Chapter 1
Evening accreted slowly at the edge of the world, the orchard shrouded in a faint mist that clung to the twisted trunks like anxious fingers. Beneath their warped branches, Sir Gilyon knelt, bone-handled trowel slicing quietly into the reverent loam. No living thing stirred in these furrows: no moths flickered, no earthworms dared tickle the surface. He worked with care, pressing soil into place around an object tooth-white and small—another relic of the vanished, planted in silence.
Beyond the orchard’s reach, the border town clung to its last embers of warmth, but here the chill laid claim to every stone. Gilyon paused, forearm braced on one knee, feeling the ache of old wounds both worn and fresh. His wife’s ring hung on a leather cord beneath his jerkin, cold against his chest. Memory nipped at him: laughter from the days before the orchard, the music of living voices now replace by a hush deeper than prayer.
A snap of twig at the treeline. Gilyon tensed, fingers tightening around the trowel. He rose, broad shadow cast among the spectral branches, and watched as a figure stepped from the dimness: short, cloaked, face masked in lacquered wood adorned with painted crescent moons.
“Evening,” the traveler called, her voice rough with the road.
“This is private land,” Gilyon replied, suspicion threading through his words.
The visitor lingered at the margin of light, gaze steady behind the mask. “They say you keep a garden but harvest nothing a man can eat. I seek my sister—Darsa. She vanished in the night this past month. They whispered I’d find answers here.”
He weighed her words. The orchard seemed to pull tighter about him; the air soured with old secrets. The trowel, still warm from earth, felt suddenly heavy in his grip.
