Part 1 - A Funeral, To Start
Hallowgrove smelled of salt, fish bones, and secrets.
The wind off the coast blew soft today, though it carried with it the damp hush that settled over the cobbled streets whenever the mourning bells rang. Vinny Sanatori stood beneath a crooked cedar tree near the bluffs, his boots half-buried in the grave-mud. Sea grass whipped at his ankles. His family had gathered in a tight ring around the opened earth, their silence broken only by the distant cry of gulls and the rhythmic clink of the priest's censer.
The coffin was simple. Unadorned. Wrong.
It wasn't the sort his grandfather would've wanted. Vinny knew that much. Vincent Tomas Sanatori had once joked that he'd prefer a pyre over a casket, something "bright enough to blind the gods," as he'd said—half-laughing, half-quoting something from a dusty old book. But this burial was quiet. Small. Hidden. No procession. No guests from the capital. No former colleagues.
Just mist. Salt. And the hush of things unspoken.
His father stepped forward without a word. From the pocket of his coat, he withdrew a folded white handkerchief and laid it gently across the lid of the coffin. He lingered for only a second, eyes downcast, then stepped back to the edge of the circle.
Vinny didn't know what the handkerchief meant. An offering? A symbol? Or just some final, unspoken gesture between father and son? There was no prayer, no tears, no explanation. Just silence.
The letter they'd shown Vinny hadn't made sense. A final note, the guards said. Found near the study desk. Suicide, they called it. But Vinny couldn't reconcile the neatness of the story with the man he remembered. Professor Sanatori had been many things: stern, brilliant, difficult—but never fragile. Never cowardly. And certainly not finished.
Not like this.
Vinny's hand curled around the edge of his coat. Inside the pocket, his grandfather's old watch—a brass timepiece with a cracked opal face—pressed into his palm. It ticked louder in his hand than it ever had on the old man's wrist.
"Do you wish to speak?" the priest asked.
Vinny shook his head. His mouth was dry.
What was there to say? That he didn't understand? That the professor had left Hallowgrove nearly a decade ago to teach at one of those grand colleges in the Topaz'lan capital, and rarely spoke of his work? That the letters he wrote back had grown shorter, colder, more tired over the years?
That in the end, all Vinny had was a casket, a funeral date, and a single letter in a stranger's handwriting?
They scattered soil over the coffin like tradition demanded. When it was over, the family began to drift away, swallowed by mist and the pull of everyday life.
Vinny lingered. Alone at the grave's edge.
He thought of all the books in his grandfather's study, stacked high and strange, filled with languages he couldn't read. Of the model sculpture of the capital museum his grandfather had carved from driftwood but never explained. Of the day the telegram came, signed by some name Vinny didn't recognize, offering condolences and nothing more.
A bitter wind swept across the hilltop. The sea below crashed softly against the cliffs, like a giant breathing in its sleep.
From his coat, Vinny drew out the only things he hadn't told his family about—one, a torn scrap he'd found tucked behind the lining of a suitcase. It wasn't much. Just a half-page note in Topaz'lan script with the heading of some institution, stained with ink and age. But at the bottom, printed neatly in gold foil, was a name:
Silverwind Life's Institutions.
And the other — tucked between the pages of a worn book about Topaz'lan history — was a ticket.
Thick, ivory cardstock. Embossed in deep purple and gold. It read:
The Grand Gala: In Honor of the High Priestess' Tomb
Hosted at the Silverwind Museum of History
Admit One — Formal Attire Required
No date. No message. Just that.
Vinny didn't know what it meant. Or why it had been hidden. But something about it refused to let him go.
He folded both carefully and tucked them back inside his coat.
The wind shifted. The tide rolled. And behind him, Hallowgrove returned to its quiet rhythm.
Vinny turned and walked into the sea-blown road, unsure of what he was chasing—but certain that he couldn't let it rest.
