish into the wilderness so easily in a realm that densely populated.

“Even still,” Donnelly said unapologetically, “that’s where you’re bound. Once you’ve crossed the border, perform the rites. You know the drill.”

His eyes went to the woods. “Too many ears here. No telling if any of these wild ghosts are reporting to some necromancer somewhere. Better to give you the rest of it in a church, or in a dream. Either way, head toward the capital.”

Donnelly left not long after. Vanished like a mirage, as was his wont. That suited my mood. The ghosts whispered in the shadows, wild chimera hooted in the deeper darkness beyond, and the dark clouds rolled above. The whole world seemed to be made of night and monsters. Sometimes, it could be hard to remember there were other little islands of light beyond all that fang-filled black.

I sat by the fire for a long while, thinking. The wisps kept it warm. Handy little creatures. Part of me had been glad of their company, but they were fey. No telling when they’d wander off. Perhaps, when Irn Bale had closed the ways to his hall, they’d been stranded.

“You can stay with me long as you like,” I said to them, not sure they understood. “Might see some nasty things, though.”

One little mote of faerie-light danced toward my face, spun around my head once, then returned to the fire. I almost smiled. Almost.

Part of me regretted not asking Catrin to stick with me. I think she might have, had I asked. Of most anyone I’d met, she may not have minded my grim work.

But she’d also need to feed, and I wasn’t willing to let her use me that way, or other innocents in my presence. Better for her to stay at her strange devil’s inn, where she could get her blood from those who offered it freely.

It wouldn’t have worked. We would have resented one another, eventually.

I tossed another twig into the fire, watching the tiny lights dance through the dark until they cooled. I lifted my right hand and ran the thumb of my left over my ring. The stone had gone almost entirely to red over the past weeks. It had fed well.

I slipped it off my finger, settled against the shattered temple wall at my back, and closed my eyes.

I let myself dream.

End of Arc 1