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- #126
There are mornings when the sun forgets its own intensity, and the woods wear the hush of old glass. That’s how it is on Castrovel: the air so thick with chlorophyll you half-expect to breathe in green, the trees older than any dynasty, moss crawling up their trunks in search of a silence more permanent than stone. I am sixty years old, a child by the metric of my kin, but my hair is already pale as dead wood—birth defect or omen, depending on which archon you ask. I spend these years in the care of the estate’s High Botanist, who considers my affinity for stillness a welcome change from his own children, the kind who climb and shout and bleed sap when they scrape themselves. I, meanwhile, walk the forest floor in the hour after rain, waiting for the world to slip up and show me something final.
This morning, that thing is a smell: not rot, exactly, but the prelude to it. There is something peculiar about death on Castrovel, as if the entire ecosystem is colluding to prevent its occurrence. Trees here do not drop their leaves so much as reabsorb them, and the local predator-prey relationships have, over the course of eons, domesticated themselves into gentle, bloodless pageants. Even insects prefer to take their leave while still in working order. So when I catch the sharp, uncanny scent near the old shrine, I do not assume the mundane.
It is difficult to explain to an outsider how rare death can be, or how desperate the few in service to Pharasma become in its absence. In my youth I imagined the psychopomps—those dignified, bone-masked custodians of the underworld—as serene, their work a sort of cosmic gardening, but now I see their aspect in the mirror: pale, starved, and a little too eager for a proper specimen.
I kneel in the wet undergrowth, careful not to disturb the living network of moss, and close my eyes. The prayers are old—none of them predate elven script—but I have always preferred the ones that sound like weather: “Wind to bone, dew to dust, return to wheel.” With the cant half-whispered, I reach into the spellwork, and the world loses its surface. Deathwatch is not a spell for the tender-hearted. It is an inventory, a census of unlife. The moment I open my eyes, the field of vision warps, and the living forest recedes into a spectrum of colorless shadow.
The corpse is smaller than a handful, hidden under a fan of ferns. Mouse, ordinary except for the intensity of its end. I feel its absence like a tooth missing from the jaw: an emptiness so sharp it makes the world ache. I perform the rest of the spell, dissolving the diagnostic overlay, and the color creeps back into my sight.
A circle of elves has gathered at a polite distance, their eyes dilated with the thrill of scandal. I suppose, for many, this is the first time they have seen a corpse at all. The forest is not built for endings. I lift the body with both hands, cradling it as one might a burnt leaf or a scrap of music. The fur is still soft, the bones light enough to be mistaken for twigs. Some part of me marvels at how little it takes to erase a living thing.
There is a formal way to do these things. I clear a small depression in the soil, place the mouse at its center, and draw the spiral of Pharasma around it with a twig. The watching elves lean in, their breath synchronized like a single, anxious lung. I murmur the words, barely moving my lips: “All rivers flow to sea. All days to dusk. All lives to the spiral.” The sound is almost nothing, but the effect is immediate: the circle of witnesses shifts, the tension dissolving into a reverence so raw it feels like a shared secret.
The High Botanist approaches, his stride careful, as if not to break the moment. His eyes linger on the grave, then on me. “Was it sick?” he asks, voice as thin as morning mist.
"Only tired,” I answer. “It stopped because it was finished.”
He nods, and I sense his relief. No sign of plague, no shadow on the food chain. Just one clean, solitary exit. He turns to the others, making a show of composure. “Let us remember,” he says, “that every thread has its end.” They disperse, though a few of the youngest remain, their curiosity unquenched. I linger, feeling the spell’s afterglow in my fingertips. There is a sensation—no, an insight—that comes at the moment of interment. The Lady’s gaze brushes past, cool and impersonal, yet oddly affirming. I understand, for the first time, that death is not a flaw in the design but the part of it most worth protecting. I feel, too, the first seed of something like vocation. Among the ageless, I will be the one who attends the lost and the broken.
The grave is so small it will vanish in a week, lost beneath the next eruption of moss or spores. The memory, however, will persist, not just in me but in the network of roots and shadows and the low, patient song that runs through the forest at dusk. I rise, brush the dirt from my hands, and step back onto the path, already searching the air for the next anomaly, the next brief subtraction from the world. I do not know it yet, but I will spend the next forty years hoping, with equal parts dread and longing, for another chance to prove myself to the Lady. Even among immortals, some souls are never satisfied with the status quo. Some wait for the shiver of interruption, the quiet moment when the world admits, if only for a breath, that it is mortal after all.
Fifty years pass and the world rots differently, here on Golarion. My eyes adapt to a new palette: not the lush, fever-green of Castrovel but the perpetual bruise of Ustalavic sky, the kind that never quite bleeds out. Ravengro is a town where even the moss seems cautious, where every wooden fence and house sags under a secret weight, and the people are no different. I have become—by accident or by the spiral’s design—a priest for those who neither trust nor understand me. The faith I brought across the stars is is at home here, not quite the oddity it is on Castrovel.
The Restlands are a geography of repetition. The same fog, every morning, rising out of the ground like the ghosts it anticipates. The same stones, worn into illegibility by a climate that never dries. I walk the lanes between plots, measuring time in steps and breaths. My robe soaks through at the hem, and I feel the familiar chill creeping up my calves, not unpleasant but certainly persistent. Today is worse than most: the fog has outdone itself, thick as ointment, and the crows have discovered a new enthusiasm for the event at hand.
I am preparing the grave of Professor Lorrimor, a man who in life was only ever half my mentor, and in death has become my responsibility entire. The tools are unremarkable—spade, brush, a length of black ribbon for the ritual binding—but I arrange them in the prescribed order, not for the dead but for the living who will watch. It is a delicate thing, this theater of closure. I have learned that humans need the show of symmetry, the reassurance that what goes in the ground stays in the ground, and that someone with steady hands is there to enforce the rule.
The grave itself is a rude cavity, recently dug, its sides caving in where the soil is most waterlogged. I crouch at the edge and tidy the shape with my hands, scooping out the clumps that have collapsed overnight. Somewhere in the town, bells mark the hour—not a peal, just a single note, flat and insistent. It is a warning, or a reminder, depending on how you choose to hear it. I glance upward. The crows have multiplied, forming a loose spiral that circles above the cemetery. Their calls are arrhythmic, insistent, as if debating who will claim the choicest morsel once the ceremony is over. I catch myself grinning. Even now, I prefer their honesty to the conversations of most townsfolk.
My memories of Lorrimor are inconsistent, which is to say they are true. In life he was a collector of secrets and a poor keeper of them. He enjoyed contradiction: a man of science who delighted in folklore, a skeptic who confessed to dreams of prophecy. We met at a public lecture—he, the local professor, and I, the alien oddity. I recall his handshake: dry, firm, and almost apologetic, as if every introduction cost him something. Over the years our conversations thickened with mutual sarcasm, always circling the question of what, if anything, survives the cut. Now, with his body cooling in the town’s single mortuary, the answer feels less abstract.
The ritual kit is old but serviceable. I unroll the black velvet and check the implements: a blade for the cord, a vial of river water for the blessing, a spool of gray thread for the closing gesture. Everything must be accounted for. I am methodical—one of the few traits I share with the Professor. The fog is so dense that the world beyond my arms length has ceased to exist. It is peaceful, in a way, to be reduced to just a pair of hands and the work they do. But there is a tightness behind my sternum, a restlessness that has no ritual. It is not grief—not as I understand it—but an irritation, like an unhealed wound. I wonder if this is what humans mean when they say someone “left an impression.” I inventory my own feelings, as I have been taught to do, and find them unsorted.
A small movement on the far side of the grave: a young boy, hat pulled down over his eyes, stands watching me with an intensity reserved for feral animals or strangers. He shivers, though it is not especially cold. I return to my task, but sense his gaze pinning me in place. Eventually he calls out, voice barely above a whisper.
“Why do you do it like that?” he asks.
I pause, brush the dirt from my palm. “Like what?”
“The thread. The water. My father says you should use incense and coins.”
I shrug, not unkindly. “There are many ways to honor the dead. This is the one I was taught.”
He nods, as if this confirms a suspicion. “My father says you’re not from here.”
“Your father is correct,” I say, then: “Does that frighten you?”
The boy considers, lips pursed. “No,” he decides, “but it makes other people angry.”
“I know.”
A brief silence, which I do not fill. Eventually the boy wanders off, back into the fog. The living are always more complicated than the dead.
I check the horizon—what little of it is left—and feel my pulse quicken. The crows have settled into a ring, their vigil precise and unsentimental. My hands tremble with anticipation rather than habit; this is my first mortal funeral, and every motion feels electrified. Still, I sense something more—a charged hush, the mist clinging as if reluctant to yield—that marks a threshold I’ve never crossed.
A flash of silver catches my eye: the distant silhouette of Harrowstone Prison, barely visible through the damp air. It squats on the southern hill, a ruin so forbidding even lichens steer clear. I’ve been warned to stay away, but I can’t help a thrill at the thought of danger. As if any one place could hoard more ghosts than the mind allows. I finish the gravework, double-check the pit’s lines, and rise. My spine protests, and I laugh softly at the ache—it’s a welcome reminder that I’m alive, poised on the brink of something monumental. The Lady of Graves, in her mercy, grants me this sharp awareness of endings.
I look out over the Restlands, the rows of markers rising and falling like the teeth of an ancient jaw. Somewhere, footsteps squelch through the mud, slow and deliberate. I wipe my hands and tuck the velvet roll into my coat. I’m ready—eager, even—more than I ever thought I could be. From the main gate emerges a black-clad procession. Four bear the coffin, flanked by the Professor’s daughter—Kendra, still raw from the news. Behind her, townsfolk move with the wary solemnity of those who trust neither ground nor sky. My excitement hums beneath my calm as they approach.
The funeral procession advances with all the momentum of a glacier. Two professors from Lepidstadt lead the coffin on its bier, their city shoes ill-suited to the mud and bramble of the Restlands. Kendra walks just behind them—no veil, no black gloves, nothing to hide the rawness of her face. I count seven townsfolk trailing in the fog, and from their posture I infer that none are here to grieve. The crows have synchronized their orbit, tracing a slow, predatory helix over the path. Even the bell at the chapel holds its tongue.
The mourners do not make it a hundred paces before the trouble manifests. Six men, not quite a mob but more than a delegation, arrange themselves across the lane with the deliberation of a hunting party. They wear the colors of the town—gray, dun, an accent of sickle-rust—but their eyes are the same shade of suspicion. At their head stands Gibs Hephenus, who, despite the years, manages to look like a retired executioner rather than a former soldier. His chin is sharp as a hatchet, and he holds his hands behind his back as if considering which limb to start with.
“That’s far enough,” he calls, his voice whittled smooth by drink and repetition. “We been talking, and we don’t want Lorrimor buried in the Restlands. You can take him upriver, or plant him out by the trees if you want, but he ain’t goin’ in the ground here.”
Kendra stops so abruptly that the coffin wobbles, the pallbearers nearly losing their grip. I see the muscles in her neck flex, as if she’s holding in a scream. She walks around the professors, plants herself in the mud, and faces Gibs without blinking.
“What are you talking about?” she says, her voice ragged but loud. “I arranged it with Father Grimburrow. The grave’s already been—”
Gibs cuts her off with a motion that’s part dismissal, part threat. “You don’t get it, woman. We won’t have a necromancer buried in the same earth as our kin. I suggest you move out while you still can. Folks are pretty upset about this right now.”
A ripple runs through the watching townsfolk, their expressions hardening into consensus. The professors exchange looks, then stare at their shoes. The coffin lists again, one end dipping perilously close to the dirt. I recognize the signs: in a moment, one side will drop and the lid will crack open, and whatever dignity the dead have managed so far will be spent.
Kendra’s hands clench. “Necromancy? Are you really that ignorant?” Her words carry, and I am not the only one who flinches at their edge.
@Apollo Tenzen you one of the palbears carrying the coffin. This is your chance to get ready for the fight or diffuse the situation.
@Memento Mori and
@Schwarzwald you are at the empty grave 70 feet away
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