The sky over Thornepass looked like wet wool, stretched thin across the valley's craggy shoulders. Mist clung to the river like a lover unwilling to let go, curling around the ferryman's oar with a lazy possessiveness. The boat's hull, chipped and patched with iron rivets, creaked as it nosed toward Edenrock's worn dock—more stone than wood now, with tufts of yellow moss spilling over its edges.
The boatman spat into the water. "Still tastes like smoke," he muttered, half to himself, half to the dark ripples below. No one answered. The only other passenger, a young man wrapped in a patched wool coat, stood quietly near the bow, eyes fixed on the shore. He had the look of someone who hadn't slept the entire trip, though his posture was too alert for weariness.
Behind him sat a satchel. No sigils, no metal buckles—just faded canvas tied shut with a cord, slightly scorched at the corner.
The boat scraped stone, and Edenrock exhaled.
---
Atop the shrine steps, old Marda swept petals into neat piles with a birch-broom more brittle than her wrists. The blossoms were past their prime, browning around the edges, but still held the sweet, fermented scent of the Stonefruit groves. Children had scattered them days ago for a coming-of-season blessing, then lost interest. Now they clung to the cracks between flagstones and stubbornly resisted the wind.
Marda muttered curses at them under her breath.
She barely glanced up when the ferry moored, only pausing to squint at the pale silhouette stepping off with his satchel in hand. Outsider. Young, thin, something careful about his stride. She'd seen enough people pass through Edenrock to know which ones were just passing and which ones were trying not to look like they were staying.
The boy was the second kind.
She swept a little harder.
---
Further uphill, two men stood ankle-deep in damp mud, locked in a loud, finger-pointing standoff beside a row of domed beehives. The smaller of the two—lean and ruddy-faced—jabbed a crooked finger toward the older man's boots, which were clearly planted a handspan over the etched stone boundary.
"Don't care how long your family's kept 'em there, Brenn. That hive crossed into my orchard. I counted six bees! Six! Marked with black tips—I painted them myself!"
Brenn, larger, broad-shouldered, and deeply unimpressed, leaned on his walking stick and narrowed his eyes.
"You painted bees."
"Only the queen's guard. I'm not a lunatic."
Brenn blinked slowly, then turned and walked away.
---
The village itself nestled like a stone dropped in the curve of the river: damp-roofed cottages, their thatch slick from last night's rain, huddled around a central green where a warped wooden stage was already half-decorated with festival garlands. Two children—Kessa and Fen, both no older than ten—were racing in barefoot loops around the stage, throwing ribbons at a mangy hound that seemed to be missing most of its teeth and none of its attitude.
Down by the baker's shed, smoke rose in weak, twitching curls from a crooked chimney. The sourdough loaves had burned again. You could smell it halfway to the shrine.
A few villagers paused to watch the stranger from the boat as he passed by—long legs, brown boots too nice for the mud, hair tied back with a copper wire—but quickly returned to their tasks. Outsiders came sometimes. They didn't often stay.
The miller's widow, Anwen, was the only one who approached him directly.
"You'll be needing a place, I suppose," she said, not bothering with a greeting.
The man blinked, startled, then nodded. "If there's space."
"There's barely, but you're thin. Come on, then."
---
Anwen's cottage leaned hard into the hillside, as if exhausted from standing upright for so many seasons. Inside, it smelled of damp oats and boiled nettle. Her son, a pale, sharp-eyed boy named Dorrin, sat near the hearth carving symbols into a stick. He didn't look up.
"Scholar?" Anwen asked as she poured hot water over dried roots. The kettle whined like it resented the attention.
"Scribe," the man corrected gently. "Apprentice. I'm here to—record things. Local stories. Dialect, customs, oral accounts. That sort."
Anwen gave a short laugh. "You'll find more muttering than meaning here. Best keep your ink dry."
The man smiled politely and unpacked a quill that looked older than he was.
---
Evening descended like a slow bruise across the valley, and the mist thickened again, curling low over Edenrock's paths. In the marshes, frogs croaked with strange rhythms. Somewhere near the edge of the ruined tower—half-sunken in the woods and long considered cursed—a child's chalk drawing had reappeared on the stone: a figure with antlers and no eyes.
But no one noticed. Not yet.
Inside the shrine, Marda lit the oil lamp and squinted at the faded mural above the altar. The figures in it had lost most of their shape, but she swore the third one from the left had been facing the other way last week.
She didn't mention it.
Instead, she muttered her evening prayer and swept another petal into her apron pocket.
Just in case.