Of Ash and Lantern's Light

The men let me in just before nightfall. One of the Outlook's sentries young, eyes ringed dark from far too many dusk watches, had tossed me a stub of chalk and pointed at the warding board.

“Name,” he grunted. “Or something like it.”

I scrawled "Lethan." Not truly mine, but it’d do in passing.

Inside, the Outlook was quieter than I was expecting. The kind of quiet you get when folk are listening far too hard for a pin to drop. Every door had salt and the ash of purifying herbs pressed into its frame. The central brazier crackled with that azure flame they claim runs off holy scraps and fleeting memory.

A woman with soot streaked hands handed me a bowl of root stew. She didn’t ask where I came from. Just nodded at the tattered lantern I carried, cracked but lit in the dreary darkness.

“Don’t let it die,” she said. “Some things out there can remember faces.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice to dispel the ice clinging to my bones.

Later, they gave me a bedroll in a narrow hall lit by candlelight, the layers of running wax spilling over the corners of every surface. The man beside me slept with his boots on, and a dagger wrapped in black cloth. His lips moved in some muttering a sort of prayer, but no sound came out.

In the dark, past the carefully warded windows, I could still hear them.

Not howls. Not screams. Just… gasps of breath.

Long and slow. Like something waiting for mine to stop. (A crumpled scrap of paper found in the Outlook of Arcvelt.)